Welcome to Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of the Haddock Clan, the creation of Belgian cartoonist Hergé.
Some Manor-keeping notes:
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Enjoy your stay! There are some fuzzy slippers over there somewhere, too.
I try to avoid {cough::ack::ahem} posting stuff that I find CUTE but... La Bonne et Belle Bianca actually snorted her morning shot of Tamarind Pok Pok Som up through that babalicious bulbous nose of hers as she was cruising videos at the morning table -- a habit which we cannot seem to break, to which we are as hostages held, to wit, to woo.*
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognised. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp ... but now a dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
In my right now, feed me "I rejoice..." and I go all Ash Wednesday and TSE on you, more likely to be thinking, parenthetically, "(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)" than about her barred owl in the ash tree. And just forget "to wit, to woo"!
*More on wit and wooing:
WINTER. [Love's Labor's Lost, Shakespeare]
When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-whoo, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow And coughing drowns the parson's saw And birds sit brooding in the snow And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-whoo, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
-- H. D. Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
Oh, Tony Baloney.
I've not been able to watch much video since the onset of these bleeping headaches. I more heard than saw Lawrence O'Donnell identify Anthony Bologna as the white-shirted Deputy Inspector who maced several young women at the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City back in September. Yes, right around the time my brain exploded.
Mostly, I giggled along with Jon Stewart over his silly name, and thought that maybe it was a joke. It's embarrassing, but I did.
Finally cogent, I watched the clips of what happened, even if I could not make out exactly what Bologna was doing. I kept looking for some sort of inciting cause, some sort of aftermath, maybe even the marks the actors were supposed to hit on this urban stage. So, of course, with those types of expectations, I didn't see a darned thing.
My vision was so blurry I even swore off PTZ videos of pus explosions and hyper-wipers.
Still, every couple of days, it seemed, something would make me think "Tony Baloney!" and I would laugh to myself.
Despite my apparent trivializing, I take Occupy Wall Street seriously and my guffaws over this incident died away as I listened to the Zuccotti Park protestors articulating their frustration, anger, and considered insights in ways that ought to make us all proud. As "authority," they don't cite what I expect (a growing tendency that I greatly respect!):
We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.
The eyes aren't crossing of their own volition (my body is a separatist's temple) and the purple blobs at the end of what purport to be my legs are more flaccid than spastic. It's a good day.
I just put in an order to sell a chunk of my GOOG holdings at the limit price of $618 per share. It's doubtful whether GOOG will even cross over into the 600s, but a girl can dream.
I remember, back in high school, even, how badly I wanted the old myth of Emerson visiting Thoreau in jail to be true. Thoreau had refused to pay a poll tax based on his opposition to the Mexican-American War, which many saw as an attempt to strengthen and expand the institution of slavery. We'd like, however, to reduce the overnight jail stay to one saucy repartee between Thoreau and his landlord -- some slick easy surface wit.
"Henry, how is it that you are in jail?"
"How is it, Waldo, that you are not?"
But, of course, it is not true. Time is better spent figuring the need that drives the myth and what truths are being so creatively avoided. What recompense for being on the wrong side of the law? Does right action seek company, need the help of rumor? Do you imagine the jail cell as cool and fragrant with bars that peep out onto a carpet of clover? I do. I see Thoreau in clean, comfortable clothing, wrapped in a lightweight wool blanket. He tells us that he and his cellmate each have a window at which to sit, and that when he arrived at "the walls of solid stone," "[t]he prisoners in their shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the doorway..."
To corral targeted individuals, enclosing them in, for example, stiff, orange netting, is called "to kettle."
One helpful first aid solution, when treating eyes that are burning, tearing, and perhaps temporarily blinded due to an application of mace, is liquid antacid. Jeanne Mansfield received an unintentional eye-full of Deputy Inspector Bologna's odd and disjointed attack on the kettled women. She described the experience in the Boston Review and I am taken by her description of the "medic" who comes to her assistance:
My eye is killing me and I’m crying, partially from the pain and partially from the shock of the violence displayed by these police. A shirtless young “medic” with ripped cargo shorts, matted brown hair, and two plastic bottles slung around his neck runs up to me and says, “Did you get pepper sprayed? Okay here, tilt your head to the side, this isn’t going to feel great,” at which point he squirts one of the plastic bottles of white liquid into my left eye, then tilts my head the other way and does the other eye, then repeats with water. Then he unties the white bandanna from his wrist and wipes my eyes with it saying, “You’ll be okay, this is my grandfather’s bandanna, he got through Korea with it, and if he got through that, then you’re going to get through this. Just keep blinking.” Thanks to the treatment—liquid antacid, pepper-spray antidote—the burning behind my eyes subsides.
In pre-market activity, GOOG is down .61%, to $588.07.
Subscribe for updates at http://uslaw.com/occupywallstreet. Slow motion video analysis of NYPD mace deployment near Union Square on September 24, 2011. Alternate angle analysis seems to indicate retaliation for a just prior interaction between officer and some individual(s) on sidewalk. More information about this and other incidents related to Occupy Wall Street protests will be updated at http://www.uslaw.com/occupywallstreet.Original video "PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!": http://youtu.be/moD2JnGTToA
Interestingly enough, Anthony Bologna apparently strode away from his fish-in-a-barrel mace attack with his ire intact, for just a few seconds later, he deployed his weapon again. [I am so thankful he did not have a gun in his hand.] In a sea of people trying to do non-violence, he is like a pillar of antimatter... he is violence. The result of antimatter meeting matter is an explosion.
DI Anthony Bologna actually engages in a second indiscriminate pepper spray assault moments after he attacked the four women.
As I sit back and try to give this thing a global think, one disparate thought dominates this morning. Even though I know it to be a strategy, and despite its many historical strategic successes, I am sad that non-violence remains the only "diametrical" choice and option, not to the extreme opposite of violence, per se, but to self-defense.
That's right, I'd never make it. I want too, too much to fight back.
The Occupy Wall Street folks are moving into a deadening space, the time of "demands." Those afflicted with know-how and not so much blessed with ancient Arab patience will start with the "but whaddawe want, whaddawe want?" until all anyone really wants is to bitch slap 'em. Frustration is going to grow, and in-fighting. Is it inevitable, dictated by the discord inherent in moving from individuals together to a notion of mass action?
I don't know. What I look forward to, always, however, as systems close? The reliable power and wonkiness of thermodynamic degradation. Entropy. Weird, strange, hot things happen, as energy degrades. As much as one doesn't want to credit the Tony Balonies of this world with any socially relevant achievement, macing kettled women at a peaceful protest is precisely the push toward steamy, wasted heat that the system demands.
Post-script at the end of the trading day: GOOG closed at $582.41.
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.
The following reflective moments were stolen from American Idyll, my brother Tumbleweed's photography blog dedicated to the beauty of the Grand Canyon, and the river. Do not copy, please, or reproduce in any way, his work -- without his permission. Sisters are special; We get away with more than we probably ought. He calls this entry "A Sort Of Wintry Trumpet," published February 12, 2010
To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare, and you hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting cold-steel scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter’s band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in the jay’s scream. Like the creak of a cart-wheel. There is no cushion for sounds now. They tear our ears.
--Henry David Thoreau (journal entry for February 12, 1854)
photo information: frozen Hermit Creek (top) Clear Creek Canyon from South Kaibab Trail (middle) Isis Temple in mist (below)
