THE WIND IN ROME

Unutterable tension

2019-12-11T16:36:00.000+09:00

He made his way round to the front of the house with the intention of taking to the road again, and was skirting the main lawn when something attracted his attention. A small brown bird was flying backwards across the lawn, about five feet from the ground; but it was not this which seemed so strange. It was the fact that the bird was flying far more slowly than any natural bird ever does.

Previously, all movements about him, although in reverse, had been in- variably at normal speeds. But this bird was like something in a slow-motion film; it was simply drifting backwards, and he could count each wing-beat. He watched it with interest, and when it was almost in the centre of the lawn his eyes widened in surprise. For it had stopped in mid-air!

In a moment he was across to it. There, five feet above the ground, the small brown bird hung as if suspended by invisible wires, frozen into an exquisitely carved, tiny statue. He passed his hand all around it, below and above, and finally took hold of it. It was brittle hard and utterly immovable, exactly as all other objects were in this alien Time Stream.

He suddenly realised, with a faint thrill of fear, that the whole world seemed to have become noticeably silent. A vast quiet was all about him; not the faintest twitter of a bird, not a rustle of a branch, not a click or tap sounded anywhere. He stood stock-still as if afraid to stir lest some other nightmare was about to beset him.

As he slowly turned his head, he discovered that all motion, too, seemed to have ceased. A gardener who had been bent over a border was grotesquely crouched, one hand half-stretched out. The slight dip and sway of the branches in the breeze had stopped, a film of smoke from a chimney balanced in the air like a spray of blue glass. The whole Earth seemed to be holding its breath.

Then a second of unutterable tension tugged at his body and a shock of reeling nausea struck him. His body seemed to be riven into a million pieces, yet he could not stir or cry. There was a brief flash of all-enveloping darkness. Then the tension snapped like a released rubber band, and he was staggering slightly, wild-eyed.

The small brown bird was flashing off toward the bushes—flying for- wards! The gardener stood gazing at him with a ludicrous look of amazement on his face. Rostof realised, with a sudden wild thrill of hope, that the man could see him. He ran forward, babbling incoherently.

The next instant he was shaking the hand of the astounded Mr. Curle, laughing and weeping at the same time.

-- Charles F. Hall, The Man Who Lived Backwards (1938)

Raymond

2019-12-08T17:29:00.000+09:00

Big Lannie did not know it, when Arlene was going to have a baby. Arlene had not been home in nearly half a year; Big Lannie told the time in days. There was no news at all of the girl until the people at the hospital sent for Big Lannie to come to her daughter and grandson. She was there to hear Arlene say the baby must be named Raymond, and to see the girl die. For whom Raymond was called, or if for anyone, Big Lannie never knew.

He was a long, light-colored baby, with big, milky eyes that looked right back at his grandmother. It was several days before the people at the hospital told her he was blind.

Big Lannie went to each of the ladies who employed her and explained that she could not work for some while; she must take care of her grandson. The ladies were sharply discommoded, after her steady years, but they dressed their outrage in shrugs and cool tones. Each arrived, separately, at the conclusion that she had been too good to Big Lannie, and had been imposed upon, therefore. "Honestly, those n.i.g.g.e.rs!" each said to her friends. "They're all alike."

-- Dorothy Parker, Clothe the Naked (1938)

Suffer not the fashonable Fools

2019-11-12T05:50:00.000+09:00

Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, & the University: who would if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call! Sculptors! Architects! Suffer not the fashonable Fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of Men whose whole delight is in Destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just & true to our own imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live forever; in Jesus our Lord.

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land

-- William Blake, Preface to Milton (1810)

The promise of the Return

2019-10-30T23:42:00.000+09:00

We must never speak to simple, excitable people about "the Day" without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. We must try to show them that that impossibility is an essential part of the doctrine. If you do not believe our Lord's words, why do you believe in his return at all? And if you do believe them must you not put away from you, utterly and forever, any hope of dating that return? His teaching on the subject quite clearly consisted of three propositions, (1) That he will certainly return. (2) That we cannot possibly find out when. (3) And that therefore we must always be ready for him.

