rise in morning torn
desire improve, enjoy world
makes day hard to plan
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White: Notes and Comment, interview with Israel Shenker, July 11, 1969; New York Times; quoted in E. B. White: A Biography, by Scott Elledge, p. 3
beware stations near
notorious Orlando
International
I was discussing travel advisories that countries around the world issue for the United States and I got to thinking, just what do these advisories say?
At this time, I have a Niece and Nephew-in-law who are working in at a hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo about which the United States Dept of State has issued a Level 3: Reconsider Travel warning with the usual comments like:
The eastern DRC region and the three Kasai provinces (Kasai, Kasai-Oriental, Kasai-Central) due to crime, civil unrest, armed conflict and kidnapping.
The U.S. government has extremely limited ability to provide emergency consular services to U.S. citizens outside of Kinshasa due to poor infrastructure and security conditions.
So I looked up the the current and official Foreign travel advice for Travel in the United States as issued by His Majesty’s Government Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
Under Safety and Security: Road Travel, HMG warns:
Driving is on the right hand side of the road.
Check the weather conditions before embarking on a long journey.
Do not sleep in your car by the roadside or in rest areas and avoid leaving any items on display in your car.
Petrol stations that do not display the price of fuel usually charge considerably more than the national average for a gallon of fuel. They’re often found close to tourist destinations and airports, and notoriously near to Orlando International Airport.
There you are.
Beware gas stations notoriously near to Orlando International Airport.
The Online Oxford Learners dictionary defines notoriously as in a way that is well known for being bad.
On the other hand, those have Gas Stations made the list.
You can almost hear, The U.K. government has extremely limited ability to provide emergency consular services to U.K. Subjects close to tourist destinations and airports, and notoriously near to Orlando International Airport.
dyeing an orange,
orange, man’s most impudent
gesture to this date
In the kitchen cabinet is a bag of oranges for morning juice.
Each orange is stamped “Color Added.”
The dyeing of an orange, to make it orange, is man’s most impudent gesture to date.
It is really an appalling piece of effrontery, carrying the clear implication that Nature doesn’t know what she is up to.
On a Florida Key, February 1941; Essays of E. B. White, p. 13
suspended between
the bottom of the sea and
the top of the sky
Men who ache all over for tidiness and compactness in their lives often find relief for their pain in the cabin of a thirty-foot sailboat at anchor in a sheltered cove. Here the sprawling panoply of The Home is compressed in orderly miniature and liquid delirium, suspended between the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky, ready to move on in the morning by the miracle of canvas and the witchcraft of rope. It is small wonder that men hold boats in the secret place of their mind, almost from the cradle to the grave. —
“The Sea and the Wind That Blows,” 1963; Essays of E. B. White, pp. 205–206.
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (2011, Cornell University Press) by Mary White. This book was compiled by Mr. White’s grand daughter and while I am grateful she pulled all these together in one book, I am not sure I don’t consider this cheating.
eyes that often seem
capable seeing things not
visible to men
Any sort of disturbance, whether man-made or elemental, is of immense interest to a goose, and geese watch the world through eyes that often seem capable of seeing things not visible to men. I have always envied a goose its look of deep, superior wisdom. I miss the cordiality of geese, the midnight cordiality. And they are the world’s best drinkers, forever at it. —
Postscript to “The Eye of Edna,” April 1962; Points of My Compass, p. 14
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (2011, Cornell University Press) by Mary White. This book was compiled by Mr. White’s grand daughter and while I am grateful she pulled all these together in one book, I am not sure I don’t consider this cheating.
uncanny – was like
nothing that had ever come
to the world before
It was the miracle God had wrought. And it was patently the sort of thing that could only happen once. Mechanically uncanny, it was like nothing that had ever come to the world before. Flourishing industries rose and fell with it. As a vehicle, it was hard-working, commonplace, heroic; and it often seemed to transmit those qualities to the persons who rode in it.—
“Farewell, My Lovely,” ca. 1936; Essays of E. B. White, p. 162, and Farewell to Model T; From Sea to Shining Sea, pp. 16–17.
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by the book In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (2011, Cornell University Press) by Mary White.
This book was compiled by Mr. White’s grand daughter and while I am grateful she pulled all these together in one book, I am not sure I don’t consider this cheating.
instagrammable
moments lacking are listed
don’t we need to pee?
Ginia Bellafante, writing in the New York Times (Must We Gentrify the Rest Stop?) about the changes at rest stops on the New York State Thruway stated:
Five years ago, the New York State Thruway Authority conducted a survey of more than 2,600 drivers to take measure of the customer experience at the service areas lining the 570 miles of road that make up one of the largest toll highways in the country, stretching from the edge of the Bronx up past Buffalo. Whether participants were traveling for work or for pleasure, they had needs that apparently were going unfulfilled.
