From Stealing to Flying and Back to the River: "They find freedom being part of the elements"

Something lovely stolen from American Idyll. -- it's hard to just steal one thing.  So a tip of the hat and an index alongside the nose to the proprietor for introducing us to Jesse Hall.  I assume he is the poem's author but am not sure.



One minute poem of the Grand Canyon from Jesse Hall on Vimeo.

From the beginning to the end, 

everything changed. 

They dismounted the surge of prominence, 

and earned a rock-steady heart. 

Thats where their rhythm is found. 

They know the role of a trickle in the creation of a masterpiece. 

They row into the abyss of being, 

adrift in endless time, 

hearing ancient echoes. 

They find freedom being part of the elements, 

traveling to where all worlds merge. 

Life's knowledge drifts down onto them, 

and blows right into their skin.

Now, a wonderful, airy tangent:

Jesse Hall was the "winner of the first season event of the ProBASE World Cup Tour 2011."

BASE jumping is the activity of parachuting from a fixed object as opposed to skydiving, which is parachuting from an aircraft. Fixed objects can be buildings, antennas, smoke stacks, bridges, power towers, cliffs, cable cars, dams or any other object high enough to jump from.The acronym B.A.S.E was coined by Carl Boenish and stands for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth which are the 4 most popular objects BASE jumpers practice their sport from 

Of course, it's the wingsuits that are the stuff of my flying dreams! In the beginnings of my loss of mobility, I watched dancers and gymnasts, then parkour and free running. Now, it's wingsuit BASE jumping, waking with scraped and bloody knuckles from skimming mountain walls.





Parkour and Free Running still give me relief from gravitational stasis, the release necessary to then be able to turn, smile, and be a gracious gimp.  But the BASE jumpers have taken over top dream billing,

Back to the River for tonight's ending -- I hope to end tonight in official "wee" hours, instead of the 7:30 AM bedtime of the past few days.  This is a poem written by Kevin, of Kevin's Meandering Mind, published there on April 20, 2014, in a post titled "Wonder Poem: Grand Canyon Vertigo."

The Villanelle Walks A Labyrinth

Labyrinth, East Hardwick, Vermont

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go. 

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go. 

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go. 

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

 -- Theodore Roethke, from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.

The Garden of Forking Paths 

Jorge Luis Borges, 1941

The World-Wide Labyrinth Locator

The Labyrinth Society

Veriditas

American Idyll

Therefore, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. 

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

REPOST: john trudell, courtesy of the family blog whore

First published on 2/24/2013

Tip of the hat, finger aside the nose, to TW, as I steal from his Valentine's Day post: "They Didn't Listen" -- and thank him for the find, and kiss the very center of his forehead.

Uploaded on Jun 27, 2009 by NancyRedStar·

"These Memories"


In the reality of many realities
how we see what we see
affects the quality 
of our reality 

We are 
children of earth and sky
DNA descendant and ancestor 
human being physical spirit 
bone flesh blood as spirit

We are 
in time and space 
but we're from beyond time and space 
the past is part of the present 
the future is part of the present 
life and being are interwoven

We are 
DNA of Earth, Moon, planets, stars 
we are related to the universal 
Creator created creation 
spirit and intelligence with clarity 
being and human as power

We are 
a part of the memories of evolution
these memories carry knowledge
these memories carry our identity
beneath race, gender, class, age
beneath citizen, business, state, religion

We are human beings
and these memories are trying
to remind us
human beings human beings
it is time to rise up,
remember who we are
~ John Trudell


Lyrics: John Trudell 
Music: Mark Matson & Hayley Hutt 
Vocals:John Trudell & Hayley Hutt 
Additional Vocals and Harmony:Deirdre Radford
Keyboards and Drum: Mark Matson 
Guitars: Byron Roberts
Produced and Engineered by: Mark Matson
Executive Producer: Nancy Red Star 

i don't think he likes it one bit but that's just too doggone bad.  someone in this family must be shameless, and i volunteered long ago ----->> if you love the land, this country, the solid comfort of the amazingly real, the white skull recognition of all that you forgot.... go read, revel,  and rest at TW's american idyll.