Note the therefore. Precisely because we cannot predict the moment, we must be ready at all moments. Our Lord repeated this practical conclusion again and again; as if the promise of the Return had been made for the sake of this conclusion alone. Watch, watch, is the burden of his advice. I shall come like a thief. You will not, I most solemnly assure you you will not, see me approaching. If the householder had known at what time the burglar would arrive, he would have been ready for him. If the servant had known when his absent employer would come home, he would not have been found drunk in the kitchen. But they didn't. Nor will you. Therefore you must be ready at all times. The point is surely simple enough. The schoolboy does not know which part of his Virgil lesson he will be made to translate: that is why he must be prepared to translate any passage. The sentry does not know at what time an enemy will attack, or an officer inspect, his post: that is why he must keep awake all the time. The Return is wholly unpredictable. There will be wars and rumours of wars and all kinds of catastrophes, as there always are. Things will be, in that sense, normal, the hour before the heavens roll up like a scroll. You cannot guess it. If you could, one chief purpose for which it was foretold would be frustrated. And God's purposes are not so easily frustrated as that.

-- C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night (1960)

First snow

2019-10-24T01:20:00.000+09:00

One morning, when I got upon deck, I saw it covered all over with the snow that fell over-night: as I had never seen any thing of the kind before, I thought it was salt; so I immediately ran down to the mate and desired him, as well as I could, to come and see how somebody in the night had thrown salt all over the deck. He, knowing what it was, desired me to bring some of it down to him: accordingly I took up a handful of it, which I found very cold indeed; and when I brought it to him he desired me to taste it. I did so, and I was surprised beyond measure. I then asked him what it was; he told me it was snow: but I could not in anywise understand him. He asked me if we had no such thing in my country; and I told him, No. I then asked him the use of it, and who made it; he told me a great man in the heavens, called God: but here again I was to all intents and purposes at a loss to understand him; and the more so, when a little after I saw the air filled with it, in a heavy shower, which fell down on the same day.

-- Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (1789)

Unless You Go With Us

2019-09-21T01:21:00.001+09:00

Moses said to the Lord, “See, thou sayest to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, “I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.” Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found favor in thy sight, show me now thy ways, that I may know thee and find favor in thy sight. Consider too that this nation is thy people.”

And the Lord said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

And Moses said to the Lord, “If thy presence will not go with me, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in thy sight, I and thy people? Is it not in thy going with us, so that we are distinct, I and thy people, from all other people that are upon the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

-- Exodus 33:12-17

Anxious vertigo

2019-09-21T00:30:00.001+09:00

Objectively speaking, despair is not the most serious sin. But it is the most dangerous of all.10 It threatens man’s moral existence, for man’s self-realization is linked to hope. “It is not so much sin as despair that casts us into hell”, says Saint John Chrysostom in his commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew.[11]

Since Peter Lombard composed his Sentences, the Church’s theology has counted despair among the sins against the Holy Spirit. Despair moves thus into the vicinity of that dark mystery expressed by the Lord: “Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this world or in the world to come” (Mt 12:32). I say deliberately no more than that despair moves “into the vicinity” of this mystery. For Saint Thomas refers this word of the Lord solely to a persistent, blasphemous resistance to grace, whereas he says of despair only that it is difficult for it to find forgiveness.[12] It is difficult for this reason: that despair, in that it “closes the door” (here again the picturesque Frankish idiom of Saint Paschasius Radbertus),[13] is by its very nature a denial of the way that leads to the forgiveness of sin.

“In both good and bad, one proceeds, as a rule, from what is imperfect to what is perfect.”[14] A sin as “perfect” as despair is normally not the first sin to be committed, nor does it “just happen”. Rather, the beginning and the root of despair is acedia, sloth.

