VANDALISM ~

(ART OF THE RURAL)

      

       Now, doesn't this show the mind and art work of real genius?

We came out yesterday and had this to look at. Sweetheart went indoors and called the Sheriff's Dept., since they have asked us to keep them abreast of such pranks, and we've already had other pranks since our towering summer of 2012 with some neighbors on our back road, so we have a few names in our hat who may have mustered such a masterpiece.

While Sweetheart called, I went back to work and bucked cordwood logs for firewood and this work goes hot, fast and metaphorically when you put names to each log.

At 9:30, the night before, a car stopped out on the road, in the woods darkness, and I waited for who might come into the yard. After a moment the car took off and I had a good look at its horizontal taillights.

In the morning we found this vital message on the chalkboard. He or she or it brought their own chalk. Two different colors.

A week ago we put up a chalkboard announcement celebrating our son Carson and his partner Jocelyn's first baby! O happy days for them and all.

Below is the original announcement for the baby, since defaced (above photograph).

Ruth Krauss Back Road Chalkie

BACKSEAT ~

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-bukowski

SYLVIA PLATH ~

     

Sylvia Plath Yorkshire, England 1956

Mortimer Rare Book Room Smith College

http://www.theworld.org/2010/04/new-recordings-of-sylvia-plath/


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jul/11/sylvia-plath-the-unbearable/

A LIGHT UNDER THE DOOR

(AND VERY FINE TO SEE)

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/small-books-with-big-souls/?ref=books

SUNDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING ~

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/binladenfiles/


http://www.guardian.co.uk/wo

FIREFLY ~

Back Road Chalkie ~

Alfred Starr Hamilton

Layla Rosemary Arnold ~

Ruth Krauss Back Road Chalkie

At around 7AM came the short but sweet email from our son Carson —

______________________________

"Hi Mom and Dad,

Layla Rosemary Arnold, born July 9th at 11pm, 7 pounds, 4 ounces. She's really beautiful and has a full head of dark hair. Jocelyn was a warrior and pushed for over 6 hours. No drugs or hospital involved. Pretty astonishing. We're exhausted and incredibly excited she's with us finally.
You're officially Grandparents.
Thinking of you and hope to see you.

much love,
Carson"

_____________________________

So I said to Sweetheart, "Let's find some stuff and be one of the first to hold this little baby." She was game, naturally. Eyes bright. Around the house I found a painted egg I was always fond of, plus a beaded bracelet, and Sweetheart took down one of Carson's favored stuffed animals (giraffe) and passing a delicious pie shop on the way to their house (less than an hour away), we chose the blueberry pie with heavenly crust, which went into a white box and the only touch missing was a string wrapped around the box. They still could have, but they didn't; it's one more of those little missing qualities of life. We arrived at weary Carson's house at 10AM and hugged him outside the front door on the tiny porch.

Upstairs Jocelyn after those six hours hard labor was tuckered out and Layla Rosemary Arnold had the vibrant red coloring of a newborn exactly 11 hours old. We were the first on the scene. After she passed the disturbance of oxygen, air bubbles? her natural color returned, with her lovely lips and quite large feet and resting snugged against Jocelyn's heart with a half-filled mason jar of water at her bedside, we all visited. Carson likewise tuckered out in a red Sun Ra T-shirt, shorts, two days beard, barefoot, tiny room, floor fan blowing, upstairs old New England shotgun house by a river and a roadway going way too fast, council was made.

Downstairs, letting Jocelyn and Layla rest deeper, we broke into the pie with Carson and joked like the three former band members we once were together, not quite parents, and not quite our child, but buddies from all the years we train-traveled, cross-country-rode, bussed, hardwork at home in the woods, footloose family. . . and laughed over all the recent rocky times. I love, adore, protect, swoon, abide and pleasure sink into anyone I can have a relationship with like this. Carson was all smiles and that old trust he once had with us was in full evidence of ribbing and quickly galvanizing over deep waters that anyone knows must never be taken all that seriously. It's love that must be taken seriously. So we loved the pie, and we loved our son; saving over half the pie for the next visitors.

We stayed about three hours. Could hear the baby cry.
 

Then we headed to three towns and did a bunch of ruined-for-the-day-in-a-bliss errands new grandparents do — like groceries, bookshop sale hunting, saw a very elder Vermont friend in a parking lot and tugged on her sweater sleeve (humidity at 89%!) and shared with her the news, and she beamed like a sea lion! we then went off and ate some good junk food (salad, fries and a large Coke, all shared between us), climbed to the summit of Sugarloaf and no one was up there post thunderstorm humid and jungle licked and explosively green, with that forever breeze on its stone faced eastern side, where the peregrines and buzzards sail, then somewhere on the road home shared a caramel sundae. What in the world!? All in celebration of a granddaughter. Now we have to climb the mountain again! And one day with that little girl.

It suddenly dawned on us, hours & hours later, talking aloud, rain on the windshield — why in the world did this fine birthing center in New Hampshire where Layla was born at 11PM, allow this young couple to drive an hour long home the murky dark countryside at 2AM, exhausted and exhilarated at once. . .couldn't they have bedded them down there until daylight, then proceeded home? It's a question new grandparents fuss over.

And furthermore, just think — a year ago this summer we had a witch-hunt taking up against us on our road by a select some — and this year a new baby is born into the life. People, hang onto your hats! Life can flip and change and wiggle through your fingers. Let it.

Rode home along the river. No one on it except a lonesome traveler with Texas plates and a passenger with thin arm tattoos and a haunting southwest long glare stare. Driving and curious that I was looking into western-eyed, I stared back. My sort of kinda hombre. That doesn't always work.

 

Now home in the thick of rain forest and mud mist river evening shaking down.

[ BA ]

Back Road Chalkie "Ruth Krauss"

some photos © Bob Arnold

New from Longhouse Summer 2013 ~ Austin Smith & Michael Theune

Austin Smith & Michael Theune

Midwestern Death Poems


"Over the past decade, we have collected a vast
array of haiku, a portion of which is presented here. 
Gathered from sources as antique shops,
estate sales, and used bookstores,
we believe we have discovered the existence 
of a tradition not unlike the Japanese tradition of the
jisei, or as defined in Yoel Hoffman's
Japanese Death Poems, the "farewell poem to life."

$10 postpaid, US addresses
Please inquire as to international orders
poetry@sover.net

Available from
 Longhouse
 PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont
 05303 

 credit card or check ~

Buy now through Paypal with this link for domestic addresses.

IRWIN SHAW ~

Irwin Shaw

The Art of Fiction

The Paris Review Interview

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5157/the-art-of-fiction-no-4-irwin-shaw

 

THE LOVE OF SIMON VINKENOOG ~

AS TOLD BY HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS
NARRATION & MONTAGE BY ALAN COX
 (AND A CAST OF THOUSANDS)

Simon Vinkenoog at Longhouse

Heathcote Williams at Longhouse




Peter Whitehead's film
Wholly Communion (1965)
Royal Albert Hall, London ~

New from Longhouse Summer 2013 ~ Jeff Todd Titon

Jeff Todd Titon

Davey


"Davey had heard this nonsense about the old trees thirty
years ago when he bought the orchard. It was planted
out for production, mostly in Macintosh and Red and
Golden Delicious, but it came with a small section
that had been planted to ancient varities. The former
owner had a hobby; he tracked down old trees all over
New England, and he took cuttings that he grafted
to rootstock and planted them in what he called his
experimental orchard."

$10 postpaid, US addresses
Please inquire as to international orders
poetry@sover.net

Available from
 Longhouse
 PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont
 05303 

 credit card or check ~

Buy now through Paypal with this link for domestic addresses.

LONG DISTANCE RUNNER ~

Renata Adler

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jul/07/renata-adler-new-york-author-interview

SECRET CID ~

Cid Corman

http://www.dotnews.com/2013/uncovering-boston-s-best-kept-literary-secret-cid-corman

drawing of Cid Corman © Bob Arnold

HAJJ PAINTINGS ~

"Since the seventh century, the Hajj, or Great Pilgrimage to Mecca,

has been a lifelong goal of devout Muslims throughout the world.

Entire households may save for years to send a respected family member to Mecca.

Egyptian journey by commissioning a local artist to depict their religious

odyssey on the walls of their homes. Hajj paintings is the first visual record

of the richness and variety of this naive art form, considered Egypt's most 

significant contribution to the contemporary international folk art scene."

"Photographer Ann Parker and writer Avon Neal spend a decade

exploring towns, villages, and isolated farm communities along

the Nile, across the Delta, down the Red Sea coast, and into the

Sinai. On the walls of buildings ranging from alabaster factories

to mud brick farmhouses they found brilliant murals illuminated

and scenes from the Koran. Their nearly one hundred and fifty

color photographs and accompanying descriptions record the

radiant palette of mostly self-taught artists."

"On exterior walls, images of transportation — ranging from

camels to airplanes — provide a spirited contrast with calligraphic

inscriptions and pastoral renderings of Islamic workshop.

Occasionally, images of pure fantasy, business and commercial references,

scenes from everyday life, and traditional representations

from Pharaonic times, as well as a variety of plants and animals, adorn

the houses. Parker and Neal also reveal the cool, shaded interior

walls of pilgrims' homes where murals unmarred by the elements  often

depict more personal themes. They examine the meanings of recurring motifs,

 compare regional styles, and identify contemporary masters of Hajj paintings."

 

 Hajj Paintings

Folk Art of the Great Pilgrimage
by Ann Parker and Avon Neal
Smithsonian 1995

HURDY-GURDY MAN ~

Just sent from Scotland

 (and thank you, Malcolm)

 and quite a treat — 

Donovan!

 busking on the street in Glasgow

 with a young and artful street singer

one

more

humble

moment

in

time

PORTISHEAD AT GLASTONBURY 2013 ~

(BETH GIBBONS)

It's almost impossible, at least for me, not to love a band that has only recorded three albums in 19 years in this day and age of hard sell, and true to form each album is a tour de force. Never mind when Portishead played Glastonbury last week — a band that can go on hiatus and do solo work elsewhere for 5 years (for Gibbons = Rustin Man etc) — it was the band's lead singer Beth Gibbons who stole all the shows, when on their closing number she ran off the stage to spend some time hugging and touching the crowd all along the barricaded front row. Nice touch — reach over the barricade. No one losing a beat from that electrified and screen pulsing stage. And was it me, or did you also feel the surging crowd, in pitch outdoor darkness, come all that much closer to the band? Before leaving the stage Gibbons said, with sincerity, to the soothing sea of trip-hop devotees, "Thank you so much ... I hope it was all right."

CHOOSING TO LOVE THE WORLD ~

Thomas Merton

photo : Edward Rice

One thing I know — that it is my destiny to be a contemplative, a Christian, and an American. I can satisfy my vocation with nothing that is partial or provincial. I cannot be a "North American" who knows only the rivers, the plains, the mountains, and the cities of the north, the north where there are a few Indians, where the land was colonized and cultivated by the Puritans . . . .This north is grand, powerful, rich, intelligent; it has a warmth all its own, a surprising humility, a charity, an inner purity that the stranger does not know. But it is incomplete. It is neither the better or the richer part of the hemisphere . . . . It lacks the roots of the old America, the America of Mexico and the Andes, where silent and contemplative Asians came millenniums ago to construct their hieratic (highly stylized and priestly) cities. It lacks the intense fervor and fecundity of Brazil, which is also African, which smiles with the grin of the Congo and laughs with the childlike innocence of Portugal. The northern half of this New World lacks the force, the refinement, the prodigality of Argentina with all the lyricism of its tormented and generous heart.

photo : Jonathan Williams

He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world eithout deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which we are driven by our Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more alienated and estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we have ever been. The result of this is evident. We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of man; and this crisis is centered precisely in the country that has made a fetish out of action and has lost ( or perhaps never had ) the sense of contemplation. Far from being irrelevant, prayer, meditation and contemplation are of utmost importance in America today.

Thomas Merton's hermitage in Kentucky

photo : Thomas Merton

We have an instinctive need for harmony and peace, for tranquility, order and meaning. None of these seem to be the most salient characteristics of modern society . . . . We must face the fact that the mere thought of contemplation is one which deeply troubles the person who takes it seriously. It is so contrary to the modern way of life, so apparently alien, so seemingly impossible, that the modern man who even considers it finds, at first, that his whole being rebels against it. If the ideal of inner peace remains attractive, the demands of the way to peace seem to be so exacting and extreme that they can no longer be met. We would like to be quiet, but our restlessness will not allow it. Hence we believe that for us there can be no peace except in a life filled with movement and activity, with speech, news, communication, recreation, distraction. We seek the meaning of our life in activity for its own sake, activity without objective, efficacy without fruit, scientism, the cult of unlimited power, the service of the machine as an end in itself.

Thomas Merton passed away at the age of 53 in Bangkok Thailand in 1968. Trappist monk, mystic and author of more than 70 books, he was born in France on the last day of January 1915. He lived the greatest part of his life at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1949 and given the name Father Louis.

http://merton.org/

Merton passages from
Choosing to Love the World
by Thomas Merton
(Sounds True, 2008)

TO LIVE OUTSIDE THE LAW. . .

YOU MUST BE HONEST ~
(HAVE A WIFE AND KID)

"U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?hp