The resulting report listed as chief takeaways that leisure travelers complained about unappealing interiors and the lack of “Instagrammable moments.”
Instagrammable moments?
Instagrammable moments!
When I was studying history back in college, I was taught over and over, in lectures, in statements, in LOUD RED LETTERS WRITTEN on term papers, to AVOID A SENSE OF PRESENT MINDEDNESS.
What was an instagrammable moment 10 years ago?
What will be an instagrammable moment be ten years from now.
Since the beginning of time people traveling from point A to point B have hoped for a clean, well lighted place to answer a call to nature.
And if it wasn’t too much trouble, maybe a decent cup of coffee and a bun or a biscuit or a doughnut maybe.
Why do these two things do not figure in as the chief takeaway on a survey of customer experience of service areas?
As Ms. Bellafante writes: In a society so casually stratified that major airlines now offer five classes of service and airport security lines can be bypassed for an annual fee, rest stops remain one of the few spaces in modern life that can be generally counted on to level us.
As my Dad would have put it, “Everybody has to pee.”
That won’t change but if it comes it to that, spare me anything instagrammable that captures that moment.
if you don’t like it
you can get on with it, others
pick choose if you can’t
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and the article, ‘It takes your hand off the panic button’: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land 100 years on by Andrew Dickson.
Mr. Dickson asks, ‘Is it genuinely one of the greatest works in the language, or – as the poet once claimed – just “a piece of rhythmical grumbling“?’
Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series based on ‘The Wasteland.’
A thoroughly enjoyable connection of wordplay and source of endless discussion in the search for meaning.
For myself, I like that bit about a piece of rhythmical grumbling by Mr. Eliot so said Mr. Eliot.
I have remembered this story before in these posts, but it reminds me of a story told by the actor Rex Harrison.
Mr. Harrison recounted rehearsing a play by George Bernard-Shaw and that the company was having a difficult time with a certain scene when, wonder of wonder, Bernard-Shaw himself dropped by to watch rehearsal.
Mr. Harrison tells how great this was as they went to the play write and asked how did he see this scene – what was he striving for?
Bernard-Shaw asked for a script and read over the scene, read it over again and a third time, then looked up and said, “This is rather bad isn’t it.”
April cruellest month,
lilacs out dead land, mixing
memory desire
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and the article, ‘It takes your hand off the panic button’: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land 100 years on by Andrew Dickson.
Mr. Dickson asks, ‘Is it genuinely one of the greatest works in the language, or – as the poet once claimed – just “a piece of rhythmical grumbling“?’
Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series based on ‘The Wasteland.’
A thoroughly enjoyable connection of wordplay and source of endless discussion in the search for meaning.
For myself, I like that bit about a piece of rhythmical grumbling by Mr. Eliot so said Mr. Eliot.
I have remembered this story before in these posts, but it reminds me of a story told by the actor Rex Harrison.
Mr. Harrison recounted rehearsing a play by George Bernard-Shaw and that the company was having a difficult time with a certain scene when, wonder of wonder, Bernard-Shaw himself dropped by to watch rehearsal.
Mr. Harrison tells how great this was as they went to the play write and asked how did he see this scene – what was he striving for?
Bernard-Shaw asked for a script and read over the scene, read it over again and a third time, then looked up and said, “This is rather bad isn’t it.”
at the violet hour
eyes turn upward from the desk
human engine waits
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and the article, ‘It takes your hand off the panic button’: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land 100 years on by Andrew Dickson.
Mr. Dickson asks, ‘Is it genuinely one of the greatest works in the language, or – as the poet once claimed – just “a piece of rhythmical grumbling“?’
Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series based on ‘The Wasteland.’
A thoroughly enjoyable connection of wordplay and source of endless discussion in the search for meaning.
For myself, I like that bit about a piece of rhythmical grumbling by Mr. Eliot so said Mr. Eliot.
I have remembered this story before in these posts, but it reminds me of a story told by the actor Rex Harrison.
Mr. Harrison recounted rehearsing a play by George Bernard-Shaw and that the company was having a difficult time with a certain scene when, wonder of wonder, Bernard-Shaw himself dropped by to watch rehearsal.
Mr. Harrison tells how great this was as they went to the play write and asked how did he see this scene – what was he striving for?
Bernard-Shaw asked for a script and read over the scene, read it over again and a third time, then looked up and said, “This is rather bad isn’t it.”
No Haiku For You 