31 August 2016
30 August 2016
Happiness.
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility
of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not
accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some
use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea
of happiness.
Leo Tolsty
Happy birthday, David.
div class="MsoNormal">
David, Self-portrait, 1794
The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled
sculptor, Rousseau the good musician, and the immortal Poussin,
tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs
that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.
Jacques-Louis David
The David episode from Simon Schama's epic, Power of Art ...
The David episode from Simon Schama's epic, Power of Art ...
Happy birthday, Brown.
Dance, Capability Brown, 1773
Lancelot "Capability" Brown was born on this day in 1716.
Lancelot Brown changed the face of eighteenth century
England, designing country estates and mansions, moving hills and making
flowing lakes and serpentine rivers, a magical world of green. The English
landscape style spread across Europe and the world. It proved so pleasing that
Brown’s influence moved into the lowland landscape at large and into landscape
painting.
Jane Brown, The Omnipotent Magician
Brown, Harewood, 1781
Alan Titchmarsh celebrates the 300th anniversary of his
lifelong horticultural hero, Lancelot "Capability" Brown. Alan travels to
Kirkharle, in Northumberland, Brown’s birthplace, to discover the roots of this
English visionary. He also visits Stowe in Buckinghamshire, where Brown lived
for ten years and created a garden that was to change the course of English
gardening.
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Dis-ease.
How did we end up living like this? Why do we do this to
ourselves? Why do we do this to our children? When did we forget that we are
human beings, not human doings?
Whatever happened to a world in which kids get muddy, get
dirty, get messy, and heavens, get bored? Do we have to love our children so
much that we overschedule them, making them stressed and busy — just like us?
What happened to a world in which we can sit with the people
we love so much and have slow conversations about the state of our heart and
soul, conversations that slowly unfold, conversations with pregnant pauses and
silences that we are in no rush to fill?
How did we create a world in which we have more and more and
more to do with less time for leisure, less time for reflection, less time for
community, less time to just … be?
Somewhere we read, “The unexamined life is not worth living …
for a human.” How are we supposed to live, to examine, to be, to become, to be
fully human when we are so busy?
This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing. It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.
This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing. It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.
Thank you, Execupundit.
29 August 2016
Haydn, Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, Hob.VIIe:1
Wynton Marsalis performs with the Boston Pops Orchestra, under the direction of John Williams ...
Whether.
There's silence between one page and another.
The long streets of the land up to the woods
where gathered
shadows escape the day
and nights show through
discrete and precious
like fruit on branches
in this luminous and geographic frenzy
I am still unsure
whether to be the landscape I am crossing
or the journey I am making there.
Valerio Magrelli
28 August 2016
Happy birthday, Goethe.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on this day in 1749.
The poet of the German enlightenment is best known for works
such as, The Sufferings of Young Werner and the quintessential mad scientist
story, Doctor Faustus (in which the protagonist sells his soul to the devil
for knowledge). In an age when anyone with a pretence to an education was
polymathic, he was widely acknowledged as a leading intellectual, and had many
other important accomplishments that are now overshadowed by his artistic fame.
27 August 2016
Whisper.
A STORY THAT COULD BE TRUE
If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.
He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by–
you wonder at their calm.
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by–
you wonder at their calm.
They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”
“Who are you really, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”
William Stafford
Though.
Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
Mary Oliver
Happy birthday, Hegel.
Schlesinger, Hegel, 1831
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on this day in 1770.
The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is
an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends,
without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without
being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of
curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest
rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this
situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought. Everybody allows that to know any other science you must
have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgment upon
it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must
have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a
model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for
the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such
study, care, and application are not in the least requisite.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
26 August 2016
Caring.
Listening lies at the very heart of relationship. It means
that we are open to the other, that we respect him or her, that their
perceptions and feelings matter to us. We give them permission to be honest,
even if this means making ourselves vulnerable in so doing. A good parent
listens to their child. A good employer listens to his or her workers. A good
company listens to its customers or clients. A good leader listens to those he
or she leads. Listening does not mean agreeing but it does mean caring. Listening
is the climate in which love and respect grow.
25 August 2016
Van Morrison, "Summertime in England"
Can you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me?
Will you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me?
