"Ah, Sweet Mystery"

Heart courtesy of Gone Coco Boutique

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Continuing the theme of Heart Month, I'd like to mention I "heart" mysteries. Starting when I used to sit in a tree reading Nancy Drew in her roadster adventures, I couldn't resist the page-turning quality of the old clock, the haunted house,and the broken locket. There was a interval of time when I read novels instead but the first time I saw Mystery on Masterpiece Theater, I began another binge which has lasted without breaks. What a delight to run across an original paperback of Winston Graham's The Walking Stick in the basement room of a small bookstore in Boone, North Carolina. Recently I have found Japanese, Chinese, and Swedish mysteries where I have not only enjoyed the plotting but also discovered so much about the settings. For instance, I never knew the extent of the Cultural Revolution. Just think. While America was having the summers of love, Chinese students were forbidden mixing. The beautiful long flower skirts I saw on Haight Street in San Francisco would have been the worst of the worst "bourgeois decadence." How horrible to be a dedicated scholar and then sent out to the countryside to live a life completely alien and arduous under the guise of needing to be "re-educated." What back breaking work as glimpsed in the movie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress! I am beyond glad that times have changed and I can now be reading the mysteries of the Chinese writer, Qui (last name first) who lives in St. Louis. I don't have a hankering to go to these places but I luxuriate in Michael Connelly's Catalina Island; Martha Grimes' British pubs; P.D. James' Scotland Yard; Tony Hillerman's New Mexico; George Simenon's French countryside, and Qui's China. Sometimes I think the perfect symposium would be a gathering of the fictional detectives rather than the authors. Dalgleish could read Chen's poetry and Chen could read Dalgleish's. Jury could give us an account of Wiggins' investment in the health care industry and Jim Chee could perform Blessing Way dance. What is most striking about these protagonists is how much heart they have. Blustery and rebellious Frost really cares. Havers cuts sarcastically through the upper crust hypocrisy but worries herself senseless over her mother. If you'd like to read an outstanding mystery blog try http://meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com on which the calendar of authors is a treasure trove. Speaking of heart, here is a poem I wrote years ago, published in Hearts Afire.

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By the Rim

You have been here always in my phantasy

walking up the road, laughing,

with shells from a prehistoric sea

just for me.

We have been together here, everywhere

joyously.

Climbing, falling pilgrims are we

in an old geography.

We do not wonder on how we met or why.

And if by chance you do appear

in the early sun's mirage

(as surely soon you must)

to discover that I am not the me I know

and you and your photograph are

strangely mismatched

and the canyon is there simply

ever-changing,

my phantasy will carry me through

the meeting you.

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...may the blessings of heartfelt endeavors and mysterious encounters be yours...