God, it is something face the sun know you are free hear the undersong
IT is something to face the sun and know you are free. To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean: It is something. To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands, Clean for the day book today and the record of the after days, Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready, So to have clean hands: God, it is something, One day of life so And a memory fastened till the stars sputter out And a love washed as white linen in the noon drying. Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth. O yes, clean hands is the chant and only one man knows its sob and its undersong and he dies clenching the secret more to him than any woman or chum. And O the great brave men, the silent little brave men, proud of their hands—clutching the knuckles of their fingers into fists ready for death and the dark, ready for life and the fight, the pay and the memories — O the men proud of their hands.
Clean Hands by Carl Sandburg as printed in Smoke and steel, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920)
Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth
On June 17, 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Monroe, “I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. The pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect but the utility greater. It will make you adore your own country, it’s soil, it’s climate, it’s equality, liberty, laws, people and manners. My god! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.”
Two years before the Constitution, they were both future Presidents but that was a job that didn’t even exist yet.
As I drive to work and face the sun with clean hands I feel the sun on my face but cannot help but hear the sob and its undersong.
I read the news and I think, My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of.
do absolutely nothing be effortlessly aimless niksening!
I was raised in West Michigan where you often heard the odd phrase, “If you’re not Dutch, You’re not much.”
West Michigan has a history of being Dutch since the first batch of Dutch Protesting Protestants arrived back in the 1850’s.
And what were they protesting back home that they had to leave?
You know …
The use of the modern music in church and I am NOT making this up.
This one group was bound for Iowa when a promoter/developer met them in Buffalo and showed them pictures of the beautiful city on the lake in West Michigan.
The land there that this feller was selling was even cheaper than the land in Iowa, so West Michigan it was, but boy were they surprised when they got there to find all they had was a picture of what the town could be.
But I digress.
As I was saying, the saying was If You’re Not Dutch …
Turns out that has morphed into “If You’re Dutch, Don’t do Much!”
Niksen means Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing!
Ms. Groskop writes, “in modern society there are lots of nice things to do. As a result, we do a lot.
The pace of life is higher than in non-western societies and the level of life satisfaction is also high and keeps rising.
And yet … A side-effect is that we get into time pressure.
And we dream of more relaxation.”
Niksen gives us what we crave: an explanation for what’s missing – the presence of nothing in our lives.”
Don’t get too excited as not much is changing about being Dutch.
Ms. Groskop quotes Carolien Hamming, the founder and CEO of CSR Centrum, a centre for research into stress and resilience just south of Utrecht, “It has nothing to do with our culture. On the contrary, we’re Calvinists and tell each other to work harder.”
So what is different?
Olga Mecking, the author of the book, Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing says:
“We always have in mind some kind of outcome.
When we prepare meals, we think, ‘This meal will help me lose weight or will make me healthier.’
If we go for a walk, it has to be part of our 10,000 steps.
So we lose that fun of just eating or just walking.
So it’s about letting go of the outcome.”
I like that.
Letting go of the outcome.
I like that a lot.
Doing something just to do something.
Going to the see something WITHOUT needed a selfie to prove you were there.
Just do it as my shoes say.
Letting go of the outcome.
I think I love that.
As Ms. Groskopf writes:
“… you don’t need to be Dutch or know the word niksen to do nothing, you can just … do it.
And there’s no way of doing nothing the wrong way.“
sometimes, each day is … making shoes for dead people who no longer walk
I had a job I loved but changes and more changes in management made doing the job more and more a frustrating nightmare.
I worked managing local TV news websites.
I had been doing this from day one when this company decided to go online an I was hired to design their first website for TV station in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Online school closings?
I made up, literally made up, the code.
Online High School Football Scoreboards?
I created the process.
Online election results?
I was part of the team that invented them.
But the job was changing because the managers were changing.
We went from people who did things to people who managed things.
One of the changes that caused so much frustration was the decision to separate the team I was on to be further and further from the news content that we worked to put online everyday.
When I started the job, the people on the web team were part of the creative effort for the content that we put online.
Under new management, we were told we were technicians and that was it.
Not that I added to the news that much but my opinions had been worth something and when I wanted to, I could contribute and write the occasional story.
When President Ford died and his funeral was in Grand Rapids we were ready on air and online.
I worked 24 hour days that entire week it seems like.
And I was able to reserve for myself the privilege of writing the final story that wrapped up the station coverage of the event.
Now I was told no more being a part of the news.
Just get it online.
I needed a creative outlet.
Buy this time I had moved from a local station to a corporate web team working with all the stations owned by this company.
My office was in ATL.
And I needed a creative outlet so I started scribbling down haiku based on words I saw or heard on my daily commute to work in downtown Atlanta.
Instead of saying hello to people at the TV Station where my office was, I would greet them with a haiku.