There is hardly another concept that has become so demonstrably “at home” in the consciousness of the average Christian as that of acedia. (This fact is due in part to the usual translation of the word as Trägheit: “sloth”,[15] which, while it coincides to some extent with the most immediate meaning of the Greek word akedeia, reflects only imperfectly and incompletely its true conceptual meaning.)

In popular thought the “capital sin” of sloth revolves around the proverb “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” According to this concept, sloth is the opposite of diligence and industry; it is almost regarded as a synonym for laziness and idleness. Consequently, acedia has become, to all practical purposes, a concept of the middle-class work ethic. The fact that it is numbered among the seven “capital sins” seems, as it were, to confer the sanction and approval of religion on the absence of leisure in the capitalistic industrial order.

But this is not just to render superficial and shallow the original concept of acedia as it exists in moral theology; it is to transform it completely.

According to the classical theology of the Church, acedia is a kind of sadness (“species tristitiae”)[16]—more specifically, a sadness in view of the divine good in man. This sadness because of the God-given ennobling of human nature causes inactivity, depression, discouragement (thus the element of actual “sloth” is secondary).

The opposite of acedia is not industry and diligence but magnanimity and that joy which is a fruit of the supernatural love of God. Not only can acedia and ordinary diligence exist very well together; it is even true that the senselessly exaggerated workaholism of our age is directly traceable to acedia, which is a basic characteristic of the spiritual countenance of precisely this age in which we live. (The meaningless expression “Work and don’t lose hope” offers some elucidation of this relationship.) The indolence expressed by the term acedia is so little the opposite of “work” in the ordinary meaning of the term that Saint Thomas says rather that acedia is a sin against the third of the Ten Commandments, by which man is enjoined to “rest his spirit in God”.[17] Genuine rest and leisure (Muße) are possible only under the precondition that man accepts his own true meaning.

In the classical theology of the Church, acedia is understood to mean “tristitia saeculi”,[18] that “sorrow according to the world” of which Paul says, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (7:10), that it “produces death”.

This sorrow is a lack of magnanimity; it lacks courage for the great things that are proper to the nature of the Christian. It is a kind of anxious vertigo that befalls the human individual when he becomes aware of the height to which God has raised him. One who is trapped in acedia has neither the courage nor the will to be as great as he really is. He would prefer to be less great in order thus to avoid the obligation of greatness. Acedia is a perverted humility; it will not accept supernatural goods because they are, by their very nature, linked to a claim on him who receives them. Something similar exists in the sphere of mental health and illness. The psychiatrist frequently observes that, while a neurotic individual may have a superficial will to be restored to health, in actuality he fears more than anything else the demands that are made, as a matter of course, on one who is well.

The more acedia advances from the region of emotion into that of intellectual decision, the more it becomes a deliberate turning away from, an actual fleeing from God. Man flees from God because God has exalted human nature to a higher, a divine, state of being and has thereby enjoined on man a higher standard of obligation. Acedia is, in the last analysis, a “detestatio boni divini”,[19] with the monstrous result that, upon reflection, man expressly wishes that God had not ennobled him but had “left him in peace”.[20]

-- Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love [Lieben, Hoffen, Glauben] (1977)

