POSTCARD 20 ~

photo : fred sieb

"this profile, formed during the ice age
was worshipped by the American Indian
as the profile of the "Great Spirit" and
was first discovered by white men in 1805.
The face, which measured 48 feet from
forehead to chin, was 1200 feet above
Profile Lake and 3200 feet above sea level.

The Old Man of the Mountain, also known as the "Great Stone Face" was a series of five granite cliff ledges on Cannon Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

It collapsed on May 3, 2003.

Here with us Winter Solstice

LEONARD MICHAELS ~

Beyond Orgasm



She didn't like me. So I phoned her every day. I announced the new movies, concerts, art exhibits. I talked them up, excitements out there, claiming them in my voice. Not to like me was not to like the world. Then I asked her out. Impossible to say no. I appeared at her door in a witty hat, a crazy tie. Sometimes I changed my hairstyle. I was various, talking, dancing, waving my arms. I was the world. But she didn't like me. If she weren't so sweet, if she had will power, if she didn't miss the other guy so much, she'd have said, "Beat it, you're irrelevant." But she was in pain, confused about herself. The other guy had dumped her. I owed him a debt. It took the form of hatred, although, if not for him, she wouldn't have needed me. Not that she did. She needed my effort, not me. Me, she didn't like. Discouraged, sad, thinking I'd overdone this bad act and maybe I didn't like her all that much, I said, "Let's go to the restaurant next door, have dinner, say goodbye." She seemed reluctant, even frightened. I wondered if, in such decisive gestures, there was hope. She said, "Not there." I wondered if it was his hangout, or a restaurant she used to enjoy with him. I insisted, "Please," she said, "any other restaurant." But I needed this concession. She'd never given me anything else. For two men I'd talked and danced, even in bed. I insisted. Adamant. Shaking. "Only that restaurant." She took my arm. We walked briskly in appreciation of my feelings. As we entered the restaurant, she pulled back. I recognized him — alone, sitting at a table. Him. The other guy. My soul flew into the shape of his face. He yawned. Nothing justifies hate like animal simplicity. "Look. He's yawning. What a swine." Was it a show of casual vulnerability? Contempt? She pulled my arm. I didn't budge. I stared. His eyes squeezed to dashes. I heard the mock whimper of yawns. He began scratching the tablecloth. Two waiters ran to his side with questions of concern. His yawn was half his face. Batlike whimpers issued from it. Jawbones had locked, fiercely, absolutely. He needed help. My fist was ready. She cried, begging, dragging me away. I let her. That night was our beginning. Whenever I yawned at her, she'd laugh and plead, "Stop it." Her admiration of me extended to orgasm. Even beyond. It was not unmixed with fear.

_________________

LEONARD MICHAELS

from The Collected Stoiries

Farrar 2007

http://harpers.org/blog/2007/06/interview-wyatt-mason-on-leonard-michaels/

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/05/the-donkey-will-know-remembering-leonard-michaels.html

WINTERLUDE ~

  film © bob arnold

 

A ZEN FOREST ~

No ugliness
    in a loved child.








No one buys water
    down by the riverside.







A dead stag
    in the field:
Grass
    wraps it.







Where no Buddha,
    the Buddha works.






 
Hide yourself
    —within the North Star.







Better see his face
    than hear his name.







He dies,
    I die —
Where can we
    meet?







 

Jump out of the world
    of Satori!







Great skill looks
    like clumsiness.







Hide yourself in
    each and every thing!







Sprinkling piss
    on sacred soil.







A three-foot staff
    stirs
        the Yellow River.







The mountain is high:
    the moon, late.








High mountains,
    running water —
I'm waiting for
    the one who knows.







A withered tree
    meets spring no more.







Clouds gone,
    the mountain shows.







Shouldering the plank
    —till death.








 
A dumb man has eaten
    a bitter cucumber.







I've seen through you
    already.












compiled by bob arnold


 _______________________

 translated by Soiku Shigematsu
foreword by Gary Snyder
from A ZEN FOREST
Sayings of the Masters
(Weatherhill 1981)

oxherding illustrations by Gyokusen

AUDREY TOTTER ~

Audrey Totter

1917 ~ 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/16/audrey-totter

photo:
Audrey Totter in " Lady in the Lake", directed by Robert Montgomery in 1947,
 with Montgomery in the mirror here as Philip Marlowe
from the Raymond Chandler novel

HAND-BUILT ~

Lloyd Kahn is the champion, kingpin, man-to-go-to, gold mine, provider, gleaner, old hand, and hands down knowledgeable one on all things hand built — and from the earth (meaning wood & stone) all the better. He has been working the grapevine for decades, sought out the woodbutchers and the back-to-the-landers and the survivors, of which he is one. The subject stays on the table and he has published many books now since the 60s on this oldest of crafts: making a home. Affordable and adorable.

Of all the structures and buildings and moving carts and trucks and hearths and abodes in this treasury of a book, and there are dozens upon dozens to fall in love with, for today "Judith Mountain Cabin" is my favorite. I do have a thing about well timed stone, rural, and the subtle architecture on this structure makes it a gem. I'd take most of the riff-raff off the roof since I don't like anything on a metal roof — let the weather slide — and if I went to all the heft to get this dynamo and well-squared stone footing into place, I'm taking a stone chimney, or even a fireplace, all the way up to the roof line.

A marvel of a book. If Lloyd lives to the ripe old age of 200, there should be 50 more of these wonders published.

Tiny Homes

simple shelter

Lloyd Kahn

Shelter Publications

P.O. 279

Bolinas, California

94924

shelter@shelterpub.com

Peter O'Toole

1932-2013

Lawrence of Arabia
directed by David Lean
Columbia Pictures
1962



http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia

GATHERED ~

photo © bob arnold

RAINMAKER ~

(1969)










 "I had an art college education and on a rainy night in 1966 I went into a pub in Cornwall, but I couldn't afford to pay to go in. So I said, I'll tell you what, I don't want to stay outside in the rain, I'll play guitar for half an hour for you. They offered me a job for the rest of the summer and I've been at it ever since."

(from MC website)

http://www.michaelchapman.co.uk/

ROBERT HAYDEN ~

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   

this man, superb in love and logic, this man   

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

__________________

ROBERT HAYDEN

Collected Poems

edited by Frederick Glaysher

Liveright 1985

 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-hayden

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER ~

Paula Modersohn-Becker

The First Modern Woman Artist

by Diane Radycki

(Yale 2013)

I AM HERE ~

One More Contradiction



Did I fulfill what I had to, here, on earth?

I was a guest in a house under white clouds

Where rivers flow and grasses renew themselves.

So what if I were called, if I was hardly aware.

The next time early I would search for wisdom.

I would not pretend I could be just like others:

Only evil and suffering come from that.

Renouncing, I would choose the fate of obedience.

I would suppress my wolf's eye and greedy throat.

A resident of some cloister floating in the air

With a view on the cities glowing below,

Or onto a stream, a bridge and old cedars,

I would give myself to one task only

Which then, however, could not be accomplished.




________________________

Czeslaw Milosz


New and Collected Poems
(1931-2001)
Ecco

Terrence Des Pres, writing in the Nation, stated that "political catastrophe has defined the nature of our . . . [age], and the result—the collision of personal and public realms—has produced a new kind of writer. Czeslaw Milosz is the perfect example. In exile from a world which no longer exists, a witness to the Nazi devastation of Poland and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, Milosz deals in his poetry with the central issues of our time: the impact of history upon moral being, the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in a ruined world."

 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980, Czeslaw Milosz was born in 1911 in Lithuania where his parents had moved to escape the political upheaval in their native Poland — the poet later left Poland himself due to the Communist regime that swept to power following WW2. He eventually settled in the United States in 1960 and became an American citizen in 1970. For decades he taught at the University of California Berkeley. His books of poetry, prose and historical importance took awhile to be known in the US, but now they are more than secure.

photo : AKG Images / East News

EMILY ~

                   Captivity is Consciousness.

                   So's Liberty.

                                                                  E M I L Y    D I C K I N S O N

(  poem 384 )

the Dickinson grave plot, Amherst, Massachusetts




http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/books/the-gorgeous-nothings-shows-dickinsons-envelope-poems.html?hp

ONCE IN VERMONT ~

Helen & Scott Nearing




In one more beautiful move recently by the hands of Gaia — as I finished typing out all the pages for this text from their classic Living the Good Life — and I'm not sure if it was Scott Nearing, or Helen, or both? but in the wink of the eye as soon as I finished my typing I looked up at the screen and every bit of my electronic keyboard work was gone. Gone. Vanished. Like a puff of smoke up the chimney with the maple logs that were keeping me warm. I had no one to say anything to, except a sleepy Kokomo across the rug on the light of the couch. So I just whispered aloud a chant-like, "my my my."


The next morning I rose early and scanned the pages. Now you hold the real McCoy.
It's all about living in a community.

Please click onto the book image to enlarge ~

Living the Good Life
Helen & Scott Nearing

being A PLAIN PRACTICAL
ACCOUNT OF A Twenty Year Project IN
A Self-Subsistent Homestead in Vermont
TOGETHER WITH REMARKS ON How to Live
Sanely & Simply IN A Troubled World

Social Science Institute
Harborside, Maine
1954

ARCHIVE ~

The destruction of Los Angeles streetcars, in favor of buses, automobiles and freeways. 1956

YOU AIN'T GOING NOWHERE ~

Here is Charles McGrath today in the New York Times where he is a contributing writer, speaking to his craft as one of the judges of The National Book Award for fiction:


"So you do the best you can. You don’t skim exactly, but you race, driving your eyes across the page, in the process forgoing much of the ordinary pleasure of reading. I sometimes thought of it as chain-sawing through books, tearing into them, grinding them up, leaving a wake of fluttering pages and bits of binding. Maybe that’s why my retina ripped.

Do you need to read the entire book to know whether it’s prize-worthy? No, to be honest. But you do need to read enough to be sure you haven’t missed something, and even then you feel guilty, worried that just a few pages farther on there’s a passage that might have changed your mind."



Imagine a writer reading this and responding: "Do you have to write the entire book to know it is finished? No, to be honest."

 
I'm afraid we are already there.

 
I'm going out now before it snows to hang up some holiday lights around the Back Road Chalkboard. If I'm Charles McGrath I'll string the over 100 feet of extension cord from the house out to the rural roadside and of course I will skim, race, and forego much of the ordinary pleasure of stringing out colorful lights. I might even use my chain saw. Anything to get through the job and into some other form of racing.

 
I might even be too busy to connect the extension cords for the whole thing to work.

 
I dunno.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/opinion/sunday/caution-reading-can-be-hazardous.html?hp

POSTCARD 19 ~

"Flagpole Wedding" Coshocton, Ohio, 1946
photograph by Allan Grant

HURRICANE SANDY, ONE YEAR LATER ~

Officials, including Vice President Joe Bidin, 

officiating at Hurricane Sandy landfall

In workman's terms:

"Hurricane Sandy was a storm like no other in the history of New York. It left more than 100 people dead and caused enormous structural damage that will take years to repair.

FEMA has received claims for nearly 16 million square feet of drywall, 56,000 furnaces and water heaters and enough paint to cover 43 million square feet."

There's more:

"Many residents of the region were also surprised to have claims denied for damage to the foundations of their houses because the damage was deemed to have resulted from “earth movement,” not storm flooding. "



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/nyregion/displaced-by-hurricane-sandy-and-living-in-limbo-instead-of-at-home.html?hp

TAKE MIKE ~

TAKE MIKE


1.

i mean he doesn't live in this town
he lives in levittown which is nowhere
as far as anybody is concerned these days
he lives in a house built after the war
in a time when everybody got married and lived
as happy as the guy in the next peapod
meaning they lived in a house like everybody else's
and didn't mind it and they all watched the same
show on the same channel on the same motel tv
and the test signal came on at the same time of night
in every household in america

but take mike for goodness sakes i mean he makes
a little money and he does something with it
that was just a little monopoly house after all
but right away he's pushing it out here and
he's adding a little skylight there
and before you know it he's got a kitchen nook
where everyone else on the street has got a wall

and he refuses to catch the 6:28
and be one of the guys
on a train full of guys
rumbling car by identical car to the city,
he won't even take an office job for chrissakes
no, he's got to be a roofer or something, and buy
a truck of his own and paint his own name on the side

and nobody but nobody is going to tell him what to do

all right maybe sometimes it means he loses a contract
in the middle of a job because he refuses to compromise
with some lady in one or another of those over-priced
houses on the north shore —but i mean take mike
he's his own man with his own set of tools and his own set
of manly possessions take mike he owns one of those dogs
that sits in the passenger seat of his truck and hangs
his head out the window for chrissakes you can take
that dog to the beach and it will actually jump

in the water if you throw a stick, i don't care
whether it's summer or the middle of january
by god they actually go out and they go for it
i've seen the pictures.


2.

it's not that i'm jealous i want to get that straight

i've lived long enough to realize that individualism
is no longer an issue i've outgrown that particular fantasy
i mean it's impossible to be an individual in a nation
of 250 million people who are all being fed
the same line of crap every day
every everlasting working day every day
about freedom and individuality

the same line of crap, advertised absolutely
everywhere and everybody is offered
the same line of products and services
which they would have to buy to be individual, wear
to be individual, the same clever line of commentary
which they would have to think to be individual,
and where the only semblance of individuality

is to figure out how to keep up with the new
fashion alternatives in individuality
without going broke or losing focus on
your work, is to figure out how to strap on
the latest feedbag and remain content
when you're not in your office or in a bed
which no longer yields up its dreams,

where choosing from among
the new lines of crap they've come up with
becomes the measure of a man, not real
life choices, no! i accept all that
after all these years.

but take mike i mean he's a man with a real leather tool belt
and a big clanging box for his tools, and when he comes
home at night, he's spackled from ear to ear
with tar and hard work, and he smiles and takes
to his easy chair, and everything about him
tells me this is a man who actually comes home
and finds real relief from a day's work,
real rest, not just another dark spot
to park his ass while he waits to die.

and there. i've said it. it's not that i'm afraid of dying
but take mike death wouldn't be so bad for a man like that
he's experienced life and life has given him its rewards
for living it, take mike he hasn't cheated himself of living
life hasn't meant missed opportunities for a man
like mike the way it has for me — because I don't know
but sometimes i feel as if i have cheated myself
and missed my chances
i don't want to die until i have really lived, even if
it's too late for me to do so
but not mike, why should he be afraid to die?


3.

that's why i say
if death has to come
and knock on someone's door
let it be mike. let mike
be the one lying
on the living room floor
clutching his chest
with his wife ironing
happily in the kitchen
and the kids out
god knows where
pummeling baseballs
and doing their hair

with the bills piling
quietly higher
with the snow still falling
on the perfectly plowed
driveway

it is the strong ones that should die,
the ones who have worked hard and slept well,
the ones who have wrestled with life, and won and lost
while the rest of us have just waited, hoping that
somehow someday someone would hand us the magic key.

death, when you come
take mike



 ____________

GEORGE WALLACE 
Greatest Hits 1988-2002
Pudding House Publications
www.puddinghouse.com 

           photo : nytimes