Loving on American Idyll

Sometimes my Brother-Units fill me with awe, sometimes with a seemingly long-awaited nod of the head, sometimes both.

Both, as in TW's recent post at American Idyll: I Must Go Where It's Quiet.

I've thought of his offerings there as collage, pastiche, satire, tour à tour.  To create, to decorate, to commentate, to put all in question, sometimes to scream, sometimes to laugh, I love watching what he does there (and ruuscal, too!).

But this one... yeah, big nods to Dylan, thank you to Joan, appropriate recollections of their story, a few wonderings about this convergence and that... but mostly, this, to me, is TW.

Here, as a temptation, is one of his photos from this post -- stolen.  I didn't ask permission.  It's his, and it might be him in it, I dunno.  Or her.  A pilgrim.  Go now and enjoy the rest -- don't do as I did and steal.


"the sky is embarrassed
and I must be gone..."

PILGRIM ABOVE HERMIT CANYON by Tumbleweed, Beloved Purveyor of Idylls

Since I am for some despicable reason so overwrought this day, I hope the American Idyll team won't mind me swiping a few pics of the feline Poncho.  Poncho reminds me, like a punch in the stomach and a tweak of the cheek, of our dear Little Boy, better known as Uncle Kitty Big Balls.  It's uncanny -- sometimes more in the attitude than in appearance, sometimes I actually have to look twice.  We miss Little Boy, and my dear Sam-I-Am's loss is palpable as the anniversary of euthanizing him arrives.  He was my Love Buddy.  I got more (and better!) kisses from Sammy than from any man I ever smooched.  But he did get a slightly unnerving ardor in the eyes that made you know Sammy was more Casanova than gigolo.  Discrete, but whoa... a true lover.  Smooches to you out there, my Sammy.

Uncle Kitty Big Balls was truly Fred's boy -- they were pals.  "They" were the reason I realized recently that naming Buddy "Buddy" was a huge error on my part.  UKBB was Fred's "buddy," and answered to it.

Anyway, the history of how we ended up with Marmy Fluffy Butt, Uncle Kitty Big Ball's sister, who gave birth to Dobby... it's fascinating reading and THIS POST sums it up as well as I can sum up any darned thing.

Here's ruuscal and TW's Poncho, the cutie pie who oozes soul:

Poncho by ruuscal

Poncho by ruuscal, at American Idyll -- check out those beautiful eyes...

They're back...

The lovely literates over at American Idyll are back from their pilgrimage, and with beautiful  evidence.  I will steal two photos from ruuscal and two photos from TW to whet your whistle.  Wet your whistle? Rev up the appetite?

Hold the breath.
Laugh.
Imagine.

CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS TEMPLES FROM WHITES BUTTE

-local flora

whipple cholla

elvis, doing his thing

The Canyon and the River are not theirs to own, of course, and both might argue that the images begged taking -- still, credit them their eye, their availability, their joy, their fun, Elvis, and Poncho.

Give the boys their due, is all I'm saying.

Smooches galore, you two (three, four?).  Cheerios and fruitloops!

Love from the Marlinspike Hall Gang

To Wet (Whet) your Whistle : Origin and Meaning

What does it mean if you wet your whistle?
The most common interpretation is to have something to drink, usually something alcoholic. More polite to say you are off to wet your whistle than to say you are going drinking.
Most references relate to a custom quite a few hundred years ago when drinking mugs had whistles that one would blow to indicate you needed a refill.
Some say the whistle was attached to the handle and became wet after the drink had been poured, hence to wet your whistle.
Other sources say the whistle was part of the mug, built into either the rim or handle. The result in both cases being a wet whistle. I went digging on the web and could find no example of Ye Olde Whistle Mug. Maybe I did not dig deep enough. The only examples I could find were replicas of whistle mugs on offer as curios.
By the way, the whistle part. It would appear in times past ones mouth and or throat were referred to in common talk as your whistle, which makes sense to me. To wet your whistle was to have something to drink. There is documentation that this was in use during the 1300’s. ( Maybe one wet ones whistle before you whistled, hard to whistle with dry lips. Maybe one wet your whistle before talking, something like a glass of water on a speakers table)
So, the way I look at it, is that to have something to drink preceded the whistle on the mug concept. Maybe the one morphed into the other.
You will also find references to “Whet your whistle”. My immediate reaction was that whet morphed into wet over the passage of time. This is not necessarily true.
Whet per definition means either to sharpen something on a grindstone (whetstone) or to excite or stimulate a desire, interest or appetite. Starters at a meal are there to whet your appetite in stimulating the desire to eat more of something else. This is also a saying in its own right, first documentation however quite a few years after the Wet your whistle.
I did a very unsophisticated test on the Internet and Googled “wet your whistle” and had 426,000 hits, the majority directed towards drinking. “Whet your whistle” resulted in 421,000 hits, the majority of the answers related to stimulating further thought or experience processes.
Now you have a good basis to go scratching around for more information and draw your own conclusion.