Grand Theft, Sibling Style: 35 Months Since the Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi

My eldest brother is my wisest one.  He also has the kindest heart and the most natural, unpolluted concept of living well and peacefully in community with one another and the Earth that is our gracious home.

I haven't ripped anything off from his blog, American Idyll in what seems like YEARS but is actually months.
Tonight, I'm scratching that itch, I'm cracking my knuckles, I'm gearing down for a casual five-fingered discount of digital thievery.  Ah, but thievery rich with attribution!  Go to American Idyll, browse, travel, dream, and learn - laugh, point, giggle, fall into awed silence the way you once were able to collapse into a bean bag contraption (and get up again).

He's democratic by nature and virtue, and so I'm hoping he won't hitch a ride on Elvis the Crow, leading a bazillion of the pointy-beaked creatures to peck on my head for violations of propriety, property, boundaries.

Not many of the voices raised or calmly modulated to float over the chaotic cacophony of the Fukushima accident and subsequent disasters are being heard.  Who wants to hear that stuff?  Unfortunately, the righteous question remains:  How dare we continue to play at being deaf, and prove our stupidity and arrogance, even if those attributes are the natural afterbirth of fear?  Fear is fueling our history of poor decisions, and our poor decisions are fueling the death power of these ecological man-made radiation disasters.  My brother-unit seems to recommend that we educate ourselves on what happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant as well as what is happening at nuclear facilities around the world by staying abreast of this news via Energy News.

Hot off the presses at Energy News, by just minutes?

Radioactive cesium levels “never seen before” at Fukushima — New record as totals nearly double in under 24 hours — Officials admit ‘there may be a new leak’ — IAEA urging for ‘resumption’ of dumping contaminated water into ocean; ‘All options’ need to be considered...

The IAEA suggestions, by the way, are being roundly criticized, though I cannot discern, with what little I've read, what viable alternatives are being offered.  Here are, however, some of the reactions to the UN agency's proposals:

AFP, Feb. 13, 2014: Fukushima should eye ‘controlled discharges’ in sea: IAEA — The UN nuclear watchdog on Thursday urged Japan to consider “controlled discharges” into the sea of contaminated water used to cool the crippled reactors at Fukushima. [...] “This would require considering all options, including the possible resumption of controlled discharges to the sea.” [...] local fishermen, neighbouring countries and environmental groups all oppose the idea. [...] The agency also called for a careful assessment of the company’s plan to create a subterranean “freeze wall” to prevent radioactive groundwater from leaking into the ocean — an ongoing problem that has stoked fears about dangers posed to marine life and the food chain. [...]

Shanghai Daily, Feb. 13, 2014: TEPCO is still eyeing dumping toxic water into the Pacific Ocean as it fails to contain in makeshift storage tanks [...] a massive daily influx of water needed to cool the battered reactors, while nuclear experts believe that other methods need to be traversed before contaminating the ocean. Dumping radioactive water into the ocean is of grave concern to local fisheries cooperatives as the potential for radioactive materials to spread to marine life remains a distinct possibility, despite TEPCO’s assurances the levels of radioactivity will be kept well below the government’s and regulator’s limits. [...] Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) Chairman Shunichi Tanaka [...] said that even though three years has passed since the reactor meltdowns at the plant, TEPCO is still utterly inept when it comes to taking accurate readings of radioactivity [...] and “lacks a basic understanding of measuring and handling radiation.”

NHK, Feb. 14, 2014: IAEA: Consider discharging contaminated water — [The IAEA] advised [Tepco] to examine all options to treat contaminated water. These include resuming controlled discharges of radioactive water into the sea. [...] [IAEA's Juan Carlos Lentijo says] the situation remains very complex [...] the IAEA team believes it is necessary to find a sustainable solution to the problem of managing contaminated water at the plant. It says that this would require considering all options, including the possible resumption of controlled discharges to the sea.

