Beauty.

Chardin, Still Life with Copper Pot, Cheese, and Eggs, 1735 

We have learned from Chardin that a pear is as living as a woman, that an ordinary piece of pottery is as beautiful as a precious stone. Everyday life will charm you once you have absorbed Chardin’s painting for a few days like a lesson. Then, having understood the life of his painting, you will have discovered the beauty of life.

Marcel Proust, from "Chardin: The Essence of Things"

Believe.

John Brown delivered his famous speech to the court at his trial on this day in 1859, in Charles Town, Virginia ...

This Court acknowledges too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of GOD. I saw a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that, "All things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them." It teaches me further, to "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised poor, I have done no wrong, but right.

Enter.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

E. M. Forster

Happy Birthday, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Chardin, A Green Neck Duck with a Seville Orange, 1730

How many attempts, now happy, now unhappy!  He who has not felt the difficulties of his art does nothing that counts.

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, born on this date in 1699

Happy Birthday, Russell Chatham

Chatham, Nightfall in September, 1991

Russell Chatham was born on October 29, 1939.

Winter Above Deep Creek: The Making of an Original Lithograph ...

Sustain.

As it has been written, so it shall be.  Here are ten stouts and porters to sustain you through the gales of November ...

• Anchor Brewing Porter
• Alaskan Brewing Smoked Porter
• Anderson Valley Brewing Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout
• Bell's Brewing Expedition Stout
• Founders Brewing Breakfast Stout
• Great Lakes Brewing Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
• Guinness Extra Stout
• Left Hand Brewing Milk Stout Nitro
• Rogue Brewing Mocha Porter
• Short's Brewing Publican Porter

Thanks for the inspiration, Kurtastrophe.

Better.

Wyeth, November First, 1950

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,

     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

     She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted grey

     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

     The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

     The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

     And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost

Checker'd.

Spenser, The Shepherd's Calendar: November, 1579

The SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: NOVEMBER

The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;

And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face

Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,

When done the journey of her nightly race,

Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.

For days the shepherds in the fields may be,

Nor mark a patch of sky - blindfold they trace,

The plains, that seem without a bush or tree,

Whistling aloud by guess, to flocks they cannot see.

The timid hare seems half its fears to lose,

Crouching and sleeping 'neath its grassy lair,

And scarcely startles, tho' the shepherd goes

Close by its home, and dogs are barking there;

The wild colt only turns around to stare

At passer by, then knaps his hide again;

And moody crows beside the road forbear

To fly, tho' pelted by the passing swain;

Thus day seems turn'd to night, and tries to wake in vain.

The owlet leaves her hiding-place at noon,

And flaps her grey wings in the doubling light;

The hoarse jay screams to see her out so soon,

And small birds chirp and startle with affright;

Much doth it scare the superstitious wight,

Who dreams of sorry luck, and sore dismay;

While cow-boys think the day a dream of night,

And oft grow fearful on their lonely way,

Fancying that ghosts may wake, and leave their graves by day.

Yet but awhile the slumbering weather flings

Its murky prison round - then winds wake loud;

With sudden stir the startled forest sings

Winter's returning song - cloud races cloud,

And the horizon throws away its shroud,

Sweeping a stretching circle from the eye;

Storms upon storms in quick succession crowd,

And o'er the sameness of the purple sky

Heaven paints, with hurried hand, wild hues of every dye.

At length it comes along the forest oaks,

With sobbing ebbs, and uproar gathering high;

The scared, hoarse raven on its cradle croaks,

And stockdove-flocks in hurried terrors fly,

While the blue hawk hangs o'er them in the sky.-

The hedger hastens from the storm begun,

To seek a shelter that may keep him dry;

And foresters low bent, the wind to shun,

Scarce hear amid the strife the poacher's muttering gun.

The ploughman hears its humming rage begin,

And hies for shelter from his naked toil;

Buttoning his doublet closer to his chin,

He bends and scampers o'er the elting soil,

While clouds above him in wild fury boil,

And winds drive heavily the beating rain;

He turns his back to catch his breath awhile,

Then ekes his speed and faces it again,

To seek the shepherd's hut beside the rushy plain.

The boy, that scareth from the spiry wheat

The melancholy crow - in hurry weaves,

Beneath an ivied tree, his sheltering seat,

Of rushy flags and sedges tied in sheaves,

Or from the field a shock of stubble thieves.