아름다운 나라

2019-08-29T01:19:00.003+09:00

저 산자락에 긴 노을지면 걸을 걸음도 살며시 달님이 오시네
밤 달빛에도 참 어여뻐라 골목 골목 선 담장은 달빛을 반기네

겨울 눈꽃이 오롯이 앉으면 그 포근한 흰빛이 센 바람도 재우니

참 아름다운 많은 꿈이 있는 이 땅에 태어나서 행복한 내가 아니냐
큰 바다 있고 푸른 하늘 가진 이 땅위에 사는 나는 행복한 사람 아니냐

강 물빛소리 산 낙엽소리 천지 사방이 고우니 즐겁지 않은가
바람 꽃 소리 들풀 젖는 소리 아픈 청춘도 고우니 맘 즐겁지 않은가

참 아름다운 많은 꿈이 있는 이 땅에 태어나서 행복한 내가 아니냐
큰 바다 있고 푸른 하늘 가진 이 땅위에 사는 나는 행복한 사람 아니냐

큰 추위로 견뎌낸 나무의 뿌리가 봄 그리운 맘으로 푸르다
푸르게 더 푸르게 수 만잎을 피워내 한 줄기로 하늘까지 뻗어라

참 아름다운 많은 꿈이 있는 이 땅에 태어나서 행복한 내가 아니냐
큰 바다있고 푸른 하늘 가진 이 땅위에 사는 나는 행복한 사람 아니냐

아름다운 나라

-- Moony (신문희), 아름다운 나라 (2008)

Under the Ivy

2019-08-27T02:08:00.000+09:00

It wouldn't take me long to tell you how to find it
To tell you where we'll meet
This little girl inside me
Is retreating to her favourite place

Go into the garden, go under the ivy
Under the leaves, away from the party
Go right to the rose, go right to the white rose
(For me)

I sit here in the thunder, the green on the grey
I feel it all around me
And it's not easy for me to give away a secret
It's not safe

But go into the garden, go under the ivy
Under the leaves, away from the party
Go right to the rose, go right to the white rose
(For me)

Go into the garden, go under the ivy
Go under the leaves for me
Go right to the rose, go right to the white rose
I'll be waiting for you

It wouldn't take me long to tell you how to find it

-- Kate Bush, Under the Ivy (1985)

I read an interview where the interviewer asked you if "Running Up That Hill" is about the contemplation of suicide. And I thought that was pretty amusing, because it seemed to me clearly not to about any such thing at all. On the other hand, strangely enough, that's just what "Under The Ivy" [the B-side to Kate's "Running Up That Hill" single] seems to be about to me. The tone of the song is very, very sad. And it seems to be about longing for the lost innocence of youth -- perhaps a follow-up to "In Search Of Peter Pan" [from Kate's second album "Lionheart"]. A white rose is a strong image in the song. And it could be a symbol for friendship or innocence, but it could also be a symbol for death. You sing "Away from the party", and it seems like you might almost mean "away from the problems and triviality of modern day life". You sing "It wouldn't take me long to tell you how to find it", and it seems like you might almost be addressing Death itself. You mention a secret, but never mention what it is. Could it be the taboo subject of suicide?

What are your feelings about this interpretation, and what were you intentions with the song?

KATE: Well, I think...uh, it... perhaps you are reading much more into it than was originally intended when I wrote it. It's very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it's secret, and it's something they used to do and that they won't be able to do again. It's about a nostalgic, revisited moment.

DOUG: Is there any reason why it's so sad?

KATE: I think it's sad because it's about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it's something that they're having to sneak away to do privately now as adults.

-- Interview with Doug Alan, 20 November 1985
Gaffaweb - Kate Bush - DREAMING - D. Love-Hounds History - LH History - Doug's Interview

A marvellous coldness

2019-08-17T07:16:00.000+09:00

“When I was in my third season, a young and a bold bird, I went down to the river where the big boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice as big as this village.”

“He has been as far as Delhi, and says all the people there walk on their heads,” muttered the Jackal. The Mugger opened his left eye, and looked keenly at the Adjutant.

“It is true,” the big bird insisted. “A liar only lies when he hopes to be believed. No one who had not seen those boats COULD believe this truth.”

“THAT is more reasonable,” said the Mugger. “And then?”

“From the insides of this boat they were taking out great pieces of white stuff, which, in a little while, turned to water. Much split off, and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. But a boatman, who laughed, took a piece no larger than a small dog, and threw it to me. I— all my people — swallow without reflection, and that piece I swallowed as is our custom. Immediately I was afflicted with an excessive cold which, beginning in my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and deprived me even of speech, while the boatmen laughed at me. Never have I felt such cold. I danced in my grief and amazement till I could recover my breath and then I danced and cried out against the falseness of this world; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. The chief wonder of the matter, setting aside that marvellous coldness, was that there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my lamentings!”