Sometimes I got a friendly nod.
Most times I got a shaking head.
Then I decided I would take advantage of my background and launch a blog!
A blog were I would publish my haiku on a daily basis.
I started in January of 2019.
On February 6th I wrote this one.
It was, and is, based on a passage in the book, The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford.
Short Timers is the book that Stanley Kubrick turned into the movie, Full Metal Jacket.
In the chapter, Body Count, Mr. Hasford writes:
Rafter Man and I stop by the USO and exchange a few off-color jokes with tie round-eyed Red Cross girls, who give us donuts. We ask the Red Cross girls if they expect us to satisfy our lust with a donut and they explain that a donut hole is all we rate. In the USO there are barrels and barrels of letters which have been written to us by children back in the World: Rafter Man reads the letters out loud. He can still be touched by them. To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk.
That last line, To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk, stuck in my brain and the next morning after reading it, feeling blue about my job I wrote:
Sometimes, this job is … making shoes for dead people who no longer walk
I wrote it up and published it on my new blog and posted it on Facebook..
Later that day, Dave, a good friend of mine over in sales who followed my adventures working for a company that wanted to be online without really wanting to be online, stuck his head in my door.
“Good one“, was all he said.
And he left.
Better than any A I ever got.
Not that I got that many A’s.
And I thought, let’s see how long I can keep this going.
what will the day bring when the day starts out playing the Liberty Bell march
Big Bill wrote:
To sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
I put it to you:
to wake, to face the day, ay there’s the rub: For in the day of waking, what reality will come.
I got up today and followed my morning regime of shower, coffee, newspapers, clothes, medicines and nostrums and sat down if front of my computer to start work.
I turned on my computers, logged in and clicked the link to the online radio station from London that plays behind my day and heard the single stoke of a bell.
Then band music began to play in the unmistakable style of a John Phillip Sousa march.
The bell sound identified the piece of music as Sousa’s Liberty Bell March, which according to Wikipedia, was written by Lieutenant Commander Sousa as part of unfinished operetta but became famous as march.
Also from Wikipedia, The ship’s bell from the SS John Philip Sousa, a World War II Liberty ship, is housed at the Marine Barracks and is used by The President’s Own in select performances of the march.
The march follows the standard form of AABBCDCDC. The trio (sections C and D) uses tubular bells to symbolize the Liberty Bell ringing. The bells usually begin during the first breakstrain (section D), but some bands use them at the first trio (section C).
This is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, and strings.
For me?
For me and a lot of people my age, the Liberty Bell march meant one thing.
It meant Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Again from Wikipedia,
The march is best known today for being associated with the British TV comedy program Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–1974), which used as its opening theme the version performed by the Band of the Grenadier Guards and published in 1938. Cast member Terry Gilliam, the only American member of the troupe, argued for the use of “The Liberty Bell” because it had fallen into the public domain by that time and could thus be used without the need to pay royalties. He has said the piece was chosen because the troupe thought it would not be associated with the program’s content, and that the first bell strike and subsequent melody would give the impression of getting “straight down to business.”
The Monty Python mode of presenting the tune was with a single strike of the bell, lifted from the third section and increased in volume, followed by a strain of each of the first two sections, followed by the famous stomping foot animation and a noticeably flatulent “splat” sound reminiscent of a whoopee cushion.
John Cleese once described the show and comedy at large as a ‘accepting a ridiculous situation and then proceed through the situation logically.’
For example Mr. Cleese pointed out, what if sidewalks were perpendicular?
Mr. Cleese answered that by saying something like, ‘If sidewalks were perpendicular, people using the sidewalks would have to be outfitted like alpine mountain climbers.”
Which led to sketch of the Python Troup making there way up a sidewalk with ropes, pitons and thick winter clothes with a background narration of a tense BBC presenter pointing out all the danger of climbing a sidewalk and the awful scene of one the climbers losing their grip and rolling down the sidewalk, plunging to sure death.
Of course, the entire time, real people are walking up and down the sidewalk, past all the climbers.
Accept a ridiculous situation and then proceed through the situation logically.
Its February and gray and rainy and cold here and everywhere.
Through out literature people ask about things God created and ask why.
Why Mosquitos?
Why Platypuses?
I ask, Why February?
The country faces a Presidential election where by most accounts, most folks don’t like or want either candidate and there is a near consensus of those who haven’t lost their minds that these candidates cannot be the best people for the job in a country of 330 million.
Wars are becoming common once again through the world.
Nature again seems to be trying to wash us all away, but only because we, the world as whole, pissed off nature and messed up the climate.
And my day started with the sound of single stoke of a bell.
Accept a ridiculous situation and then proceed through the situation logically.
As Bette Davis said, fasten those seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy flight.
For in the day of waking, what reality will come.
At least the song got me to look towards the coming day with a laugh.
No Haiku For You 