There he doth dithering sit, and entertain

His eyes with marking the storm-driven leaves;

Oft spying nests where he spring eggs had ta'en,

And wishing in his heart 'twas summer-time again.

Thus wears the month along, in checker'd moods,

Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;

One hour dies silent o'er the sleepy woods,

The next wakes loud with unexpected storms;

A dreary nakedness the field deforms -

Yet many a rural sound, and rural sight,

Lives in the village still about the farms,

Where toil's rude uproar hums from morn till night

Noises, in which the ears of Industry delight.

At length the stir of rural labour's still,

And Industry her care awhile forgoes;

When Winter comes in earnest to fulfil

His yearly task, at bleak November's close,

And stops the plough, and hides the field in snows;

When frost locks up the stream in chill delay,

And mellows on the hedge the jetty sloes,

For little birds - then Toil hath time for play,

And nought but threshers' flails awake the dreary day.

John Clare

Spattered.

Kelley, The Schoolhouse, Being Deserted, Soon Fell to Decay, and Was Reported to be Haunted by the Ghost of the Unfortunate Pedagogue, 1991

The next morning the old horse was found, without his saddle and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master’s gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the school-house and strolled idly about the banks of the brook but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs, deeply dented in the road and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a spattered pumpkin.

Washington Irving, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Tremendous.

Kelley, Just Then He Saw the Goblin Rising in His Stirrups, and in the Very Act of Hurling his Head at Him, 1991

The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, “Who are you?” He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind; the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle. His terror rose to desperation, he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head in the eagerness of his flight.

They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn and plunged headlong down hill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskillful rider an apparent advantage in the chase; but just as he had got halfway through the hollow the girths of the saddle gave away and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain, and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches, and (unskilled rider that he was) he had much ado to maintain his seat, sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse’s back-bone with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.

An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones’ ghostly competitor had disappeared. “If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash; he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider passed by like a whirlwind.

Washington Irving, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Special.

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

Ray Bradbury, from The Halloween Tree

Bach, Passacaglia e Thema Fugatum d'apres, BWV 582

L'Accademia dei Dissonanti perform ...

Falconieri, "La suave melodia"

Performing are Xenia Gogu, violin, Teresa Madeira, cello, and Víctor García García, five-string cello piccolo ...

Kapsperger, Passacaglia in A

Xavier Díaz-Latorre performs ...

Luck.

Celebrating.

Scourings.

Rockwell, Ichabod Crane, 1937

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed.

He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch’s token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, “in linked sweetness long drawn out,” floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!

But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!

Washington Irving, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", found among the papers of the late Dietrich Knickerbocker in Geoffrey Crayon's Sketchbook

Music.

The boy stepped out under a moon of archaic bone, a paper bag of golden kernels, bulky and cool against his hip, were stolen treasure. 

October 30, and the town had already begun to forget itself. Porch lights burned low as banked coals. The parchemnet of fallen leaves scraped the sidewalks in small, hurried flutterings of pages. The air was perfumed with the gardens he had passed—turned earth, the sweet-sour breath of the tomatoes, cabbages, and squshes still rooted there— the air itself tasted of matches struck and then blown out.  

He was twelve, or at least he was at supper. That night he was something older, thinner -- a wire pulled taut between the kitchen door he closed and the dark at the end of the block. His friends waited by the ancient oak that leaned like a eavesdropping man. Their whispers were no louder than the rustle of their satchels of munitions. One of them carried a pocket full of soap. Another carried a length of string and the bright, nervous idea of it. The kernels in his paper sack would provide abundant opportunities.

The night opened the way a book opens for a thumb. Lawns were pale roads. Windows were eyes that had not yet decided whether to see. Somewhere a dog barked twice and then thought better of it. The boy felt the particular pride of being uncaught: the cold climbed his wrists, the laugh that wanted to live in his throat forever and was told, for now, to stay. He cradled a handful of corn in his sweaty palm. For a moment it was only corn, ordinary, smooth, light. Then it left his hand and became constellations of small, pale comets. The stars shattered, exploding against the aluminum siding of the house with a sound like a battle drum. Porch lights flared. Somewhere a voice called a name that was not his. Exulted, the rebels scattered into the deepest murkiness provided between houses, and the shadows enveloped them without judgment.

Fifty years later he remembered the joyous adventure that lived in the running—the way his lungs burned clean, temples thundered, every shadow looked like a friend, until it wasn’t. Danger lived in the stopping, but laughter made even walking difficult.  

