The gift of life. Sat with my 91 year old Mum this morning, and every year she tells me the story of my birth, her gift of life to me. How she was wheeled into the delivery room at 3:55 a.m., and at 4:05 a.m. she was holding me in her arms. I was number 4 of 8. Here’s to making my 64th orbit around the sun.
ghostsniperMarch 29, 2023, 12:00 PM
Happy YOUR day John.
I remember way back (4 yrs ago, snicker) when I was a spry young buk like you.
At about 6pm this evening I’m gonna sit on the front porch in this 60+ degree climate, watch the birds and creatures and sip one of these things and I’ll wish we were both partaking at your trout house in the forest.
Thanks, Ghostsniper, my U.P. friend, who is the same age as you, if I recall correctly, calls me a young pup. I’ll be porch sitting myself tonight, here in GR, though our weather is bit more brisk. Actually had a touch of snow this morning. Sun is out now, though. Tomorrow, I’m headed back north. Enjoy the cider, I’ll stick with bourbon.
Casey KlahnMarch 29, 2023, 12:37 PM
Here’s a toast to Michelangelo. If anyone gets the notion to watch a great movie about him, see the one with Charleton Heston as the man, and Rex Harrison as the Pope. The Agony and The Ecstasy.
And, not to be outdone, here’s a toast to our own John Venlet: welcome to 64, old timer. I graduated HS in 1976 – I wonder if you did the same year? Also, I imagine we served in our respective military years about the same time. Wish I was that age again, tear-assing around New York City trying to… never mind that part.
In Sept., I’ll clock 65, and the same month will celebrate my late father’s hundredth year since his birth.
Thanks, Casey. Actually graduated high school in ’78, cause you gave me one more year than I’ve earned. Just made 63 today. And don’t worry, with the leeway you’ve given me I’m not concerned I’ll outdo any of your exploits.
Casey KlahnMarch 29, 2023, 3:27 PM
OK, I see how the math works. Gotchya.
Why, at 63 yer still wet behind the ears. Enjoy your day and many happy returns.
AnonymousMarch 29, 2023, 6:57 PM
One of my younger brothers graduated in ’76. Twas a good year as I recall. His claim to fame was having graduated with Madonna when she was a teenage unknown and still had a last name. Those were the days, eh?
ghostsniperMarch 29, 2023, 6:19 PM
Lethe
A Self-elegy by Harriet Westbrook
first wife of Percy Shelley
1
I look down into the moss-green pool
my own reflected face flanked by clouds
inhabiting yet the heavens cold and cruel
unloose the binding dresses destined shrouds
I speak as listening to ghosts aloud
whispering my life unto the wind
promises broken promises once avowed
overheard by ghosts ghosts will not rescind
and aweful Queen of Ghosts these promises will tend
Water swirling through my sinking skirts
washing billowing blouse and filling dresses
with muddy Serpentine swelled with rains
to rinse with ash-blonde foam my flowing tresses
Water chilling skin with cold caresses
taking our child and me down slowly dreamily
almost weightless as the tide progresses
its silty sound swallowing me and our baby
will swallow you too My Love as Your Soul at last confesses
2
We haunt these waters gliding scaleless finless
naked with the naked fishes glinting
They like us adrift forever sinless
rising up from sunless sea-paths squinting
at dancing rays filtering down hinting
of warm red light above, hot-skinned creatures
gliding through air and Fate’s breath unrelenting
burdened only by wind and rock-hard features
and voices mouthed all round, soundless unseen preachers
Listen to the water flowing over my grave
Listen to the current running down to sea
washing among the rounded pebbles a-lave
with muddy sediment. This soil will, free
from stream bed and bank, resalt the mineral sea
with the salt and dust of me and our baby’s bones
It will flavor the ocean floor, far Normandy
and the coast of farther Leghorn as it moans
with the Tyrrhene tidal winds squalling in blackest tones
I did not even know Ophelia, never
doubting but ‘gratitude and admiration,’
I saw you write, ‘demand I shall love her forever’
But what sad dreamer dreaming since time began
kept such vow being but flesh and man
unless his vow and dream might coincide
which self-encircling artist will not plan
and god, foreseeing future, matches bride
with dream unchanging, dreamers dreaming side by side
Mediterranean waves washed you ashore
you wept for by all as genius lost
while I must grovel in London mud, no more
bemoaned than fishes or frogs or flotsam wave-tossed
For Poesy I am but the cost
staring skyward glassy-eyed from Serpent’s flank
Of me Faith’s Child the poets never guessed
You will Muse but never Woman thank
For you my maidenhead naively led twice sank
You say you cannot love what you do not