the big ditch from space

from american idyll

TW had another fine year around the sun, and is off trekking the canyon, listening to the river.  And cavorting.  There's gotta be some cavorting.

So it looks as if updates to American Idyll will not be forthcoming until the pilgrims return:

Once again
we are permitted 

to stagger into 

and wander about

the obscure hinterlands

of the Grand Canyon.

Be well until 

our mid-May return.

from american idyll

He also got my attention with a quote from one of my secret loves:

BUT IT IS NO GOOD TRYING TO TELL ABOUT THE BEAUTY.
IT WAS JUST THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTIFUL BEYOND BELIEF,
AND THAT IT IS A KIND OF JOY WHICH HAS TO BE LIVED.
--T.H. WHITE
THE BOOK OF MERLYN

God, I love that book!  

from american idyll

This is what the AI overseers left for us to ponder in their absence -- The Big Ditch from space.  They're down there somewhere, and I know they are cavorting.

a belated "happy birthday," TW!  

Master of Contradiction

The grin went ear-to-ear at discovering that ruuscal had used my favorite Stephen Maria Crane poem to illustrate some of his (her?) grand photographic work over at American Idyll.

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

"It is futile," I said,

"You can never — "

"You lie," he cried,

And ran on.

(PoemHunter.com offers 103 Poems of Stephen Maria Crane for download.)

Come aside, and rest...

As I often do when my denatured brain cells overheat, I spent some time this evening enjoying the photographic evidence of nature's brilliant calm as captured by my oldest brother's camera.

You can enjoy more of his work, and his friend ruuscal's photos, as well, over at his American Idyll blog. TW has a longstanding love affair with the Grand Canyon, in which he has lived, loved, worked, and played.


When he and I reunited after what seemed a lifelong time apart, TW was quick to realize that I often needed "armchair" access to Anywhere Else, and gave me the first (of his many) gifts -- my own Late Night Insomniac's Pass that lets me traipse about the canyons, smell the flowers, and worship at The River's edge. 

Brother-Unit TW chose to add some of Chopin's Nocturne in B flat minor and lush videography to offset his triptych of "the beautiful Butte."  There is also a bit of good advice, for good measure, tacked onto the end.

Older brothers just can't help themselves.
I love you, Tumbleweed. We're gonna get you to The Manor once Linda at the Lone Alp Home Depot gets our flooring order straight. We're having a test run on Brother-Unit Visitation next weekend, when Grader Boob is flying in, provided he can successfully elude the Dean of the English Department, who is already dicking around with The Boob's grades. The poor boy is overwhelmed:

Been dealing with a cold, grading, and the final plagiarists/collusionists (?) of Fall semester.


Each equally aggravating.

It's important to remember, on days like today, that "the beautiful Butte," Chopin, and even freezing, stormy weather are as much "reality" as the shootings in Tucson or that nagging pain sitting right behind your eyes.

Breathe deep:

Take long walks

in stormy weather

or through

deep snows

in the fields

and woods,

if you

would keep

your spirits up.

Deal with

brute nature.

Be cold

and hungry

and weary.

--Henry David Thoreau

(journal entry for December 25, 1856)

* Please don't reproduce TW's photography without securing his permission -- just leave me a comment here and I'll hook you guys up!

