Fullscreen and it will bring a shine to your soul. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Fullscreen and it will bring a shine to your soul. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
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
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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
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How smart was that? Very cute until momma runs up and puts a front hoof through sweet pea’s forehead.
Cute, now check her for deer ticks. Lyme disease is epidemic. And it’s a nasty illness with lots of serious side effects.
Sorry, guys. I thought that was sweet as can be. Proof that all of nature is harmony until your mind grows to such a proportion that you perceive yourself separate and alone. Then the critters run away.
If only life was that sweet and easy.
Innocence meets innocence. It’s over much too quickly.
Ticks are every where in ruralville, don’t blame the animals. Ticks were here first.
Just yesterday I saw the smallest tick I had ever seen crawling on my leg. I didn’t even know what it was. Had to use a magnifying glass to see it’s legs. I picked it off, set it on the workbench, squirted it with some ether and put the torch to it. Yeah, it sizzled and popped. I hate parasites.
Loved how the dear was ready to bolt, trying to decide whether friend or foe.
I’m a dog lover and I have a pair of Golden Doodles. I bought my older boy from a breeder in Oklahoma and he is 13 now, showing a few signs of the inevitable and making me worry more about him than my own kids, sometimes. The other is a 2 year old that I’ve recently adopted after he had been shuffled about in foster homes and like most doods he’s a little hard headed and strong willed but in no danger of being fostered ever again.
Recently my older boy was wobbling, having trouble standing up and more trouble walking and I immediately thought that he had had a stroke or his heart was screwing around with him so I took him to my vet who, after examining him, removed a tick that was about the size of a fingernail of a small child.
That damned tick, even as tiny as it was, had caused these problems in my dog and after removing the thing the vet gave him a steroid and a preventative and within 24 hours my pup was headed back to recovery.
He’s fine now but I tell this story to impress upon everyone that it doesn’t take much of a tick bite to
incapacitate a pet or a human and everyone should be aware of and careful of the dangers they pose.
Young children, due to their innocence and not being exposed to the real world and all its pitfalls and dangers, are primarily the only ones able to get away with this in the wild kingdom world.
Animals have a unique sense of danger, due to the way they live, constantly surrounded by predators & danger of all kinds. The fawn did not recognise or sense danger so went about the order at hand, filling the stomach. Had Momma shown up she might have been wary but is doubtful would have reacted much differently, not sensing danger or predatory intentions.
I hunted in South Africa in 2002. Through the brush, I had so many tick on me at times that you didn’t pick them off, you initially tried to WIPE them off. I had so many bug bites I got a bacterial infection that presented itself a few days home, after my five day venture on the black continent. I even found one of those little bastards like Ghost was describing, dug into my forearm after I was safely back in Doo-Dah. Doxyclyclene got rid of the fever in a day. Also used for Lyme disease and acne, both types of bacteria.
I also have a deep pit/scar under my left butt cheek from a freak accident/fall off a ladder onto a piece of sheet metal. A tick had found that deep scar as a home for a few days before I found it, and in reaction yanked it off, with a fair amount of blood following.
I’m with Ghost, parasites are awful, both insect and human type.