wondering at the languages I don't know

I wish I could read German. I have read many translations of Rilke. Some sound better than others, but they have many differences, leading me to wonder what the original actually contains.

Hail to the spirit, with power that connects;

for we live in figures. And with tiny steps

the hours go by, keeping pace

alongside our actual days.

In the absence of knowing our true location,

we deal with interrelation

the antennae feel the space

and the empty distances carry...

Pure tension. Oh music of forces at play!

From you, is not, through casual commerce,

every disturbance deflected away?

Even the farmer who works and lives

where seeds transform themselves to summers

never does enough. The earth bestows. -Sonnets to Orpheus, Ranier Maria Rilke

coffee 'n' stuff

there was a coffee spoon
given to me
however
I drink my coffee black
newspapers around
here and there
perhaps even the metro section

Johannes Agricola in Meditation- by Robert Browning

There's heaven above, and night by night

I look right through its gorgeous roof:

No suns and moons though e'er so bright

Avail to stop me; splendor-proof

I keep the broods of stars aloof:

Fir I intend to get to God.

For 't is to God I speed so fast

For in God's breast, my own abode,

Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,

I lay my spirit down at last.

I lie where I have always lain,

God smiles as he has always smiled:

Ere stars were thudergirt, or piled

The heavens, God thought on me his child

Ordained a life for me, arrayed

Its circumstances, every one

etc.

Blood River

The Congo is an amazing place, completely chaotic, completely removed from the modern world. Due to the constant fighting, no white man has gone through the Congo from Lake Tanganyika to the coast in decades. Stanley was the first to do it, in the nineteenth century. It is just too dangerous to go overland in large parts of the country. There is no law, and roving bands of soldiers or rebels or just criminals may kill you at any time. There is no law, no government, nothing at all. Numerous villages are so isolated that they have no clue of the outside world. It is pretty much the only country in the world that has gone steeply downhill since the 60's, to the point where they are surviving, if they are, using the same techniques they have always used. It is too chaotic for farming, so they live on a certain kind of root that provides some amount of inadequate nutrition.

The country has riches, in the form of mineral wealth, but the mines are controlled by small groups who enrich no one but themselves. The only role the government serves is to take bribes from the people that are making money. There is no kind of support for the people in the form of the rule of law, or any kind of medicine. It is kind of a hell, and the rain forest mostly remains as it always has been. Any organized economic activity, such as coffee farming or palm oil farming simply can't get done in the atmosphere of chaos and violence.

Mobutu had a lot to do with Congo's problems. He robbed the country blind for thirty years while the United States supported him. This country could have done something-but we didn't. Nobody has cared about the Congo in the least other than to get the mineral wealth in their hands. That's true of this country historically and true of China now.

There's lots of blame to go around. The Belgians should take a lot of it too. And the slave traders before them.

I'm reading a book about a brave guy who decided to go across the Congo on foot in 2004. It's quite interesting: Blood River.

Fwd: testing

brautigan imbroglio

in watermelon sugar the deeds were done
or in three piece suits
on the phone
making deals
crashing the economy
bailing out before hand
with big
going-away presents

the night they drove old dixie down

Written by the Band, done by Jerry Garcia...

new recording

beanery blog

Some guy, Michael Galinas, I believe, is playing some good songs tonight down here at second street, with a bit of a sparse crowd, which is kind of normal for Saturday nights. He's got kind of a nonremarkable voice, but plenty of guitar talent, and a nice loud sounding steel string guitar, but mainly some good and interesting songs in his repertoire.

g manley hopkins

But what more can be said?  Perhaps a poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swing finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves-goes itself;myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-

Christ-for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Spring and Fall:

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove, unleaving?

Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost, guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

writing and music

The dude in the bean plays on, sharing all of his most strange guitar chords and feelings with the audience, and the clouds spin on, and people sit and talk and think, and hardly speak in the least, but the world is what it is,...

The dudes go into a lenghy and spirited session of soloing, and I feel that the just tapping of the keys on the pad are enough to keep me rescucitated to some degree.  The fact that I don't understand everything can surely be resolved by the gradual application of the general principle that to do the right thing in every circumstance is the right thing to do. 

In the long and short of it.....what more is there left to say, but more of the writing and the thinking, inscribed and set down in some way....and hopefully negotiated to a better conclusion.

If I had a gun, for every ace I've drawn,

I could arm a town the size of Abilene

Don't you push me baby, because I'm holdin' low

And you know I'm only in it for the gold.

All that I am asking for is ten gold dollars

And I could pay you back with one good hand

You can look around about the wide world over

And you'll never find anoher honest man.

Last fair deal in the country, Sweet Suzie,

Last fair deal in the town

Put your gold money where your love is baby,

Before you let my deal go down.

----now they are playing "Cold Rain and Snow"----what a great song..."I married me a wife, she's been trouble all my life.  Pushed me....out in the cold rain and snow.".....

Don't you push me baby, cause I'm holdin' low

And I know a littel something you won't every know

Don't you touch hard liquor, just a cup of cold coffee

Gotta get up in the morning and go

Everybody's praying and drinking that wine

I can dell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines

Come to daddy on the inside straight,

.....

These guys are rocking out with the "Cold Wind and Snow"...going to be the next major jam band of the modern era.  

Another decent song ....

Hello cowgirl in the sand

Is this place at your command

Can I stay here for a while

Can I see your sweet sweet smile

Old enough now to change your name

When so many love you is it the same?

Its the woman in you that makes you want to play this game.

Hello Ruby in the dust

Has you band begun to rust

After all the sin we've had

I was hoping that we turn back

Old enough now to change your name

When so many love you is it the same....

Hello woman of my dreams...

I guess the good thing about that song is the lyrics...

Stuck in the Bauhaus again, in the middle of a sea of silent laptops, aside from the noise of the young people talking in the background.

Sep 10, 2008

In other news, apparently the beavs played today.  Some people are out partying somewhere, more or less partying depending on how the game went, but plenty in either case.

 Reading a great story by Geoge Eliot, a true genius of a writer, and it occurs to me that despite the disappearance of books, a writer of that calibre will aways be recognized as such.

The fact is that it is a Saturday night, with nothing to do, no money to impress much of anyone, but that don't appear to make much of a difference to anyone.  In the long run, there is a depth to life in the great writers, and a depth to the words of all people, and if one can look into that and see the true nature of life and things, then any sort of acceptance is workable, or any sort of existence is fine for things and ideas and the nature of words.  In the end, we need to have our lives measure up to the ideas of them, but then again, our ideas of necessary achievement may be quite different from day to day.

from song of the rolling earth

weapon shapely, naked, wan,

head from the mother's bowels drawn

wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,

gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed

sown,

resting the grass amid upon,

to be leaned and to lean on.

--actually, from Song of the Broad-Axe

open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For great Apollo bids
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung;
And when again your dewiness he kisses,
Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses:
So haply when I rove in some far vale,
His mightly voice may come upon a gale.
-keats

starting from paumanok

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands-love of populous pavements;
Dweller in Manhatta, my city-or on southern savannas;
Or a soldier camp'd, or carrying my knapsack and gun-or a miner in California;
Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring;
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the clank of crows, .....


Shut not your doors....

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all of your well filled shelves, yet
needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

--both of these are from Walt Whitman, of course. I would try to pretend like I wrote them myself. Somehow they seem full of life, and full of untold latencies, you might say.

weather report

the weather is kind of sunny, which is nice, and I am happy with my new beautiful laptop, featuring windows vista.  I don't know what the deal with this system is.  For all the bad I have heard about it, it seems to work just fine, easily understandable for a longtime xp user.  I'm no idiot with computers, but for all that I want to like Linux, when you sit down with it it is unbelievably frustrating.  It is not ready for us casual users, I would venture to say.

  The seem to be fairly quiet in this little cafe, as is usually the case on any afternoon, even during the school year.  

  As for me, I remain undirected, but is that so bad a thing?  I guess there could be worse.  Aside from karate, I have no real direction.

  Perhaps this Whitman poem partially applies to me:

Beginning my studies

Beginning my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,

The mere fact, consciousness-these forms-the power of motion,

The least insect or animal-the senses-eyesight-love;

The first step, I say, awed me and pleased me so much,

I have hardly gone, and hardly wished to go, and farther,

But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in ecstatic songs.

  

Praising, that's it! One ordained to praise,

he sprang like ore from the silence of stone.

His heart, oh, perishable winepress

of an infinite wine, for man alone.

His voice no dust can choke or dim

when divine instance seizes him.

All turns vineyard, clusters of grapes,

in his susceptible south grown ripe.

Nor mold in the kings' sepulchers

gives the lie to his laudings, nor

that from the gods a shadow falls.

Of the abiding messengers,

he reaches far into death's door

glorious fruit in golden bowls

-from Sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke

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:

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.

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.

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.

gettin' up every morning and riding to philo

It's getting a little bit easier. There's not a lot of traffic at six a.m. The ride up Harrison is really the worst part. There is a stretch of that street that is narrow and has no bike line. Not only that, but there are dangerous grates every twenty feet or so, so I have to ride in the middle of the street. Plus it is uphill and kind of bumpy, as the pavement has a lot of holes in it. From there, riding out to 53rd is kind of bleak. The bald hill path is pretty nice, and sometimes I even appreciate it at that early hour. Many times I have surprised little bunny rabbits that run into the blackberries. The fields look nice. Then when I get onto Reservoir road, there are a couple of bothersome hills. A dead deer has been lying on the road for about three weeks now. Passing that, there is some downhill and some railroad tracks, and then the turn onto the main street, and a little uphill, downhill, and uphill and I am done, and at the little market to buy my coffee. The loggers think I am some Corvallis biker on a ride. Little do they know that I work in town. Or maybe they have figured it out. The coffee is bad, but I'm not going to stop at Java Connection with sweat pouring off of me.
Anyway, the ride takes 30 minutes one way. One hour both ways. So that is a lot of exercise. Plus working all day and trying to practice karate.

Karadzic captured

Yay. Karadzic was taken into custody. That means the Serbs are being more reasonable, and that Karadzic, who was a killer of thousands and a war criminal, will be tried like he should be.

Allergy cure.

I usually suffer from pretty bad grass seed allergies every year, but this year I use a neti pot every day and have had no problems. Without taking any drugs. Snorting salt water up your nose takes some getting used to, but it works. Also works for sinus infections.

"The Getaway", with Steve McQueen is a great movie. Those 70's movies remind me of my childhood, because I remember those cars from when I was a kid.

Work has been taking all my energy, partly because I decided to commute to work by bicycle, so that's riding from here to Philomath every day. I have to get up at five in the morning.

musician at beanery

walkin' around

This is a good time of year for walking around town. The flowers are out and everything is quite green from all the rain. I would recommend this walk in particular: start from Franklin park, walk down Taylor to 12th, and then left on 12th to Jackson, and then walk toward the river and to wherever you might be going. The people residing on Taylor street and 12th street seem to take a lot of care in their gardens. They are nice streets no matter what the season, but particularly at this time of year.

That's me, a modern day Thoreau, except walking through town and not the fields of Concord.

It is not by his high superflousness we know?
To be equal a need
is natural...but to fling
rainbows and pretzel sticks
here and there

books

Hopkins was a talented poet. The other book I was thinking was by Phillip Roth, but I see now it is written by somebody named Henry Roth.

vise that someone made