We'll go riding up to Kendal in the country
In the summertime in England.
Did you ever hear about
Did you ever hear about
Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge, baby?
Did you ever hear about Wordsworth and Coleridge?
They were smokin' up in Kendal
By the lakeside
Can you meet me in the country in the long grass
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me
With your red robe dangling all around your body
With your red robe dangling all around your body
Will you meet me
Did you ever hear about
William Blake
T. S. Eliot
In the summer
In the countryside
They were smokin'
Summertime in England
Won't you meet me down Bristol
Meet me along by Bristol
We'll go ridin' down
Down by Avalon
Down by Avalon
Down by Avalon
In the countryside in England
With your red robe danglin' all around your body free
Let your red robe go.
Goin' ridin' down by Avalon
Would you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Would you meet me?
In the Church of St. John
Down by Avalon
Holy Magnet
Give you attraction
Yea, I was attracted to you.
Your coat was old, ragged and worn
And you wore it down through the ages
Ah, the sufferin' did show in your eyes as we spoke
And the gospel music
The voice of Mahalia Jackson came through the ether
Oh my common one with the coat so old
And the light in the head
Said, daddy, don't stroke me
Call me the common one.
I said, oh, common one, my illuminated one.
Oh my high in the art of sufferin' one.
Take a walk with me
Take a walk with me down by Avalon
Oh, my common one with the coat so old
And the light in her head.
And the sufferin' so fine
Take a walk with me down by Avalon
And I will show you
It ain't why, why, why
It just is.
Would you meet me in the country
Can you meet me in the long grass
In the country in the summertime
Can you meet me in the long grass
Wait a minute
With your red robe
Danglin' all around your body.
Yeats and Lady Gregory corresponded
And James Joyce wrote streams of consciousness books
T.S. Eliot chose England
T.S. Eliot joined the ministry
Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge?
Smokin' up in Kendal
They were smokin' by the lakeside
Let your red robe go
Let your red robe dangle in the countryside in England
We'll go ridin' down by Avalon
In the country
In the summertime
With you by my side
Let your red robe go
You'll be happy dancin'
Let your red robe go
Won't you meet me down by Avalon
In the summertime in England
In the Church of St. John
Did you ever hear about Jesus walkin'
Jesus walkin' down by Avalon?
Can you feel the light in England?
Can you feel the light in England?
Oh, my common one with the light in her head
And the coat so old
And the sufferin' so fine
Take a walk with me
Oh, my common one,
Oh, my illuminated one
Down by Avalon
Oh, my common one
Oh, my storytime one
Oh, my treasury in the sunset
Take a walk with me
And I will show you
It ain't why
It just is
Oh, my common one
With the light in the head
And the coat so old
Oh, my high in the art of sufferin' one
Oh, my common one
Take a walk with me
Down by Avalon
And I will show you
It ain't why
It just is.
Oh, my common one with the light in her head
And the coat so fine
And the sufferin' so high
All right now.
Oh, my common one
It ain't why
It just is
That's all
That's all there is about it.
It just is.
Can you feel the light?
I want to go to church and say.
In your soul
Ain't it high?
Oh, my common one
Oh, my story time one
Oh, my high in the art of sufferin' one
Put your head on my shoulder
And you listen to the silence.
Can you feel the silence?
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me?
Will you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me?
We'll go riding up to Kendal in the country
In the summertime in England.
Did you ever hear about
Did you ever hear about
Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge, baby?
Did you ever hear about Wordsworth and Coleridge?
They were smokin' up in Kendal
By the lakeside
Can you meet me in the country in the long grass
In the summertime in England
Will you meet me
With your red robe dangling all around your body
With your red robe dangling all around your body
Will you meet me
Did you ever hear about
William Blake
T. S. Eliot
In the summer
In the countryside
They were smokin'
Summertime in England
Won't you meet me down Bristol
Meet me along by Bristol
We'll go ridin' down
Down by Avalon
Down by Avalon
Down by Avalon
In the countryside in England
With your red robe danglin' all around your body free
Let your red robe go.
Goin' ridin' down by Avalon
Would you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Would you meet me?
In the Church of St. John
Down by Avalon
Holy Magnet
Give you attraction
Yea, I was attracted to you.
