Stay In Touch -Have I not proven to you that I Am in the saving sinners business? -Jesus
Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Lessons of Primo Levi #1 « Trauma and Philosophy
The Lessons of Primo Levi #1 « Trauma and Philosophy
Excerpt:
He goes on to observe that we need to learn how to think of this “grey zone” [wherein the very distinction between perpetrator and victim becomes--very intentionally on the part of the perpetrators--blurred] appropriately, “if we want to know how to defend our souls when a similar test should once more loom before us, or even if we want to understand what takes place...
. . . This institution represented an attempt to shift onto others–specifically the victims–the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.” The same mechanism, in a less brutal manifestation, is present throughout contemporary society. It is essentially what the abuser does to the abused wife [...or to a child..or a date...or....], for instance–when he conditions her to believe she “brought it on herself.”
~Francis (Frank) F. Seeburger is a professor of philosophy at the University of Denver
Excerpt:
He goes on to observe that we need to learn how to think of this “grey zone” [wherein the very distinction between perpetrator and victim becomes--very intentionally on the part of the perpetrators--blurred] appropriately, “if we want to know how to defend our souls when a similar test should once more loom before us, or even if we want to understand what takes place...
. . . This institution represented an attempt to shift onto others–specifically the victims–the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.” The same mechanism, in a less brutal manifestation, is present throughout contemporary society. It is essentially what the abuser does to the abused wife [...or to a child..or a date...or....], for instance–when he conditions her to believe she “brought it on herself.”
~Francis (Frank) F. Seeburger is a professor of philosophy at the University of Denver
Monday, May 28, 2012
Reconstituting the internal 'thou'...The Witness
Witness:
1. The first level, that of
being a witness to oneself…as a…survivor…I have distinct memories…the
subsequent life my family and I led there.
I remember both these events and the feelings and thoughts they provoke
in minute detail. They are not facts
that were gleaned from somebody else’s telling me about them…
But these memories are those of an adult…the recall in a young child…It
is as though this process of witnessing is of an event that happened on another
level, and was not part of the mainstream of the conscious life…[of a child]. Rather, these memories are like discrete
islands of precocious thinking and feel almost like the remembrances of another…removed,
yet connected to me in a complex way…The remembrances of yet another child survivor,…subtly
related to my own in the quality…will serve as a connecting, reemerging thread…
2. …the process of witnessing is
my participation, not in the events, but in the account given them, in my role
as the interviewer of survivors…My function in this setting is that of a
companion on the eerie journey of the testimony. As an interviewer, I am present as someone
who actually participates in the reliving and reexperiencing of the event. I
also become part of the struggle to go beyond the event and not be submerged
and lost in it.
3. …the process of witnessing is itself being witnessed. I observe how the narrator, and myself as
listener, alternate between moving closer and then retreating from the
experience---with the sense that there is a truth that we are both trying to
reach, and this sense serves as a beacon we both try to follow. The traumatic experience has normally long
been submerged and has become distorted in its submersion. The horror of the historical experience is
maintained in the testimony only as an elusive memory that feels as if it no
longer resembles any reality. The horror
is, indeed, compelling not only in its reality, but even more so, in its
flagrant distortion and subversion of reality.
Realizing its dimensions becomes a process that demands retreat. The narrator and I need to halt and reflect
on these memories as they are spoken, so as to reassert the veracity of the
past and to build anew its linkage to, and assimilation into, present-day life.
“This essay will be based on this enigma of one child’s memory of
trauma.”
There is an implicit imperative to ‘the testimony.’…an imperative need
to ‘tell’ and thus to come to ‘know’ one’s story, unimpeded by ghosts from the
past against which one has to protect oneself.
One has to know one’s buried truth in order to be able to live one’s
life. [p.78]
[In the unholy triangle…abuser, victim, witness]
….to maintain an integrity….that could keep itself uncompromised,
unharmed, by…her very witnessing. The
perpetrators, in their attempt to rationalize the unprecedented scope of the
destructiveness, brutally imposed upon their victims a delusional ideology
whose grandiose coercive pressure totally excluded and eliminated the possibility
of an unviolated, unencumbered, and thus sane, point of reference in the
witness.
What I feel is therefore
crucial to emphasize is the following:
it was not only the reality of the situation and the lack of responsiveness
of bystanders or the world that accounts for the fact that history was taking
place with no witness: it was also the
very circumstance of being inside the event that made unthinkable the
very notion that a witness could exist, that is, someone who could step outside
of the coercively totalitarian and dehumanizing frame of reference in which the
event was taking place, and provide an independent frame of reference through
which the event could be observed…
What do I mean by the notion
of a witness from inside? To understand
it one has to conceive of the world of the Holocaust as a world in which the
very imagination of the Other was no longer possible.
There was no longer an other
to which one could say ‘Thou’ 4 in the
hope of being heard, of being recognized as a subject, of being answered. The historical reality of the Holocaust
became, thus, a reality which extinguished philosophically the very possibility
of address, the possibility of appealing, or of turning to, another. But when one cannot turn to a ‘you’ one
cannot say ‘thou’ even to oneself. The
Holocaust created in this way a world in which one could not bear to witness
to oneself. The Nazi system turned
out therefore to be foolproof, not only in the sense that there were in theory
no outside witnesses but also in the sense that it convinced its victims, the
potential witnesses from the inside, that what was affirmed about their ‘otherness’
and their inhumanity was correct and that their experiences were no longer
communicable even to themselves, and therefore perhaps never took place. This loss of the capacity to be a witness to
oneself and thus to witness from the inside is perhaps the true meaning of
annihilation, for when one’s history is abolished, one’s identity ceases to
exist as well.
Survivors often claim that
they experience the feeling of belonging to a ‘secret order’ that is sworn to
silence. Because of their ‘participation’…they
have become the ‘bearers of a secret’ (Geheimnisstraeger) never to be
divulged. The implications of this
imaginary complicity and of this conviction of their having been chosen for a
secret mission are that they believe, out of loyalty, that their persecution
and execution by the Nazis was actually warranted. This burdensome secret belief in the…propagated
‘truth’ of Jewish subhumanity compels them to maintain silence. As ‘subhumans,’ a position they have accepted
and assumed as their identity by virtue of their contamination by the ‘secret
order,’ they have no right to speak up or protest. Moreover, by never divulging their stories,
they feel that the rest of the world will never come to know the real truth,
the one that involved the destruction of their own humanity. The difficulty that prevents these victims
from speaking out about their victimization emphasizes even more the delusional
quality of the Holocaust. This delusion,
fostered by the Holocaust, is actually lived as an unconscious alternate truth,
by executioners, victims and bystanders alike.
How can such deadlock be broken?
The Emperor’s New Clothes
…secret sharing of a collective delusion….the…delusion was ubiquitously
effective in Jewish communities as well.
This is why those who were lucid enough…about the…destruction either
through information or thorough foresight, were dismissed as ‘prophets of doom’
and labeled traitors or madmen. They
were discredited because they were not conforming by staying within the
confines of the delusion. It is in this
way that the capabilities of a witness alone to stand out from the crowd and
not be flooded and engulfed by the event itself, was precluded.
The silence….after…[has] been
a continuation of the power and the victory of that delusion.
Across the Gap
….any instance of its survival inevitably implied the presence of some
sort of informal discourse, of some degree of unconscious witnessing that could
not find its voice or its expression during the event….the historical
imperative to bear witness could essentially not be met during the actual occurrence. The degree to which bearing witness was
required, entailed such an outstanding measure of awareness and of
comprehension of the event---of its dimensions, consequences, and above all, of
its radical otherness to all known frames of reference---that it was beyond the
limits of human ability (and willingness) to grasp, to transmit, or to
imagine. There was therefore no
concurrent “knowing” or assimilation of the history of the occurrence. The event could thus unimpededly proeceed as
though there were no witnessing whatsoever, no witnessing that could decisively
impact on it.5
….The perspective I propose tries to highlight, however, what was
ultimately missing, not in the courage of the witnesses nor in the depth of
their emotional responses, but in the human cognitive capacity to perceive and
to assimilate the totality of what was really happening at the time.
Witnessing and Restoration.
Yet it is essential for this
narrative that could not be articulated, to be told, to be transmitted, to be
heard. Hence the importance of
historical endeavors…
To a certain extent, the
interviewer-listener takes on the responsibility for bearing witness that
previously the narrator felt he bore alone, and therefore could not carry
out. It is the encounter and the coming
together between the survivor and the listener, which makes possible something
like a repossession of the act of witnessing.
This joint responsibility is the source of the reemerging truth.
…The testimony constitutes in this way a conceptual breakthrough, as
well as a historical event in its own right, a historical recovery which I tend
to think of as a ‘historical retroaction.’
What ultimately matters in all
processes of witnessing, spasmodic and continuous, conscious and unconscious,
is not simply the information, the establishment of facts, but the experience
itself of living through testimony, of giving testimony.
The testimony is, therefore,
the process by which the narrator (the survivor) reclaims his position as
witness: reconstitutes the internal ‘thou,’ and thus the possibility of a
witness or a listener inside himself.
In my experience, repossessing
one’s life story through giving testimony is itself a form of action, of
change, which has to actually pass through, in order to continue and complete
the process of survival after liberation.
The event must be reclaimed…
~Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub. Testimony:
Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, pp.78-84
Sunday, May 27, 2012
First Known When Lost: "The Hundred Last Leaves Stream Upon The Willow"
First Known When Lost: "The Hundred Last Leaves Stream Upon The Willow"
Excerpt:
In November of 1916, Edward Thomas sent a draft of "The Long Small Room" to Eleanor Farjeon.
Edward Thomas to Eleanor Farjeon (letter postmarked November 15, 1916), in Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958), page 221.
The Long Small Room
The long small room that showed willows in the west
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled,
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed
What need or accident made them so build.
Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped
In from the ivy round the casement thick.
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep
The tale for the old ivy and older brick.
When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse
That witnessed what they could never understand
Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
One thing remains the same -- this my right hand
Crawling crab-like over the clean white page,
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow,
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age.
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.
Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).
William Ratcliffe, "Cottage Interior" (1920)
...................
On April 9, 1916 -- exactly a year prior to his death at the battle of Arras -- Thomas wrote the following untitled poem: [To his wife.]
And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).
The final two lines are classic Thomas...
Excerpt:
In November of 1916, Edward Thomas sent a draft of "The Long Small Room" to Eleanor Farjeon.
Edward Thomas to Eleanor Farjeon (letter postmarked November 15, 1916), in Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958), page 221.
The Long Small Room
The long small room that showed willows in the west
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled,
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed
What need or accident made them so build.
Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped
In from the ivy round the casement thick.
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep
The tale for the old ivy and older brick.
When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse
That witnessed what they could never understand
Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
One thing remains the same -- this my right hand
Crawling crab-like over the clean white page,
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow,
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age.
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.
Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).
...................
On April 9, 1916 -- exactly a year prior to his death at the battle of Arras -- Thomas wrote the following untitled poem: [To his wife.]
And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).
The final two lines are classic Thomas...
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Lest we forget …
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Lest we forget …
Excerpt: [This brought to mind Clifford, my great-grandmother's brother, who was one of the soldiers 'gassed' in France. He spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitals. He died in a VA hospital. Clifford, RIP.]
... maybe the greatest depiction of war's reality ever. (It is John Singer Sargent's Gassed. It is a very large painting and to see it, as I did once at the Boston museum, is overwhelming.) Here is more.
Excerpt: [This brought to mind Clifford, my great-grandmother's brother, who was one of the soldiers 'gassed' in France. He spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitals. He died in a VA hospital. Clifford, RIP.]
... maybe the greatest depiction of war's reality ever. (It is John Singer Sargent's Gassed. It is a very large painting and to see it, as I did once at the Boston museum, is overwhelming.) Here is more.
The Wind
All night the fierce wind blew --
All night I knew
Time, like a dark wind, blowing
All days, all lives, all memories
Down empty endless skies --
A blind wind, strowing
Bright leaves of life's torn tree
through blank eternity:
Dreadfully swift, Time blew.
All night I knew
the outrush of its going.
At dawn a thin rain wept.
Worn out, I slept
And woke to a fair morning.
My days were amply long, and I content
In their accomplishment --
Lost the wind's warning.
~Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (1996).
Saturday, May 26, 2012
THE BLUE LANTERN: May Day
THE BLUE LANTERN: May Day
Excerpt:
Image: Walter Crane (1845-1915) - May Day, British Museum, London.
Excerpt:
Image: Walter Crane (1845-1915) - May Day, British Museum, London.
Anecdotal Evidence: `Friends Find Each Other Interesting'
Anecdotal Evidence: `Friends Find Each Other Interesting'
Excerpt:
Davenport lets go with his funniest rant:
“Aha, so you have been put upon by the Liberals? I began years ago turning them out of my doors. Had to, to have some peace…Sensitivity is simply the enfranchisement to mooch…Bishop Pike! Norman Cousins! The two silliest one-worlders ever to kiss the hammer-and-sickle. Pike gets about a million dollars per annum of American tax money to pray nightly to Chairman Mao…You are, my friend, enrolled in a Communist Sunday School—ironically of the Liberal Variety, which will be the first to be put in the gas chambers when the Revolution comes.
“Fortunately, there is no known record of a real artist being taken in by the tears and panty-waist Socialism of the Left.”....
Friday, May 25, 2012
First Known When Lost: "True And Not Feigning": Edward Thomas And John Clare
First Known When Lost: "True And Not Feigning": Edward Thomas And John Clare
Excerpt:
Love lives beyond the tomb,
And earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful and the true.
Love lives in sleep:
'Tis happiness of healthy dreams:
Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.
'Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning's pearly dew;
In earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.
'Tis heard in Spring,
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angel's wing
Bring love and music to the mind.... ~John Clare
Excerpt:
Love lives beyond the tomb,
And earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful and the true.
Love lives in sleep:
'Tis happiness of healthy dreams:
Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.
'Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning's pearly dew;
In earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.
'Tis heard in Spring,
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angel's wing
Bring love and music to the mind.... ~John Clare
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Last Crusade: Spain 1936
Why be satisfied with leftist propaganda on the Spanish
Civil War? Carroll's treatment of the events of 1936 is singular in
Anglo-American scholarship for seeing the conflict for what is truly was: a
death struggle against the Christian faith and a war against Christian
civilization in Europe. This outstanding work of
scholarship illustrates the phenomenon of the traditionalist as revisionist:
the distortions of decades of Marxist historiography are overturned in
Carroll's narration of the bloody struggle to preserve Western civilization in
the heart of 20th century Europe. [Amazon, Book Description]
………………..
Reviews:
The Christian victims of the Spanish Socialist Revolution,
April 2, 2007
By Quilmiense
(USA/Spain)
This review is from: Last
Crusade: Spain
1936 (Paperback)
What legitimacy does a government have when it does
not protect its citizens? The Spanish governments looked the other way while
the socialist hordes destroyed churches and killed members of the clergy freely
since 1931."July 24 1936, three Discalced Carmelite sisters (the order founded by St. Teresa of Ávila) were recognized by militia in a Madrid street ... 'Nuns! Shoot them!' one of the militiamen cried. They opened fire at once on the helpless women, killing one instantly and severely wounding another." Then an Assault Guard appeared and stopped a bus to take the wounded nun to the hospital... "Give her here and I'll finish her off!" cried the bus driver. "The third nun escaped for the moment ... and was eventually accosted by a man who pretended to want to help her, but turned her over to another group of militia who shot her also before the day was done."
The book is filled with well documented and horrifying stories like this one. These are common street people, not SS nazi officers. It leaves one speechless wondering what kind of evil must have possessed these people to hate innocent nuns and priests (Christ) so much.
This book is very important because these facts are not as well known as they should. Here the crimes committed against Christians by the hound dogs of the Left since 1931 are condensed and made self-evident. There are no excuses, no attempts to underscore the barbarity committed by the hordes of the self-righteous Left. A must read, specially for those who say they like to read both sides of the story. Well, here's the side you couldn't find (or could you?).
Mr. Carroll does well in finding the first symptoms of the Spanish malady in the 20th century in the effects of '98: the ignominious way we lost the remnants of the Spanish empire. After 1898 "large segments of Spanish society were alienated from the national heritage." `98 was not the cause of our (still present) malady, this must be clear, it was the signal to start shooting, that things couldn't go any worse, and that it was time for the wackiest Spaniards to take control. Exacerbated local nationalisms, loss of prestige of a national identity, political extremism (influence of foreign fascism & communism), all colluded to get us into the Civil War and beyond.
This is a succinct study, from a Catholic (or religious if you may) perspective, focusing on the victims of anti-religious hatred, martyrs of the Cross, people who still in 2007 haven't been honored or recognized, but are kept aside of most leftist history books.
Facts and figures. Nobody can deny them. Here they are exposed in a clear and succinct way for everyone to check out, if they want to look into it. There are two points that need updating on this book, though. One is that the death of anarchist Durruti is mostly agreed today to have been ordered by Stalin and committed by one his loyal henchman. The second is that Negrín was indeed a undercover Stalinist agent, a fact that nobody can deny today. His theft of the Spanish gold reserves, and their subsequent delivery to Moscow, plus his replacement of Largo Caballero as Prime Minister, ordered by Stalin as well had, indeed, no other explanation. Largo, fanatic as he was, would not murder his anarchist allies, but Negrín would prove a more obedient employee.
"Socialists and anarchists never tired of painting the clergy as hirelings of the rich "upper classes", though in fact most priests received little more money than their parishioners and most religious lived in near poverty ... many people still believed the socialist and anarchist charges." It's sad that one has to try to convince people that the accusations of the Left were not true. If they were, would the burning of churches and the killing of priests and nuns be more tolerable? The official break of the Civil War was in July 1936, but for the victims of the Left it had started in May 1931: "About a hundred churches and other religious buildings were destroyed or damaged throughout Spain." The president of the government was opposed to stop these actions: "all the conventos in Spain are not worth the life of a single republican", he said. The socialists, anarchists and communists did not hide their totalitarian aspirations of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. They publicly vowed they would do it. They had already started in 31. The government never impeded their revolutionary actions. The strategy was to create chaos, destroy, and use the democratic system to gain control and destroy Spain from within. Today it's the same. We have illegal political parties: A republican and pro-independence Catalan party allied with the socialist government -in a constitutionally Monarchical nation; again, the socialist government negotiating with another illegal (& pro-terrorist Basque) party. Why? To hurt the Right's chances to ever win any more elections (like the PRI did in Mexico for 75 years). Spain's allies in foreign policy are, oh my!, countries well known for their love of democracy and freedom, and incorruptibility: Cuba, Venezuela, Morocco...
-----
And Mexico...
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
AtonementOnline: "For Greater Glory" - The Cristiada
AtonementOnline: "For Greater Glory" - The Cristiada
Excerpt:
I attended a screening of "For Greater Glory," which tells of the Cristiada, the war waged against the oppressive Mexican government in the 1920's by the Cristeros. What a magnificent film...absolutely inspiring! Not only should every Catholic see it for its beautiful testament to our Faith, but every American should see it as a reminder of how precious is our right to religious freedom.
The most haunting line to me: when Plutarco Calles arrogantly says, "The people elected ME!" I've heard that someplace before...
........................
Addendum: Father Francisco Vera, pray for us. 9/10/11 From Tantumergo's Dallas Catholic blog:
...it’s a recounting of the history of the Christeros, the faithful Mexican Catholics who refused to submit when their socialist government tried to take over, and make impotent, the Church. Really good history, but I also found it very upsetting...This is how the faithful Catholics of the Christeros were treated by their enlightened socialist betters if caught:
It is sometimes interesting to reflect on the course of events in nations after persecutions of the Church are allowed or encouraged by the leaders or populace of those nations.
Excerpt:
I attended a screening of "For Greater Glory," which tells of the Cristiada, the war waged against the oppressive Mexican government in the 1920's by the Cristeros. What a magnificent film...absolutely inspiring! Not only should every Catholic see it for its beautiful testament to our Faith, but every American should see it as a reminder of how precious is our right to religious freedom.
The most haunting line to me: when Plutarco Calles arrogantly says, "The people elected ME!" I've heard that someplace before...
........................
Addendum: Father Francisco Vera, pray for us. 9/10/11 From Tantumergo's Dallas Catholic blog:
...it’s a recounting of the history of the Christeros, the faithful Mexican Catholics who refused to submit when their socialist government tried to take over, and make impotent, the Church. Really good history, but I also found it very upsetting...This is how the faithful Catholics of the Christeros were treated by their enlightened socialist betters if caught:
It is sometimes interesting to reflect on the course of events in nations after persecutions of the Church are allowed or encouraged by the leaders or populace of those nations.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
First Known When Lost: "When The Wind And The Light Are Working Off Each Other"
First Known When Lost: "When The Wind And The Light Are Working Off Each Other"
Excerpt:
...At times, yellow shafts of sunlight angle down through the ragged, traveling clouds...
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. ~Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (Faber and Faber 1996).
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. ~Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (Faber and Faber 1996).
.......................
Addendum: "Insider's Notes"
"The Trees" return each year: "Yet still the unresting castles thresh/In fullgrown thickness every May." ~Philip Larkin
When all the reeds are swaying in the wind
How can you tell which reeds the otters bend? ~Michael Longley, Selected Poems
How can you tell which reeds the otters bend? ~Michael Longley, Selected Poems
Howard Phipps, "Footbridge at Bishopstone"
The riverbed, dried-up, half-full of leaves.
Us, listening to a river in the trees. ~Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern
Us, listening to a river in the trees. ~Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern
I fall asleep to the sound of rain,
But there is no rain in the desert.
The leaves of the trader's little cottonwoods
Turn, turn in the wind. ~Janet Lewis, Kayenta, Arizona, May 1977
But there is no rain in the desert.
The leaves of the trader's little cottonwoods
Turn, turn in the wind. ~Janet Lewis, Kayenta, Arizona, May 1977
"Now -- for a breath I tarry/Nor yet disperse apart --/Take my hand quick and tell me,/What have you in your heart." Houseman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’
"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." ~Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”
.......
O no, it is an ever fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: ~Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: ~Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Like captives trembling at the victor's sight.
And happy lines on which, with starry light,
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,
And read the sorrows of my dying sprite,
Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book.
And happy rhymes! bathed in the sacred brook ~Edmund Spenser, Amoretti
VII
In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
“You’ll be in New Row on Monday night
And I’ll come up for you and you’ll be glad
When I walk in the door . . . Isn’t that right?”
His head was bent down to her propped up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened. ~~Seamus Heaney,’Clearances’
In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
“You’ll be in New Row on Monday night
And I’ll come up for you and you’ll be glad
When I walk in the door . . . Isn’t that right?”
His head was bent down to her propped up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened. ~~Seamus Heaney,’Clearances’
Everything Is Going To Be All Right
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right. ~Derek Mahon
“It was one of those unwonted days (we all have them) when you realize at the time that you will never forget what passes. This realization is accompanied (for me, at least) by a poignant pang. At what? You know: the relentless and remorseless march of time and all that.
But enough. The day will never disappear….”
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right. ~Derek Mahon
“It was one of those unwonted days (we all have them) when you realize at the time that you will never forget what passes. This realization is accompanied (for me, at least) by a poignant pang. At what? You know: the relentless and remorseless march of time and all that.
But enough. The day will never disappear….”
..........................
Sorrow can be a home to stand on so
And see far to: another earth, a place I might know…~Fanny Howe
And see far to: another earth, a place I might know…~Fanny Howe
-----------------
Afternoon Tea
Please you, excuse me, good five-o'clock people,
I've lost my last hatful of words,
And my heart's in the wood up above the church steeple,
I'd rather have tea...
Please you, excuse me, good five-o'clock people,
I've lost my last hatful of words,
And my heart's in the wood up above the church steeple,
I'd rather have tea...
Oh! what do they matter, my dears, to the stars
Or the glow-worms in the lanes!
I'd rather lie under the tall elm-trees,
With old rooks talking loud overhead,
To watch a red squirrel run over my knees,
I'd rather lie under the tall elm-trees,
With old rooks talking loud overhead,
To watch a red squirrel run over my knees,
...
And wonder what feathers the wrens will be taking
For lining their nests next Spring;
Or why the tossed shadow of boughs in a great wind shaking
Is such a lovely thing. ~Charlotte Mew, Complete Poems
For lining their nests next Spring;
Or why the tossed shadow of boughs in a great wind shaking
Is such a lovely thing. ~Charlotte Mew, Complete Poems
...........
. . . For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. ~Philip Larkin
....
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. ~Philip Larkin
....
Daydream
One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no-one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason, even in the winter, even in the rain.
~A. S. J. Tessimond, Voices in a Giant City (1947).
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no-one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason, even in the winter, even in the rain.
~A. S. J. Tessimond, Voices in a Giant City (1947).
There Will Be a Talking
There will be a talking of lovely things
there will be cognizance of the seasons,
there will be men who know the flights of birds,
in new days there will be love for women:
we will walk the balance of artistry.
And things will have a middle and an end,
and be loved because being beautiful.
.......................
There will be a talking of lovely things
there will be cognizance of the seasons,
there will be men who know the flights of birds,
in new days there will be love for women:
we will walk the balance of artistry.
And things will have a middle and an end,
and be loved because being beautiful.
.......................
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so. ~Thomas Hardy
Hoping it might be so. ~Thomas Hardy
...
And suddenly I am weeping, weeping for the old men and the abused children, for the people so alone they never get prayed for, for Sister Georgina, for myself. I've tried so hard to "get" it by being good: praying the "right" way, giving up coffee, being mature and responsible and accepting about my cancer. But nobody ever "gets" it. It's not about being good, it's about being vulnerable. It's not about being perfect, it's about becoming human. It's not about pretending that cancer don't suck in every possible way, it's about consenting to bear my suffering in a desperate, keening, crawling-on-bloody-knees kind of love for my brothers and sisters, just as, in some mysterious way, my brothers and sisters bear their suffering for me.
~Heather King
She left without leaving a number
Said she needed to clear her mind
He figured she'd gone back to Austin
Cause she talked about it all the time
It was almost a year before she called him up
3 rings and an answering machine is what she got
Said she needed to clear her mind
He figured she'd gone back to Austin
Cause she talked about it all the time
It was almost a year before she called him up
3 rings and an answering machine is what she got
If it’s anybody else wait for the tone you know what to do and
P.S. if this is Austin I still love you.... ~Blake Shelton
P.S. if this is Austin I still love you.... ~Blake Shelton
..................
“Remembering your face, I see it here,
Eyes weary, unexpectant, unresigned.
Not wise, but self-composed and self-contained,
And not self-pitying, you knew how to give
And when to take and, waiting, not despair.
During bitter years, when fear and anger broke
Men without work or property to shadows
(My childhood’s world), you, like this living woman,
Endured, keeping your small space fresh and kind.” ~Helen Pinkerton
Eyes weary, unexpectant, unresigned.
Not wise, but self-composed and self-contained,
And not self-pitying, you knew how to give
And when to take and, waiting, not despair.
During bitter years, when fear and anger broke
Men without work or property to shadows
(My childhood’s world), you, like this living woman,
Endured, keeping your small space fresh and kind.” ~Helen Pinkerton
..................
... the man’s life – his loneliness and ecstasies – moved her, sometimes, to tears.
Tongued with Fire
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
~ T. S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’
..........................
I looked inside “a red-orange rose in a box wrapped up in love somewhere other than the night.” A tiny note tucked in tender rosy folds whispers, “I love you and miss you terribly.”
Anecdotal Evidence: `Johnson's Impressed Me by Being Human'
Anecdotal Evidence: `Johnson's Impressed Me by Being Human'
Excerpt:
“I’ve been reading a good deal lately in a book called `Prayers and Meditations’ by Dr Johnson. I like it very much.”
So writes Ludwig Wittgenstein...
Excerpt:
“I’ve been reading a good deal lately in a book called `Prayers and Meditations’ by Dr Johnson. I like it very much.”
So writes Ludwig Wittgenstein...
Monday, May 21, 2012
Once I Was A Clever Boy: El Greco and St Leo the Great on the Ascension
Once I Was A Clever Boy: El Greco and St Leo the Great on the Ascension
Excerpt:
A painting which does, to my mind, convey substantially more than other depictions the theology, and not just the mechanics, of the Ascension is El Greco's Holy Trinity, which is sometimes presented as a depiction of the Ascension, or at least the reception of Christ, both human and divine, back into the unity of the Trinity. It was painted as part of a series of nine canvasses for the Cistercian monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo in 1577-79, and is now in the Prado in Madrid.
Image: backtoclassics.com
Derived from late medieval representations of the Holy Trinity, familiar in paintings and alabasters, but whereas these are static and facing the viewer, in this painting El Greco infuses the theme with a profoundly human and tender feeling, derived from the tradition of the Pieta.
Excerpt:
El Greco and St Leo the Great on the Ascension
A painting which does, to my mind, convey substantially more than other depictions the theology, and not just the mechanics, of the Ascension is El Greco's Holy Trinity, which is sometimes presented as a depiction of the Ascension, or at least the reception of Christ, both human and divine, back into the unity of the Trinity. It was painted as part of a series of nine canvasses for the Cistercian monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo in 1577-79, and is now in the Prado in Madrid.
Image: backtoclassics.com
Derived from late medieval representations of the Holy Trinity, familiar in paintings and alabasters, but whereas these are static and facing the viewer, in this painting El Greco infuses the theme with a profoundly human and tender feeling, derived from the tradition of the Pieta.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wuthering Expectations: It is only the truth for you, not for us - Janet Lewis's The Wife of Martin Guerre
Wuthering Expectations: It is only the truth for you, not for us - Janet Lewis's The Wife of Martin Guerre
Excerpt:
Another short novel today, Janet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941). Lewis’s historical novel is written on entirely different principles than Saramago or Sebald use. The story is based on a famous 16th century court case, and Lewis constrains herself with the details contained in the legal record. The fictiveness of the novel exists between the legal facts, within the head, really, of Bertrande de Rols, the wife...
Update: I forgot to link to D. G. Myers's enthusiastic review of The Wife of Martin Guerre...
===================
Excerpt:
A commonplace of modern literary thought is that “the tragic mode is not available,” Lionel Trilling says, “even to the gravest and noblest of our writers.” Perhaps it is not surprising that Lewis, the wife of the reactionary critic Yvor Winters, would have ignored the commonplaces of modern literary thought. But her novel goes further. Published at the end of Auden’s “low dishonest decade,” it has the effect of calling into question the literary values of the age—the self-important difficulty, the grandiose incoherence, the rage at all costs to be New, even if that ends in the pursuit of evil. The Wife of Martin Guerre commits none of these. It is an austere and renunciatory work. It has no clever and yackety “voice.” It is written in a plain, expository style—a style of...
Excerpt:
Another short novel today, Janet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941). Lewis’s historical novel is written on entirely different principles than Saramago or Sebald use. The story is based on a famous 16th century court case, and Lewis constrains herself with the details contained in the legal record. The fictiveness of the novel exists between the legal facts, within the head, really, of Bertrande de Rols, the wife...
Update: I forgot to link to D. G. Myers's enthusiastic review of The Wife of Martin Guerre...
===================
Excerpt:
A commonplace of modern literary thought is that “the tragic mode is not available,” Lionel Trilling says, “even to the gravest and noblest of our writers.” Perhaps it is not surprising that Lewis, the wife of the reactionary critic Yvor Winters, would have ignored the commonplaces of modern literary thought. But her novel goes further. Published at the end of Auden’s “low dishonest decade,” it has the effect of calling into question the literary values of the age—the self-important difficulty, the grandiose incoherence, the rage at all costs to be New, even if that ends in the pursuit of evil. The Wife of Martin Guerre commits none of these. It is an austere and renunciatory work. It has no clever and yackety “voice.” It is written in a plain, expository style—a style of...
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Barefoot and Pregnant: Violence, Children, and History
Barefoot and Pregnant: Violence, Children, and History
Excerpt:
We're not cavalier about violence, though, however it may seem; rather, we probably pay closer attention to violence in its various forms than most parents who place a de facto ban on violence in books and movies. The reason for that is simple. Human beings are capable of committing violent acts, both in defense of good and in service of evil. To ignore or deny that facet of human nature is dishonest.
This morning, Mrs. Darwin directed my attention via facebook to a story about a French priest who is racing against time to try and bring to light the truth about yet more hidden Nazi atrocities. The generation who witnessed the mobile Nazi death squads, the Einsatzgruppen, slaughter hundreds of thousands of Jews and Gypsies in the Soviet Union is dying out, and Fr. Patrick Desbois is desperately trying to record their stories before it's too late.
You really ought to read the article. It's fascinating, in the same horrific way that all the tales of those atrocities are fascinating. I have less trouble understanding the willing submission of the victims in the Soviet Union than I do in Western Europe, because the Jews and Gypsies had been subjected to pogroms in Eastern Europe for centuries. I don't even have trouble swallowing the cooperation of the townspeople, even going so far as to dig the graves and watch in silence for days as those buried alive struggled beneath the fresh earth, because what choice did they have? As I understand it, life in Eastern Europe, particularly those remote villages of the Soviet Union, was unimaginably bleak and cruel, due to both the government and the weather. These were not a people accustomed to anything other than trying to survive. (This is not to say that there weren't heroic acts of self-sacrifice; I'm sure there were, I just understand why they weren't the norm.) What I truly cannot fathom, though, is why no one said anything after the war, or after the oppression of the Stalinist regime had lifted. Were they afraid? Were they trying to forget? Did they think it didn't matter, that the past was the past? Why did no one think that these atrocities needed to be recorded, the victims remembered, and history set straight? ...
Excerpt:
We're not cavalier about violence, though, however it may seem; rather, we probably pay closer attention to violence in its various forms than most parents who place a de facto ban on violence in books and movies. The reason for that is simple. Human beings are capable of committing violent acts, both in defense of good and in service of evil. To ignore or deny that facet of human nature is dishonest.
This morning, Mrs. Darwin directed my attention via facebook to a story about a French priest who is racing against time to try and bring to light the truth about yet more hidden Nazi atrocities. The generation who witnessed the mobile Nazi death squads, the Einsatzgruppen, slaughter hundreds of thousands of Jews and Gypsies in the Soviet Union is dying out, and Fr. Patrick Desbois is desperately trying to record their stories before it's too late.
You really ought to read the article. It's fascinating, in the same horrific way that all the tales of those atrocities are fascinating. I have less trouble understanding the willing submission of the victims in the Soviet Union than I do in Western Europe, because the Jews and Gypsies had been subjected to pogroms in Eastern Europe for centuries. I don't even have trouble swallowing the cooperation of the townspeople, even going so far as to dig the graves and watch in silence for days as those buried alive struggled beneath the fresh earth, because what choice did they have? As I understand it, life in Eastern Europe, particularly those remote villages of the Soviet Union, was unimaginably bleak and cruel, due to both the government and the weather. These were not a people accustomed to anything other than trying to survive. (This is not to say that there weren't heroic acts of self-sacrifice; I'm sure there were, I just understand why they weren't the norm.) What I truly cannot fathom, though, is why no one said anything after the war, or after the oppression of the Stalinist regime had lifted. Were they afraid? Were they trying to forget? Did they think it didn't matter, that the past was the past? Why did no one think that these atrocities needed to be recorded, the victims remembered, and history set straight? ...
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
SHIRT OF FLAME: WHERE DID I GO?
SHIRT OF FLAME: WHERE DID I GO?
Excerpt:
...that describes/explains at least some of my current upheaval, and it is all around something with which we are all semi-obsessed, but hardly ever actually talk about: money.
What I'm seeing is most of us so do not want to be horrible consumers and greed-infected Wall Streeters that we can go to another, in its way equally unhealthy, extreme. We can take Christ's message that "as ye do unto the least of these, so ye do unto me" to mean that we should choose our own martyrdom and insist upon being one of "the least of these"--in the wrong way--ourselves. We all bring massive childhood baggage about money, holiness, success, fear, loyalty to our families of origin with us into adulthood. And we have very little guidance--not from our families, not from our schools, definitely not from our culture--as to how to manage money, earn money, think about money, relate to money. Thus many of us--okay, I--have shame around money, secrecy around money, a love-hate conflict with money, and an almost neurotic fear when it comes to money: of having too little; of having too much.
I could have gone along in my living-on-1500-dollars-a-month, no-health-insurance, no-vacations, no-separate-accounts-for-personal-and business way indefinitely, but reality jarred something loose and so, way WAY against my better judgment, will, and personal desire, I'm devoting a lot of energy and time to seeking help in this area.
It's going to be a long--in fact, life-long--haul. All my ideas about my spirituality, my progress, God's will for me are being upended. I feel very lost.
...This morning I was cleaning my desk and I came across a little card a friend sent me years ago. It's a quote from Dorothy Day: "I always had a sense of being followed, of being desired, a sense of hope and expectation." I thought, Well I haven't. I've had a sense of abandonment and failure and pulsating, electric fear. I threw the card in the wastebasket and started crying.
And then I went to Mass.
Excerpt:
...that describes/explains at least some of my current upheaval, and it is all around something with which we are all semi-obsessed, but hardly ever actually talk about: money.
What I'm seeing is most of us so do not want to be horrible consumers and greed-infected Wall Streeters that we can go to another, in its way equally unhealthy, extreme. We can take Christ's message that "as ye do unto the least of these, so ye do unto me" to mean that we should choose our own martyrdom and insist upon being one of "the least of these"--in the wrong way--ourselves. We all bring massive childhood baggage about money, holiness, success, fear, loyalty to our families of origin with us into adulthood. And we have very little guidance--not from our families, not from our schools, definitely not from our culture--as to how to manage money, earn money, think about money, relate to money. Thus many of us--okay, I--have shame around money, secrecy around money, a love-hate conflict with money, and an almost neurotic fear when it comes to money: of having too little; of having too much.
I could have gone along in my living-on-1500-dollars-a-month, no-health-insurance, no-vacations, no-separate-accounts-for-personal-and business way indefinitely, but reality jarred something loose and so, way WAY against my better judgment, will, and personal desire, I'm devoting a lot of energy and time to seeking help in this area.
It's going to be a long--in fact, life-long--haul. All my ideas about my spirituality, my progress, God's will for me are being upended. I feel very lost.
...This morning I was cleaning my desk and I came across a little card a friend sent me years ago. It's a quote from Dorothy Day: "I always had a sense of being followed, of being desired, a sense of hope and expectation." I thought, Well I haven't. I've had a sense of abandonment and failure and pulsating, electric fear. I threw the card in the wastebasket and started crying.
And then I went to Mass.
We Are One: FOOD TEST
We Are One: FOOD TEST
Excerpt:
...I was punished for trying to protect my insides. To this day, bread and water is a huge comfort food. However, in this particular situation I was teetering on the verge of a complete melt down.
Counseling to the rescue. Both KavinCoach and NewCounselor taught me different methods of re-framing a situation. I sat at the table repeating in my mind, "I will get fed. If my dinner doesn't come, that is ok I have money in my pocket and I can go across the street to the fast food restaurant and order what ever I want."
...I chose to walk away.
Excerpt:
...I was punished for trying to protect my insides. To this day, bread and water is a huge comfort food. However, in this particular situation I was teetering on the verge of a complete melt down.
Counseling to the rescue. Both KavinCoach and NewCounselor taught me different methods of re-framing a situation. I sat at the table repeating in my mind, "I will get fed. If my dinner doesn't come, that is ok I have money in my pocket and I can go across the street to the fast food restaurant and order what ever I want."
...I chose to walk away.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Durward Discussion: Catch Of A Life Time
Durward Discussion: Catch Of A Life Time
Excerpt:
He was right. He has never again caught such a magnificent fish as the one he landed that night long ago. But he does see that same fish again and again every time he comes up against a question of ethics. For, as his father taught him, ethics are simple matters of right and wrong. It is only the practice of ethics that is difficult.
Do we do right when no one is looking?...
Excerpt:
He was right. He has never again caught such a magnificent fish as the one he landed that night long ago. But he does see that same fish again and again every time he comes up against a question of ethics. For, as his father taught him, ethics are simple matters of right and wrong. It is only the practice of ethics that is difficult.
Do we do right when no one is looking?...
Barefoot and Pregnant: Home. Sweet, Sweet Home
Barefoot and Pregnant: Home. Sweet, Sweet Home
Excerpt:
Ah. We are home. Actually we arrived home yesterday at 2:30 a.m., but we were so wiped out that we spent the rest of the day doing only the essentials (which, because I'm neurotic, included fully unpacking, doing the laundry, grocery shopping and making bread. What can I say? I hate to face a week unprepared.)
It was a very crazy week-long visit...
Excerpt:
Ah. We are home. Actually we arrived home yesterday at 2:30 a.m., but we were so wiped out that we spent the rest of the day doing only the essentials (which, because I'm neurotic, included fully unpacking, doing the laundry, grocery shopping and making bread. What can I say? I hate to face a week unprepared.)
It was a very crazy week-long visit...
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Marks in the Margin: The Lanyard
Marks in the Margin: The Lanyard
Excerpt:
The Lanyard - Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Excerpt:
The Lanyard - Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
We Are One: Motherhood - The good, the bad and the ugly
We Are One: Motherhood - The good, the bad and the ugly
Excerpt:
I also put impossibly high expectations on myself. People have tried to reassure me that I did the best I could...but what if the best I could, wasn't good enough? Doubts, fears, guilt, plague me. I also learned that children are amazing and choose at some point to allow my mistakes to hinder them or become spring board to doing something different.
I learned that saying the words "I love you" to a child isn't enough. You need to show with your actions even when you are tired and out of sorts yourself or they have grown and left home. I also know that at some of my lowest times, my children were the ones that put their arms around me and reassured me that going forward was possible. I cherish those memories.
Motherhood is an awesome and terrifying responsibility...
Excerpt:
I also put impossibly high expectations on myself. People have tried to reassure me that I did the best I could...but what if the best I could, wasn't good enough? Doubts, fears, guilt, plague me. I also learned that children are amazing and choose at some point to allow my mistakes to hinder them or become spring board to doing something different.
I learned that saying the words "I love you" to a child isn't enough. You need to show with your actions even when you are tired and out of sorts yourself or they have grown and left home. I also know that at some of my lowest times, my children were the ones that put their arms around me and reassured me that going forward was possible. I cherish those memories.
