₩ a n d e r :: ℒust

Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.
- Isabelle Eberardt

: Est assez l'amour ? :

Ah me! why may not love and life be one? -Henry Timrod

El Jardin

Well, yes I was aware the Academy Awards were well over but I was rooting (tee!) for this documentary myself.

The Full Glass Now Empty

1932-2009

Not much more to say than reiterating what a deep loss Mr Updike's passing is to those of us who cherished his work and worth. His last New Yorker essay, The Full Glass is a poignant vestige.

New Year...

ANOTHER full-orbed year hath waned to-day,

And set in the irrevocable past,

And headlong whirled long

Time's winged blast

My fluttering rose of youth is borne away: Ah rose once crimson with the blood of May,

A honeyed haunt where bees would break their fast,

I watch thy scattering petals flee aghast,

And all the flickering rose-lights turning grey.

______________________

Poor fool of life! plagued ever with thy vain Regrets and futile longings! were the years Not cups o'erbrimming still with gall and tears?

Let go thy puny personal joy and pain!

If youth with all its brief hope disappears,

To deathless hope we must be born again.


-Mathilde Blind

: Ringraziamento Felice :

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow...
- John Greenleaf Whittier

: Mordego :

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing? If not, you will never really change.

-D.H. Lawrence

Shine On...

Sad day as another creative soul has been lost.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert... Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wild One

The Eat Local Challenge has started in our state this past Friday and runs until Sunday. It's a ripe time within the season to put you money where your mouth and taste buds should be- straight to the source vs mega-agri-biz farms that have monopolized and literally ruined not only the soil and land, but generations of farmers that have tilled the Earth and provided for countess mouths and minds.

Raj Patel's book Stuffed and Starved and continued efforts are blazing nicely ahead and there is a nice tidbit over at Grist Mill worth the read.

Bonne Appetite!

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.

-Juvenal

: nostalgique :

Ahh... the past couple of weeks watching both the DNC & RNC have jolted me to such inspirational highs, and this week, to such demoralizing lows- bleh!

Truly this has been the biggest comedic performance (ultimately damaging and tragic if to come to pass by mindless voter-monkeys!) I have seen drawn out to such oafish lengths, then blasted upon every media outlet for "analysis" and discussion that bears a resemblance of a dog chasing its tail. Nothing but the Charlie Brown voices in the background I hear rambling idiotic God-fearing invocations from relatively dare I say, young individuals. What gives with all of this rubbish? Where we're heading I fear more.

Suddenly I'm reminiscing my teenage angst-ModPunk-imbued days, guess we're all regressing a little these days.

'That's Entertainment'! La-la-Laaaa...

Deep in the Woods...

... for the annual gathering-performance. There has been some "modernizing" of the cast look which could really blow. I guess it's just so damn difficult to have both the language of Shakespeare and appearance jostling those give-it-to-me-easy-fast-and-mindless masses, c'est ca.

" I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

Act ii. Scene. 1

When Literature was Savored Slowly- like a Good Meal

There seems to be a renewed interest in "lit-crit" lately which I find encouraging and necessary both to counterbalance the plethora of crud saturating every nook and cranny of online book sales, cult-like Oprah book clubs, self-publishers, mega-chain book stores and frankly overly-inflated, sometimes downright pompous writer-wannabes; or as Seaton writes in his review of Praising It New in the WSJ the "many writers with literary pretensions who are now hyped beyond their merits or neglected in spite of them".

True, the fact that you can find a bombardment of books, clubs, etc. does highlight something positive about a possible increased readership and interest in actual reading, and maybe even more hopeful, a true engagement with the author's work-- but I'm still skeptical. Even I find myself at times drawn to some of the more banal, cliched tripe that is more like fast-food drive-thru gut/mind rot and literally everywhere vs the "source of wisdom and delight" that in the past seemed more the norm, or at least what a writer was striving for, even when dealing with topics/characters of grave intensity and depth.

I feel there is a need for a more penetrating exploration of the written word. A slowing down to actually take in and digest what the writer has skillfully crafted and prepared for the offering. Do you sit graciously at the table and use napkin, fork, spoon and knife? Or do you just devour without a breath in between, a utilitarian taste with no sense of texture, scrambling to just inhale without any discrimination or even some bit of critique and complementary discussion?

Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism is a good reference and counterbalance to read and read again I find, even now. Harold Bloom's foreworded thoughts end quite poignantly:

"If I live long enough, I fully expect individual computers themselves to declare their possession of personality and genius, and to bombard me with the epics and romances of artificial intelligence. In all this proliferation, I hardly will to Frye for comfort and assistance. But, where shall I turn? ... Frye's criticism will survive because it is serious, spiritual, and comprehensive, but not because it is systematic or a manifestation of genius. If Anatomy of Criticism begins to seem a period piece, so does The Sacred Wood of T.S. Eliot. Literary criticism, to survive, must abandon the universities, where "cultural criticism" is a triumphant beast not to be expelled."

Oh... and like with any good meal, don't forget to have an excellent wine in tow!

Moonlit Cove - Albert Pinkham Ryder

Sorrows of the Moon

Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,

And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest:

While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress

Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;

As on a crest above her silken avalanche,

Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,

And sees a pallid vision everywhere she'd glance,

In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.

When sometime, in her weariness, upon her sphere

She might permit herself to sheda furtive tear,

A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,

Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,

An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;

Within his heart, far from the sun, it's buried deep.

-Charles Baudelaire