scarcely anyone …
any time … can locate self
in meaningful sense
Adapted from the lines:
We achieve our dimensions for very specific reasons we ourselves ordain.
In other words, we already are, at any given moment, what we, in totality, wish to be.
Scarcely anyone at any given time can locate himself in a meaningful sense.
From the book, Sundog by Jim Harrison, Bantam Books, New York, 1985
sunrise ever on
this stage is acted God’s calm,
annual drama
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra,
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging,
silvery
fringes,
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products.
From A Carol of Harvest for 1867 by Walt Whitman as published in The Galaxy, an American monthly magazine founded by William Conant Church and his brother Francis P. Church in 1866, according to Wikipedia.
Also according to Wikipedia, Whitman’s position as a Galaxy author was important to his personal fortunes and his literary reputation. The Galaxy was respectable, it was popular, and it paid generously. It also provided a venue where Whitman could join with other writers in exploring the meaning of literary nationalism and cultural democracy for the new era.
Paid generously may be the most important two words in the lives of too many poets, artists and writers through all of history.
As Jim Harrison said once, “Just like all the writers’ schools have created less variety—there’s a sameness. I said once that the lowa Writers School on a yearly basis outproduces the English romantic movement. It’s all a delusion. What are you going to do with four thousand M.F.A.’s? It’s ludicrous.”
But the sunrise’s everyday in the God’s annual drama
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds.
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul.
Generous, too, God, is.
confused and distraught
this will have to serve – face it
these loom large these days
Driving to work this morning, I was listening to a collection of articles by Jim Harrison in a book posthumously published titled, A really big lunch (New York : Grove Press 2017).
It is a collection of Mr. Harrison’s articles about food, cooking and eating,
In the introduction by Mario Batali, Mr. Batali wrote of Jim Harrison, “…and nothing makes a cook quite so happy as someone who exists entirely to eat — and when not eating, to talk about eating, to hunt and fish for things to eat, or to spend time after eating talking about what we just ate.”
Mr. Batali also wrote that Mr. Harrison was someone … “who wrote sentences that stretched beyond the wildest poetry of my imagination” and I could appreciate that.
Still these are essays about eating, hunting and fishing for things to eat, and talking about what Mr. Harrison just ate.
Maybe not the best thing to listen to first thing in the morning especially for someone who still gets by on just coffee please until I wake up enough around lunch time to think about putting food in my system.
I made it through Mr. Batali and then through the first essay titled, Eat Your Heart Out, a discussion of commercially available hot sauces (in 1981), the rain was pouring down, I couldn’t see and much as I enjoy Mr. Harrison’s prose, I said to myself, “… time for some music” and as the car eased off the bridge onto the island where I work, I reached over to switch from audio books to music.
In that second before the click registered on my handheld, the next essay (Food for Thought as published in Smoke Signals 1982) in the queue stated to play.
I heard the first two words of that essay before it stopped.
I heard, “Dear Mike ...”
And it went off.
Well, boy howdy but that kind of freaked me out.
I had to hear what Mr. Harrison was writing to me.
I switched my device back to audio books and hit play.
I heard the last bit the previous article that I had just heard and then once more I heard, “Dear Mike …”
“I am so confused and distraught …”
And I hit stop.
That’s all I needed to hear.
Confused and distraught.
Like Castor and Pollux, the twins of the Gemini, confused and distraught.
The full sentence, I later looked up is, I am so confused and distraught that this will have to serve as my food letter for the upcoming issue. Let’s face it, the twin specters of food and politics loom large these days.
Food I am not so much worried with.
But politics?
And of much else in life?
Confused and distraught.
Remember Potiphar in the Bible?
According to the Genesis 39:6. Potiphar … “did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.“
Did not concern himself with anything … ANYTHING, except the food he ate.
Lucky guy!
quizzical sense earth
far more fascinating place than
allowed it to be
In my reading I often come across a short collection of words by an author and I say to myself. that might work as a haiku if I could connect it with something.
In my adventures, I often come across a scene and take a photo and I say to myself that might work with a haiku if I connect it with something.
We had taken a walk today along what is called Fish Haul beach on the north end of of Hilton Head Island.
This is the location of the one of the first successes the Union Army and Navy had back in 1861 in the Civil War.
You can look out over the waters where Port Royal Sound and the Atlantic Ocean come together and I said to my wife that take away the few cottages you could see, and this is what it looked like back then except there were 40 warships under sail, moving a circle as they fired some 4000 shells at Confederate forts on the Phillips Island to the north and Hilton Head island to the south.
The shelling lasted about 4 hours and all the Confederates ran away.
“And nothing has changed,” I said again.
It was an extremely low tide and we were able to walk further back along the salt marshes behind the beach front.
We came to a pond that we have looked at for years but never from this side before.
There were dead trees and reeds and marsh grass and sea shells.
It was place and a view new to us.
And I thought …
In a few hours, the tide will come and rearrange all this.
Nothing in front of us will stay the same.
This view, what we are seeing, will never been seen in this way again.
And I thought of this passage from True North by Jim Harrison.
“ … [the] quizzical sense that the earth was a far more fascinating place than I had allowed it to be.
I was not inclined at the moment to blame anyone else for the number of ways I had been single minded in the wrong direction.”
I told my wife I wanted to stay at the point until the tide turned and wait as long as possible amd leave just before the tide cut us off.
I wanted to see it.
My wife stared at my and shook her head and walked back the path out of the marsh.
I have this quizzical sense that the earth is a far more fascinating place than I had allow it to be.
I am not inclined at the moment to blame anyone else for the number of ways I had been single minded in the wrong direction.
But I am trying to enjoy the path I am on.
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.
