08 October 2022
Rosenmüller, Ascendit invictissimus Salvator
Wolf Matthias Friedrich performs with Abendmusiken Basel ...
07 October 2022
Turned.
Wyeth, Witch Country, Cushing, 1973
The SCARECROW
Once I said to a scarecrow, “You must be tired of standing in this
lonely field.”
And he said, “The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I
never tire of it.”
Said I, after a minute of thought, “It is true; for I too have
known that joy.”
Said he, “Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it.”
Then I left him, not knowing whether he had complimented or belittled
me.
A year passed, during which the scarecrow turned philosopher.
And when I passed by him again I saw two crows building a nest
under his hat.
Kahlil Gibran
06 October 2022
05 October 2022
Imagery.
If we want to go beyond history, or even, while remaining in history, detach from our own history the always too contingent history of the persons who have encumbered it, we realize that the calendars of our lives can only be established in its imagery.
Gaston Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space
Thanks, Kurt. Here's to French Colombard bottles in the firepit.
Rewards.
A PARABLE of SAUNTERING
There is a fourth lesson of the trail. It is one which John Muir taught me [during an early Sierra Club outing].
There are always some people in the mountains who are known as "hikers." They rush over the trail at high speed and take great delight in being the first to reach camp and in covering the greatest number of miles in the least possible time. they measure the trail in terms of speed and distance.
One day as I was resting in the shade Mr. Muir overtook me on the trail and began to chat in that friendly way in which he delights to talk with everyone he meets. I said to him: "Mr. Muir, someone told me you did not approve of the word 'hike.' Is that so?" His blue eyes flashed, and with his Scotch accent he replied: "I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike!
"Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."
John Muir lived up to his doctrine. He was usually the last man to reach camp. He never hurried. He stopped to get acquainted with individual trees along the way. He would hail people passing by and make them get down on hands and knees if necessary to see the beauty of some little bed of almost microscopic flowers. Usually he appeared at camp with some new flowers in his hat and a little piece of fir bough in his buttonhole.
Now, whether the derivation of saunter Muir gave me is scientific or fanciful, is there not in it another parable? There are people who "hike" through life. They measure life in terms of money and amusement; they rush along the trail of life feverishly seeking to make a dollar or gratify an appetite. How much better to "saunter" along this trail of life, to measure it in terms of beauty and love and friendship! How much finer to take time to know and understand the men and women along the way, to stop a while and let the beauty of the sunset possess the soul, to listen to what the trees are saying and the songs of the birds, and to gather the fragrant little flowers that bloom all along the trail of life for those who have eyes to see!
You can't do these things if you rush through life in a big red automobile at high speed; you can't know these things if you "hike" along the trail in a speed competition. These are the peculiar rewards of the man who has learned the secret of the saunterer!
Albert W. Palmer
04 October 2022
03 October 2022
Sooner.
Wyeth, N.C., The Murderer of Roy Campbell of Glenure, 1913
Call up your vermin to your back, sir, and fall on! The sooner the clash begins, the sooner ye'll taste this steel throughout your vitals!
Robert Louis Stevenson, from Kidnapped
Maneuvers.
Firchau, Self-Portrait, 2022
That flash was procured at Singing Dog Records while on "college visitation maneuvers" with Orsie in the Spring of 1981. Lunch was my first experience at Bernie's Bagels and Distillery.
Released.
The Police released their best album, Zenyatta Mondatta, on this day in 1980.
"Shadows in the Rain" ...
Released.
Electric Light Orchestra released Out of the Blue on this day in 1977.
"Night in the City" ...
02 October 2022
Remembering.
Wyeth, N.C., Ridge Church, 1936
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The boughs of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace Stevens
Thirteen.
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Happy Birthday, Marx
Groucho Marx was born on this day in 1890.
From A Day at the Races ...
Thank you!
Ritual.
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
Alfred , Lord Tennyson, from "In Memoriam"
Glows.
JACK O' LANTERN
Candle, spoon, and carving knife:
nearing the vigil of the dead,
let’s impose a little life
upon a ripening, faceless head.
Slice and pry the handled top,
Shovel out the mush and seeds,
Cut -- before we hear the clop,
Coming too close, of chalky steeds.
Two triangles make the classic eyes
Another makes a classic nose;
Three teeth, square and oversize,
Complete a countenance that glows
all night by its captive wick,
its parody of intellect.
Idle amusement for the quick.
And yet the venturous dead are checked:
shades of traitors that are given
one night's leave of Satan's jaws;
throngs of warlocks; wild unshriven
things with lammergeyer claws;
bogies by the wild heavens abhorred
witness their own defective will
when they flee this grinning gourd
presiding on our window sill.
Of whom or what an effigy,
that is for itself to know
until All Hallows' turn us free
to lift the cranial lid and blow.
Robert B. Shaw
Happy Birthday, Stevens
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Wallace Stevens, born on this day in 1879
Inversely.
My moods are inversely related to the clarity of the sky. I always assumed everybody shared my love for overcast skies. It came as a shock to find out that some people prefer sunshine.
Glenn Gould
01 October 2022
Intuition.
I've always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need X-number of hours alone.
Now, what that X represents I don't really know, whether it be two and seven-eights or seven and two-eights, but it's a substantial ratio.
Glenn Gould
Solitary.
Some men are daylight readers, who peruse the ambiguous wording of clouds or the individual letter shapes of wandering birds. Some, like myself, are librarians of the night, whose ephemeral documents consist of root-inscribed bones or whatever rustles in the thickets upon solitary walks.
Loren Eiseley
Rodney Crowell, "The Long Journey Home"
We ran off chasing rainbows
'Neath the blue Montana sky
And we self-proclaimed our freedom with a roar
We crossed those raging rivers
And we drank the taverns dry
And we bowed our heads to legends
Gone before ...
Please.
Aldridge, Besslyn’s Pond, Great Bardfield, 1950
The wild wood music from the lonely dell,
Where merry Gipseys o'er their raptures dwell,
Haunting each common's wild and lonely nook,
Where hedges run as crooked as the brook,
Shielding their camps beneath some spreading oak,
And but discovered by the curling smoke
Puffing, and peeping up, as wills the breeze,
Between the branches of the coloured trees: —
Such are the pictures that October yields,
To please the poet as he walks the fields ...
John Clare, from "October"
Touched.
Doisneau, Le Sonnette, 1934
Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.
Ray Bradbury
Unsophistications.
The sheep-like tendency of human society soon makes inroads on a child's unsophistications, and then popular education completes the dastardly work with its systematic formulas, and away goes the individual, hurtling through space into that hateful oblivion of mediocrity. We are pruned into stumps, one resembling another, without character or grace.
N. C. Wyeth
Once upon a time there was a crooked tree and a straight tree ...
It's still happening.
At school I notice the number of "crooked trees" are fewer each year.
The lumberjacks are getting better and better at cultivating straight trees. They've successfully recruited young apprentices to aid in the process.
Schools are the worst place for crooked trees.
The antidote is a housemade (God, I hate that word, but it's meaningful here) mixture of the following; each essential (none are available in a public school setting), all measured to-taste ...
- Fresh air sampling and studies, tree-climbing, water-wandering, and wind resistance (literal and figurative); exposure to raw weather
- Books, read like a snacker snacks and like a savorer savors
- Commonplace books and an introduction to the love of a favored writing instrument
- Transportation: bikes, skateboards, boats, nothing motorized ... sturdy shoes
- Solitude
Gordon Lightfoot, "Restless"
The lake is blue, the sky is gray, the leaves have turned to gold
The wild goose will be on her way, the weather's much too cold
When the muskie and the old trout too have all gone down to rest
We will be returning to the things that we love best ...
Essentially.
I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.
Glenn Gould
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