but I am lost My God unchaste unmarried
unloved and then from pitying hands unsought
a child that unfathered must never be carried
My past my present haunts cannot be buried
Fled you think a love is right or not
if not then virtue is to be remarried
But I am no mistake to be unbought
as fish of ghostly form I cannot be uncaught
3
That Deep that sparkles with riddles and grinning monsters
spread out around you though morning had dawned clear cloudless
and blue, sky reflecting sanely exactly
the silvery surface. Waveless nearly windless
the mast hardly cocked, the stockstill lazy compass
Beneath this idyll Naiades eyed their prey
above Erinyes preened and whetted careless
The Sea grave of all waters watched lidless fey
the sea floor swelled to receive the salt of one more your clay
Fate tempted She rose from her deep abode
flanked by Furies followed by millions
out from their caves of darkness Sea Ghosts flowed
in circling waves of dancing writhing cotillions
and Percy you saw before you joined the billions
my billowing blouse rippling from every crest
my eyes in the faces of Triton’s minions
and seaweed that sewed each frond a lover’s tress
enwrapping you Love like curling sea snakes vengeance-blest
Gulls, oyster-albine bacchantes, screamed alone
or beating wing for breast tearing through the veils
of Delphic mists as swirling maidens swore atone
Below there leapt blue dolphins, breaching whales
who slapping flukes on briny greenswell wail
a long-drawn song an ocean jeremiad
awash with centuries-old earth-circling tales
of languishment and death and bones half-hid
by silt and wavy seaweed and eddies Neptune-bid
Pipers primly skipped from threatening wave
Scuttling crabs retreated always sideways
every beast that day did itself save
from Supernature’s cast in Passion Plays
as Venus made a count of all the days
crushing under dainty goddess slipper
or whitest barest foot him who pays
the uttermost farthing and then must kneel and kiss her
lips with redeemed lips that then must ever miss her
4
Someday when I awake when I arise
when earth and water mix in Parousia
and look my drowned poet in the eyes
as Cronus meets the eyes of mother Rhea
and Uranus the gaze of mother Gaea
remember once you loved me knew not why
marred by Adam’s sin non culpa mea
son of father’s dearth back to Sky
who rains on Gaea as a cloud gone floating by
That dark night unrestful I will wake
beneath the blowing cattails lulling you
to sleep, that night I will at last forsake
the quiet earth and overreaching dew
At midnight belly rounding with the moon
I will arise Astarte-like from the rushes
I will arise respirited too soon
like her whose presence all the Spirit hushes
display the perished bloom and hectic flushes
the falsely beating heart and warming womb
the graying lips of red and mother’s blushes
I will awake untimely unentomb
bones best left enearthed and flesh and feeling numb
Then when Chaos stirs the bloody Earth
remixing limbs eyes Souls hearts
and making every death a crying birth
infusing salty water into parts
confused by Change and Time and Judgment starts
my water and your storm will be the same
I, Immortal Bird, will sing the Arts
and you will mouthe my pain not in name
but kissed from storm to storm no weather-lover’s blame
You who hate the seed for taking root
will also hate the cloud that whitens high
the storm that overwaters virgin shoot
bass-boom thunder and the infant cry
of washed-out life weakening to die
beneath unsheltered sky. You will curse
the rain that fills the drowning stream and I
Skylark blithe but long deflowered and worse
unignorant of pain to innocently coerce
my strains to pure profusion—Not Purity
but Sacred Soilure, the Dirt of Ages
will bless my songbird bones—I will cloudless see
what you must miss unmuddied: the ghost-watched wages
of sin to Art and Love are not on gold-gilt pages
in Heaven but are writ in Runes upon the Earth
bloody kana venting Vulcan’s rages
at Nazarene. Magdalene knew: not worth
pap a Pure Conception or a Virgin Birth
5
I will learn to rain and you to rust
The mud will take us both and both the sky
Sea-silt and Cloud-froth will bed our breath and dust
and we will learn to live and so to die
For now I wait the rain drips past my eye
you dig deep beneath the seas of Rome
The seas will rise and fall in circles by the bye
and when the sea floor meets the starry dome
soaked and salty you will take our baby home
anonMarch 29, 2023, 7:09 PM
TL;DR
Melodramatic much?
I’m not sure what it all is supposed to mean, but I’m glad that in 2023 I have had (since the ’70’s) books and articles available which teach that a woman is valuable in and of herself and that destroying herself (and a child) in an attempt to “lay a guilt trip on a man” means only that the man has won (succeeded in destroying her).
