fog, little cat feet sits looking over harbor on silent haunches
From Fog in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).
I will bet you one dollar you knew this poem.
I will double that bet and guess you knew it was Mr. Sandburg.
I will double that bet and guess that its the only poem by Mr. Sandburg you know.
Maybe a safe bet, but if there are two things I hope from all this is that most folks know this poem and that it is by this poet and for today, and you know what, that is enough!
So let us go on out to the kitchen and grab ourselves a beer to celebrate if I won or do the same thing if I lost.
Fog as published in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).
The fog comes on little cat feet.
It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
By the way with a 60 degree swing in the temperature since last weekend and with the ocean still at about 55 degrees, we gots ourselves a FOG warning here in the Low Country / Coastal Empire.
briefest moments can have explosive power that overwhelm the times
Back to Jim Harrison, but then I am driving to work so Mr. Harrison is much on my mind when I sit down at me desk.
In the sometimes painful book True North (Grove Press, 2005), Mr. Harrison writes:
The easily perceptible linear thread through our lives causes a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days.
The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.
It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there.
The easily perceptible linear thread I thought was very good especially on a warm humid morning in January in the Low Country of South Carolina.
I drove the east towards the ocean into a thick fog bank that reduced my world to about 10 feet in front of me and 10 feet behind.
Nothing was easily perceptible.
Everything was hidden, even the great Atlantic Ocean that covers 20 percent of the earth’s surface.
I got to work and parked in the quiet of a gray, wet morning in January in a summer resort town.
Quiet.
But there was this sound in the background as I walked the path to my office.
I couldn’t place it.
I figured out that through some freak of acoustics in the fog, I could hear the ocean.
Couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.
Moments that can change lives can cause a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days.
Our own point of view is unique on earth.
Wherever you stand and look, you are the only one there.
But keep in mind this.
In one of Anthony Bourdain (if there was ever a literary complimentary combination like that of bacon with eggs it would be Bourdain and Harrison) shows, Mr. Bourdain spent the day with taggers, those folks who decorate subway cars in New York City.
These fellers described how they would paint a car in a certain pattern and then sit in a certain location with their buddies, a place were their point of view was unique on earth, and wait for hours and hours for that specific car with that specific pattern to come by.
Sometimes, when a train with car showed up, it would be going the wrong way and the pattern would be on the side away from that their point of view was unique on earth.
The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.
And sometimes, those moments are facing the wrong way.
The truly goofy part of my illustration of the taggers is that THEY KNOW they missed the moment as they say the other side of the car.
How many moments, explosive moments, come and go, never revealed.
Can you march to a different drummer when you don’t hear the drum?
Lots of thoughts for a foggy morning.
To be honest, I just liked the painting Mr. Harrison did with his words.
I continued down the beach past the path to my tourist cabin toward the estuary of the Sucker River a mile or two distant. The moon’s sheen on the water followed me as I walked for reasons not clear to me. It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there. The few sounds of the village diminished, and I mostly heard my feet in the damp sand, and then a loon call ahead in the estuarine area. To the left far out in Lake Superior the lights of a freighter made their slow passage to the west. I heard a coyote out on a forested promontory called Lonesome Point and single dog.
may the Lord bless the man who invented noble sleep and was never told
Adapted from the poem, Glad to Sleep by Julius C. Wright in the 1906 book, Poetic Diamonds.
God bless the man who invented noble sleep Bless his noble eye Bless him that he didn’t keep His wonderful invention, nor try
May the Lord bless him; yes, I say, Lord, bless his soul Invented almost the greatest thing And was never told
Mr. Wright identified himself as, “A Youth of Twenty Years, Who Never Spent a Day in College.“
And he wrote in the preface to Poetic Diamonds:
Whether or not the contents of this little volume will suit you I can’t tell. But I have put forth my best efforts to compose something to please everybody —
The Saint and the sinner, The looser and the winner, The great and the small. The low and the tall.
So I have pulled wide the throttle to let it go, and ask you to keep your eyes upon the rails that it may be widely and publicly circulated. And I truly hope that it will find a useful field of labor instead of filling an early grave in the cemetery of forgetfulness.
The poem took me as I had a late late late night the other and as I learned in college, it was the day after an ‘all-nighter’ that killed me, it was the day after the day after that I was a zombie.
