Alternate Title: Just THROW the damn ball!
No matter who you are, no matter how GOOD your mood may be, this will improve it. [Full Screen, Speakers Up. Stay with it.]
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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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the magic of canines, proof of the Divine Sovereign
thank you
The drive and ability of some humans to assemble beauty out of disparate elements is remarkable. And a blessing to the rest of us.
Joy!
The misery of cities is noted in the fact that at least 7 times during that video I thought “Isn’t it illegal for those dogs to be on the beach?”
But I shook it off like a wet dog.
Don’t know about all that catterwauling in the background (turned it way down) but Spaniels, what’s not to like? Since 1984 we’ve had at least 1 continuously, cockers and brittanys. 2000 to 2011 we had a cocker and a brittany. Our current mutt is 1/2 brittany and 1/2 aussie, 100% high energy and loyal to a fault. But I’d have her no other way.
Two springers and a springer cross. The males tend to end up in rescue because people don’t know how to deal with them. But they are such loving and funny dogs.
We’re a setter family and I’ve got a mini GoldenDoodle that I love like my kids. Friend of mine had a pair of Springers that nearly ran his whole family crazy before they settled down and the gyp never really did, ever, plant her feet on terra firma.
Sporting and water dogs…there are few things better but you do need a calm disposition and a firm but gentle hand because they will try your patience to limits you never knew you had. They really don’t begin to grow up until they’re well past 3 years.
Neither do humans.
Something wonderful in its own way: Cats + Bach. Cat #2 (who takes up most of the short video) looks a lot like Miss Olive, and its movements (almost balletic toward the end) echo the delicacy of Bach’s sonata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAQu2LZIeaQ&ab_channel=Valhavingfun
Jack – we have 2 Border Collies. They’re both 12 going on 2. OMG! Talk about trying your patience. They are just too smart for their own good… and mine, too!
Thanks, PA. Great video and yes she does look like a younger Olive.