PAEAN: The Structural Water of Deer Creek

i fell in love with this photo the instant i saw it and cannot explain why.  thank you, ruuscal, over at american idyll, my favorite armchair destination.

deer creek
photo by ruuscal, american idyll

with my indian rug and a pipe to share

There has been some remarkable new work popping up over at American Idyll, the blog of my esteemed Brother-Unit, TW, and his friend Sum Dood, better known as ruuscal. 

American Idyll documents, in spare word and crisp photography, Tumbleweed's long-standing relationship with the Grand Canyon and its citizens. 

Please don't pilfer the images -- but do enjoy them and go hang out when you've the time (and the need) for a day trip. 

Heed the admonition (but don't feed the animals):  yes, the river knows!

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved.

I am not sure that you are of the same mind.

But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.

This is the world of light and speech,

and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

~ George Eliot

[letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 11 May 1875]

Huxley Terrace and
Grand Scenic Divide

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

                     --Chinese proverb

Talking Ravens from David Old Duffer Rice on Vimeo.

Colorado River
above
Trinity Canyon



Tapeats Creek photos

 Aurora borealis
The icy sky at night
Paddles cut the water
In a long and hurried flight
From the white man
to the fields of green
And the homeland
we've never seen.

They killed us in our tepee
And they cut our women down
They might have left some babies
Cryin' on the ground
But the firesticks
and the wagons come
And the night falls
on the setting sun.

They massacred the buffalo
Kitty corner from the bank
The taxis run across my feet
And my eyes have turned to blanks
In my little box
at the top of the stairs
With my Indian rug
and a pipe to share.

I wish a was a trapper
I would give thousand pelts
To sleep with Pocahontas
And find out how she felt
In the mornin'
on the fields of green
In the homeland
we've never seen.

Tower of Ra, Tiyo Point and Shiva Temple

And maybe Marlon Brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk of Hollywood
And the good things there for hire
And the Astrodome
and the first tepee
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
-- neil young





Thank you, TW. 
Thank you, ruuscal!

[Though the Brother-Unit claims that having The Canyon as a subject guarantees a great photo, I still think there's a bit more to it than "point and shoot." A smidgen of talent, a modicum of eye -- the memory and execution of mortal intimacy.]

Light Held Together By Moisture

posted by ruuscal over at american idyll


Credit & Copyright: Miloslav Druckmüller (Brno University of Technology), Martin Dietzel, Peter Aniol, Vojtech Rušin

Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the light of the solar corona easily visible. Normally overwhelmed by the bright solar disk, the expansive corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, is an alluring sight. But the subtle details and extreme ranges in the corona's brightness, although discernible to the eye, are notoriously difficult to photograph. Pictured above, however, using multiple images and digital processing, is a detailed image of the Sun's corona taken during the 2008August total solar eclipse from Mongolia. Clearly visible are intricate layers and glowing caustics of an ever changing mixture of hot gas and magnetic fields. Bright looping prominences appear pink just above the Sun's limb.

The Sun,
with all those planets revolving around it
and dependent upon it,

can still ripen a bunch of grapes
as if it had nothing else
in the universe to do.*





Wine is sunlight, held together by water.*




*Galileo Galilei

Walking: Brother Wind Returns

nomads sauntering into Turquoise Canyon

Lazing about, trying to remember, as well as invent, the rules for living with a fractured hip, I discovered that ruuscal, associate of Brother-Unit TW, and co-contributor/dirigeant to American Idyll, often the blog of my short dreams, thanks to their haunting meld of image, text, and sound...

I discover that russcal, he has posted an entry on walking, the son of a gun.

Wow, I am getting good at approximating bitterness, eh?

It turns out that handy-dandy Fred recalls every "hip precaution" in the Conservative Approach to Periprosthetic Femoral Bust-Ups Manual. Me? If I do something and it hurts beaucoup or makes a sound like metal torquing on metal, I try not to repeat that motion.

You can shout, even whisper, seductively, hip precaution rules at me all the live-long day and I won't remember to follow them. My learning curves are notoriously stubborn; I am stuck in Lacan's stade du miroir.

