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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
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
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
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This child will fail geometry. He has no natural understanding of lines, curves and forces. After the first time being wacked in the head by the lid he should have turned around and pulled the bin. But every time he ever saw an adult moving a bin, they always push it. He had no creativity to turn around and pull it. Pulling it would have put the wind against the lid, thus holding it down.
I always pull my bins to the street. My neighbors look at me funny. I can pull two bins, one in each hand. Everyone else makes two trips. Go figure…
Question? He keeps looking up at the camera. Does he know that someone if filming him?
Reminds me of the classic Larson cartoon of the fat kid pushing hard upon the door that says, “Pull.” Above the door is a sign, “School For Gifted Children.” The kid in this video is Presidential timber. Men in smoke-filled rooms are taking notes.
“This child will fail geometry.”
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Maybe. But so what? I failed algebra. Twice.
What that kid showed was his “stick-to-it-iveness”, the will to keep tryin’ no matter what.
Determination will always be stronger than smarts.
I’d have put a spring clamp or 2 on that lid.
That kid not only had “stick-to-it-ivness,” he also exhibited no crying, whining, or run to momma wimpyness.
“Nobody said it would be easy for Dems to drag their partisan impeachment into the senate.”
That was me at the age of “eleb’un”.
Don’t feel bad Ghost, I was so ADHD that I failed Algebra I twice. Took it again and was failing a 3rd time when a caring teacher pulled me aside and told me that she would help me but that I had to pay attention in class and do my homework. I did and pulled a certain F up to a B. She was the only teacher I ever had from K -12 that actually cared enough to help me find my focus and I’ve never forgotten her.
I’m gonna cut the kid some slack – he’s got the perspiration bit covered, but awaits suitable inspiration.
Future California politician.
Having had the mortifying experience of losing a wheelbarrow full of wet concrete in front of the whole damn crew…
I can relate.
At least I was smart enough to let it go. (why my back still works)
JWM
OK, so the kid ain’t a quick study. But he’s still doing better than some folks in my town, where we’ve had people actually trip and fall INTO one of this big bins.
They were probably trying to feed.
He’s far from being the first youngster to suffer the consequences of trying to handle more than a four-finger lid.
You can tell by the way he hitched his pants up at the end that he wasn’t going to give up.
“four-finger lid”
=======
Ain’t heard that one in awhile.
Ha-ha! – ghostsniper, I’d half-hoped that “four-finger lid” might elicit a reaction from one or another of my fellow dinosaurs. Delighted to read that you got it!
After that plastic can whacked me on the head for the second time I would have dropped a match on it and burned it to the ground.
Turn it around kid! Just turn it around! Oh! Never mind.
You do not have to be a germ-phobe or hypochondriac to know that front of the trashcan is where it engages with the least sanitary portions of the trash truck. No Batman kootie spray is going to get this kid to put his hands on the hepatitis C and maggot infested fecal matter that he envisions on the front of the trash can. Hell, I’m in my mid 50s and still would not touch the front of a trash barrel on a dare with my bare hands in trade for an M-60. FFS.
Auntie – Sadly, it’s be a VERY long while.
“…least sanitary portions of the trash truck…”
======
You got that right Snake….almost.
The entire truck is unsanitary as far as I’m concerned.
We don’t do trash cans, just bags, right before the truck comes.
If they sit out there too long the ‘coons get in em.
Down in Cape Coral, FL the city inspectors make the rounds at about 6am writing tickets to people that didn’t bring their trash cans in from the day before. My brother built a nice wooden lattice fence 4′ high on the side of his garage so the trash cans couldn’t be seen from the street (unsightly) and he used bungee cords on the cans to keep the coons out. The inspectors said you have to take the cords off before putting the cans on the curb because on of the people that pick the can up to dump in the truck got an eye put out when a cord snapped when he tried to remove it. So my brother got in the habit of removing the cords and hanging them on the fence, until code enforcement gave him a $26 ticket for it. Yep, hanging a bungee cord on the fence is an infraction. Just a small part of the reason we moved away.
They have airplanes flying around taking note of the yards that appear to have not been mowed lately and sending a $50 ticket to the owner of record. I once mistakenly received a ticket for the neighbors yard and it took me 6 months of arguing to get my money back, minus a $10 service fee. Our 12yo son got a $10 ticket for shooting his BB gun in our backyard that had a 6’ high estate fence around it.
Seems a nosy neighbor lady didn’t think that was right. Too many people, and most of them minding everybody else’s business.
Your bro’s plight reminds me of that line from the Declaration of Independence… from that long list of grievances describing a certain asshole named George III… “He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.”
‘Life is hard,
harder if you’re stupid.’
John Wayne
Weeeelllllll … that kid still has time to learn. There was a certain person of my acquaintance who was wheeling the garbage bin out to the curb and thought he/she/it needed to take something back out of the bin because surely spousie didn’t mean to throw THAT away … while stretching and bending into the bin, the supporting foot slipped on the icy driveway … said person ended up with a broken hip and months of recovery. Anybody can apply for the stupid human tricks award.
I despair for the species ( HT: Road to Perdition, Aurora speakeasy )
Well I guess the good news is, he’ll never work on a garbage truck.
SPK you can’t pull it from the front! You got to lean it back!
You must be the kids uncle.
Wind + big plastic thing + not understanding you can turn it around = humor on the internet