Category: Life

February 15 – Glass House?

Glass House? My windows,
were all broken long ago,
Old age benefit!

McCarthy: You’ve been drinking alone, Pauly. I don’t like that.

Beigler: Drop the stone, Counselor. You live in a glass house.

McCarthy: My windows were busted a long time ago, so I can say as I please.

From the movie, Anatomy of a Murder – This dialogue was between young lawyer Paul Beigler (Jimmy Stewart) and his friend, Parnell Emmett McCarthy (Arthur O’Connell). Beigler refers to McCarthy as, “One of the world’s great men”

Have to say that the exchange is only in the movie and not in the book of the same name.

In the book, Beigler watches McCarthy stumble out of his office on New Years Eve and says to himself, “To Parnell Emmett Joseph McCarthy – one of the world’s obscure great men.”

Would be interesting to find out why the name was shortened for the movie.

Both the movie and the book are HIGHLY RECOMMENED.

Haiku for You – February 14 – Love

All things, understand?

Because I love. Everything,

is, exists, only.

Adapted from Prince Andrei’s thoughts, from War and Peace (Book 12, Chapter 16) by Leo Tolstoy

As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now always occupied his mind- about life and death, and chiefly about death.

He felt himself nearer to it.

“Love? What is love?” he thought.

“Love hinders death. Love is life.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

Everything is united by it alone.

Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

These thoughts seemed to him comforting.

But they were only thoughts.

Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun.

Haiku for You – February 13 – Waiting for the Click

My transformation,
each morning, coffee, waiting …
that click in my head

BIG DADDY: Did you say click?
BRICK: Yes, click.
BIG DADDY: What click?
BRICK: A click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful.
BIG DADDY: I sure in hell don’t know what you’re talking about, but it disturbs me.
BRICK: It’s just a mechanical thing.
BIG DADDY: What is a mechanical thing?
BRICK: This click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful. I got to drink till I get it. It’s just a mechanical thing, something like a — like a — like a —
BIG DADDY: Like a–
BRICK: Switch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — all of a sudden there’s — peace!

from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

Haiku for You – February 12 – Mister Lincoln

Dear Mister Lincoln,

Yes, today we know your name!

We wish you were here!

On Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, I try to respond to the poem, Nancy Hanks by Rosemary Benét (wife of Stephen Vincent Benét).

If Nancy Hanks
Came back as a ghost,
Seeking news
Of what she loved most,
She’d ask first
“Where’s my son?
What’s happened to Abe?
What’s he done?”

“You wouldn’t know
About my son?
Did he grow tall?
Did he have fun?
Did he learn to read?
Did he get to town?
Do you know his name?
Did he get on?”

Maybe a more appropriate haiku would have been,

Dear Nancy Lincoln,
Today, yes, we know his name.
We wish he was here!

mjh