Really! See his Le stade du miroir. Théorie d'un moment structurant et génétique de la constitution de la réalité, conçu en relation avec l'expérience et la doctrine psychanalytique, Communication au 14e Congrès psychanalytique international, Marienbad, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1937.

I'm just kidding.

However, the fact that I had recourse to Lacan, and to that stade, formateur de la fonction sujet? That means I am angry from piled-on frustrations, and hiding behind declarations of powerlessness. I never did get Lacan!

I am unable to walk, and by walk I mean the expansive exercise of going from, say, bed to bath.
I am unable to stand, at least as of this moment. (Because this must change, it will change: being sweetly scrubbed to a glowing pink, or even remotely toileted by Fred, la bonne et belle Bianca Castafiore, or any other denizen of The Manor will mark my perfect day for bananafish.)

I had forgotten how painful a busted hip can be, so much so that mere mention of the idiotic pain scale makes my upper lip assume sneer posture. Fred says that when my upper lip sneer combines with my much preferred toothy grins, it's a scary proposition.

You've long ago figured out what I need to relearn daily: It's not about me.

The Good Lord didn't intend for me to take this crap seriously!

On a good day, I remember that before hitting the bottom of my first mug of coffee.

On a bad day, friend, foe, family, or feline has to politely smack me upside the head before that old lightbulb stutters on, and remind me that I long ago left the 6 - 18 month age group behind.

Still, don't mistake my daily enlightenment for willingness to submit to "there-are-people-a-lot-worse-off" or "God-will-not-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle." No, those remain retarded statements, no matter their truth value. Such statements might be backed by the virtue of all the saints, but you don't want to inflict them on someone in the grip of endless, severe pain.

No... You will want to wait a bit, wait for the grip to loosen, for the jets to cool, then smack the Loser in Your Life with all the truisms you have on hand.

I simply need to remember, and to readjust, and then, to hush. It needs to be done quickly, before lack of sleep, loss of x, y, or z, before the firm establishment of a pout, and the deep, deep blues.

Maybe ruuscal has something for me, then? Maybe the impulse of this sister to need a brother has intuitively led to the saving grace of the ant's forefoot* , and to a brother's friend.

Maybe it is always about paying attention, being aware, praying centering prayers.

He's presenting Thoreau, of course, Thoreau's Walking. From our very recent beginnings, TW and I have honored text and image, literal and visual, ut pictura poesis, and almost always through the beauty of the canyon, by the wild, old river.

slanting light on an esplanade afternoon

globe mallow and sandstone

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil--to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return--prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again--if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man--then you are ready for a walk.
--Henry David Thoreau (from "Walking")

Brother Wind - Tim O'Brien with Darrell Scott

Made up my mind to go
Some place so far away, I headed west
Without a sad goodbye
No hugs or tears that way, it's probably for the best
Sent cards along the way
Said I was looking for a brand new life
I never settled down
My wanderlust would always cut the ties like a knife
Sometimes the lonesome wind
Calls out just like it knows me
And on a night like this
When I don't know where to go, he shows me the way

He knows me, my brother wind
He's lonely too and he takes me away

I always looked ahead
I was so afraid that I'd be caught behind
Followed a crooked stream
To places I'd never seen and one more highway sign
Just like some other guys
I count the hours 'til the day will end
But it's not so I can rest
For me it's the time that's best for talking to my friend

Cause he knows me, my brother wind
He's lonely too and he takes me away

Now half my life is gone
The only home I have is open road
My skin is cracked and brown
A mirror to the dessert ground and the dusty wind that blows
I never made a mark
Just scattered footsteps on the shifting sand
Whatever pushes me
It's something only he can understand

