shadows seemed to float down the stream with the current float unresisting
Adapted from the line:
Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge.
It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout.
They were very satisfactory.
As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.
As it appears in Big Two-Hearted River: I by Ernie Hemingway.
but they were young yet there remained for them many life’s uncut pages
Adapted from Jack London’s short story, Dutch Courage.
Back in the day, I worked at a publishing house.
They had an entire department devoted to creating the printing pages layout of a the books published by the publishing house.
Then, and maybe still, when a book is printed, the pages are not printed one at a time, like pages out of a copy machine and then bound together.
No Sir!
A book is printed out on sheets of paper, four feet wide and five feet long.
It seems to me that either 32 or 64 pages of a book were printed on one piece of paper.
Pages are printed on BOTH sides of this giant piece of paper.
A machine then folded and folded and folded this sheet of paper, origami style, so that when it was all over, what you had was a block of folded paper, with all the pages lined up in order.
Page 33 might be on the back of page 32, but when it was laid out on the paper, page 33 might be in the center of side 1, so page 32 had to be place in the correct corresponding place on side 2.
Layout was like a giant sudoku game.
A couple of things resulted from this process.
One was that sometimes, the page counted didn’t match up.
Did you ever wonder why you got a book and it had a couple of blank pages before the forward and after the end of the book?
And it is these blocks of 32 or 64 pages that make up the sections of pages that you can see in a book that has bound pages that have uncut edges.
Working in bookstores and libraries, I was taught that having an uncut edge was not a sign of sloppiness but instead the rough edged pages were a sign to those who knew, that the book had a sewn instead of a glued binding
But that was just the outer edge.
Of course, the inner edges of the book had to be cut, if for no other reason to remove the folded edges.
If those weren’t removed, the pages couldn’t be opened and the book couldn’t be read.
And there is the story of life’s uncut pages.
Some book collectors wanting a first edition, who also wanted it kept in mint condition could hardly be expected to want to read any book in question, the true collector just needed the book to complete their collection.
So the true collector bought first editions that were left UNCUT!
Early in their marriage, Young Eleanor perused the books in Franklin Roosevelt’s library and was dismayed to find so many books with uncut pages.
She had to tear open a couple pages just to see what the books were about.
“YOU DID WHAT?” asked Frank at lunch when she reported what she had done.
SO books with uncut pages at not uncommon.
Books with their stories wrapped up inside.
Mr. London, writing about two young men about to try and climb the famous Half Dome in Yosemite wrote this:
“What’s that for?” Gus asked, pointing to a leather-shielded flask which Hazard was securely fastening in his shirt pocket.
“Dutch courage, of course,” was the reply. “We’ll need all our nerve in this undertaking, and a little bit more, and,” he tapped the flask significantly, “here’s the little bit more.”
“Good idea,” Gus commented.
How they had ever come possessed of this erroneous idea, it would be hard to discover; but they were young yet, and there remained for them many uncut pages of life.
So many erroneous ideas.
But they were young yet, and there remained for them many uncut pages of life.
“I saw this and I said ‘Jeez, that’s not right that a soldier doesn’t have a headstone. Somebody should do something,‘ ” Kolehmainen said. “And actually, a friend said, ‘Well, why isn’t that somebody you? Do something.’”
For me, that kind of summed the basis of the American Citizen Soldier.
For ages, this tired old world has seen, as is says in the Bible, “… the time when kings go off to war, soldiers march off for King and County, SPQR, for the Fatherland, for the Motherland or the Homeland.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!
I use the line Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori or It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country on Memorial day without mentioning that in the WW1 poem, Dulce et Decorum est, Wilfred Owen wrote:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
The old lie.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!
Then there is the American Citizen Soldier.
What was their motivation?
I have read a lot of history.
I have read a lot of military history.
I have read a lot of the military history of the United States.
And a certain feeling, a certain suspect animus or bias or maybe just a feeling is present in this history.
A feeling that was expressed by Mr. Kolehmainen in the mentioned Freep story.
I saw this and I said ‘Jeez, that’s not right.’
‘Somebody should do something!’
And actually, a friend said, ‘Well, why isn’t that somebody you?’
‘Do something.‘
Stephen Ambrose (and yes, I quote him reluctantly but there it is) wrote in his book, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 – May 7, 1945, New York: Simon & Schuster (1997):
The Great War changed the language.
It made patriotic words sound hollow, unacceptable, ridiculous, especially for the next set of young Americans sent to Europe to fight over the same battlefields their fathers had fought over.
Nevertheless, as much as the Civil War soldiers, the Gls believed in their cause.
They knew they were fighting for decency and democracy and they were proud of it and motivated by it.
