Why I Wear My Mask | Welcome to the Masquerade
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Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
My Back Pages
In Memory Of W.B. Yeats
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
from “1054 AD”
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
Your Say
My Thinking Hat
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The People Yes
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
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
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
Chimes of Freedom
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
The Vault
My Back Pages
Byzantium
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
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
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
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
from “1054 AD”
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.
Another succinct piece I can post on several FB sites to bust their asses. We have a maskhole Gov. in NC, who clearly has a mask fetish. And hates hiz State.
Spot on! Perfectly done!
Yesterday I was in a waiting room at the doctor’s office, with about 3 other people scattered throughout the small room. One elderly man was dooming and glooming about the selfishness of schools reopening . How they were going to all bring COVID home and kill everyone. I’d say fear will be more destructive than actual disease.
Masks are now required by law around here in hoosierville.
Not sure what the penalty is, don’t care.
We rarely go anywhere so it’s not a big deal.
FedEx dood came by last week and he wasn’t wearing, so I guess it is still selective law enforcement.
03Nov it’s going to boil over. maybe sooner
@Jewel
“Yesterday I was in a waiting room at the doctor’s office….”
Last week, I was in my dermatologist’s waiting room awaiting the semi-annual removal of questionable pieces of my hide. The entry procedure is prolly familiar to most of us: Somebody from the doctor’s staff is given the unenviable job of door guard, where they take everyone’s temperature and ask the required questions before entry is allowed. So I passed that test and took my seat awaiting my turn at the knife. And of course, wearing a mask is mandatory (I’ll skip the debate about whether a mask is helpful or not).
A couple of minutes after taking my seat, in walked this woman, wearing her mask as she must, and she went through the door guard’s ritual. But her mask was one of those belly dancer veils, transparent, and complete with jewels and little twinkly thingis.
Now remember: I was at my dermatologist’s office. If you’ve never been, they’re full of people my age….someone in their 50’s is usually young for the crowd. I will presume that this woman-publicly-wearing-her-belly-dancer-veil has the rest of the outfit to go along with her veil, but thankfully, she opted to leave that at home. No one, not in love with her, needs to see that.
I identify the paddle holster and it’s contents on my hip as a mask on my face and my preferred pronouns are yessir and nosir.
Now, what were you sayin’ ?
Everywhere a lock down. Everywhere mask-clad zombies. Here’s something amazing… some great news… something has actually worked out totally okay.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/coronavirus_common_sense.html
Where do we know that chick in the video from?
Something very familiar in her mannerism and speech; a video series or some such?
Anyway, it is a beautifully presented piece and hits just the right spots.
And to James ONeil’s point, a good paddle holster is my preference OSW as well.