Women: do not let any man destroy you…if you can help it. (And you probably can.)
AnneMarch 29, 2023, 9:13 PM
Thank you anon–
As for age–it seems that I am the oldest one here. Celebrated 79 last month! I am so grateful for all that I have been given. I get up every day trying to live a life that says “thank you, Dear Lord”
Yes, of course. The Willem Dafoe movie is better, though.
Today marks 170 since van Gogh’s birth.
AnneMarch 30, 2023, 6:36 PM
Went on a small tour that included his room in the “hospital”. It was not at all confining, he was free to walk around anywhere. It was a quite good size room by today’s standards. Maybe about 15 wide by 20-25 long. Plenty of windows.
Casey KlahnMarch 30, 2023, 8:35 PM
Who had “Biden arrests Trump; disarms patriots” on his bingo card? Place a marker there, because it’s happening, apparently.
Turned 73 last weekend, today is the 12th year since my wife passed away. And one day after the final nail was set in the framework turning America into a Banana Republic.
There was a SciFi book about America after a political party took to jailing the others leaders as soon as they got back into power. Can’t remember the title now, but I remember that it didn’t end well.
Another story that posted yesterday but probably didn’t get noticed by many, the FBI is building a new headquarters for themselves. It will be bigger than the Pentagon.
Message received and understood.
John the River,
The downfall of America began in the 1930’s with the infiltration of Catholic Seminaries by Communists, then Protestant seminaries followed by teachers colleges.
If you research the subject be forewarned that the great coverup of what happened has started. Some
ghostsniperMarch 31, 2023, 12:01 PM
Nope.
1913, the fed reserve
THAT’s what going to sink this doomed ship of fools.
Perhaps in 2 weeks or less.
Ghostsniper, I understand the severity of what you speak. That said, we have overcome many financial disasters as a nation. My comment deals with the severe decline in what can only be called “Americas Morality Crisis”. We are morally bankrupt. I place this blame squarely on the shoulders of the pablum pukers in all the pulpits and the cowardice of the average American who is afraid to stand up and say something, say anything.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
YES. Gerard would have loved to have this conversation this week. His work was/is such a perfect reflection of all that this painting depicts.
I like to think that Gerard is still here watching our conversations.
The gift of life. Sat with my 91 year old Mum this morning, and every year she tells me the story of my birth, her gift of life to me. How she was wheeled into the delivery room at 3:55 a.m., and at 4:05 a.m. she was holding me in her arms. I was number 4 of 8. Here’s to making my 64th orbit around the sun.
Happy YOUR day John.
I remember way back (4 yrs ago, snicker) when I was a spry young buk like you.
At about 6pm this evening I’m gonna sit on the front porch in this 60+ degree climate, watch the birds and creatures and sip one of these things and I’ll wish we were both partaking at your trout house in the forest.
https://www.oliverwinery.com/wine/beanblossom-hard-cider/original-hard-cider
I ain’t a wine drinker but I saw these at the store and liked the label.
8.3 alcohol….might be inneresting.
Thanks, Ghostsniper, my U.P. friend, who is the same age as you, if I recall correctly, calls me a young pup. I’ll be porch sitting myself tonight, here in GR, though our weather is bit more brisk. Actually had a touch of snow this morning. Sun is out now, though. Tomorrow, I’m headed back north. Enjoy the cider, I’ll stick with bourbon.
Here’s a toast to Michelangelo. If anyone gets the notion to watch a great movie about him, see the one with Charleton Heston as the man, and Rex Harrison as the Pope. The Agony and The Ecstasy.
And, not to be outdone, here’s a toast to our own John Venlet: welcome to 64, old timer. I graduated HS in 1976 – I wonder if you did the same year? Also, I imagine we served in our respective military years about the same time. Wish I was that age again, tear-assing around New York City trying to… never mind that part.
In Sept., I’ll clock 65, and the same month will celebrate my late father’s hundredth year since his birth.
God bless ya, John. Don’t do anything I would do.
Thanks, Casey. Actually graduated high school in ’78, cause you gave me one more year than I’ve earned. Just made 63 today. And don’t worry, with the leeway you’ve given me I’m not concerned I’ll outdo any of your exploits.
OK, I see how the math works. Gotchya.
Why, at 63 yer still wet behind the ears. Enjoy your day and many happy returns.
One of my younger brothers graduated in ’76. Twas a good year as I recall. His claim to fame was having graduated with Madonna when she was a teenage unknown and still had a last name. Those were the days, eh?