The Adjutant had done his very best to describe his feelings after swallowing a seven-pound lump of Wenham Lake ice, off an American ice-ship, in the days before Calcutta made her ice by machinery; but as he did not know what ice was, and as the Mugger and the Jackal knew rather less, the tale missed fire.

“Anything,” said the Mugger, shutting his left eye again —“ANYTHING is possible that comes out of a boat thrice the size of Mugger–Ghaut. My village is not a small one.”

There was a whistle overhead on the bridge, and the Delhi Mail slid across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully following along the river. It clanked away into the dark again; but the Mugger and the Jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads.

-- Rudyard Kipling, from 'The Undertakers,' The Second Jungle Book (1895)

Music for a marsh

2019-08-12T04:15:00.000+09:00

I like looking at this painting.

Martin Johnson Heade (1876-1882), Marsh Sunset, Newburyport, Massachusetts

I like looking at it and listening to this. It feels like I'm looking at it in the morning.

Johannes Friedemann, Una Mattina

Then I look at it while listening to this and it feels like I'm looking at the sunset.

Ludovico Einaudi, Nuvole Bianche

Claudia's dream

2019-08-12T03:44:00.000+09:00

When he was sat on the judgment seat, his wife had a message sent to him, saying, "Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered many things in a dream today because of him."

-- Matthew 27:19

Pontius Pilate, my husband, ruler of this Hebrew land,
I had a vision while I was sleeping. A man was wearing colors of a King.
You were questioning him; you said "Tell me what is true!" He looked at you
And spoke the sound of silence.

You said "You'd better talk to me! I have the power to set you free!"
The man said "Power comes from up above." His eyes were shining with the fire of love.
Though you tied his hands, it was plain for me to see, which man was free:
The man who stood in silence.

You were trapped inside a cage, by the crowd's unholy rage.
I was watching closely all the while; can't you see, my dear, it's you on trial?
And the verdict that will be your legacy is killing me.
Please listen to his silence.

Then you tried to take command; you told the crowd "Behold the man!"
I could see his cloak was painted red from the thorns you pressed upon his head.
You demanded, "Why does this man have to die? Why crucify?"
A king all crowned in silence.

You said "His guilt's on you today," and then you tried to look away.
It was a look I didn't recognize; all the life had vanished from your eyes.
And you sat down all alone upon your chair. I cannot bear
To see you now in silence.

-- James Louviere, Pontius Pilate's Wife's Dream (1999)

Not far off

2019-07-29T11:44:00.002+09:00

11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

-- Deuteronomy 30

11 오늘 내가 당신들에게 내리는 이 명령은, 당신들이 실천하기 어려운 것도 아니고, 당신들의 능력이 미치지 못하는 것도 아닙니다. 12 이 명령은 하늘 위에 있는 것이 아니므로, 당신들은 '누가 하늘에 올라가서 그 명령을 받아다가, 우리가 그것을 듣고 지키도록 말하여 주랴?' 할 것도 아닙니다. 13 또한 이 명령은 바다 건너에 있는 것도 아니니 '누가 바다를 건너가서 명령을 받아다가, 우리가 그것을 듣고 지키도록 말하여 주랴?' 할 것도 아닙니다. 14 그 명령은 당신들에게 아주 가까운 곳에 있습니다. 당신들의 입에 있고 당신들의 마음에 있으니, 당신들이 그것을 실천할 수 있습니다.

-- 신명기 30장

On a west sea sunset

2019-07-21T17:41:00.000+09:00

바다 바람이 우리에게 분다
갈매기들이 우리를 부르다
나무들이 우리에게 속삭인다
서해 노을

The ocean winds blow to us
The seagulls cry to us
The trees whisper us secrets
On a west sea sunset

Certainties

2019-07-16T19:05:00.001+09:00

That man is a wonder. Well, he can read the prairie like a book. To see him cut for sign, well, you’d think the good Lord dealt us each our five senses and bottom dealt Mr. Arthur one extra. Still, he is old. I don’t know how it’ll go for him, but I can’t help feeling in the wrong.