Your coat was old, ragged and worn
And you wore it down through the ages
Ah, the sufferin' did show in your eyes as we spoke
And the gospel music
The voice of Mahalia Jackson came through the ether
Oh my common one with the coat so old
And the light in the head
Said, daddy, don't stroke me
Call me the common one.
I said, oh, common one, my illuminated one.
Oh my high in the art of sufferin' one.
Take a walk with me
Take a walk with me down by Avalon
Oh, my common one with the coat so old
And the light in her head.
And the sufferin' so fine
Take a walk with me down by Avalon
And I will show you
It ain't why, why, why
It just is.
Would you meet me in the country
Can you meet me in the long grass
In the country in the summertime
Can you meet me in the long grass
Wait a minute
With your red robe
Danglin' all around your body.
Yeats and Lady Gregory corresponded
And James Joyce wrote streams of consciousness books
T.S. Eliot chose England
T.S. Eliot joined the ministry
Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge?
Smokin' up in Kendal
They were smokin' by the lakeside
Let your red robe go
Let your red robe dangle in the countryside in England
We'll go ridin' down by Avalon
In the country
In the summertime
With you by my side
Let your red robe go
You'll be happy dancin'
Let your red robe go
Won't you meet me down by Avalon
In the summertime in England
In the Church of St. John
Did you ever hear about Jesus walkin'
Jesus walkin' down by Avalon?
Can you feel the light in England?
Can you feel the light in England?
Oh, my common one with the light in her head
And the coat so old
And the sufferin' so fine
Take a walk with me
Oh, my common one,
Oh, my illuminated one
Down by Avalon
Oh, my common one
Oh, my storytime one
Oh, my treasury in the sunset
Take a walk with me
And I will show you
It ain't why
It just is
Oh, my common one
With the light in the head
And the coat so old
Oh, my high in the art of sufferin' one
Oh, my common one
Take a walk with me
Down by Avalon
And I will show you
It ain't why
It just is.
Oh, my common one with the light in her head
And the coat so fine
And the sufferin' so high
All right now.
Oh, my common one
It ain't why
It just is
That's all
That's all there is about it.
It just is.
Can you feel the light?
I want to go to church and say.
In your soul
Ain't it high?
Oh, my common one
Oh, my story time one
Oh, my high in the art of sufferin' one
Put your head on my shoulder
And you listen to the silence.
Can you feel the silence?
Seeking.
The man who has reverence will not think it his duty to "mold" the young. He feels in all that lives, but especially in human beings,
and most of all in children, something sacred, indefinable, unlimited,
something individual and strangely precious, the growing principle of life, an
embodied fragment of the dumb striving of the world. All this gives him a
longing to help the child in its own battle; he would equip and strengthen it,
not for some outside end proposed by the State or by any other impersonal
authority, but for the ends which the child's own spirit is obscurely seeking.
The man who feels this can wield the authority of an educator without
infringing the principle of liberty.
Bertrand Russell
Rest.
McCubbin, Midday Rest, 1888
Come, rest awhile, and let us idly stray
In glimmering valleys, cool and far away.
Come from the greedy mart, the troubled street,
And listen to the music, faint and sweet,
That echoes ever to a listening ear,
Unheard by those who will not pause to hear
The wayward chimes of memory's pensive bells,
Wind-blown o'er misty hills and curtained dells.
One step aside and dewy buds unclose
The sweetness of the violet and the rose;
Song and romance still linger in the green,
Emblossomed ways by you so seldom seen,
And near at hand, would you but see them, lie
All lovely things beloved in days gone by.
You have forgotten what it is to smile
In your too busy life, come, rest awhile.
In glimmering valleys, cool and far away.
Come from the greedy mart, the troubled street,
And listen to the music, faint and sweet,
That echoes ever to a listening ear,
Unheard by those who will not pause to hear
The wayward chimes of memory's pensive bells,
Wind-blown o'er misty hills and curtained dells.
One step aside and dewy buds unclose
The sweetness of the violet and the rose;
Song and romance still linger in the green,
Emblossomed ways by you so seldom seen,
And near at hand, would you but see them, lie
All lovely things beloved in days gone by.
