The Hammock Papers: Remember.

21 April 2016

Remember.

Curtis, Crow War Party, 1908

"Yes," he smiled. "I shall always remember my first war-party. I was asked to go by the man who was to carry the pipe, and I felt so proud I could scarcely keep the secret to myself. I thought the day very long, and was relieved when at night we rode silently out of the village with our faces toward the east. We wore only light shirts and leggings made from the skins of bighorns, and carried nothing except our bows and shields. War-bonnets and bright colors were hidden away, because they can be seen easily, and no war-party wishes to be seen. Bonnets were never used by warriors until all chance of surprise was gone. Then they were brought out, if there was time. Our bonnets were in rawhide cases and might not be used at all.

We rode all night without seeing our Wolves. Yet I know, of course, they were out ahead of us somewhere. I kept looking at every knoll top until we hid away for the day. Then they came in, looking exactly like wolves.

Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years Personal Experience

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL