Friday, August 29, 2008

Norman

Norman played the bean tonight. I like him okay. Then again, I think Norman actually refers to the band, not a person, kind of like Pink Floyd. But anyway, they have a mellow soporific jangly sound with some good original lyrics and don't seem insincere. Here' some pictures:



Friday, August 22, 2008

the weather

the weather seems to be fairly sunny today. A little breezy, and the plants look better from the recent rainy. Apartment owners are out fixing up their apartments for the deluge of college students. The quiet summer was quite nice, but the reality is that this is a college town, and that's not a bad thing to be, in the larger scheme of things. It's better than being, say, and oil refinery town, for example.
Anyway, the weather was nice, and I was reminded of a few lines from walt whitman:

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current
and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.

What a nice thought, to not accept anything which anyone can not have as a counterpart on their own terms. I'm not sure what it means, but it must mean something, and to me it has to do with being sincere and not too proud....and open to the ideas that might come up in the course of the day.

And of course, who can forget these lines?

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the
stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

A pismire is an ant. This somehow reminds me of Thoreau's poem:

What is a railroad to me?
Something to set the blackberries a'growing.

There was more to it than that, but that is all I can remember.

A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I would guess that Whitman was a precursor to the nature enthusiasts such as John Muir and just about everybody these days.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

the interzone

the weather is odd, a little rainy, and it seems like late fall, or it did earlier this morning. This afternoon it got hot, but in kind of a humid and overcast kind of way. I really did like seeing a bit of rain after all of the hot weather. The weather is always and amazing thing. The rains fall on the earth, and the sun scorches, the winds run to the north and west and east and south....in the morning, the fog comes in and the dews gradually melts off, and the idea that nature is there is not changing, a constant reality, and a constant reminder that the world is much larger than our problems.
That reminds me of some quote from Thoreau's journals, the book of which I do not have with me.....something about sitting out in the sun all day, being drenched with the placid day.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,



Ye have left your souls on Earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond'rous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian Lawns
Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large bluebells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless tranced thing,
But divine meoldious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new!
-Keats

John Keats died young, at age 25. He never was recognized for his poetry in his lifetime.

We make our meek adjustments, contented with such random consolations as the wind deposits in slightened and too ample pockets.

For we cans till love the world, who find a famished kitten on the step, and know recesses for it from the fury of the street, or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk, dally the doom of that inevitable thumb, that slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, facing the dull squint with what innocence, and what surpise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies more than the pirouettes of any pliant cane; Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise. We can evade you, and all else but the heart: What blame to us if the heart live on.
-Hart Crane

Hart Crane was an American, also died young.