- Your first responsibility is to your household.

Yes, but…

- I’m sorry. I should not dismiss it with an easy apothegm.

Yes.

- Gilbert had a saying for any situation. A ready bit of wisdom. He was very certain.

He was a doughface?

- How did——oh, yes. He was an admirer of President Pierce, yes, very much so. He had fixed political beliefs. All of his beliefs were quite fixed, even those that... fortune did not tend to endorse. He would upbraid me for being “wishy-washy.” I never had his certainties. I suppose it’s a defect.

Oh, I don’t think it is a defect at all. Oh no. Uncertainty——that is appropriate for the matters of this world. Only regarding the next are we vouchsafed certainty.

- Yes.

I believe certainty regarding that which we see and touch——it is seldom justified, if ever. Down the ages, from our remote past, what certainties survive? And yet we hurry to fashion new ones. Wanting their comfort. (shakes his head) “Certainty”——it is the easy path, just as you said.

- Strait is the gate...

... and narrow the way. Indeed. Indeed.

-- from "The Gal Who Got Rattled," The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Ghostly rationality

2019-07-11T02:24:00.000+09:00

Poor ghosts, poor ghosts! how many flights they must have attempted for two hundred years from their hated sins, how many excuses they must have given for their presence, and the sins were with them still—and still unexplained. Suddenly one of them seemed to scent my living blood, and bayed horribly, and all the others left their ghosts at once and dashed up to the sin that had given tongue. The brute had picked up my scent near the door by which I had entered, and they moved slowly nearer to me sniffing along the floor, and uttering every now and then their fearful cry. I saw that the whole thing had gone too far. But now they had seen me, now they were all about me, they sprang up trying to reach my throat; and whenever their claws touched me, horrible thoughts came into my mind and unutterable desires dominated my heart. I planned bestial things as these creatures leaped around me, and planned them with a masterly cunning. A great red-eyed murder was among the foremost of those furry things from whom I feebly strove to defend my throat. Suddenly it seemed to me good that I should kill my brother. It seemed important to me that I should not risk being punished. I knew where a revolver was kept; after I had shot him, I would dress the body up and put flour on the face like a man that had been acting as a ghost. It would be very simple. I would say that he had frightened me—and the servants had heard us talking about ghosts. There were one or two trivialities that would have to be arranged, but nothing escaped my mind. Yes, it seemed to me very good that I should kill my brother as I looked into the red depths of this creature's eyes. But one last effort as they dragged me down—"If two straight lines cut one another," I said, "the opposite angles are equal. Let AB, CD, cut one another at E, then the angles CEA, CEB equal two right angles (prop. xiii.). Also CEA, AED equal two right angles."

I moved towards the door to get the revolver; a hideous exultation arose among the beasts. "But the angle CEA is common, therefore AED equals CEB. In the same way CEA equals DEB. Q.E.D." It was proved. Logic and reason re-established themselves in my mind, there were no dark hounds of sin, the tapestried chairs were empty. It seemed to me an inconceivable thought that a man should murder his brother.

-- Lord Dunsany, "The Ghosts," from The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories (1908)

The only soul to sense and seek

2019-06-10T17:20:00.000+09:00

"I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquillity!

"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence—you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name of the Algol, the Demon-Star, It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Demon-Star.

"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away."

-- H.P. Lovecraft, Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)

Mama Johnson's dream

2019-06-05T11:25:00.000+09:00

Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am ushered into a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids are tacky flowers.

