… while here in the States, things continue to keep on slip-sliding away.
In Finland 2021 is off to a fast start
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
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
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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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
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
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
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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
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
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.
A true Finn wouldn’t have had a towel wrapped around himself.
@John: Au contraire! How’s he going to wipe the sweat off when he finishes that sprint?
Looks to me like UPS should be hiring some smart-alec Finnish sprinters for winter deliveries.
Point taken, Mike, possibly I was not basing my assertion on enough statistical data. The one data point I leaned on was a Finnish friend who also races motorcycles on icy lakes. I was at a race he was participating in up in northern Michigan, and at the same lake there was one of those polar bear swims going on. When my friend noticed the participants gathered round the hole in the ice, after the race, he rode his bike over and asked if it would be alright if he took a dip. When they said “No problem,” he stripped down to his skivvies, and dove right in, swam around for a bit, unlike the other polar bear participants who jumped in and immediately out, and then stood around for a bit talking all things Finnish; sauna, icy dips, etc.; while still in his skivvies. All the rest of the polar bear plungers had donned boots, heavy blankets, or warm jackets. After chatting them all up for 10 or 15 minutes, he climbed backed into his ice racing gear, and rode off. And he didn’t have a towel.
Happy New Year Gerard. Thank you for all you do.
SISU–is a very real quality and it seems to be only applicable to the Finns! Love em!
I dunno 🤷🏻♂️ Gerard, I didn’t hear a gun go off so I’m going to call “false start” or “jump the start” on that crazy 😜 Finn.
Happy New Year sir. May you keep offering us your unique take on the weirdness and wonder of the world.
P.S. Can you repost your story on “Spare a Quatah?” someday? Always makes me laugh 😆.
“Looks to me like UPS should be hiring some smart-alec Finnish sprinters for winter deliveries.”
Canadian hockey players can do the job too– and they might jump at the chance to get away from Trudeau.
For 30 years I lived on a street much like that back in MN. That UPS driver wasn’t a native. First off, he’s not wearing shorts. UPS drivers wear shorts. Period. Second, a true Minnesotan woulda sized up the situation right away. Brace up on the back of the van and a healthy shove would have delivered that sucker right to the door. A slap shot with a hockey stick would work better but UPS drivers usually don’t carry sticks around in the truck. FedEx maybe, but not UPS.
[UPS driver] Here comes Rocket Richard up the ice at a furious pace! He shoots!! He scores!!!
John and Mike, I have actually been on the Finnish lake and smack-dab right on the Arctic Circle (it theoretically ran right through the lake) and I was expecting buck nekked! The Finns sauna and jump in the drink in their birthday suits.
My host, a retired Finnish Navy Captain, informed me that the Arctic Circle moves about. The reason is that it delineates the place where one full solar day and one full day of darkness each occur once annually. Just a bit of geographic trivia for ya. The reindeer run around like bandits, and the girls are worth seeing. I’m just reporting the truth.
As a native northern Minnesotan raised where it’s always “colder by the Lake (Superior)” by a father who spoke only Finnish until he entered elementary school, I understand both the humor and reality of these videos. That I am also a retiree from UPS brings things to a another level. Proud of the good delivery service against the odds, enjoyed the surprise ice sprint, and simply can not stop joyful laughter from bubbling up inside me. Thank you for the positive gift to end 2020.
When we first got married (Wyoming) Husman and I went hotpotting just outside Yellowstone Park. We were naked, in winter, and walked through bitter, ice cold, calf deep water…to join the other nekkid bathers in a warm pool of neck deep hotsprings water. Ahhh. Good times. It was the only place without ice. Lots of steam, but no ice.
I have taken a dip in the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean) at Prudhoe Bay, quite invigorating.
One of my less pleasant memories while learning to deal with life in the arctic and sub-arctic; in the spring coming out of a Finnish style sauna, deciding to dive head first naked into a snow bank to cool off. The snow bank was on a south slope, the sun had glazed a hard, rough, layer of ice atop it. Hence, instead of diving in I found myself naked belly skating some twenty feet across it.
Hence, instead of diving in I found myself naked belly skating some twenty feet across it.
That had to be more abrasive, than bracing, James.
Here in my little Midwest town, the 1st day of 2021 is looking and feeling a bit gloomy- dark and overcast skies, no susnshine, a persistent cold wind, a layer of ice over everything, foggy, and freezing rain coming down in waves.
I sure hope that’s not an indication of how the rest of the year will be!
born south shore of lake erie, here- the driver’s a rookie. walk in the snow, push the box.
and I grew up next to a town of Finns, beautiful, flaxen-haired Finns.
A member of the UPS Curling team?
A comment on the Youtube side of the finland runner:
“It’s him, it’s Jesus”
Then,
“Catch him! He’s trying to get away!”