A blast from the past. Excellent pre-Ukraine Putin propaganda. Mr. Putin goes to church.
And then… Mr. Putin sings the Russian national anthem. (A president who can actually remember the words and sings (as JFK would have said) with ‘vigah.
A blast from the past. Excellent pre-Ukraine Putin propaganda. Mr. Putin goes to church.
And then… Mr. Putin sings the Russian national anthem. (A president who can actually remember the words and sings (as JFK would have said) with ‘vigah.
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Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
My Back Pages
In Memory Of W.B. Yeats
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Your Say
My Thinking Hat
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
The Vault
My Back Pages
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Comments on this entry are closed.
Did I hear, “got myself a gun, got myself a gun” at the end of this video? I am over 50% hearing loss and have been thinking I heard words the speaker did not actually speak.
Maybe I can find the lyrics to this “song” if I do a search.
Not realistic. Not a single bikini babe to be seen anywhere on the grounds
excellent
Putin puttin’ on the dog.
Putin needs the cavalry unit of the Garde Republicaine for the full dramatic effect: The French have better uniforms and brassier music. From this year’s Bastille Day observance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPn1RDQZwKQ&ab_channel=QuentinBiscarrat
Putin has sleek quiet BMW’s for his escort. Trump has Harleys. He ought to order straight pipes for all his Hog Ridin’ Fools.
(extra points for the obscure allusion)
JWM
comment ozone’d again
JWM
Terry,
The music is the theme song to the Sopranos…..pretty sure, if that helps, and yes,
“Woke up this morning and got myself a gun.”
I have been posting comments for a few years here at AD under the above poster name (Kevin in PA).
What are the odds that another commenter, not me, (Kevin n in PA) would use a name so close to mine? Is this some sort of mix up? Or is this person commenting to appear to be me?
Very curious.
My dear jwm, I got your “obscure” S. Clay Wilson reference.
ZAP!
I don’t know Gerard, he didn’t serve anyone radioactive tea, and he didn’t ask for a list of people to kill today.
He’s gone soft. 😒
Trudat, nmack. The people Trump kills are anonymous, and die fighting for breath.
It is good to be king. I personally like what he like Trump does as well. Not necessarily that I like the men but everything they do shows they love their countries.
He acts like a boss. The song fits. Autocrats gotta autocrat.
Now, let’s do Trump. Let’s see if the song fits him as well.
When you got it, flaunt it
Step right up and strut your stuff….
Was Putin on the way to church? As the viewpoint pans around the church-filled plaza, is that an outdoor assembly in the background? Did anyone else see that?
You heard right. Here you go, Terry.
Woke Up This Morning
Alabama 3
Well, you woke up this morning
Got yourself a gun
Your mama always said you’d be the chosen one
She said, you’re one in a million, you’ve got to burn to shine
But you were born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eyes
And you woke up this morning
All that love had gone
Your papa never told you about right and wrong
But you’re looking good, baby
I believe you’re feeling fine (shame about it)
Born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eyes
Because you woke up this morning
Got a blue moon in your eyes
Woke up this morning
You got a blue moon in your eyes
Well, you woke up this morning
The world turned upside down
Lord above, thing’s ain’t been the same since Howlin’ Wolf walked into your town
But you’re one in a million, you’ve got that shotgun shine
Born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eyes
You woke up this morning
You got a blue moon in your eyes
Woke up this morning
You got a blue moon in your eyes
When you woke up this morning everything was gone
By half past ten your head was going ding-dong
Ringing like a bell from your head down to your toes,
Like a voice trying to tell you there’s something you should know
Last night you were flying but today you’re so low
Ain’t it times like these that make you wonder if you’ll ever know
The meaning of things as they appear to the others
Wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers
Don’t you wish you didn’t function, don’t you wish you didn’t think beyond the next paycheck
And the next little drink?
Well, you do, so make up your mind to go on ’cause when you woke up this morning
Everything you had was gone, everything you had was gone
Woke up this morning
Woke up this morning
Woke up this morning, you want to be, you want to be the chosen one tonight
Yes, you know, because you just get help yourself
Woke up this morning
Woke up this morning
Woke up this morning
You got yourself a gun, got yourself a gun, got yourself a gun
Putin’s more sophisticated nowadays, he’s mimicking Don Draper’s walk and mannerisms, including the chin-thumb touch.
https://youtu.be/YocBfe1N598 (fast forward to :50 seconds)
“Putin’ On The Ritz” is his real theme song.
Crimea river. Crimea river over you…
Oh, I forgot. Ain’t anymore Crimea.
Georgia. Georgia…the whooooole night through.
Oh yeh, half of Georgia’s toast.
Let’s see…looks for songs about Finland and the Baltics…any suggestions? I heard it through the grapevine…not much longer you won’t be mine, honey, honey yeahhhhh
Imagine Biden trying this without a porta potty.
Nah. It would be a match to a Leslie Nielsen movie sketch.
That is about the tightest shit I’ve seen in a month.