-- Alice Walker, "Everyday Use" (1973)

The excellent foppery of the world

2019-05-26T19:00:00.000+09:00

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

- Edmund, King Lear Act 1 Scene 2

Mannequin

2019-03-23T23:34:00.000+09:00

Mannequin (1987)

I'm so glad I found you
I'm not gonna lose you
Whatever it takes
I will stay here with you
Take you to the good times
See you through the bad times
Whatever it takes
Is what I'm gonna do

Let 'em say we're crazy
What do they know?
Put your arms around me
Baby, don't ever let go
Let the world around us
Just fall apart
Baby, we can make it
If we're heart-to-heart

The German Legion

2019-03-18T17:38:00.001+09:00

Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. A plough has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. Here stood the camp; here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed. At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and thistles, the old trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of the halters; to help seeing rows of spectral tents and the impedimenta of the soldiery. From within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the King’s German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that time.

...

So far from being as gay as its uniform, the regiment was pervaded by a dreadful melancholy, a chronic home-sickness, which depressed many of the men to such an extent that they could hardly attend to their drill. The worst sufferers were the younger soldiers who had not been over here long. They hated England and English life; they took no interest whatever in King George and his island kingdom, and they only wished to be out of it and never to see it any more. Their bodies were here, but their hearts and minds were always far away in their dear fatherland, of which — brave men and stoical as they were in many ways — they would speak with tears in their eyes.

-- Thomas Hardy, from "The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion," from Life's Little Ironies (1894)

Chronic remorse

2019-03-16T23:50:00.001+09:00

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one’s middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by the different person who was oneself in youth—all this is surely vain and futile.

-- Aldous Huxley (1894 -1963), Foreword to Brave New World

Main Street at Christmas

2019-02-21T03:38:00.001+09:00

I like Rockwell paintings because nobody seems to work. Even when they're working it's not work.

Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas (1967)
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)

Where does the West begin?

2019-02-18T13:53:00.000+09:00

Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
That’s where the West begins;
Out where the sun is a little brighter,
Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter—
That’s where the West begins.

Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where friendship’s a little truer,
That’s where the West begins;
Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
Where there’s laughter in every streamlet flowing,
Where there’s more of reaping and less of sowing—
That’s where the West begins.

Out where the world is in the making,
Where fewer hearts in despair are aching,
That’s where the West begins;
Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there’s more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying –
That’s where the West begins.

-- Arthur Chapman (1873-1935), Out Where the West Begins

Those foolish days

2019-02-09T03:24:00.000+09:00

To the boy of twenty it seems impossible that he will not love as wildly at sixty as he does then. He cannot call to mind any middle-aged or elderly gentleman of his acquaintance who is known to exhibit symptoms of frantic attachment, but that does not interfere in his belief in himself. His love will never fall, whoever else's may. Nobody ever loved as he loves, and so, of course, the rest of the world's experience can be no guide in his case. Alas! alas! ere thirty he has joined the ranks of the sneerers. It is not his fault. Our passions, both the good and bad, cease with our blushes. We do not hate, nor grieve, nor joy, nor despair in our thirties like we did in our teens. Disappointment does not suggest suicide, and we quaff success without intoxication.

We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances.

...

What noble deeds were we not ripe for in the days when we loved? What noble lives could we not have lived for her sake? Our love was a religion we could have died for. It was no mere human creature like ourselves that we adored. It was a queen that we paid homage to, a goddess that we worshiped.

And how madly we did worship! And how sweet it was to worship! Ah, lad, cherish love's young dream while it lasts! You will know too soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was nothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is a wild, romantic misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of after-sorrows. When you have lost her--when the light is gone out from your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror, even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair.

And who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, what raptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed--the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed--though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows! You hadn't pluck enough to go in, but you hung about the corner and gazed at the outside. Oh, if the house had only caught fire--it was insured, so it wouldn't have mattered--and you could have rushed in and saved her at the risk of your life, and have been terribly burned and injured! Anything to serve her. Even in little things that was so sweet. How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and felt more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How precious to you was everything that she had hallowed by her touch--her little glove, the ribbon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in her hair and whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to look at now.

...

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!

-- Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927), "On Being In Love" from Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow