Gillian Welch, David Rawlings
Saturday, July 23, 2011
READERS ~
father & son photographs over the years taken by the quiet hand of the household
photos above © susan arnold
henry miller
On the whole, I must say, I have found better men — better in every sense of the word — among the uncultured than among the cultured ones of the world. The most monstrous crimes against humanity are being committed every day by those who have had all the advantages of learning. By making people more literate, more book conscious, we can hardly say that we are thereby making better citizens of them.
A book is no better than, and usually not as good as a rock, a tree, a creature of the wild, a wisp of cloud, a wave, or a shadow on the wall. We who make books are indebted not to books but to the things which impel men to write books: earth, air, fire and water. If there were not a common source from which author and reader alike draw, there would be no books. Would it be such a calamity, a world without books? Could we not still communicate our joys, our discoveries, by word of mouth? Falling back on the tongue, there would be no need to destroy whole forests, mar the landscape, befoul the air, or dull the minds and bodies of those who toil to provide us with mental and spiritual fodder in the form of books.
— Henry Miller
from - "To Read or Not To Read"
Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
New Directions, 1962
A book is no better than, and usually not as good as a rock, a tree, a creature of the wild, a wisp of cloud, a wave, or a shadow on the wall. We who make books are indebted not to books but to the things which impel men to write books: earth, air, fire and water. If there were not a common source from which author and reader alike draw, there would be no books. Would it be such a calamity, a world without books? Could we not still communicate our joys, our discoveries, by word of mouth? Falling back on the tongue, there would be no need to destroy whole forests, mar the landscape, befoul the air, or dull the minds and bodies of those who toil to provide us with mental and spiritual fodder in the form of books.
— Henry Miller
from - "To Read or Not To Read"
Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
New Directions, 1962
father & son photographs over the years taken by the quiet hand of the household
photos above © susan arnold
henry miller
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
LESSONS ~
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/19/ralph_naders_solution_to_debt_crisis
MORE!
http://www.pbs.org/pov/biblioburro/
trendyprincess.com
www. democracynow.org
pbs.org
MORE!
http://www.pbs.org/pov/biblioburro/
trendyprincess.com
www. democracynow.org
pbs.org
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
A MOMENT ~
Happily I was streaming C-Span and caught this moment Live, not having a television.
Three cheers, of course, for fellows always in flannel shirts.
And cheers as well for protective wives — Wendi Deng (Ms. Rupert Murdoch) who leapt up, in pink jacket, and got in a good slap on the patriot, Jonathan May-Bowles.
I'd call it a tie.
buster keaton with custard pies
Three cheers, of course, for fellows always in flannel shirts.
And cheers as well for protective wives — Wendi Deng (Ms. Rupert Murdoch) who leapt up, in pink jacket, and got in a good slap on the patriot, Jonathan May-Bowles.
I'd call it a tie.
buster keaton with custard pies
EARTH ~
Slowly, past this day, you sleep
and as you lightly breathe a river burns from me...
all the final voices forever said —
and in your sleep I awake, here,
have eaten an orange,
have gone to the creek and bathed
listening to its thin and liquid speech,
its joy to run so free and clean.
Now, returning to this ragged tent,
sanctuary to your sleep, your real sleep,
I wish for your waking
so that we together could take cool pause
at the hidden pond I found downstream,
our bodies quick and chilled by the water,
our bodies breathing — holding.
Now, here as pen point and shadow
touch this page
I look up almost stunned to
know that from your sleep you have loved me,
and from my awakening I have loved you back.
. . .
Karma
karman; Sanskrit; action —
root — KR, "to act"
Am I flower
--to be fancied of
clouds —
--this pure staring of
faces?
--Am I so overheated
I fume the angels,
the very choirs themselves?
I may speak of angels,
may I not,
for they speak of me —
The gates of Pan's gardens are
never closed
. . .
Come lover light
in my dawn —
come lover dawn
to my bedded cheek
come light in my dawn —
step across me
so that scent of hem
and any flower
that thou art
brings me to the
window to bless thy
leaving till
darkness brings
thee to haunt me.
Come dawn lover
to window rise
thy voice in darkest
dawn —
come upon me
by mountain shine
by quickest beam of
early light, the
sun!
thy lover ever
come down in me.
Hand me by moan
thy face in faintest
air
that kiss
abd breath still
upon me —
with heart within
my head
and my eyes to win
thee —
Come dawn lover
and light in me.
Man mourns
that which he is
and loves that which he is not.
His lover must always
come endlessly
from our eternity;
come flowing as a special
message of you and me.
O come down
dawn lover —
thy one love
upon all is our need.
O come down lover on
we
. .
from the silent world
It is the morning
I eat for breakfast
that yellow meal
of corn within
a white crock bowl —
O foods of my soul,
the wind that scatters
the near spirits
through the trees,
the wind that moves
processionally our ancestors
moves through me.
. . .
from Lyric Poems
(City Lights 1988)
A TRUE BLUE SAN FRANCISCO POET WHO WAS BORN IN SAN FRANCISCO (1932-2003 ). HIS FIRST BOOK OF POEMS WAS SAPPHOBONES (POETS HOUSE, 1966). HE ALSO WROTE PROSE ~ HAPPINESS BASTARD ( 1968) ~ LIKE JACK KEROUAC'S ON THE ROAD, THE TEXT WAS COMPOSED ON ONE CONTINUOUS SCROLL ON A TYPEWRITER. THOSE THAT KNEW HIM NEVER FORGOT HIM; THE REST OF THE WORLD GETS THE UNFORGETTABLE POEMS.
Billy Batman & Kirby Doyle
Poem To A Mountain Girl
Poem To A Mountain Girl
Slowly, past this day, you sleep
and as you lightly breathe a river burns from me...
all the final voices forever said —
and in your sleep I awake, here,
have eaten an orange,
have gone to the creek and bathed
listening to its thin and liquid speech,
its joy to run so free and clean.
Now, returning to this ragged tent,
sanctuary to your sleep, your real sleep,
I wish for your waking
so that we together could take cool pause
at the hidden pond I found downstream,
our bodies quick and chilled by the water,
our bodies breathing — holding.
Now, here as pen point and shadow
touch this page
I look up almost stunned to
know that from your sleep you have loved me,
and from my awakening I have loved you back.
. . .
Karma
karman; Sanskrit; action —
root — KR, "to act"
Am I flower
--to be fancied of
clouds —
--this pure staring of
faces?
--Am I so overheated
I fume the angels,
the very choirs themselves?
I may speak of angels,
may I not,
for they speak of me —
The gates of Pan's gardens are
never closed
. . .
Come lover light
in my dawn —
come lover dawn
to my bedded cheek
come light in my dawn —
step across me
so that scent of hem
and any flower
that thou art
brings me to the
window to bless thy
leaving till
darkness brings
thee to haunt me.
Come dawn lover
to window rise
thy voice in darkest
dawn —
come upon me
by mountain shine
by quickest beam of
early light, the
sun!
thy lover ever
come down in me.
Hand me by moan
thy face in faintest
air
that kiss
abd breath still
upon me —
with heart within
my head
and my eyes to win
thee —
Come dawn lover
and light in me.
Man mourns
that which he is
and loves that which he is not.
His lover must always
come endlessly
from our eternity;
come flowing as a special
message of you and me.
O come down
dawn lover —
thy one love
upon all is our need.
O come down lover on
we
. .
from the silent world
It is the morning
I eat for breakfast
that yellow meal
of corn within
a white crock bowl —
O foods of my soul,
the wind that scatters
the near spirits
through the trees,
the wind that moves
processionally our ancestors
moves through me.
. . .
from Lyric Poems
(City Lights 1988)
A TRUE BLUE SAN FRANCISCO POET WHO WAS BORN IN SAN FRANCISCO (1932-2003 ). HIS FIRST BOOK OF POEMS WAS SAPPHOBONES (POETS HOUSE, 1966). HE ALSO WROTE PROSE ~ HAPPINESS BASTARD ( 1968) ~ LIKE JACK KEROUAC'S ON THE ROAD, THE TEXT WAS COMPOSED ON ONE CONTINUOUS SCROLL ON A TYPEWRITER. THOSE THAT KNEW HIM NEVER FORGOT HIM; THE REST OF THE WORLD GETS THE UNFORGETTABLE POEMS.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
EARTH ~
Adonis ( Ali Ahmad Said Esber )
CELEBRATING CHILDHOOD
Even the wind wants
to become a cart
pulled by butterflies.
I remember madness
leaning for the first time
on the mind's pillow.
I was talking to my body then
and my body was an idea
I wrote in red.
Red is the sun's most beautiful throne
and all the other colors
worship on red rugs.
Night is another candle.
In every branch, an arm,
a message carried in space
echoed by the body of the wind.
The sun insists on dressing itself in fog
when it meets me:
Am I being scolded by the light?
Oh, my past days —
they used to walk in their sleep
and I used to lean on them.
Love and dreams are two parentheses.
Between them I place my body
and discover the world.
Many times
I saw the air fly with two grass feet
and the road dance with feet made of air.
My wishes are flowers
staining my days.
I was wounded early,
and early I learned
that wounds made me.
I still follow the child
who still walks inside me.
Now he stands at a staircase made of light
searching for a corner to rest in
and to read the face of night again.
If the moon were a house,
my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep.
They are taken by dust
carrying me to the air of seasons.
I walk,
one hand in the air,
the other caressing tresses
that I imagine.
A star is also
a pebble in the field of space.
He alone
who is joined to the horizon
can build new roads.
A moon, an old man,
his seat is night
and light is his walking stick.
What shall I say to the body I abandoned
in the rubble of the house
in which I was born?
No one can narrate my childhood
except those stars that flicker above it
and that leave footprints
on the evening path.
My childhood is still
being born in the psalms of a light
whose name I do not know
and who names me.
Out of that river he made a mirror
and asked it about his sorrow.
He made rain out of his grief
and imitated the clouds.
Your childhood is a village.
You will never cross its boundaries
no matter how far you go.
His days are lakes,
his memories floating bodies.
You who are descending
from the mountains of the past,
how can you climb them again,
and why?
Time is a door
I cannot open.
My magic is worn,
my chants asleep.
I was born in a village,
small and secretive like a womb.
I never left it.
I love the ocean not the shores.
Poet, philosopher and essayist born in Qasabin Syria in 1930.
From seventeen adopted the pseudonym Adonis.
He is considered the epitome of contemporary Arabic poetry.
CELEBRATING CHILDHOOD
Even the wind wants
to become a cart
pulled by butterflies.
I remember madness
leaning for the first time
on the mind's pillow.
I was talking to my body then
and my body was an idea
I wrote in red.
Red is the sun's most beautiful throne
and all the other colors
worship on red rugs.
Night is another candle.
In every branch, an arm,
a message carried in space
echoed by the body of the wind.
The sun insists on dressing itself in fog
when it meets me:
Am I being scolded by the light?
Oh, my past days —
they used to walk in their sleep
and I used to lean on them.
Love and dreams are two parentheses.
Between them I place my body
and discover the world.
Many times
I saw the air fly with two grass feet
and the road dance with feet made of air.
My wishes are flowers
staining my days.
I was wounded early,
and early I learned
that wounds made me.
I still follow the child
who still walks inside me.
Now he stands at a staircase made of light
searching for a corner to rest in
and to read the face of night again.
If the moon were a house,
my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep.
They are taken by dust
carrying me to the air of seasons.
I walk,
one hand in the air,
the other caressing tresses
that I imagine.
A star is also
a pebble in the field of space.
He alone
who is joined to the horizon
can build new roads.
A moon, an old man,
his seat is night
and light is his walking stick.
What shall I say to the body I abandoned
in the rubble of the house
in which I was born?
No one can narrate my childhood
except those stars that flicker above it
and that leave footprints
on the evening path.
My childhood is still
being born in the psalms of a light
whose name I do not know
and who names me.
Out of that river he made a mirror
and asked it about his sorrow.
He made rain out of his grief
and imitated the clouds.
Your childhood is a village.
You will never cross its boundaries
no matter how far you go.
His days are lakes,
his memories floating bodies.
You who are descending
from the mountains of the past,
how can you climb them again,
and why?
Time is a door
I cannot open.
My magic is worn,
my chants asleep.
I was born in a village,
small and secretive like a womb.
I never left it.
I love the ocean not the shores.
ADONIS
Selected Poems
(Yale/Margellos, 2010)
translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Selected Poems
(Yale/Margellos, 2010)
translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Poet, philosopher and essayist born in Qasabin Syria in 1930.
From seventeen adopted the pseudonym Adonis.
He is considered the epitome of contemporary Arabic poetry.
Friday, July 15, 2011
EARTH ~
CELEBRATING DEATH
Death arrives from the back
even when it comes before us.
Only life confronts.
The eye is a road
and the road is an intersection.
A child plays with life,
an old man leans on it.
The tongue rusts from excess of speech,
and the eye dries from lack of dreams.
Wrinkles —
grooves on the face,
potholes in the heart.
A body — half doorstep,
half incline.
His head is a butterfly
with a single wing.
The sky reads you
after death writes you.
The sky has two breasts;
from them all people suckle
every moment, every place.
The human being is a book
life reads continuously,
and death reads in an instant,
and only once.
What about this city?
In it dawn appears like a walking stick
in a darkness named Time.
Spring came to the garden of the house,
laid down his suitcases
and started giving them to the trees
under a rain falling from his arms.
Why is the poet always mistaken?
Spring gives him its leaves
and he gives them to ink.
Our existence is a slope
and we live to climb it.
I congratulate you, sand.
You are the only one who can pour
water and mirage
into the same bowl.
Poet, philosopher and essayist born in Qasabin Syria in 1930.
From seventeen adopted the pseudonym Adonis.
He is considered the epitome of contemporary Arabic poetry.
CELEBRATING DEATH
Death arrives from the back
even when it comes before us.
Only life confronts.
The eye is a road
and the road is an intersection.
A child plays with life,
an old man leans on it.
The tongue rusts from excess of speech,
and the eye dries from lack of dreams.
Wrinkles —
grooves on the face,
potholes in the heart.
A body — half doorstep,
half incline.
His head is a butterfly
with a single wing.
The sky reads you
after death writes you.
The sky has two breasts;
from them all people suckle
every moment, every place.
The human being is a book
life reads continuously,
and death reads in an instant,
and only once.
What about this city?
In it dawn appears like a walking stick
in a darkness named Time.
Spring came to the garden of the house,
laid down his suitcases
and started giving them to the trees
under a rain falling from his arms.
Why is the poet always mistaken?
Spring gives him its leaves
and he gives them to ink.
Our existence is a slope
and we live to climb it.
I congratulate you, sand.
You are the only one who can pour
water and mirage
into the same bowl.
ADONIS
Selected Poems
(Yale/Margellos, 2010)
translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Selected Poems
(Yale/Margellos, 2010)
translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Poet, philosopher and essayist born in Qasabin Syria in 1930.
From seventeen adopted the pseudonym Adonis.
He is considered the epitome of contemporary Arabic poetry.
HE WAS A POET ~
Roberts Blossom
March 25, 1924-8 July 2011
March 25, 1924-8 July 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/arts/roberts-blossom-quirky-character-actor-dies-at-87.html?src=recg
one of the great spirits, farewell
one of the great spirits, farewell
Thursday, July 14, 2011
BIOMETRICS ~
(will make sure we are all prisoners)
(will make sure we are all prisoners)
The Look of Love
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/asia/14identity.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
photo : Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press
Monday, July 11, 2011
EARTH ~
Rodolfo Enrique Facundo Cabral
was born on May 22, 1937 in Buenos Aires
then soon moved to Tierra del Fuego ~
writer, folk legend, friend of Borges
assassinated in Guatemala 9 July 2011
was born on May 22, 1937 in Buenos Aires
then soon moved to Tierra del Fuego ~
writer, folk legend, friend of Borges
assassinated in Guatemala 9 July 2011
“I was without a voice until I was 9, illiterate until I was 14, became a widower at 40 and only met my father when I was 46.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
