05 April 2025
Reverence.
JIM HARRISON: NOTES on the SACRED ART of LOG SITTING
Approach the log cautiously with proper reverence as if you were entering a French cathedral.
If it’s over 60 degrees, inspect the lower sides of the log for rattlesnakes.
Now examine the log closely for the most comfortable place to sit, usually away from the sun.
Sit down.
Empty your mind of everything except what is in front of you—the natural landscape of the canyon.
Dismiss or allow to slide away any aspect of your grand or pathetic life.
Breathe softly. Avoid a doze.
Internalize what you see in the canyon: the oaks and mesquites, the rumpled and grassy earth, hawks flying by, a few songbirds.
Stay put for forty-five minutes to an hour. When you get up bow nine times to the log.
Three logs a day is generally my goal.
Smile.
'Tis the season for Valençay.
Raw goat.
Lemony tang.
Crack a few Tellicherry peppercorns over it.
Put some Benny Goodman wax on the hi-fi and swig some ice-cold Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc straight from the bottle.
Smile at one of the best parts of Spring.
Social.
Caley, Untitled, 1960
“Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around."
"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this."
She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard.
"Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not."
Ray Bradbury, from Fahrenheit 451
Unsought.
Pourbus, The Younger, Francis Bacon, Lord Keeper, and afterwards, Lord Chancellor of England, 1617
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
Francis Bacon
03 April 2025
A-Titling.
Our intention is simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age: this is an arduous task, and, therefore, we undertake it with confidence. We intend for this purpose to present a striking picture of the town; and as everybody is anxious to see his own phiz on canvass, however stupid or ugly it may be, we have no doubt but the whole town will flock to our exhibition. Our picture will necessarily include a vast variety of figures; and should any lady or gentleman be displeased with the inveterate truth of their likenesses, they may ease their spleen by laughing at those of their neighbours — this being what toe understand by poetical justice.
Like all true and able Editors, we consider ourselves infallible; and, therefore, with the customary diffidence of our brethren of the quill, we shall take the liberty of interfering in all matters either of a public or private nature. We are critics, amateurs, diletanti, and cognoscenti ; and as we know " by the pricking of our thumbs," that every opinion which we may advance in either of those characters will be correct, we are determined, though it may be questioned, contradicted, or even controverted, yet it shall never be revoked.
We beg the public particularly to understand, that we solicit no patronage. We are determined, on the contrary, that the patronage shall be entirely on our side. We have nothing to do with the pecuniary concerns of the paper: its success will yield us neither pride nor profit; nor will its failure occasion to us either loss or mortification. We advise the public, therefore, to purchase our numbers merely for their own sakes; if they do not, let them settle the affair with their consciences and posterity.
To conclude, we invite all editors of newspapers and literary journals to praise us heartily in advance, as we assure them that we intend to deserve their praises. To our next door neighbour, "Town," we hold out a hand of amity, declaring to him that, after ours, his paper will stand the best chance for immortality. We proffer an exchange of civilities ; he shall furnish us with notices of epic poems and tobacco — and we, in return, will enrich him with original speculations on all manner of subjects, together with " the rummaging of my grandfather's mahogany chest of drawers," " the life and amours of mine uncle John," anecdotes of the Cockloft family," and learned quotations from that unheard of writer of folios, Linkum Fidelus ...
If any one should feel himself offended by our remarks, let him attack us in return—we shall not wince from the combat. If his passes be successful, we will be the first to cry out, a hit! a hit ! and we doubt not we shall frequently lay ourselves open to the weapons of our assailants. But let them have a care how they run a-tilting with us; they have to deal with stubborn foes,who can bear a world of pummeling; we will be relentless in our vengeance, find will fight "till from our bones the flesh behack't."
Washington Irving, from Salmagundi; or, the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff
Happy Birthday, Irving
White, The Author in Westminster Abbey, 1864
There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster school, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. He conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in which Doomsday Book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing through a second door, entered the library.
I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the Church in his robes hung over the fireplace. Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall.
I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.
How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with such indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! how many sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of Nature; and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? To occupy an inch of dusty shelf—to have the titles of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself, and in another age to be lost even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound; like the tone of that bell which has tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a moment, lingering transiently in echo, and then passing away, like a thing that was not!
While I sat half-murmuring, half-meditating, these unprofitable speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps; when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns, like one awaking from a deep sleep, then a husky hem, and at length began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it, and having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.
Washington Irving, born on this day in 1783, from "The Mutability of Literature," found in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
02 April 2025
Magnificent.
Karr, Meg, The Magnificent, 2025
“What I would do for wisdom,”
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much.
Or so it seems.
Even on walks
I follow the dog.
Jim Harrison
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
