1.3.2023 – lunch time beach walking

lunch time beach walking
servers clicks webpages emails
somewhat disappear

Out the door of my office, down the street and cross at the corner.

Take the fenced in path through the parking lot.

Bang – Zoom, I am on the beach.

I am walking across the sand wearing khakis and a button down to be sure but still …

Jim Harrison once wrote along that lines that it would take a half a day but he could get on plane, land in northern upper lower Michigan, get in his car and be back at his home in Leelanau.

Really, he said, it was the only way he could handle being in Los Angeles.

Back at my desk, the servers, clicks, webpages and emails are waiting for me.

But I knew they would be when I left.

Whatever happened to those little naked elves?

12.27.2022 – hearts nearly always

hearts nearly always
to know silence perfectly
is to know music

From Carl Sandburg and his poem, To Know Silence Perfectly.

There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always

If the music dies down there is a silence

Almost the same as the movement of music

To know silence perfectly is to know music

12.3.2022 – sea rocks apounding

sea rocks apounding
in high wind, southeast sleet, these
are heard so to speak

From the poem, So to Speak by Carl Sandburg.

Dreams, graves, pools, growing
flowers, cornfields – these are
silent, so to speak

Northwest blizzards, sea rocks
apounding in high wind, southeast
sleet after a thaw – these are heard,
so to speak

11.18.2022 – make things so simple

make things so simple
things are simple as a rule
not always she said

From the exchange:

“There’s something awfully consoling about you,” said Flora. “You make things so simple.”

“Things are simple as a rule,” said the big game hunter.

“Not always,” said Flora.

As it appears in Agatha Christie’s whodunit The murder of Roger Ackroyd (United States: Grosset & Dunlap,1926.) which you can read here.

I am not a much of a mystery reader.

Most of the time my suspension of disbelief comes crashing down with a loud OH COME ON followed by the thump of me tossing the book to one side.

I don’t do that anymore because I don’t toss my kindle.

I watched a lot of that old Columbo TV series with Peter Falk and I enjoyed watching the crime and then watching Lt. Columbo find the clues we saw the murderer leave behind but still when in one episode the killer lit several cigarettes and left them on the ashtray as a false clue as to the timing of the crime, the first thing Lt. Columbo when he arrived on the scene was the check the filters of the cigarettes to see if they showed evidence of being smoked … boy howdy, but I yelled, OH COME ON.

As an aside, one of the more poignant things I have read lately was a short statement about Peter Falk. He died after a term with Alzheimer’s. In that statement, there was this short line that stated something along the lines that ‘for the last 3 years of his life, Peter Falk had no recollection of playing the role of Lt. Columbo.’

But I digress.

The other day I was watching one of my favorite movies, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (the one with Charles Laughton where they have some single camera shots that last 3 to 5 minutes without a cut or break in the dialogue) which you can watch right now online through this goofy app/website named TUBI – the free version has commercials, sometimes very long commercials but I am old and I don’t mind, and I wanted to try and track down some dialogue and as the movie is based on a play that is based on a book by the same name by Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, and I ended up on her wikipedia page.

According to wikipedia, In 2013, the 600 members of the Crime Writers’ Association chose The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as “the best whodunit … ever written”. Critic Sutherland Scott stated, “If Agatha Christie had made no other contribution to the literature of detective fiction she would still deserve our grateful thanks” for writing this novel.

Now I do not know who was in the Crime Writers’ Association and if this was based on a multiple choice ballot or vote of hands or voice vote or what have you, but there it is.

We will accept that the Crime Writer’s Association was a group of note but I do wonder.

I think of what Jim Harrison once said, when he said, that just once, he would like win an award that he had heard about it before he was told he had won it.

Still, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted best crime novel ever.

I thought that made The Murder of Roger Ackroyd worth a read or at least an attempt to read.

I am halfway through and it is holding my interest but I can put it down to, say, watch a few minutes of TV or something but I am plugging on.

So far, Dame Aggie has made things so simple.

And things are simple, as a rule.

But … not always.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

To be continued …

11.17.2022 – Lord, give me this day

Lord, give me this day
my opinion and forgive
the one yesterday

Adapted from the line:

For my part,” an editorial writer ended his silence, “I begin each bright morning with praying: Lord, give me this day my daily opinion and forgive me the one I had yesterday.”

As it appeared in the poem, “The People, Yes!” by Carl Sandburg.

According to Wikipedia, The People, Yes is a book-length poem written by Carl Sandburg and published in 1936. The 300 page work is thoroughly interspersed with references to American culture, phrases, and stories (such as the legend of Paul Bunyan). Published at the height of the Great Depression, the work lauds the perseverance of the American people in notably plain-spoken language. It was written over an eight-year period. It is Sandburg’s last major book of poetry.

As it says, The People, Yes, lauds the perseverance of the American people in notably plain-spoken language.

It is also one of the great collections of one-liners in my personal experience until Garrison Keillor published his Pretty Good Joke book.

Mr. Sandburg includes:

“Man,” spoke up an anthropologist, “is a two-legged animal with¬ out feathers, the only one who cooks his food, uses an alpha¬ bet, carries firearms, drinks when he is not thirsty, and practices love with an eye on birth control.”

“Shakespeare is the greatest writer of them all, a dead Englishman and you have to read him in high school or you don’t pass.

“I want money,” said the editorial writer who knew where he got it, “in order to buy the time to get the things that money will not buy.”

I close with this blessing.

May you live to eat the hen that scratches over your grave.