Xinhua, Feb. 13, 2014: [TEPCO] said Thursday that samples of water tested contained radioactive cesium at levels never seen before by the embattled utility. TEPCO [is] admitting there may be a new leak at the site of a well located just 50 meters from the adjacent Pacific Ocean [...] The utility has failed to locate the source of the leak, in another major failing [...]

Tepco Handout, February 13, 2014: “The highest dose among the results previously announced” — 130,000 Bq/L of Cs-134, 137. Previous record set the day before at 76,000 Bq/L of Cs-134, 137.

I'm proud of my brother's voice joining with other activists' ways of speaking to the world.  But, as sisters do, I think his way of leading us to the information is gentler, and inspired.  (This is the part where I steal his post, all the while reminding you, Dearly Beloved Readers, that TW is its author, the artist who makes these beautiful collages of words, photography [his own], and subtle spell casting.  And maybe, right here, lost in all my verbiage, I can slip in how very much I cherish him, love him, and wish to sooth his brow.)

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

The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music. An infinite tenderness takes possession of me, smoothing away the harsh cynicism which a reiterated experience of human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity.
Like the sounds of every instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the Great Mother's own heart.
--Paul Brunton
A Hermit in the Himalayas: The Journal of a Lonely Exile

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

AMERICAN IDYLL  AMERICAN IDYLL AMERICAN IDYLL   AMERICAN IDYLL

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2014

A Highway Of Diamonds With Nobody On It

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warning
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-going back out before the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

IT HAS NOW BEEN 35 MONTHS SINCE THE WRETCHED DISASTER AT FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI OPEN-AIR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT BEGAN.
STAY INFORMED.

Last Stand at Fukushima (Hat tip to TW)

Last Stand at Fukushima

My Brother-Unit TW is doing his damnedest to inform and cajole people into awareness of the Fukushima plant's Number Four Unit and the plans to just kinda yank those spent rods out.  From what this Luddite gathers, the spent rods are sitting somewhat strangely in the water... oh, and that water?   The condition of its all important neutron absorbers is basically unknown.

So maybe this is not another in that famous series of "What, me worry?" scenarios we keep dramatizing in matters concerning our home planet and our nuclear proficiencies.

I'm as ignorant as the next fool, so TW is teaching me lots, and yes, scaring me.  What's a brother for?

No, seriously.  What's a brother for?  [TW and Grader Boob:  Insert one wink, one nod, one finger aside the nose.]

So I pass on to you some of the informative links he's posted over at American Idyll, an amazing place. And as does that blogger, we at Marlinspike Hall, a nuclear free zone, serenade you with "Morning Dew," though we've sinned by replacing the Grateful Dead cover with The Jeff Beck Group (1968).

Not feeling like doing much reading? Here's the steno version, then:

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where those cores actually are.
Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site. Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake, releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific.
The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit Four.
More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.
Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl. 

 --Harvey Wasserman
Global Research, 9/20/13

Fukushima Forever
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN)
A Letter to All Young Athletes Who Dream of Coming to Tokyo in 2020:  Some Facts You Should Know About Fukushima
Webcast Portal:   ‘The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident,’ held at the New York Academy of Medicine, NYC, March 11 & 12, 2013, co-sponsored by The Helen Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
MoveOn Petition: The World Community Must Take Charge at Fukushima
Breaking Energy News

MORNING DEW

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,

Walk me out in the morning dew today.

I can't walk you out in the morning dew my honey,

I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

I thought I heard a baby cry this morning,

I thought I heard a baby cry this today.

You didn't hear no baby cry this morning,

You didn't hear no baby cry today.

Where have all the people gone my honey,

Where have all the people gone today.

There's no need for you to be worrying about all those people,

You never see those people anyway.

I thought I heard a young man morn this morning,

I thought I heard a young man morn today.

I thought I heard a young man morn this morning,

I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,

Walk me out in the morning dew today.

Ill walk you out in the morning dew my honey,

I guess it doesnt't't really matter anyway,

I guess it doesnt't't matter anyway,

I guess it doesnt't't matter anyway,

Guess it doesnt't't matter anyway.

