Onward Into the October Country
Next post: The Right Fool for the Right Job
Previous post: Radical Roots and the Conquest of the Democratic Party (Written 2005)
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
The best month!
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond . . . nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
I had a friend who believed you needed moonshine just like you need sunshine.
Moonshine is fine, but I prefer bourbon.
Yankee talk. Here in the deepest south November’s best. Hell, we’re forecast for 90° highs and that delightful southern humidity as far into October as the eye can see. I will admit the days get shorter and the nights get longer just like everywhere else in the mid-latitudes.
That’s because you haven’t had the right kind yet Bob.
Yes, fall is starting. As in, the leaves are FALLing.
Not robustly yet, that will be a few more weeks, but still.
My Stihl blower is tuned, gassed and ready and has had a few minor workouts so far.
It’s the sycamores that cause the most grief cause their leaves are so big.
Big enough to trip over. Or, if rained on, surfboarded across the deck.
They are jaggy on the edges, much like their relative the maples, so they get hung up in the cracks between the deckboards, too big to fit under the bottom rung of the railing without a direct full speed assault. Stack 3 or 4 sycamore leaves together and you have a problem that requires effort, like maybe a boot in it’s ass.
By mid Nov I’ll have all the leaves on 1-1/2 acres of our property that is lawned stacked up in 2 or 3 huge piles. I’m talking 5′ high by 20′ in diameter piles. Because of the overhanging branches and not wanting to burn the lawn I can’t burn. So I turn the blower end for end, yank the little pipe and install the big one, and start mulching them leaves. That takes 2 days. I do not install the bagger and just blow the mulch all over the lawn. When that’s done I break out my Harley with blades – my Craftsman lawn tractor with dual blades powered by a 22 hp V2 Honda engine. Yeah, it sounds like a Harley too. Barump-a-rump…. Then I go back n forth over and over reducing that mulch to molecular size. Yeah, over the winter when not covered by snow the lawn has a dark brown hue rather than the light brown most people have but that mulch is breaking down and come spring next year it will start feeding those wakening grass blades and by May I’ll have to break out that Harley with blades again. This is our 13th winter here and we love every minute of it, as long as there is propane in the tank, stacked hardwood in the yard, and the larder is packed to the rafters.
One of the cool things about snow is while sitting around the firepit on Christmas eve on vertical log “stools” you can just sit your brew right down in it and it stays frosty – the minus 30 degree air helps too – but after you’re 13th one it don’t really matter cause that’s when the good stuff comes out of the crawl. Yeah, moon in a glass gallon bottle slammed with marachino cherries 2 months prior. DaWgEeZ!!!!
Three years on. I am open to trying good moonshine.
Yes. Sitting by a fire in the snow, letting your brew chill down, your life long girl next to you…
You got it, ghostsniper.
I love October and November. The earth finally receives a break from the stifling heat and the deer seasons begin to open, the best time in all of creation to enjoy a chilly morning sunrise and watch the earth come alive. Even with a bit of cold it’s a comforting time.
After November, I want it to be early May again when the pompano begin their runs.
Last night I dropped a friend off at the airport in Fairbanks, she’s returning to Japan. Driving back home during the first hour of the first day of October I noticed the aurora dancing overhead and my Jeep’s thermometer moving 2 or 3 degrees above or below freezing as the road’s elevation changed with the terrain.
Back home I increased the draft on my banked wood fire in the stove upstairs, went out and snapped a few shots of the Northern Lights dancing overhead, came back in, opened the doors on my Vermont Casting’s Defiant stove, and poured myself a shot of Jameson’s as a nightcap, sat in the dark watching the flames dance.
One October’s my birthday and I tipped my glass to the four score years behind me, life’s been good and Octobers are grand up here on top of the world.
HB, JA!
While I love fall, with its dance of colors…ruby, burgundy, saffron and orange, it is not my time of year.
Born in December, winter is my season.
Fallow fields, their rippled furrows glazed in ice, and trees that have shed their glory, sleeping deep.
Frosted moon, stars glittering in an ebony sky and an occasional wind swept cloud.
Short days and blissfully long nights.
Blanton’s bourbon by the fire pit.
Yes, winter has my heart.
Thirty Seconds Over Sullivan County, NY October ‘19
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3838565346fec5c2f19d138c1c2c98d4e51b6e8eeed5da18327d1a02eb4cd76f.jpg
What are we flying in? Looks pretty interesting.
I might be thinking Confederate Air Force WWII bomber bombardier seat.
Actually, the “Thirty seconds” word combo makes the WWII bomber guess closer.
Looks like the Collins Foundation’s B-24 Liberator “Witchcraft”. Last B-24 flying in the world. I took a flight in her from Stinson Field in San Antone to Temple, Texas. The bombardier position requires one to lay on your belly with one’s chest on a short padded stool to use the bomb site.
the video shows the prop spinners low out of the leftside window. if it’s a 24, I believe they’d be shown high, or not at all due to the depressed camera angle.
A B-17, kept local to NE, I *think*. I have an old pal involved in such efforts.He flew for awhile with a C-47 crew, the aircraft’s provenance taken to D-Day. Decked out in original scheme w/invasion stripes.
He has other adventures.
The foto is a screen shot from the brief video I have, I mailed it to V’der Leun some months ago.
shot with an iphone.
Norden sights cost about 75K each, I saw one in a NYC fleamarket (where I once purchased a Luger) for maybe $300.00.
My grandmother used to recite a poem by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) round about this time of year:
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather.
When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless, vagrant,
And golden-rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers hour by hour,
October’s bright blue weather.
O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October’s bright blue weather.
Jackson is an interesting writer. She was born in Amherst, MA, which explains the New England-y imagery in the poem. After her first husband was killed in an accident in 1863, she moved to Colorado seeking a cure for her tuberculosis. There she met her second husband, a railroad executive. Jackson became an activist on behalf of the Ponca, Sioux, and other American Indian tribes during her years living out West. Her poem may be typical of the nineteenth century in its emphasis on the joys of friendship as well as nature (Hunt was a close friend of Emily Dickinson, who had also grown up in Amherst), but it still catches the atmosphere of a New England autumn.
I love that book…
October’s Heaven Scent
I hope heaven’s like October
‘Cause, October, you’re the one
Who gives us skies of indigo
That greet the autumn sun.
A collage of fallen leaves
Tumbling through a wood,
Stirring up that smell of fall
That makes me feel so good.
And a patch of ripened pumpkins
To make a million pumpkin pies
Or friendly jack-o-lanterns
With glowing mouths and eyes.
I hope heaven’s like October,
The air just has that feel
Of wishes and remembering
And makes them seem so real.
If heaven is like October
There’ll be a gentle storm
But I’ll have a cozy house
And fire to keep me warm.
I’ll hear a lonely whistle blow
From a train way down the track,
If heaven’s like October,
Then I can live with that.
the aircraft:
https://www.eaa.org/eaa/events-and-experiences/aluminum-overcast-eaa-b-17-bomber-tour
NTSB report of the Collins crash:
https://cdn.planeandpilotmag.com/2021/04/Report_ERA20MA001_100356_4_14_2021-1_00_18-PM.pdf