He knows me, my brother wind
He's lonely too and he takes me away

*** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** *** ** ***

*So does the poetry of attention indite salvation, restoration, and peace. Pound sees the lizard in its wild enormity stalking prey along a grass-blade. The world is at work, dramatic and wide. Nature is not arrested. All's well. And this wellness seen up close goes far, all the way to Pound's beloved London where the river, gulls, and garden also go on. His faith restored by sight, Pound continues to see, and the elegant drama of lizard and green fly unfolds along his rain ditch. The pleasures of peace and the gifts of civilization and society are given freely to the open eye by the undetained light of a sunset, the new Pound's (his poem has made him new) "grand couturier." Everywhere in The Pisan Cantos, Pound the hysterical aesthete is calmed and renovated by intimates of his eye, as here, in "Canto LXXXIII:"

mint springs up again
in spite of Jones' rodents
as had the clover by the gorilla cage
with a four-leaf

When the mind swings by a grass-blade
an ant's forefoot shall save you
the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower

In the poetry of attention, the poet comes to his senses. He is saved along the way. Proud mind, which loves to impose itself between appearance and reality (such imposition lies at the core of all bad poems), "swings by a grass-blade" until fact, in the shape of "an ant's forefoot," strides to the rescue. Fact is, faith is, appearance and reality remain tenderly intimate at the origin of poems. Pound knows, having come to his senses: "the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower." In the attentive occasion that is truth in poetry, what you see is what you get. O taste and see.

\im-ˈpȯr-tənt

All photos from American Idyll, a blog maintained by my eldest Brother-Unit, TW (plus the maintes beautiful contributions of ruuscal). American Idyll is dedicated to the Grand Canyon, and to the river, because, as TW notes: the river knows...

"...Let us go," we said, "into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, make us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too." And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn't terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn't very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.
-- John Steinbeck (from "The Log from the Sea of Cortez"**)

**The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 – April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck's most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck's thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the narrative portion of an unsuccessful earlier work, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which was published by Steinbeck and Ricketts shortly after their return from the Gulf of California, and combined the journals of the collecting expedition, reworked by Steinbeck, with Ricketts' species catalogue. After Ricketts' death in 1948, Steinbeck dropped the species catalogue from the earlier work and republished it with a eulogy to his friend added as a foreword.

Sandwiched in Cottonwood: Box 3

cottonwood tree, american idyll, by ruuscal

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed... 'That art Thou!' say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add: 'Not a part, not a mode of that, but identically Th at, that Absolute Spirit of the World.'
--William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

During the night, I came *this* close to killing myself. Don't worry, the flirtation is over. The only reason to grant any status whatsoever to last night's peril is that it was not born of collapse, nor was it a yielding or concession. There was no surrender; There was no giving up. I felt no worse before than I did after.

So why even bring it up?

Because I came away with the realization that I want to cease my dedication to the cultivation and maintenance of the "barriers between [myself] and the Absolute."

Don't worry. That doesn't mean an end to my dedication to verbal foolishness. [Witness the proof before you.]

A box from TW arrived yesterday, out of the blue. If you have been keeping count of these troves from my once-lost, now-found older brother, this is the third such gift.

This is the first gift box, however, to arrive without the contextual benefit of an occasion. The first box came in the guise of a Christmas present, even though he does not celebrate Christmas, himself. The second box was a boisterous January birthday celebration.

It was only after the second gift box that I reciprocated, sending him one in April in honor of his own trip around the sun. The experience of choosing what to pack, and what incantations to chant over the gathered mess, turned out to be an occasion of great angst and small personal growth.

"What is the big deal?" you may be thinking. "So you baked a dozen chocolate chip cookies and tossed in some cup-o'noodle soups, and voilà, an instant care package..."

Actually, that sort of care package is also dear to my heart -- but that is not the type of boxes my brother and I are exchanging.

In the beginning, the beginning being November 2009, it went like this: A few weeks back, thinking it would be a way to save money and be a marvelous gift, I asked my two brother-units for used copies of the two books that had been the most formative to the person they each have become.

Yes, I thought up that Grand Idea and was very proud of myself. Then, Brother-Unit Grader Boob declined by sending a loud and poignant gift certificate, with which I promptly purchased a Wii system with appropriate accompanying loot. Oh well, it was just a thought, I thought.

My pride morphed into sincere doubt and a sense of familiar foolishness. Until, that is, the arrival of Brother-Unit Tumbleweed's first box. It took my breath away, made me weep, and I remain, to this day, a gasping woman drenched in tears.

It's not a simple matter of grabbing a few items you think you might love or like, and packaging them as clear explanations of the person you want everyone to think you are.

Even though it wasn't stated in the rules, the urge to explain the inclusion of an item must be carefully stifled. For instance, in my box to him there was a weaving made by a women's collective in Nicaragua. I could not tell Tumbleweed of its history, about how it formed the basis of a short story that traced the narrative of its hieroglyphic threads. There's no way to divulge, either, how much I hate its color scheme or how I miss the friendship of the woman who gifted it to me.

It tells the story of a farmer defending his corn against crows.

That I am having a hard time is such tired and tiresome news. In some ways, I am managing my sucky health in a healthier fashion, especially in how it impacts the people I love. By keeping their welfare foremost in mind, I am able to speak, in real life, almost none of the pain, discomfort, and hardship with which I live. But this death of pretension has not significantly changed my experience. Not yet, at least. I intend to keep trying.

What scares me is my matter-of-factness.

It makes strange, true things come out of my mouth. I was telling Fred, for instance, of a recent email from a dear friend, an email that was brimming over with affection.

Matter of factly, I turned from the sapling we were admiring to say, "It came at an excellent time, for I have been feeling particularly unloved."

Particularly. Passive aggression. I am angry with myself for claiming it, here, as a matter of fact. But, it is said, done.

Still, it can be shocking, the words that remain in the wake of hyperbole and pity. Thank goodness for the wealth of humor at hand, for ballast's sake -- and to complement my complete grasp of, and dedication to, the truth.

Thank goodness I have such a brother as Tumbleweed.

The third gift box, sent on the occasion of no-occasion, contained:

1. Everyone's favorite: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson. (Almost as important, to me, are the illustrations by Ralph Steadman.) That was surely a creepy time. I remember being forced into a baby blue Cadillac, driving from Miami to creepy Homestead A.F.B., where I was forced from the baby blue Cadillac onto the runway tarmac to await Air Force One and a limp-wristed, sweaty-palmed, newly-reelected Richard Milhouse Nixon. Pat was with him, but she was quickly subsumed under the dry-like-stale-baby-powder category. I remember thinking that she could barely support one hyphen, much less four, in the search for complex adjectives.

ralph steadman, i shot the sherrif

That's not true. Of course, it also was not a true Tar Macadam runway, those now being exceedingly rare. The ramp/apron area of airports are made of concrete.

I'll reread the book, I guess, and those old names of McGovern, Humphrey, Muskie, Hart, Kennedy. Even though I wrote "everyone's favorite," up above, Hunter S. Thompson isn't really one of mine. A drug-addled smartass, author of Gonzo journalism, a favorite of mine? Sure, it may sound like a match made in heaven, but I cannot rid myself of the fatigue reading him generates (and I don't need help in the fatigue department, thankyouverymuch).

I love the way Thompson went out, though. No, not the bullet to the brain, no -- I mean the ashes shot out of the cannon. I am pretty sure, though, that the creative energy and money necessary to produce a send off of equal quality will be lacking, once I am a stiff. I mean, Johnny Depp is reputed to have bankrolled the affair for Hunter... I've no attendant rich friends gifted in funerial highjinks.

2. passions of a man: Charles Mingus, the complete atlantic recordings 1956-1961. Part of Rhino Records jazz reissue series. I am excited! Another man of... temperament! [I begin to suspect a trend, as I reflect on the totality of TW's boxes. A trend, if he is cognizant. A tell, if he is not. Always remember, and never forget, he supports himself, his friends, and his menagerie with monies from his work in the betting industry.]

I've always appreciated Mingus' firm stance against the romanticization of Charlie Parker and his penchant for self-destruction which figured prominently among the cultivated traits of his pretendants -- If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, was the entire working title to Gunslinging Bird. It's been described as a blistering "jazz waltz."

I so love form and organization. Together with raucous insanity? It's Eden as it was meant to be, with The Asp held over.

