that mysterious
grandeur would be less grand if
less mysterious

In an essay titled, The Name and Nature of Poetry, A. E. Housman wrote:

That mysterious grandeur would be less grand if it were less mysterious; if the embryo ideas which are all that it contains should endue form and outline, and suggestion condense itself into thought.

Mr. Houseman was writing about poetry about which he also said, Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it.

I think I understand what he is getting at.

Don’t look too hard for meaning when you can just enjoy something.

I have some favorite movies but movies that are my favorites not from the movie itself, but from the way the actors in the movie play their parts.

There is an old Charles Laughton movie titled Witness for the Prosecution that though painful to watch in some scenes, in others, there is much pleasure in watching Charles Laughton act.

Orson Welles courtroom address in Compulsion.

Robert Duvall and Robert Deniro in True Confessions.

Much of the writing of Jim Harrison for me is not in what he writes but in how he writes it.

It is time to stop wondering what it means and just enjoy what it is.

I took the day off today.

I wanted a day off and I had the time on my side of the ledger at work.

My dear wife signed up for the day off as well and after a lazy start and some errands we spent the day in the sand at the beach.

We stretched out in the sun along the salt water and the waves and enjoyed the granduer of ocean that can be mysterious.

We left it at that.

The sun, the sand, the salt, the surf.

It was grand.

A mysterious grandeur would be less grand if it were less mysterious.

A day off with nothing and it was everything I thought it could be.

It something they call down here, locals living like tourists.

A grand mystery.

they age according
to grief they experience
not the years they live

From the line, “We have a saying in Afghanistan: People age according to the grief they experience, not the years they live.” as written by By Fahim Abed in the article, We Are the Flour Between Two Millstones in the New York Times on August, 12, 2022.

In an article about the life of Afghans, not in Afghanistan, but here in the United States.

Mr. Abed writes, “I am in the United States now, and though I am physically safe, my psychological well-being is anything but. Everything is so different here, and I have no idea about how most things work: Where do I park my car? How do I pay my bills? And, by the way, how does American health insurance work?”

Park the car to how does American insurance work.

Gosh, who does know.

So many friends that I talked to feel the same way. As the anecdotes added up, I couldn’t help but think of another saying we have in Afghanistan: We are the flour between two millstones.

I shudder thinking about my generation being ground into powder, wedged between the anxiety of being refugees while watching the Taliban dismantle the country we grew up in.

Still Mr. Abed ends with, “But for now, all we can do is wake up, look at ourselves in the mirror, and hope that today, if even for a little bit, will be better.”

All we can do is wake up.

look at ourselves in the mirror.

Hope that today, if even for a little bit, will be better.

Americans, us as Americans, we got a pretty good deal.

Maybe time we should act like it.

gospel of light is
crossroads indolence action
be ignited or gone

Adapted from What I Have Learned So Far by Mary Oliver.

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.