January 20, 2010
Felicitations, Phil,
on your natal anniversary. Now you are a big boy and can wear long trousers.
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comments:
- Joel Bernstein: I know right?
- Rick Neece: Being nice is a dainty way to put it.
- Rick Neece: Hey Cristopher? Who cried “uncle” first, at the end of your ten-year stand-off? To quote my...
- Michael Smith: Ours is the kitchen.
- Amy Mabli: That’s what happens when you give the dogs the bed.
- Deron Bauman: Sweet Jesus.
- Michael Smith: Don’t we all.
- Pam: I have a story coming out soon in a ‘little mag’, Chicago Quarterly Review. An old friend recently...
- Pam: And I thought, somedays, that my work was meaningless…
- Pam: I remember Eggleston at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple years ago. He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit...
- Christopher Walken: Hey Clusterflockers, Realize y’all are hurting. I’ve been a really close friend of my...
- Marco: This works pretty well in mobile, more so in iOS
- Michael Smith: It was not the intent of management to imply all sissies are “namby pamby”. Management was...
- Rick Neece: I take umbrage with the term “namby pamby.” Some sissies are fierce.
- Carole Corlew: Shelia. Happy no big deal day. I would start your very own post but this phone is in semi rebellion.
Still crazy after all these years. Best of days, Phil.
I don’t think you’re gonna get that fella into long pants, Sheils. No matter how hard you try. Well it’s sunny over here, hope it’s sunny for you too, Phil. Rock out with your cake out.
Happy, Happy!
happy fucking birthday!!
Feliz Cumpleaños, hon.
Don’t give up on the shorts!
Happy Birthday!
Joyeux anniversaire! What a darling expression you make when you smile.
You are ALL rather lovely! That block of maisonettes is where I lived as a kid – to get me home my father used to whistle from the balcony! It would sometimes take him a while to get my attention, but, he always did.
My Dad whistled from the front porch at dusk. There was no mistaking or denying his call.
Kind of makes me wonder if “whistling the kids home” is an Englishy sort of thing and whether my grandfather whistled my dad home or my great-grandfather, my grandfather?
I tried to learn to whistle like Dad but I never caught on to it.
Rick, I have always loved whistling. During my childhood it seemed commonplace – now, it seems so few whistle. My dad used to do that two fingered kind of whistle, but, he was able to do it by just rolling his tongue – I have always longed to do that.
My Dad did it exactly the way you describe, just by the roll of his tongue. It pierced the air. Kids and dogs, like me, must have stopped in mid…how many ears lifted, heads cocked? The message heard for blocks around, “C’mon now, it’s getting dark. Come home.”
Same here, Rick. As dusk fell I knew I had to listen out for him. Man, I’d love to be able to whistle like that – surely the Internet can teach me.
My dad never whistled. He would just come and stand in the open door at dusk, and wherever I was I could feel him standing there.
I wrote something about that feeling a while back:
Small Journeys
So long was that shadow of one so little, stretching across the stubble of the field, snagging and tearing but going on. I would reach home late, and knew it by the light at my back that failed into my larger self. I tried to imagine I was huge, and a faint courage came then with each stitching lift of my shoes. But when I was bigger still—as large as the night—approaching a small light in a window, I stopped, and looked. Fearing to go in to my father.
P.S. You were and are beautiful, Phil. Thank you for being in the world. And happy birthday!
Thank you Daryl, It’s beautiful. You will never be too sentimental in my mind. I wrote my my own.
Oh Rick, your “Whistled Home” at the link you give is Splendid. So subtly told—an archetypal pattern that brings up my own memories of playing the same game. The war games of kids, always unknowingly about wanting to break through to being loved.
Daryl, that is so beautiful – written in such a way that the thought feels like my own.
Rick, I loved your remembery.
This place is rather wonderful.
[...] Daryl Scroggins: So long was that shadow of one so little, stretching across the stubble of the field, snagging and tearing but going on. I would reach home late, and knew it by the light at my back that failed into my larger self. I tried to imagine I was huge, and a faint courage came then with each stitching lift of my shoes. But when I was bigger still—as large as the night—approaching a small light in a window, I stopped, and looked. Fearing to go in to my father. [...]
My Papa taught me how to whistle when I was about 2. Two different styles. It’s kinda necessary for anyone aspiring to be a carny.