In the sudden quiet after the mischievous music had been made, the thought came forward, sharp as the first frost, that someone would have to rake it all up in the morning, and that the hand that gathered it, may belong to a man who remembered and did not curse the memory or the boy. 

The moon watched. It had seen this every year and still favors the stealthy.  

By the time he slipped back through the kitchen door his fingers smelled of the grains he robbed. His mother, still reading. She did not look up. On the table pumpkin pie awaited with an ice-cold glass of milk.

Outside, the town settled, floting in the golden wreckage of the night. The boy stood very still and listened to his own blood, which had not yet decided whether it has been changed ... or wanted to.

Unflinching.

Deiker, Rabbits in a Cabbage Field, 1864

THE SCARECROW

The Scarecrow

All winter through I bow my head

beneath the driving rain;

the North Wind powders me with snow

and blows me black again;

at midnight 'neath a maze of stars

I flame with glittering rime,

and stand above the stubble, stiff

as mail at morning-prime.

But when that child called Spring, and all

his host of children come,

scattering their buds and dew upon

these acres of my home,

some rapture in my rags awakes;

I lift void eyes and scan

the sky for crows, those ravening foes,

of my strange master, Man.

I watch him striding lank behind

his clashing team, and know

soon will the wheat swish body high

where once lay a sterile snow;

soon I shall gaze across a sea

of sun-begotten grain,

which my unflinching watch hath sealed

for harvest once again.

Walter de la Mare

Thanks for the image, Kurt ... don't neglect the sidebar.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Jethro Tull, "No Lullabye"

Keep your eyes open

And prick up your ears

Rehearse your loudest cry.

There's folk out there

Who would do you harm

So I'll sing you no lullaby.

There's a lock on the window;

There's a chain on the door:

A big dog in the hall.

But there's dragons and beasties

Out there in the night

To snatch you if you fall ...

Good morning.

Legendary.

Kelley, A Fine Autumnal Day, 1990

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

Washington Irving, from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Hang.

'Tis the last Thursday in October and the weekend begins now ...

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."     

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington" 

For best results, listen to this: Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Devil May Care" ...

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day. 

Umberto Limongiello

Stanley, Witch Carving Pumpkin, 1928

Old Blind Dogs, "Terror Time"

The heather will fade

Aye, bracken will die

Streams will run cold and clear

Aye, the small birds they'll be goin'

For it's then that you'll be knowin'

That the terror time is here ...

Telemann, Sonata in D-Major, TWV 44:1

The Bremer Barockorchester performs ...

Buxheimer Organ Book, Virginem mire pulchritudinis

Luca Pianca performs ...

Mozart Sonata in D-Major for Two Pianos, K.44

Elina Akselrud and Denis Zhdanov perform ...

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Sweet Pumpkin"

RUSH, "New World Man"

What if Stewart Copeland played with RUSH?

I got to know him and then got to know the band. And getting deeper into it, going to see them, I get it. I understand why people get all reverent about Rush.

Wedge.

Ten.

Tolkien, Rivendell, 1937

Frodo woke and found himself lying in bed under a richly carved wooden ceiling, listening to a waterfall.

"Where am I, and what is the time?" he said aloud.

"In the house of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning," replied Gandalf. "It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know."

J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Fellowship of The Ring

Still.

Yet.

The LOVE of OCTOBER

A child looking at ruins grows younger

but cold

and wants to wake to a new name

I have been younger in October

than in all the months of spring

walnut and may leaves the color

of shoulders at the end of summer

a month that has been to the mountain

and become light there

the long grass lies pointing uphill

even in death for a reason

that none of us knows

and the wren laughs in the early shade now

come again shining glance in your good time

naked air late morning

my love is for lightness

of touch foot feather

the day is yet one more yellow leaf

and without turning I kiss the light

by an old well on the last of the month

gathering wild rose hips

in the sun

W.S. Merwin

Fight.

The word impossible does not exist for me. I’ve got a lot of signal flags in my flag bag, but there is not a white one in there. I am going to keep fighting until the day I die — and might keep on fighting afterward, depends on where I am.

Ted Turner

Clifton Hicks, "Unquiet Grave"

Keeps.

Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1660

VERMEER

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum

in painted quiet and concentration

keeps pouring milk day after day

from the pitcher to the bowl

the World hasn’t earned

the world’s end.

Wisława Szymborska 

Early.

But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe’en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

But one strange wild dark long year, Hallowe’en came early.

One year Hallowe’en came on October 24, three hours after midnight.

