don’t want to dignify the news with my attention
— HappyAcres (@HappyHectares) April 21, 2021
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Previous post: Small Fires in the Deep
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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
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
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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
Gerard Van der Leun
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YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, Happy Acres!!!!111!!!!
I remember a site called “Rotten dot com.” It was a gallery of death, mutilation, and horror. Every picture had a description: “Man falls into wood chipper”. You read that, and say, “No way am I clicking that link.” And then you click it, and immediately wish you hadn’t.
Like when you go to pour the milk into your coffee, and the milk plops out in big yellow globs. Odds are close to 100% that you’re gonna’ sniff the carton anyway. And remember the stuff in the tupperware container way back in the fridge?
Just like the news.
JWM
The political platforms of the left are gradually transformed into scaffolds. –Dávila
Happy Acres is being quite charitable referring to the undisguised agitprop of today as being “the news”. Just a sign of the times, though, as everything is being defined down to its crudest, lowest common denominator.
What news?
Here’s some news.
We got 2″ of snow overnight, last time that happened was in 1873.
So planting has been forestalled a bit, but only a bit.
(all the early plantlings on the porches are draped like ghosts with all the bed sheets so we slept like animals on the floor last night)
The sun has been shining, the temp is 42, and the snow is almost gone.
Planting will start post haste. YAYYYY!!!!
You heard it here first folks.
News you can use!
no TeeVee or “news”papers, magazines for twenty-five years. nor current films.
I search with Duck Duck Go “/news” and comb thru it, wary of sources.
Dignity?
She left some time ago.
The current Resident and Vice Resident in the White House are two of the most undignified hacks I’ve ever witnessed. The “news” that is reported in the main isn’t news at all. What we are witnessing is a country being undermined from within and assaulted by enemies both foreign and domestic. I don’t see this nation surviving. Not when the mob is the jury and the rule of law is a mockery of justice.
With the indulgence of our good host I offer some alternatives for reported news;
https://www.revolver.news
https://rantingly.com
https://thenationalpulse.com
Stay safe and please pray for our country.
As I looked up from my computer, I see it is now snowing here in NEPA.
I planted shallots and spuds last week, peas yesterday. Been working on clean-up after having 6 trees taken down last week. Plenty of firewood to burn in the pit this Summer and Autumn.
Raspberries are showing strong growth, asparagus will be popping through within weeks.
I find solace in the words Voltaire offered in the story – Candide and conclude that Doctor Pangloss was a nice person with good intentions, but he was a fool.
Back to my garden!
I only read news to see the latest psy-ops. I usually believe none of it, and often I believe the opposite.
This morning I asked my wife: “Remember when it was going to be 1 to 2 million-plus dead of Covid by (last) year? Remember when they said masks won’t work? Then, they said wear them, but it’ll only be for a couple of weeks.” I finished with: “When they get to one percent on deaths, I’ll tune in.”
In the spirit of this post, I have tuned Biden out the same way I tuned Obama out. I know everything’s going to hell on rails, and there’s no reason for me to torture myself with the details daily.
News? There is none, only propaganda and any search for “the truth” futile. I miss old Remus more every day as he was my most trusted source. There’s a highway at the bottom of our little hill that runs east to west and it’s full of people going to work, or back home or more likely, just going. We sat out by our campfire, listening to the whine of the road and the distant roar of jets above the clouds.
And all the news just repeats itself/Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen
My friend,,,,,, it’s only propaganda if you watch it, believe it.
Oddly enough nothings changed on our mountain.
Village Idiot.