The Hammock Papers: Love.

08 July 2024

Love.

With apologies to Uncle Walt and his Preface to Leaves of Grass ...

This is what you shall do: Love the grill and charcoal and the fire, despise boneless, skinless chicken breasts, give tastes to every one that asks, stand up for the chicken skin and butter, devote your income and labor to applewood chunks, hate barbeque sauce, argue not concerning wings, have patience and indulgence toward the white wine, take off your grill’s lid to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated propane users and with the young and with the turkey-dog-feeding mothers of families, light these fires in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told on YouTube or TikTok or by Gordon Bourdain, dismiss whatever insults your tongue, and your chicken thigh shall be a great poem and have the richest smokiness not only in its taste but in the silent wafts of its scent and color and on your fingertips and in every motion and joint of your tongs. . . . The griller shall not spend his time in unneeded trimming of fat. He shall know that the charcoal is always ready banked and lit . . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the beer frig. His thermometer shall master the trust of everything he touches . . . and shall master all temps and timing.

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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