The Hammock Papers: Glory.

27 February 2022

Glory.

LET ME TELL YOU HOW I DIED – IWO JIMA

It’s a small spit of land in the ocean so blue

But we must have it, it’s what we’ve come to do

We crawl ashore at this isolated place

And the tropical sun burns hot on our face

The sand is black, crafted in hell

The whole place is covered with a terrible smell

The enemy hides out in caves underground

It’s impossible to see them sneaking around

They hit us with guns, with artillery, and fire

Still, we blast up the hillside, we won’t retire

Men fall around me, blown all apart

We must reach the top, we must not lose heart!

Suddenly, I see something through the hellish smoke

Something I know, my passion invoked

There it is! Old Glory, waving on a flag pole

At the top of Suribachi, we’ve done it! Our goal!

But that glorious flag is the last thing I will see

Because it was then that the grenade with my name found me

Blasted me to pieces, I’m lost in the heat

Carry on Marines, for we do not retreat.

M.B. Henry

On February 23, 1945, during the battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines raised a flag atop Mount Suribachi.

Lest we forget.

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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