You have forgotten what it is to smile
In your too busy life, come, rest awhile.
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Happy birthday, National Park Service.
The National Park Service was created on this day in 1916.
How little note is taken of the deeds of Nature! What paper publishes her reports? Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds, or the written music of water written in river-lines? Who reports and works and ways of the clouds, those wondrous creations coming into being every day like freshly upheaved mountains? And what record is kept of Nature's colors -- the clothes she wears -- of her birds, her beasts -- her live-stock? How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all round the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris -- we hear them boom again, for we read past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarser senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir
Don't miss Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea ...
Thanks, Jess!
24 August 2016
Divine.
Old stone-pits, with veined ivy overhung;
Wild crooked brooks, o’er which is rudely flung
A rail, and plank that bends beneath the tread;
Old narrow lanes, where trees meet over-head;
Path-stiles, on which a steeple we espy,
Peeping and stretching in the distant sky;
Heaths overspread with furze-bloom’s sunny shine,
Where Wonder pauses to exclaim, “Divine!”
Old ponds, dim shadowed with a broken tree;—
These are the picturesque of Taste to
me;
While painting Winds, to make complete the scene,
In rich confusion mingle every green,
Waving the sketchy pencils in their hands,
Shading the living scenes to fairy lands.
Shading the living scenes to fairy lands.
John Clare
Home.
For millennia, the ancestors of modern Hopi people lived in
this region, refining the practical know-how and spiritual energy that allowed
them to not only exist, but thrive in a seemingly harsh environment. This
knowledge and experience would be passed from generation to generation,
ultimately culminating and expressed in the contemporary culture of Hopi
people, reflecting a connection that spans thousands of years across hundreds
of miles.
Eventually the revolutions of the earth out distance the
early inhabitants, all that is left of their passing are their ancient
homes, tools, textiles, ceramics, jewelry and images carved and painted upon
the cliff walls. In some cases, the physical remains of revered family are
interred within and around the structures, left as spiritual guardians of a
holy space. These are the tangible remains of their existence, ones that we can
see and in some cases, touch and feel with our own hands; while some are experienced
in the relative comfort of museums, archives and research centers across the
country.
Others, if we are lucky enough, are encountered in our own
wanderings across the same landscapes the Ancient Ones once called home. Under
the same sun, moon and stars they once gazed upon, we can hold in our hands the
results of thousands of years of living within a natural world. For many of us,
Indigenous and otherwise, this is still the case and we are afforded the
opportunity to glimpse into their being.
Yet there is another aspect of this landscape that cannot be readily seen or touched by our human hands. This is the Spirit Of Place. It is expressed as the solitude of the evening sunset as the winds sigh a relaxed breath, the sudden rush of excitement watching a falcon pursue its prey across the grasslands, the overwhelming expression of humility as we gaze upon stars, planets and other celestial bodies in the dark night sky. All of these experiences are afforded us due to the landscapes of the Bears Ears remaining in a relative pristine condition. The open space of the canyons, mesas, deserts, forests, springs, streams and rivers remain connected to one another and to those wild things of earth, water and sky that call this place home.
Yet there is another aspect of this landscape that cannot be readily seen or touched by our human hands. This is the Spirit Of Place. It is expressed as the solitude of the evening sunset as the winds sigh a relaxed breath, the sudden rush of excitement watching a falcon pursue its prey across the grasslands, the overwhelming expression of humility as we gaze upon stars, planets and other celestial bodies in the dark night sky. All of these experiences are afforded us due to the landscapes of the Bears Ears remaining in a relative pristine condition. The open space of the canyons, mesas, deserts, forests, springs, streams and rivers remain connected to one another and to those wild things of earth, water and sky that call this place home.
23 August 2016
Flight.
Ringer, Northwoods Campfire, 2011
I felt its urgent demand in the blood. I could hear its
call. It's whistling disturbed me by day and its howl woke me in the night. I
heard the drum of the sun. Every path was a calling cadence, the flight of every
bird a beckoning, the color of ice an invitation: com. The forest was a fiddler, wickedly
good, eyes intense and shining with a fast dance. Every leaf in every breeze was a toe tapping out of the same
rhythm and every mountaintop lifting out of cloud intrigued my mind, for the
wind at the peaks was the flautist, licking his lips, dangerously mesmerizing
me with almost inaudible melodies that I strained to hear, my ears yearning for
the horizon of sound. This was the calling, the vehement, irresistible demand
of the feral angel -– take flight.
