John Bonham was born on this day in 1948.
"The Ocean" ...
31 May 2023
Just.
I thought Pretty In Pink was just a metaphor for somebody being naked.
Richard Butler, serving tea wearing a shirt without any sleeves
Born.
AUGURIES of INNOCENCE
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers Song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made & Born were hands
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity
This is caught by Females bright
And returnd to its own delight
The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar
Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
The poor Mans Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Africs Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands
Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole Nation sell & buy
He who mocks the Infants Faith
Shall be mockd in Age & Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
The Questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to Reply
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesars Laurel Crown
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply
The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
To be in a Passion you Good may Do
But no Good if a Passion is in you
The Whore & Gambler by the State
Licencd build that Nations Fate
The Harlots cry from Street to Street
Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse
Dance before dead Englands Hearse
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
William Blake
Transposition.
Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.
Claude Monet
Uncertain.
Stevenson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dungeon Canyon, 1961
The wind is careless — uncertain — I like the wind — it seems more like me than anything else — I like the way it blows things around roughly — even meanly — then the next minute seems to love everything.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Afar.
Natural, reckless, correct skill;
Yesterday's clarity is today's stupidity.
The universe has dark and light, entrust oneself to change
One time, shade the eyes and gaze afar at the road of heaven.
Ikkyu
Natural.
Ari Weinzweig on leadership, life, and an acceptance of aloneness ...
If we’re ultimately alone in the world, but we’re not trained in how to manage that aloneness, then we are inevitably headed for trouble. Is it worth investing so much in so many people? I stand with May Sarton when she writes, “We have to believe that every person counts, counts as a creative force that can move mountains.”In all of this, I’m realizing that accepting and managing our aloneness is very much akin to comparable work we’re all confronted with around anxiety. Unmanaged or misunderstood, anxiety leads to inappropriate expressions of anger, apathy, addiction, and acting out. (Or, for all I know, an excessive affinity for alliteration.) It's only when we can make peace with the fact that anxiety is normal—an element of existence—that we can learn to lead effectively. As Peter Block’s friend, teacher, and co-author, Peter Koestenbaum says,When anxiety is denied, our nature is denied. … As a result, the price we pay for the denial of existential anxiety is severe. The dominant consequence is to restrict our life.…Existential anxiety is healthy and is the natural condition of the person when in a state of self-disclosure.The same is true with aloneness. Accepting it as painful at times, but still a normal part of who we are, makes it far less problematic. Instead of acting out, we can learn to live and lead more effectively.
Ari on the power of solitude ...
Solitude, once we settle into it, is a wonderful thing. It creates spiritual sustenance. It gives us much needed time to reflect. It’s our opportunity for long ignored thoughts and feelings to emerge. It’s a chance to quietly acknowledge fears that linger below the surface, unacknowledged, that weaken our emotional foundations. Reflective, thoughtful time on our own can surface hopes and dreams of a better future, support intuition, and encourage us to expand our emotional horizons.
Excitement.
Excitement dissolves your fear.
There isn't a minute of this that isn't important ...
Happy Birthday, Whitman
SONG of the OPEN ROAD, 6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear'd it would not astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion'd, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?
Walt Whitman, born on this day in 1819
PBS' In Search of Walt Whitman
"The Early Years"
"The Civil War and Beyond"
30 May 2023
Excellent.
An excellent book ...
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
Redouble.
Victor Davis Hanson, "The Idol of Equality" ...
As the ancient poet Hesiod noted, there are two sorts of human jealousies: the positive one of a free society in which citizens are impressed by the singular works of some and thus redouble their efforts to match or exceed them (“She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plow and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth”), and a destructive envy (“foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face”) in which the many resent that the few have something they do not, and thus redouble their efforts to either destroy them or take away what they have acquired.The problem with destroying liberty in service to mandated sameness is obvious, driven by Hesiod’s second, destructive envy: It has never worked, because it is contrary to human nature — both man’s acquisitive habits and the fact that we are not all born into the world equal in every respect. Instead, forced equality erodes personal initiative, undermines the rule of law, ruins the honesty of language, and requires a degree of coercion antithetical to a free society.
Are you listening, public education?
Grace.
Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1600
_edited.jpg)
Humility, which Burke ranked high among the virtues, is the only effectual restraint upon this congenital vanity; yet our world has nearly forgotten the nature of humility. Submission to the dictates of humility formerly was made palatable to man by the doctrine of grace; that elaborate doctrine has been overwhelmed by modern presumption.
Russell Kirk, from The Conservative Mind
Alas.
The FOUNTAIN
A Conversation
We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.
We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.
"Now, Matthew!" said I, "let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon;
Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made!"
In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee:
"No check, no stay, this streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years
And flow as now it flows.
And here, on this delightful day,
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.
My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what Age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.
The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:
But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own, --
It is the man of mirth.
My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved.
Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains!
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains:
And, Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee!"
At this he grasped my hand and said
"Alas! that cannot be."
We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide;
And through the wood we went;
And ere we came to Leonard's Rock
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church-clock,
And the bewildered chimes.
William Wordsworth
29 May 2023
Virtue.
Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. 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, born on this day in 1736, from his speech given 5 June 1788
Happy Birthday, Chesterton
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine. He was damned by John Calvin. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.
G.K. Chesterton, born on this day in 1874, from Orthodoxy
Sacrifice.
President Reagan's Memorial Day remarks during ceremonies at Arlington Cemetery, May 31, 1982 ...
The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery. One gets that feeling here on this hallowed ground, and I have known that same poignant feeling as I looked out across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David in Europe, in the Philippines, and the military cemeteries here in our own land. Each one marks the resting place of an American hero and, in my lifetime, the heroes of World War I, the Doughboys, the GI's of World War II or Korea or Vietnam. They span several generations of young Americans, all different and yet all alike, like the markers above their resting places, all alike in a truly meaningful way.Winston Churchill said of those he knew in World War II they seemed to be the only young men who could laugh and fight at the same time. A great general in that war called them our secret weapon, "just the best darn kids in the world." Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life. Well, they didn't volunteer to die; they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be, the values which make up what we call civilization. And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation. And let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish: that no other generation of young men will every have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.
Memory.
DECORATION DAY
Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry's shot alarms!
Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
Or the drum's redoubling beat.
But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
28 May 2023
Beautiful.
She could always make
the most beautiful sandwich.
Laced swiss cheese: sliced
crossways, folded once.
Ham in rolls like sleeping bags.
Turkey piled like shirts.
Tarragon. Oregano. Pepper.
Herb dill mayonnaise the color of
skin. On top: the thin, wandering line of
mustard
like a contour on a map
in a thin, flat drawer.
Or a single, lost vein.
The poppyseeds hold on,
for now.
Placed on a plate like isolated
driftwood
or a large, solemn head.
The spilled chips in yellow piles
are like the strange coins
of tall, awkward islanders.
The thin dill pickle: their boat
slides into
the green-sour sea.
Brad Ricca
Meadow.
Abondance
- 700 year-old abbey cheese
- raw cow's milk, brine-washed
- Smells and tastes of its meadow origin
- Repeat as needed
Heart.
UP NORTH
It’s the place people go to escape,
a place made of cabins, pine trees and lakes.
But no matter how far you drive,
there’s no sign to say “You’ve arrived.”
So just follow your heart til you find,
your special place that brings peace of mind.
As you breathe in the air and unwind,
your cares are all left behind.
It’s no mystery where the northwoods start.
When you’re “up north,”
you’ll know in your heart.
Suzanne Kindler
Friends.
Firchau, Molson, 2008
The HOUSE DOG’S GRAVE
I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking pan.
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the night through
I lie alone.
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read–and I fear often grieving for me–
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope than when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that’s too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided. . . .
But to me you were true.
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.
Robinson Jeffers
Beethoven, Symphony No. 4 in B♭ major, Op. 60
Danish National Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, performs ...
Happy Birthday, Percy
The salvation of art derives in the best of modern times from a celebration of the triumph of the autonomous self—as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—and in the worst of times from naming the unspeakable: the strange and feckless movements of the self trying to escape itself. Exhilaration comes from naming the unnameable and hearing it named.
Walker Percy, born on this day in 1916, from Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
As a guest with Eudora Welty on Firing Fine, December 12, 1972 ...
27 May 2023
Cleared.
Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled
to leave the house and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.
I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets.
Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.
Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied.
But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall-the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.
And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
widewinged toward me, settled
just offshore on his post,
took up his vigil.
If you ask
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.
Denise Levertov
Excellent.
An excellent movie.
The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man. His compulsion is my liberation.
Elton John, "Philadelphia Freedom"
The salad bar is open (the plates chilled), the soup is French Onion, and schooners of Weidemann are two-for-one. Try the chicken nachos with an extra side of ranch ...
Happy Birthday, Sioux
Siouxsie Sioux was born on this day in 1957.
"Song from the Edge of the World" ...
Profound.
Cassatt, Two Women Seated by a Woodland Stream, 1869
I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.
In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Flying.
The American Flag, The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory is pretty much just for flying. Stop using it for pop culture decoration. I'm talking to you, Charcuterie Sharon -- no flag napkins.
Clear.
O'Keeffe, An Orchid, 1941
I feel that a real living form is the result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown—where it has experienced something—felt something—it has not understood—and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown—known. By unknown—I mean the thing that means so much to the person that wants to put it down—clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand—sometimes he partially knows why—sometimes he doesn’t—sometimes it is all working in the dark—but a working that must be done—Making the unknown—known—in terms of one’s medium is all-absorbing—if you stop to think of the form—as form you are lost—The artist’s form must be inevitable—You mustn’t even think you won’t succeed—Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Weber, Bassoon Concerto in F major, Op.75
Gordon Fantini performs with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Gabor Takácks-Nagy ...
Intoxicating.
Wyeth, N.C., Sea Fever, 1937
He who indulges habitually in the intoxicating pleasures of imagination, for the very reason that he reaps a greater pleasure than others, must resign himself to a keener pain, a more intolerable and utter prostration.
Robert Louis Stevenson, from Notes and Essays: Chiefly of the Road
26 May 2023
Stand.
Martin Luther was declared an outlaw and his writings banned by the Edict of Worms on this day in 1521.
Excellent.
An excellent album.
From bandcamp.com ...
Following rare access to the bell tower at Hull Minster in September 2021, this immersive electronic work is made entirely of recordings of the bells that have rung out over the city of Hull for centuries, and of the clock mechanism that has marked that time. With live spatialisation across 24 speakers set up around the magnificent Hull Minster, this music delves deep into the resonances of the place and plays with the rich acoustics of the building.Nightports is based on a simple rule of restriction: only sounds captured for a particular project can be used. Nothing else – no samples or synths or drum machines – though the sounds captured can be stretched, cut, morphed and twisted, ordered and reordered. All of the sounds of this performance come from Hull Minster. It is music in and of this special place.
25 May 2023
Working.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, and Juan Hamilton in discussion, Interview, 1983 ...
HAMILTONGeorgia, tell Andy about how you got your mountain. Remember when somebody was interviewing you, and you said, “That’s my mountain.” And they said, “What do you mean that’s your mountain?” You said, “God told me if I painted it enough he’d give it to me.” Isn’t that true?
O’KEEFFEAnd I’m still working on it.
Adventures.
It's the last day of school. Time to leave the nest and let the adventures of life begin!
Today is your day!Your mountain is waiting.So ... get on your way!Dr. Seuss