But last night I had a noble sleep.
A sleep so tired that I didn’t dream.
Just a noble sleep.
Then that last paragraph I quoted from the preface.
So I have pulled wide the throttle to let it go, and ask you to keep your eyes upon the rails that it may be widely and publicly circulated. And I truly hope that it will find a useful field of labor instead of filling an early grave in the cemetery of forgetfulness.
I find it hard to get my arms around that I have been writing these haiku now for five years.
I started in January of 2019 after a morning of mindless commuting in Atlanta when I started to take note of odd combinations of words as I listened to books on tape and looked at the signs and advertising on my way downtown.
My admin page says I have made 1,786 posts and used 741,983 words (I know I copy and paste often so I cannot say I have written 741,983 words).
This is all a bit much and a bit nutz at the same time but the drinking song from La Traviata is playing on the radio just now so as I good Roman, I will take that for a positive omen.
I have pulled wide the throttle to let it go, and ask you to keep your eyes upon the rails that it may be widely and publicly circulated.
And I truly hope that it will find a useful field of labor instead of filling an early grave in the cemetery of forgetfulness.
CHANCE! Do Not Pass Go! Go To Jail, Do Not Collect … Two Hundred Dollars
The Standard Monopoly deck consists of 32 Cards: 16 Community Chest and 16 Chance Cards. 1 of those Chance cards is a Go to Jail. So when you pull a Chance card, you have a 1 in 16 chance of being sent directly to jail.
Oddly enough, Chance is ranked as 39th out of 40 possible squares anyone playing Monopoly might land on with any given throw.
I think that sounds a bit low for a game board of 40 squares where three of them are Chance but I leave that to those who like math more than I do.
But consider the concept.
At anytime you can land on Chance.
You select an orange card.
1 out of 16 of those cards will send you to jail.
Any of those cards, and you have to take one, will impact your turn and could impact your game.
To much like real life except of the act of drawing your card and knowing the moment where ‘destiny takes a hand’ is upon you.
Yesterday we landed on Chance and got the Go to Jail card.
Well not jail, but the next best thing, the Emergency Room.
The how and the why is incidental to this essay but let me say that all is well.
The point being is that me and my wife and one of our sons sat in the ER waiting room from 7PM to 2AM in downtown Charleston, SC.
We sat there, that is, once we found it.
Construction changed the location of the entrance to the ER but not the information on the current road signs that direct you to the ER or in the info available in Google Maps (How many times can you hear ‘Go To the Route’ before you throw your phone out the window).
I had stop and GET OUT to ask directions THREE TIMES – once from Security in the Parking Garage – once from a EMT driver in a parked ambulance and once from a lady in the hall just to GET TO ER – the PLACE WHERE BABIES ARE BORN and the PLACE WHERE HEART ATTACK VICTIMS ‘Every Minute Counts’ Go.
But I digress as we did persevere and we did get checked in and did join the group in the waiting room in a downtown ER in a minor major American city late at night.
And I was reminded that an ER, like being on a jury, is some of the best live performance theater available in America today and that either place is the LAST place you want other people making decisions about your future …
Cheney recently took to social media to share a statement made by Stefanik on January 6, 2021, condemning the Capitol rioters, a statement which has since been scrubbed from Stefanik’s official website. “I’m told that, in response to my prior tweet, @EliseStefanik deleted her 1/6/21 statement,” Cheney wrote, “that those who stormed the Capitol ‘must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.’”
In her original condemnation, Stefanik said, “I fully condemn the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today at the United States Capitol,” further stating that “violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable and anti-American. The perpetrators of this un-American violence and destruction must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Cheney continued by questioning Stefanik’s integrity, “One day [Stefanik] will have to explain how and why she morphed into a total crackpot. History, and our children, deserve to know.” The tension between Cheney and Stefanik encapsulates the Republican Party’s struggle with the legacy of January 6. While Cheney has committed herself to preventing Trump’s return to power, Stefanik has embraced the former president’s narrative, describing the Department of Justice’s probe into the riot as “baseless witch hunt investigations.” Stefanik’s defense of those convicted in relation to the riot, including referring to them as “hostages,” stands in stark contrast to her earlier stance.
No Haiku For You 