Ray Bradbury, from Something Wicked This Way Comes

Thanks, Kurt.

John Anderson, Rest in Peace

Ol' John has passed.

If ya only know one piece o' gritter poetry b'heart, make it this'n, featuring the pedal steel artistry of Paul Franklin ...

Rekindles.

Homer, The Pumpkin Patch, 1878

"Jack-o'-Lantern, Jack-o'-Lantern,

Tell me where you hide by day?"

"In the cradle where the vapours

Dream the sunlit hours away."

"Jack-o'-Lantern, Jack-o'-Lantern,

Who rekindles you at night?"

"Any firefly in the meadow

Lends a Jack-o'-Lantern light."

John B. Tabb

Wish.

“There goes the Todd woman,” I said.

Homer Buckland watched the little Jaguar go by and nodded. The woman raised her hand to Homer. Homer nodded his big, shaggy head to her but didn’t raise his own hand in return. The Todd family had a big summer home on Castle Lake, and Homer had been their caretaker since time out of mind. I had an idea that he disliked Worth Todd’s second wife every bit as much as he’d liked ’Phelia Todd, the first one.

This was just about two years ago and we were sitting on a bench in front of Bell’s Market, me with an orange soda-pop, Homer with a glass of mineral water. It was October, which is a peaceful time in Castle Rock. Lots of the lake places still get used on the weekends, but the aggressive, boozy summer socializing is over by then and the hunters with their big guns and their expensive nonresident permits pinned to their orange caps haven’t started to come into town yet. Crops have been mostly laid by. Nights are cool, good for sleeping, and old joints like mine haven’t yet started to complain. In October the sky over the lake is passing fair, with those big white clouds that move so slow; I like how they seem so flat on the bottoms, and how they are a little gray there, like with a shadow of sundown foretold, and I can watch the sun sparkle on the water and not be bored for some space of minutes. It’s in October, sitting on the bench in front of Bell’s and watching the lake from afar off, that I still wish I was a smoking man.

Stephen King, from "Mrs Todd's Shortcut"

Thanks to Kurtastrophe for introducing me to this way, way back in those heady days.

Voices.

Steve suggested that I begin sharing the ideas my students come up with in my classroom, so may I introduce Voices in The Wood.

We were trying to define art, artists, and artistic talents ...

For me art is a metaphor or a myth. I fear a lot of people think of art as just a physical outcome: a painting, a song, a poem. And after many discussions people will think of it as an emotion or how it makes them feel: beautiful, creative, fury, regret, envy. But this is my problem, if art can make you feel a unique specific emotion, why don't they call themselves a beautyist, furyist, and so on, because that describes the specific emotion. 

Abby

I'm a wonder-ist.  You?

Happy Birthday, Robert Bridges

LOW BAROMETER

The south-wind strengthens to a gale,

Across the moon the clouds fly fast,

The house is smitten as with a flail,

The chimney shudders to the blast.

On such a night, when Air has loosed

Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,

Old terrors then of god or ghost

Creep from their caves to life again;

And Reason kens he herits in

A haunted house. Tenants unknown

Assert their squalid lease of sin

With earlier title than his own.

Unbodied presences, the pack’d

Pollution and remorse of Time,

Slipp’d from oblivion reënact

The horrors of unhouseld crime.

Some men would quell the thing with prayer

Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor,

Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair

Or burts the lock’d forbidden door.

Some have seen corpses long interr'd

Escape from hallowing control,

Pale charnel forms—nay ev’n have heard

The shrilling of a troubled soul,

That wanders till the dawn hath cross’d

The dolorous dark, or Earth hath wound

Closer her storm-spredd cloke, and thrust

The baleful phantoms underground.

Robert Bridges, born on this day in 1844

Old Blind Dogs, "Tatties and Herrin'"

But awa tae the north

'Mongst the brave and the darin'

Tae the lads that were brocht up

On tatties and herrin' ...

Tremendous.

Audubon: A New Golden Age of Observation Is Revealing the Wonders of Night Migration ...

Billions of birds travel north in spring and south in fall, hundreds of species keeping a cycle of movement, and they do so primarily at night. While some large birds like hawks, cranes, and waterfowl are daytime travelers, most migrants—including the vast majority of songbirds—are on the wing in the dark. The reasons include a calmer atmosphere, guidance from the stars, and safety from predators. Meanwhile we humans by and large have no inkling of the tremendous journeys made while we sleep. Even for those who study migration, the story is unfolding in ways never before possible.

Accompaniment ...