Lethe
A Self-elegy by Harriet Westbrook
first wife of Percy Shelley
1
I look down into the moss-green pool
my own reflected face flanked by clouds
inhabiting yet the heavens cold and cruel
unloose the binding dresses destined shrouds
I speak as listening to ghosts aloud
whispering my life unto the wind
promises broken promises once avowed
overheard by ghosts ghosts will not rescind
and aweful Queen of Ghosts these promises will tend
Water swirling through my sinking skirts
washing billowing blouse and filling dresses
with muddy Serpentine swelled with rains
to rinse with ash-blonde foam my flowing tresses
Water chilling skin with cold caresses
taking our child and me down slowly dreamily
almost weightless as the tide progresses
its silty sound swallowing me and our baby
will swallow you too My Love as Your Soul at last confesses
2
We haunt these waters gliding scaleless finless
naked with the naked fishes glinting
They like us adrift forever sinless
rising up from sunless sea-paths squinting
at dancing rays filtering down hinting
of warm red light above, hot-skinned creatures
gliding through air and Fate’s breath unrelenting
burdened only by wind and rock-hard features
and voices mouthed all round, soundless unseen preachers
Listen to the water flowing over my grave
Listen to the current running down to sea
washing among the rounded pebbles a-lave
with muddy sediment. This soil will, free
from stream bed and bank, resalt the mineral sea
with the salt and dust of me and our baby’s bones
It will flavor the ocean floor, far Normandy
and the coast of farther Leghorn as it moans
with the Tyrrhene tidal winds squalling in blackest tones
I did not even know Ophelia, never
doubting but ‘gratitude and admiration,’
I saw you write, ‘demand I shall love her forever’
But what sad dreamer dreaming since time began
kept such vow being but flesh and man
unless his vow and dream might coincide
which self-encircling artist will not plan
and god, foreseeing future, matches bride
with dream unchanging, dreamers dreaming side by side
Mediterranean waves washed you ashore
you wept for by all as genius lost
while I must grovel in London mud, no more
bemoaned than fishes or frogs or flotsam wave-tossed
For Poesy I am but the cost
staring skyward glassy-eyed from Serpent’s flank
Of me Faith’s Child the poets never guessed
You will Muse but never Woman thank
For you my maidenhead naively led twice sank
You say you cannot love what you do not
but I am lost My God unchaste unmarried
unloved and then from pitying hands unsought
a child that unfathered must never be carried
My past my present haunts cannot be buried
Fled you think a love is right or not
if not then virtue is to be remarried
But I am no mistake to be unbought
as fish of ghostly form I cannot be uncaught
3
That Deep that sparkles with riddles and grinning monsters
spread out around you though morning had dawned clear cloudless
and blue, sky reflecting sanely exactly
the silvery surface. Waveless nearly windless
the mast hardly cocked, the stockstill lazy compass
Beneath this idyll Naiades eyed their prey
above Erinyes preened and whetted careless
The Sea grave of all waters watched lidless fey
the sea floor swelled to receive the salt of one more your clay
Fate tempted She rose from her deep abode
flanked by Furies followed by millions
out from their caves of darkness Sea Ghosts flowed
in circling waves of dancing writhing cotillions
and Percy you saw before you joined the billions
my billowing blouse rippling from every crest
my eyes in the faces of Triton’s minions
and seaweed that sewed each frond a lover’s tress
enwrapping you Love like curling sea snakes vengeance-blest
Gulls, oyster-albine bacchantes, screamed alone
or beating wing for breast tearing through the veils
of Delphic mists as swirling maidens swore atone
Below there leapt blue dolphins, breaching whales
who slapping flukes on briny greenswell wail
a long-drawn song an ocean jeremiad
awash with centuries-old earth-circling tales
of languishment and death and bones half-hid
by silt and wavy seaweed and eddies Neptune-bid
Pipers primly skipped from threatening wave
Scuttling crabs retreated always sideways
every beast that day did itself save
from Supernature’s cast in Passion Plays
as Venus made a count of all the days
crushing under dainty goddess slipper
or whitest barest foot him who pays
the uttermost farthing and then must kneel and kiss her
lips with redeemed lips that then must ever miss her
4
Someday when I awake when I arise
when earth and water mix in Parousia
and look my drowned poet in the eyes
as Cronus meets the eyes of mother Rhea
and Uranus the gaze of mother Gaea
remember once you loved me knew not why
marred by Adam’s sin non culpa mea
son of father’s dearth back to Sky
who rains on Gaea as a cloud gone floating by
That dark night unrestful I will wake
beneath the blowing cattails lulling you
to sleep, that night I will at last forsake
the quiet earth and overreaching dew