Motherhood is an awesome and terrifying responsibility...
...as glorious as my mother in her rags.Selah...
“When the image of her comes up on a sudden—just as my bad
demons do—and I see again her henna hair, the eyes dwarfed by the electric
lights in the Star Lady Barbershop, and the dear, broken wing of her mouth, and
when I regard her wild tatters, I know that that not even Solomon in his
lilied raiment was so glorious as my mother in her rags. Selah.” ~Edward
Dahlberg (1978), Because I Was Flesh on his mother, Lizzie..
---
---
RECUERDO
We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable –
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable –
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
…
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept “God bless you!” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept “God bless you!” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
SHIRT OF FLAME: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY
SHIRT OF FLAME: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY
Excerpt:
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping...
====================
And...now you will uncode all landscapes/By this...
The Peninsula
When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive
But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark again. Now recall
The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog
And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.
~Seamus Heaney,
Excerpt:
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping...
====================
And...now you will uncode all landscapes/By this...
The Peninsula
When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive
But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark again. Now recall
The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog
And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.
~Seamus Heaney,
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Spiritual Journey of a grand lady of 'Carmel'
The Spiritual Journey
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
A year and a half later, I was promoted to director of youth ministry at St. Thomas parish. I had thought about answering the call to priesthood, but I was still discerning the married life. The problem was, I couldn’t find the right girl. It was precisely at this point in time when a friend told me that sister Teresita had left the monastery and was working as a tutor in town. I immediately called her up, and I tried not to sound too excited. I asked her if she would be a catechism teacher for one of my ninth-grade CCD classes. She came in and we talked about it. A couple of weeks later she signed up as a teacher, and we were on our first date!
After a few weeks of dating, Carrie opened up and told me about her tragic past. I held her in my arms as she cried and told me she was sexually abused by her father her entire childhood. She was very upset and fearful of being hurt by another man, and I didn’t blame her. Her situation broke my heart, but it did not lessen my love for her. I promised her that day that I would always respect her, body, mind and soul, and I would protect her from harm. She had a lot of courage, because she decided to trust me, against her own fears and insecurities.
Soon we were engaged, and that’s when her cross became very heavy. She suffered from a lot of PTSD, which often took me by surprise. She got a lot of help through counseling, but she believes her greatest strength was her faith in Christ, and I would certainly agree. Whenever things became almost unbearable for the both of us, we had to rely totally on God’s help. We had many struggles and hardships during our engagement, but we turned to Christ with all our questions and difficulties. As a result...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott (Pamela Blevins ) 9781843834212 - Boydell & Brewer
Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott (Pamela Blevins ) 9781843834212 - Boydell & Brewer
Excerpt:
Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain
This dual biography of Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott tells the dramatic story of two geniuses who met at the Royal College of Music in 1911 and formed an unlikely partnership that illuminated and enriched the musical and literary worlds in which they moved. Gurney's poetry and songs have taken their place as part of the inheritance of England. Scott, Gurney's strongest advocate, emerges from his shadow for the first time. Her own remarkable achievements as a pioneering music critic, musicologist, advocate of contemporary music and women musicians place her among the most influential and respected women of her generation.
Based on original research, this is the first biography of Gurney since 1978 and the only biography of Scott. It offers new, in-depth perspectives on Gurney's attempts to create music and poetry while struggling to overcome the bipolar illness that eventually derailed his genius, and restores Marion Scott's rightful place in music history....
Excerpt:
Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain
This dual biography of Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott tells the dramatic story of two geniuses who met at the Royal College of Music in 1911 and formed an unlikely partnership that illuminated and enriched the musical and literary worlds in which they moved. Gurney's poetry and songs have taken their place as part of the inheritance of England. Scott, Gurney's strongest advocate, emerges from his shadow for the first time. Her own remarkable achievements as a pioneering music critic, musicologist, advocate of contemporary music and women musicians place her among the most influential and respected women of her generation.
Based on original research, this is the first biography of Gurney since 1978 and the only biography of Scott. It offers new, in-depth perspectives on Gurney's attempts to create music and poetry while struggling to overcome the bipolar illness that eventually derailed his genius, and restores Marion Scott's rightful place in music history....
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Dolce Bellezza: I Am Forbidden (and give-away)
Dolce Bellezza: I Am Forbidden (and give-away)
Excerpt:
The novel I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits is a mesmerizing look at ....
Excerpt:
The novel I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits is a mesmerizing look at ....
Monday, May 7, 2012
First Known When Lost: Charles Tomlinson On Cellphones: "The Self-sufficiency Of Trees"
First Known When Lost: Charles Tomlinson On Cellphones: "The Self-sufficiency Of Trees"
Excerpt:
All Aboard
intimacies of every kind
blossom into relations, revelations
as bosoms unburden themselves and stand
stark in that no-man's-land of tattle
confronting the traveller:
Excerpt:
All Aboard
All aboard and then
the entire train
breaks into phone fever andintimacies of every kind
blossom into relations, revelations
as bosoms unburden themselves and stand
stark in that no-man's-land of tattle
confronting the traveller:
I must exchange my seat and get
into the phone-free hermitage where I
can contemplate the self-sufficiency of trees, the passing landscape and the sky...
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Anecdotal Evidence: `How Poets Die in This Age'
Anecdotal Evidence: `How Poets Die in This Age'
Excerpt:
Let us remember the birth of a poet more often remembered for his desolate death at age thirty-four. Miklós Radnóti was born on this date in 1909 in Budapest. When I spoke of Radnóti with an Israeli-born computer scientist whose parents came from Hungary and Rumania, he said: “You remember him? You must remember him!” Radnóti’s posthumous existence as man and poet is a miracle, and I’ve recounted some of the story here.
What might Radnóti have become in a world less murderous?
Excerpt:
Let us remember the birth of a poet more often remembered for his desolate death at age thirty-four. Miklós Radnóti was born on this date in 1909 in Budapest. When I spoke of Radnóti with an Israeli-born computer scientist whose parents came from Hungary and Rumania, he said: “You remember him? You must remember him!” Radnóti’s posthumous existence as man and poet is a miracle, and I’ve recounted some of the story here.
What might Radnóti have become in a world less murderous?
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