All that is wild is winged – life, mind, and language – and knows the
feel of air in the soaring “flight, silhouetted in the primal.”
Jay Griffiths, from Wild
Astride.
In the ensuing decades, however, the idea of flânerie as a
desirable lifestyle has fallen out of favor, due to some arcane combination of
increasing productivity—hello, fruits of the Industrial Revolution!—and the
modern horror at the thought of doing absolutely nothing. But as we grow inexorably busier—due in large part to
the influence of technology—might flânerie be due for a revival?
Addressing.
Nature poetry has a rich heritage in the United States and
is always being written anew as our relationship with nature evolves. Our
national parks have also long partnered with artists through residencies,
exhibitions, and public programs to take the subjects of nature, culture, and
self and portray and investigate them together in unique ways for the broad
public. The 2016 centennial anniversary of the National Park Service is an
especially fitting moment to expand both of these traditions. The concept behind
this project draws inspiration from poetry as a powerful yet intimate art form
that can capture how we perceive the world around us always through language.
It is also rooted in installation and performance art, which bring surprising
encounters in the everyday world. Where park visitors expect signs to be
informational, authoritarian, scientific, or historical, here, poetry reverses
that and offers a subjective version of the same content. The poetic signs also
explore what it means to commune with nature in places like national parks with
other people and with wildlife, how officialdom and administrators also
"see and feel" nature with us, and how contemporary poetry and art
continue to experiment with addressing the natural world in our time.
CONNECT
22 August 2016
Open.
Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1745
Herman Hesse
The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without
searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stars were beautiful,
beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and
butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a
child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust.
Happy birthday, Debussy.
The sound of the sea, the curve of the horizon, wind in the leaves, the cry of a bird, leave a manifold impression on us. And then suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in musical language. I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child.
Claude Debussy
Valery Gergiev conducts the London Symphony performing La Mer ...
20 August 2016
19 August 2016
Aged.
Hand-tinted quarter plate daguerreotype, blue paper mat,
cased, contemporary manuscript laid over the case lining stating: “Baltus
Stone, Revolutionary Pensioner of the United States. Born October 1744. Signed
his receipt for his Pension at the Philadelphia agency by making his mark.
March 5, 1846. Aged about 101 ½ Years.”
Bach, Violin Concerto In A Minor, BWV 1041
Il Giardino Armonico performs, led by Giovanni Antonini; Enrico Onofri, fiddle ...
Health.
Innes, Pool in the Woods, 1891
The BREATH of MORNING
How beautiful and fresh the pastoral smell
Of tedded hay breathes in this early morn!
Health in these meadows must in summer dwell,
And take her walks among these fields of
corn.
I cannot see her, yet her voice is out
On every breeze that fans my hair about.
Although the Sun is scarcely out of bed,
And leans on ground as half awake from sleep,
The boy hath left his mossy-thatched shed,
And bawls right lustily to cows and
sheep;
Or taken with the woodbines overspread,
Climbs up to pluck them from their thorny bowers,
Half drowned by drops which patter on his
head
From
leaves bemoistened by night’s secret showers.
John Clare
18 August 2016
Fantastical.
My overcoat too was becoming ideal;
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of!
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of!
My only pair of breeches had a big hole in them.
– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
– My stars in the sky rustled softly.
And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides
On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops
Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine;
And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,
On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops
Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine;
And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,
I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics
Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart!
Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart!
Arthur Rimbaud
17 August 2016
16 August 2016
Beyond.
BILBO'S LAST SONG
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.
Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!
J.R.R. Tolkien
Still.
Chatham, Aspens, Undated
I SIT and THINK
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
I SIT and THINK
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No.5, Op.73
Alfred Brendel performs with Merek Janowski and the NHK symphony orchestra ...
Fruitful
There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the
idealist most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure
of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate
violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of
conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to
too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to
violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work. It destroys the fruitfulness of his work, because it kills the root
of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
Thomas Merton