They just didn’t talk or write about it.
I saw this and I said ‘Jeez, that’s not right.’
‘Somebody should do something!’
And actually, a friend said, ‘Well, why isn’t that somebody you?’
‘Do something.‘
somebody should do something … somebody? well … why isn’t that you?
vibrant but distant world love unpredictable with equanimity
In the New Yorker (Yorker, May 29, 2023, Issue 14 Volume 99), At the Galleries used this line in a review of two Yvonne Jacquette shows,
… paintings (and drawings and prints) are vibrant but distant, expressing their love of the unpredictable world with equanimity.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, equanimity means evenness of mind under stress. equanimity suggests a habit of mind that is only rarely disturbed under great strain.
According to the Cambridge online dictionary, equanimity means a calm mental state, especially after a shock or disappointment or in a difficult situation.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, unpredictable means not predictable, such as not able to be known or declared in advance.
According to the Cambridge online dictionary, unpredictable means likely to change suddenly and without reason and therefore not able to be predicted.
Put it all together and you get:
… paintings (and drawings and prints) are vibrant but distant, expressing their love of the not predictable, not able to be known or declared in advance, likely to change suddenly and without reason, world, with an evenness of mind and a calm mental state.
Vibrant but distant,
expressing love of the not predictable,
not able to be known
or declared in advance,
likely to change suddenly
and without reason,
world,
with an evenness of mind
and a calm mental state.
Hmmmmmmm.
That’s not bad is it?
A bit of free-verse, imagistic poetry almost maybe worthy to stand by itself.
Third Avenue (with reflection) III (2004–5) Yvonne Jacquette
The complete review reads:
Since the late nineteen-seventies, the name Yvonne Jacquette has been synonymous with aerial landscapes: cities twinkling at night or patchwork rural expanses, seen from the high floors of skyscrapers or from low-flying planes.
These paintings (and drawings and prints) are vibrant but distant, expressing their love of the unpredictable world with equanimity.
Call the images realist if you insist, but their intricate patterns tilt toward abstraction, a reminder that paintbrushes aren’t cameras.
Two wonderful shows at the DC Moore gallery (on view through June 10) present very early and very late works by the American artist, who died in April, at the age of eighty-eight.
Instead of airborne perspectives, the show surprises with domestic vantage points, whether it’s a Maine meadow framed by floral curtains, from 1964, or the back of a billboard seen through the window of Jacquette’s Manhattan studio, from 2020. “Barn Ceiling” (above), from 1969, is a luminous, nearly seven-foot-tall interior that’s also a rigorous study in stripes (and, maybe, a post-and-beam riposte to Minimalism, then in its heyday).
Jacquette planned the exhibitions in recent months with her son (and fellow-painter), Tom Burckhardt.
One of the shows’ most touching moments is a rare still-life, from 2020 — film cannisters stored on shelves, their stacks suggesting miniature towers — that also reads as a portrait of Jacquette’s late husband, the Swiss filmmaker and photographer Rudy Burckhardt.
rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night … and I love the rain
April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops Let the rain sing you a lullaby The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk The rain makes running pools in the gutter The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf.
It’s been dry.
It’s been dry here in the Low Country of South Carolina.
One mile from the Atlantic Ocean and there isn’t enough water on the land, despite how much water is next to the land.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Low Country is Abnormally Dry but not in a drought.
And it has started to rain.
A storm has anchored itself off the coast of South Carolina and the lows and highs and storm fronts have locked this storm into place over head and it is going to rain.
It will most likely rain for the next day.
It might rain for the next two days.
It could rain for the next three days.
As you might guess, it is Memorial Day Weekend.
I think that pretty much guarantee’s rain for the next three days.
We live in an ocean side resort community.
People have put a lot of time, money and effort into arranging a Memorial Day vacation at the shore.
I think that pretty much guarantee’s rain for the next three days.
We live in the south of South Carolina.
Life here is designed to be lived outdoors.
Miles of beaches, acres of golf courses and very little opportunity to do anything under cover or indoors.
I think that pretty much guarantee’s rain for the next three days.
I think of the weather jokes I learned during 20 years of working in local TV news.
What do you call the day that follows two days of rain?
Monday!
By law, the seventh day of a seven day forecast is always warm and sunny. You just never get to that seventh day …
Turn a frown upside down … you get rain in your nose.
It is so true that everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.
And I can’t do anything about it.
I guarantee rain for the next three days.
So I will watch it.
So I will listen to it.
And without other options, I will love it.
Let the rain kiss you Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops Let the rain sing you a lullaby The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk The rain makes running pools in the gutter The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.
No Haiku For You 