Songwriters: DOBSON, BONNIE/ROSE, TIM
(or whoever the hell actually wrote it....)

Let's close, my brethren, with  Laurie Anderson, with balm and condolences to her on the death of her husband, Lou Reed.

["Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature," Anderson wrote. "He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air."]

The musical association is again stolen from mi hermano...

Mi hermano y yo... somos.  















© 2013 L. Ryan

ORANGES and SARDINES

Sardines, Mike Goldberg, 1955

found this on the always inspiring american idyll -- for which i'd be a pimpless blogwhore, even if its organizing genius were not kin.

as the marlinspike hall household is now clearly divided into the visual artistry and music of the fredster, and my own overwrought wordsmithing, this very much appealed to me as being... accurate:

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

--Frank O'Hara
Why I Am Not A Painter

Frank O'Hara by Alice Neel, 1960
The Paris Review

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

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

and i permit myself the luxury of adding one of my favorites in the ut pictura poesis game.  i am to be forgiven, as it was the basis for my thesis, though i was then confined to master diderot strolling from one gilt frame to another in the salons (1759 through 1771, 1779 and 1781).

The Painter
BY JOHN ASHBERY

Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: “Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
“My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

Take Ten

despite the current extreme funkiness of our world weather patterns, which have left some of us tired of rain, no one, i believe, denies the calming, trustworthy, mildly wild nature of the sound of falling rain.  it means something to us.  it's -- at least -- permission to be set apart;  it's -- at least -- permission to share shelter, be it a tent or a worn quilt.

a tip of the hat, once again, to TW at american idyll.

take ten minutes now, or bookmark it for some future arid day.

"I'm as Nimble as a Forest Creature"

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

[Jewel and Doc are dancing together] 

Jewel: Say 'I'm as nimble as a forest creature.' 

Doc Cochran: You're as nimble as a forest creature. 

Jewel: No, say it about yourself. 

Doc Cochran: I'm as nimble as a forest creature.

This was posted over at American Idyll, Home of the Brave, and made me recall how much I loved Deadwood, and this scene in particular.

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

It also made me think of others and of the necessity for a Deadwood marathon one of these -- those -- nights.  As much as I loved Al, Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon) moved me;  The two of them, together?  I weep... In this first clip, the Reverend finds friends in Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and Sol Star (John Hawkes) -- may we all be so blessed when we are afflicted and lost.

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

A favorite of language teachers everywhere:

[Wu is explaining his problem to Al by drawing pictures]
Mr. Wu: Bok Gwai Lo... cocksucka!
Al Swearengen: Yeah, glad I taught you that fuckin' word. These are whites, huh?Mr. Wu: White cocksucka! [shows empty bag]
Al Swearengen: Two white cocksuckers killed him and stole the dope that he was bringing to you.Mr. Wu: White cocksucka! You, Swedgin.
Al Swearengen: [suddenly enraged] The dope that you were gonna fuckin' sell to me?Mr. Wu: White cocksucka.
Al Swearengen: These two white cocksuckers? Who the fuck did it?Mr. Wu: Wu?
Al Swearengen: "Who," you ignorant fuckin’ chink!Mr. Wu: Wu!
Al Swearengen: Who? Who? Who stole the fucking dope?Mr. Wu: Cocksucka!
Al Swearengen: Aw, Jesus.

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

My favorite bit of dialogue (at this moment):

Al Swearengen: We're forming a fucking government.

A. W. Merrick: Who is?

Al Swearengen: Us! You and me! Come to me in a vision! Ya stupid bastard.

:::::::::::::

Al Swearengen: Open the fucking canned peaches!

The favored one-liner, as determined by polling of living souls within Marlinspike Hall:

Farnum: Puberty may bring you to understand what we take for mother-love 

is really murderous hatred and a desire for revenge.