At midnight belly rounding with the moon
I will arise Astarte-like from the rushes
I will arise respirited too soon
like her whose presence all the Spirit hushes
display the perished bloom and hectic flushes
the falsely beating heart and warming womb
the graying lips of red and mother’s blushes
I will awake untimely unentomb
bones best left enearthed and flesh and feeling numb
Then when Chaos stirs the bloody Earth
remixing limbs eyes Souls hearts
and making every death a crying birth
infusing salty water into parts
confused by Change and Time and Judgment starts
my water and your storm will be the same
I, Immortal Bird, will sing the Arts
and you will mouthe my pain not in name
but kissed from storm to storm no weather-lover’s blame
You who hate the seed for taking root
will also hate the cloud that whitens high
the storm that overwaters virgin shoot
bass-boom thunder and the infant cry
of washed-out life weakening to die
beneath unsheltered sky. You will curse
the rain that fills the drowning stream and I
Skylark blithe but long deflowered and worse
unignorant of pain to innocently coerce
my strains to pure profusion—Not Purity
but Sacred Soilure, the Dirt of Ages
will bless my songbird bones—I will cloudless see
what you must miss unmuddied: the ghost-watched wages
of sin to Art and Love are not on gold-gilt pages
in Heaven but are writ in Runes upon the Earth
bloody kana venting Vulcan’s rages
at Nazarene. Magdalene knew: not worth
pap a Pure Conception or a Virgin Birth
5
I will learn to rain and you to rust
The mud will take us both and both the sky
Sea-silt and Cloud-froth will bed our breath and dust
and we will learn to live and so to die
For now I wait the rain drips past my eye
you dig deep beneath the seas of Rome
The seas will rise and fall in circles by the bye
and when the sea floor meets the starry dome
soaked and salty you will take our baby home
TL;DR
Melodramatic much?
I’m not sure what it all is supposed to mean, but I’m glad that in 2023 I have had (since the ’70’s) books and articles available which teach that a woman is valuable in and of herself and that destroying herself (and a child) in an attempt to “lay a guilt trip on a man” means only that the man has won (succeeded in destroying her).
Women: do not let any man destroy you…if you can help it. (And you probably can.)
Thank you anon–
As for age–it seems that I am the oldest one here. Celebrated 79 last month! I am so grateful for all that I have been given. I get up every day trying to live a life that says “thank you, Dear Lord”
Which is doing your best to live Psalm 118:24 up in the sidebar there, Anne. God Bless.
Thank you Ghostsniper. A wonderful testament.
National Vietnam Veterans Day: Honoring Those Who Served
By Chris Queen 2:28 PM ON MARCH 29, 2023
https://pjmedia.com/columns/chris-queen/2023/03/29/national-vietnam-veterans-day-honoring-those-who-served-n1682543
Loving Vincent
——————
This might be worth taking a look at.
Have you seen it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOtwJL4iV8s&t=1s
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3262342/
Yes, of course. The Willem Dafoe movie is better, though.
Today marks 170 since van Gogh’s birth.
Went on a small tour that included his room in the “hospital”. It was not at all confining, he was free to walk around anywhere. It was a quite good size room by today’s standards. Maybe about 15 wide by 20-25 long. Plenty of windows.
Who had “Biden arrests Trump; disarms patriots” on his bingo card? Place a marker there, because it’s happening, apparently.
Turned 73 last weekend, today is the 12th year since my wife passed away. And one day after the final nail was set in the framework turning America into a Banana Republic.
There was a SciFi book about America after a political party took to jailing the others leaders as soon as they got back into power. Can’t remember the title now, but I remember that it didn’t end well.
Another story that posted yesterday but probably didn’t get noticed by many, the FBI is building a new headquarters for themselves. It will be bigger than the Pentagon.
Message received and understood.
John the River,
The downfall of America began in the 1930’s with the infiltration of Catholic Seminaries by Communists, then Protestant seminaries followed by teachers colleges.
If you research the subject be forewarned that the great coverup of what happened has started. Some
Nope.
1913, the fed reserve
THAT’s what going to sink this doomed ship of fools.
Perhaps in 2 weeks or less.
Ghostsniper, I understand the severity of what you speak. That said, we have overcome many financial disasters as a nation. My comment deals with the severe decline in what can only be called “Americas Morality Crisis”. We are morally bankrupt. I place this blame squarely on the shoulders of the pablum pukers in all the pulpits and the cowardice of the average American who is afraid to stand up and say something, say anything.