4th track from Mingus "Mingus Dynasty" album. Recorded in New York on November 1 and 13, 1959. Charles Mingus (bass); Booker Ervin, John Handy, Benny Golson (saxophones); Jerome Richardson (saxophone, flute); Donald Ellis, Dick Williams (trumpets); James Knepper (trombone); Maurice Brown, Seymour Barab (cello); Theodore Cohen (vibraphone); Roland Hanna (piano); Dannie Richmond (drums).

--from rogerjazzfan

I am somewhat ashamed at my excitement, as I don't react with such exuberance over all of the music my big brother gifts to me. I am no Deadhead, f]r instance, though I have amassed Big Knowledge around their songs, and seek to understand TW's place in the culture.

[Please note that Gunslinging Bird does not figure among the Atlantic recordings.]

3. Coltrane: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings

4. Handel, Water Musick, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan

5. Mozart, Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Lest I be accused of recently being bereft of satire, or parody, even:

"A little nightmare music" is a opera in "one irrevocable act" by the eponymous P.D.Q. Bach in which the man behind the alias, Peter Schickele, effectively plunders (or to quote a more politically correct term, "readopts") Mozart's music, most obviously "A little night music", to retell "a dream P.D.Q. Bach had December 4, 1791-- the night that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died and Antonio Salieri didn't."

The narrative is very simple (considering the opera, composed of four musical numbers, runs no more than twenty minutes): Salieri (bass), a successful composer, comments on the beauty of Mozart's music (violin; marked as a "unsuccessful composer") and prophets him world renown; he is quickly brought down to reality by Peter Schläfer (tenor), a mysterious writer, who quickly claims that it is actually Mozart who is the better composer; this point and a quarrel that develops from it makes Salieri so mad that he ponders poisoning the writer but a good kick from P.D.Q. (silent part) leads to the death of Mozart, as Schlafer laments the loss of his best coat. The witty libretto in combination with the varied music of Mozart makes for quite an enjoyable recording (which also presents two of the most hilarious orchestral pieces that one could hope to hear).

Presented here is the setting of the second movement of Mozart's concerto, the Romanza, which in this version becomes a delightful cavatina for the tenor (giving the orchestral piece a logical vocal twist). The basic sonata structure and the delightful music of the Austrian composer are preserved and given a perfectly whimsical text by P.D.Q., as the writer comments on how it is obvious, to him at least, that it is Mozart, and not Salieri, who will be the more famous composer.

A young Bruce Ford sings this adaptation, and, despite the obvious comical element of the whole piece, his handsome delivery of the music is an added bonus.

-- courtesy of LindoroRossini

6. Gregorian Chant:Gregorianischer Choral
Choralschola der wiener Hofburgkapelle, Vienne
Pater Hubert Dopf, S.J.

7. Mozart, The Flute Quartets. Jean-Pierre Rampal, Flute. Isaac Stern, Violin. Salvatore Accardo, Viola/Alto. Mstislav Rostropovich, Cello.

8. Anonymous 4 -- A Lammas Ladymass: 13th and 14th Century English Chant and Polyphony "...a Ladymass for the summer portion of the church year, as it might have been sung around the feast of Mary's Assumption in August."


Bodleian Library, fragment of agnus dei for three voices
Amazon's music sampler

The vocal group Anonymous 4 formed in 1986, originally comprising Johanna Maria Rose, Susan Hellauer, Ruth Cunningham and Marsha Genensky. So named in honor of the designation given by musicologists to the unknown 13th-century Parisian student whose writings detailed the vocal polyphony he heard at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the ensemble's performances also explored medieval chanting and polyphony, combined with elements of poetry and narrative; debuting in 1992 with An English Ladymass, the Anonymous 4 immediately topped Billboard's classical music charts, a feat repeated by their 1993 follow-up On Yoolis Night. Subsequent efforts include 1995's The Lily and the Lamb and Miracles of Sant'iago, 1996's A Star in the East and 1997's 11,000 Virgins. After completing A Lammas Ladymass, Cunningham left the group in 1998 and was replaced by Jaqueline Horner. Legends of St Nicholas followed a year later.

-- Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

I dare to believe that my brother comes to know me, although my preference is for gruff and tired men, and less perfection. I like the creak of real wood, the sound of something dropped, a cough in the background.

This was immediately added to the bedtime playlist. Thank you, TW.

Uh-oh. In what might be some sort of Perverted Pyramid Ponzi Ploy of a Stockholm Syndrome Plan... I fell prey to lax thinking and forgot what informs the choices for the box. The point is not to please me, the point is to share what has been formative.

Now *that* boggles the mind.

9. Audio tapes: Doc Watson, Vanguard Years I & II; John Renbourn Traveller's Prayer; Grateful Dead, Winterland, SF 3/18/77 * 10/22/78; Grateful Dead, Springfield, Mass 6/30/74.

10. A wrinkled, tattered, and slightly smelly red Grand Canyon National Park bandana, within which are nestled one beaded necklace, a small quartz rock formation, one sea shell, one piece of sandstone, two miniature rubber dinosaurs, and seven rocks.

11. A beautifully stitched, tightly woven, colorful undersea scene -- a placemat? It feels like something I am supposed to know, to recognize, but I do not. It also smells.

12. Bawdy Verse: A Pleasant Collection (The Penguin Poets series) edited by E. J. Burford.

The volume falls open, of its own accord, to page 145:

Have Y'Any Crackt Maidenheads? (c. 1672)
[A broadside ballad]

Have y'any crackt Maidenheads to new leach or mend?
Have y'any old Maidenheads to sell or to change?
Bring 'em to me; with a little pretty gin
I'll clout 'em, I'll mend 'em, I'll knock 'em in a pin
Shall make 'em as good Maids agen,
As ever they have been.

NOTE: From even before the time of James I there had been Quacks who specialized in renewing maidenheads. Midwives were particularly esteemed for this service. The main chemical used was alum, or othere astringents designed to tauten up the vaginal walls to give the impression of virginity. In many cases, however, serious damage was caused and the enraged pimps frequently assaulted the Quacks, who usually fled to the Netherlands or France whence they had come. Dutch Quacks were attacked in the famous petition of the Whores to the Prentices in 1668 after the Shrove Tuesday riots which so upset Charles II and "vex'd my Lady Castlemaine."

13. The River That Flows Uphill:A Journey from the Big Bang
to the Big Brain by William H. Calvin

You can read it along with me, here! Hmm, a good many of the links are now defective, though the text itself shows up fine.

This Sierra Club Book of 1987 is Calvin's "river diary of a two-week whitewater trip through the bottom of the Grand Canyon, discussing everything from the Big Bang to the Big Brain." Calvin is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science, most recently with the University of Washington School of Medicine.

14. Secrets of the Great Pyramid by Peter Tompkins, with an appendix by Livio Catullo Stecchini [Recounts the fascinating discoveries made by explorers, adventurers, and scientists about the Great Pyramid of Cheops, including the stunning recent assertions that the ancient structure was used as a geometric tool to measure the outside world.]

15. Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening: Vegetables

16. Three issues of National Geographic: May 1955, May 1969, July 1978 -- All featuring wonderful articles on the Grand Canyon.

17. Time and the River Flowing: Grand Canyon (abridged), by François Leydet

18. The Hidden Canyon: A River Journey, by John Blausten, including A Journal by Edward Abbey and an introduction by Martin Litton

*** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * ***

I am not sure exactly why, except that I like them, of course, but this post opens and closes with photos taken/snatched/borrowed from TW's blog, American Idyll. Ah, but these were taken, not by Tumbleweed, but by ruuscal, who now shares authorship of that wonderland. TW recently explained in an email replete with references to dirt, manure, and zucchini:

the canyon blog will soon have new shots from exotic locales as some chums are stomping about all last week and the next upcoming. i am rather bluesy at not being able to tag along due to grinding slave obligations, no cat-sitter, and all the tiresome inconveniences of a cumbersome, improbable dead end life. yet, one takes a sliver of solace from having shown them the way and having set up a forum where big views of wilderness are always welcome when they return. but day-yum, i would loved to have joined the expedition. sigh.

More venture forth to walk, and witness, because of him -- than he will ever know.




Twilight songbird, in the Deer Creek Canyon cottonwoods
american idyll, by ruuscal