Current family duties will preclude me from updating here for a bit. Thanks.
![Pellom's Time Shop [Updated with a Sermon by Rev. Sensing]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/pellomstimeshop-227x300-1-150x150.jpg "Pellom's Time Shop [Updated with a Sermon by Rev. Sensing]")
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
Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host
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.
Will pray that all works out well.
Hope it’s nothing serious. Let us know if prayers are needed!
All the best!
What EOP and Esky said above. Sending good hopes and wishes your way.
Ditto, ditto, ditto, Gerard.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
I sincerely hope all is well.
Gerard’s Mom took a tumble and skinned her knee.
All is well at this time, he will report in later.
Lois is resting and has been looked at by the EMT’s and will get a good nights sleep, Gerard not so much. Send him some prayers, he has asked for them. Thanks, this is coming from a good friend.
“Send him some prayers, he has asked for them.”
Have sent and will keep sending.
Hope and pray all is well with you both.
Thank you Geoff C. The Saltine. It’s clear how GVDL adores his Mother. Will direct prayers his and his Mother’s direction.
“Gerard’s Mom took a tumble and skinned her knee.”
DAM!
Last night I wrote, “Hope Mama’s doin’ OK!”, and then didn’t send it, didn’t want to draw ill will.
And now this.
Sincerly hope she’s alright.
She’s an American Heirloom.
Can you imagine sitting and talking to Lois?
Her life spans a century.
To touch memories of a time before the great war, the Titanic, when motorized kites filled the air. WoW.
I’d bring a legal paid full of questions and subject matters.
And a bit of quality chocolate.
Looking forward to seeing “all is well” for all. Agree with Ghost, this precious lady has some wonderful stories yet to be told!
Prayers and mojo from Utah.
We’ll miss you (and your Mom) for a bit. Our prayers are with you. Meantime, we’ll put our critical thinking on hold ’till you’re back.
Prayers for Mama and Gerard.
Love you brother
Praying all is well, for both of you, and will remain well, Gerard.
Thoughts (good ‘uns) and prayers for your Mom and yourself. Make haste slowly in your return and her recovery.
Prayers coming for you and for your Mother from another Northern Californian and a fellow traveler from the Bay Area ’60’s…….
Best wishes, Gerard. I hope things turn out well for all.
Gerard,
Good wishes and prayers for you and your Mom.
Praying.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Mrs VdL – suspect that skinned knees have lots more mileage in them. Greetings and grateful thanks from Norfolk England for rearing the best blogmeister of the intertubes. Your vicarious influence is manifest and much appreciated.
That last comment was mine, mistagged. 🙂
Gerard,
I’ll continue to pray for your mother’s recovery. Your blog is a wonderful resource. But, as you obviously know, the real world takes priority over such things. Tend to your mother – I guarantee we will still all be here when you return.
Thanks,
Tom
Prayers UP for a speedy motherly recovery attended-to by an obviously devoted son and heir who is followed and revered by hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of we inter-stellar bloggers … Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen. Maranatha! .. In Him! .. <3 <3 <3
Wish your mother well for me Gerard.
Bless her heart!
She reminds us all of the need to keep some skin in the game to play our part.