Servant.
Art is still doubly a servant –- to higher aims no doubt, on the one hand, but nonetheless to vacuity and frivolity on the other.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Happy birthday, Henderson.
Do not be afraid of cooking as your ingredients will know, and misbehave. Enjoy your cooking and the food will behave; moreover it will pass your pleasure on to those who eat it.
Fergus Henderson
CONNECT
Livers.
At St. John Bread & Wine ...
Monkfish Liver and Green Sauce. Our wonderful fish supplier has had a good run on monkfish recently, and where there are monkfish there are monkfish livers! Lucky us! Pan-fried in brown butter, finished with glorious green sauce. Your lunch tomorrow, with a chunk of sourdough.
Monkfish Liver and Green Sauce. Our wonderful fish supplier has had a good run on monkfish recently, and where there are monkfish there are monkfish livers! Lucky us! Pan-fried in brown butter, finished with glorious green sauce. Your lunch tomorrow, with a chunk of sourdough.
Brahms, Horn Trio, Op. 40
Daniel Barenboim, piano, horn, Dale Clevenger, Itzhak Perlman, fiddle, performing ...
Wild.
Not long shall you be ours
The Raven King knows all too well
Which are the fairest flowers.
The priest was all too worldly
The priest was all too worldly
Though he prayed and rang his bell
The Raven King three candles lit
The priest said it was well
Her arms were all too feeble
Her arms were all too feeble
Though she claimed to love me so
The Raven King stretched out his hand
She sighed and let me go
The land is all too shallow
The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King goes by
For always and for always
For always and for always
I pray remember me
Upon the moors, beneath the stars
With the King’s wild company.Susanna Clark, from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Imagined.
Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?
Michel de Montaigne
30 July 2018
Answer.
My life may appear melancholy
But traveling through this world
I have entrusted myself to Heaven.
In my sack, three quarts of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion
I cannot say -- wealth and honor are nothing but dust.
As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage.
And stretch out both feet in answer.
Ryokan
Ryokan
Guard.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who comes near that precious jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined.
Patrick Henry
The Clash, "Ghetto Defendant"
Do the the worm on Acropolis
Slamdance cosmopolis
Enlighten the populace ...
Slamdance cosmopolis
Enlighten the populace ...
Conform.
A FOREST HYMN
The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,---ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences,
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs,
That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn---thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in His ear.
Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,
These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show
The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here---thou fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees
In music; thou art in the cooler breath
That from the inmost darkness of the place
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.
Here is continual worship;---Nature, here,
In the tranquility that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird
Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak---
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated---not a prince,
In all that proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as lofty as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.
My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me---the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die---but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses----ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death---yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne---the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.
There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them;---and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou
Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the village; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities---who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of the works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.
William Cullen Bryant
There.
WHY the DAY FLIES
The poet, throughout his life, leans for a moment against some tree, or sea, or bank of earth, or cloud of a certain hue, as circumstances permit. He is not fused to the distractions of others. His love, his joy, his astonished reach have their equivalent in all the places he has not gone, all the places he will never go, among strangers he will not know. When we lift our voices to him, when we greet him with honors that bind, if we invoke the stars in his name, he responds that he is from the country beside, from the sky that has just gone under.
The poet quickens, then runs to the outcome.
At evening, despite the apprentice’s dimples on his cheeks, he is a courteous passerby whose farewells are brief so he can be there when the bread comes out of the oven.
René Char
Emancipated.
A young monk asked the Master: "How can I ever get emancipated?"
The Master replied: "Who has ever put you in bondage?"
Advaita teaching
Advaita teaching
Constantly.
TO JIM from the RIVER
Still floating on the current,
this last stretch before the sea,
like so many we fished together
through what seemed an endless river
of summer afternoons—this one
as familiar as it isn't, hurrying more
the further we go—our conversations
about the words of which things are made,
stilled now to become just the things
themselves, the purling and the rings
of water reaching out from our casts,
heard now only with our eyes
as I stand in the bow, watching
my fly float high on its hackle
along the grassy bank,
careful not to let my gaze
drift back to where
you would always be,
sitting behind me, a wreath
of cigarette smoke—
the strange feeling you said
you sometimes had, letting
a trout go after all
the concentration of catching it—
more like Mozart
than Wagner, you said,
your good right eye
watching for the rise of a life
your blind left, not too far
downstream, already absorbed
in that dark river light into which
we're constantly rowing.