Franz Kafka's Dead Ears {chapeau, TW}

This is not my photograph.  This is not your photograph.  This photograph was stolen from TW's blog, American Idyll, my favorite vacation spot and place to rest and sweat my mind.  I have stolen it before but now that I am taking Alzheimer's meds, I will claim dementia... Hope I didn't write that out loud.  

Oops.

Isn't it beautiful?

He'd say it's impossible to take a bad picture of this land.  The tinting, the coloration is nice, but incidental.  

Been thinking of you, TW.  Please forgive me for stealing your photograph.  Again.  

Fly, fly like the wind, Dear Readers, and rest (and do some healthy sweating) over at TW's Place.  

BUT DON'T STEAL HIS ART.  That's a sister's privilege. (Maybe, we'll see... I'm pushing it...)  I don't know what he calls what he does -- beyond, duh, "blogging" -- but it's a kind of calligraphy, collage.  Sometimes it's zen and sometimes it's cacophony all in your face.  This collage of multiple disciplines, I love.  There is an awesome quote from Nicole Krauss' The History of Love and just the right music by which to gaze and read.

Sometimes I just stare.

He calls it "They could hear themselves." -- which, of course, is a function of Franz Kafka's dead ears.

Sumpin' Pithy Stolen From TW's Blog

A year ago, I was at a dinner in Amsterdam when the question came up of whether each of us loved his or her country. The German shuddered, the Dutch were equivocal, the Brit said he was "comfortable" with Britain, the expatriate American said no. And I said yes. Driving across the arid lands, the red lands, 
I wondered what it was I loved. The places, the sagebrush basins, the rivers digging themselves deep canyons through arid lands, the incomparable cloud formations of summer monsoons, the way the underside of clouds turns the same blue as the underside of a great blue heron's wings when the storm is about to break.

Beyond that, for anything you can say about the United States, you can also say the opposite: we're rootless except we're also the Hopi, who haven't moved in several centuries; we're violent except we're also the Franciscans nonviolently resisting nuclear weapons out here; we're consumers except the West is studded with visionary environmentalists...and the landscape of the West seems like the stage on which such dramas are played out, a space without boundaries, in which anything can be realized, a moral ground, out here where your shadow can stretch hundreds of feet just before sunset, where you loom large, and lonely. 
--Rebecca Solnit
Storming the Gates of Paradise

Wikipedia on Solnit

Solnit's media site

TW's Blog

Kolob Schmolob!

I've gone 18 hours without any true spaz attacks and am enormously grateful.  Unfortunately, my left foot is informing me that the respite is over, but at least I had a chance to cook dinner -- without injuring myself or a beloved -- a wild and woolly affair featuring Sven (face it, if The Castafiore is here in quarters, so is Sven), Bianca, Cabana Boy, Fred, Tante Louise (she dropped by to inspect our fire extinguishers), me, and the Feline Triumvirate.  On the menu, spicy pinto beans, and a chicken stewed with spinach, onion, cumin, and organic brown jasmine rice.  Oh, and roasted, juicy, burst-in-your-mouth mushrooms.

For dessert?  Irish whiskey.

We cheered Obama;  We jeered Romney.

It was a good time.

Like everyone, I had hoped for a better job report this morning, but I'll take tepid over awful any day.

And in pre-market trading?  GOOG hit 700.  The farther GOOG, DHI, and COH (my three current best bets) go... the more likely you bloodsucking medical creditors will get your filthy lucre.

I dropped by American Idyll, Brother-Unit TW's blog mostly featuring his incredible photography of The Canyon and The River, and wise words...  But today, I gotta steal this:

KOLOB: Mormons believe that Kolob is the star system for the planet where God lives. According to Mormon tradition, one day for Kolob is the same as one thousand years of our time. 

I have no idea if Romney believes in the stuff from the book of Abraham in the LDS tradition... Like with everything else, what he really believes is difficult or impossible to discern.   Most Christians don't read the Bible literally (unless it suits an argument), and I am hoping Romney also abstracts Kolob as... well, as something best left to NASA.

It kinda explains, in a weird way, his weakness in geopolitics...

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!