2.12.2022 – saying yes to the

saying yes to the
paradoxes democracy
hopes of government

Salutations on the aniiversary of your birth, Mr. Lincoln.

In remembrance I offer Carl Sandburg’s 1936 poem, Lincoln?

He was a mystery in smoke and flags
Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,
Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,
Yes to the hopes of government
Of the people by the people for the people,
No to debauchery of the public mind,
No to personal malice nursed and fed,
Yes to the Constitution when a help,
No to the Constitution when a hindrance
Yes to man as a struggler amid illusions,
Each man fated to answer for himself:
Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind
Must I choose for my own sustaining light
To bring me beyond the present wilderness?

       Lincoln? Was he a poet?
       And did he write verses?
“I have not willingly planted a thorn
       in any man’s bosom.”
I shall do nothing through malice: what
       I deal with is too vast for malice.”

Death was in the air.
So was birth.

2.11.2022 – what are the roots that

what are the roots that
clutch, what branches grow out
this stony rubbish

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.”

2.8.2022 – pearls that were his eyes

pearls that were his eyes
you alive, or not? Is there
nothing in your head?

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“?’

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 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.”

2.4.2022 – saw morning paper

saw morning paper
first page back page inside page
saw the world go by

From the poem, Moon Rider by Carl Sandburg published in Poetry – A Magazine of Verse in March of 1922.

Mr. Sandburg wrote these lines 100 years ago.

The man opened the morning paper: saw the first page,
The back page, the inside pages, the editorials;
Saw the world go by, eating, stealing, fighting;
Saw the headlines, date-lines, funnies, ads,
The marching movies of the workmen going to work, the workmen striking,

I start my day with the morning papers on online.

I see the front pages, the back page and the inside pages.

I see the world go by.

It is the first line of the poem that sticks with me.

WHAT have I saved out of a morning?
The earliest of the morning came with moon-mist
And the travel of a moon-spilt purple:

All those pages.

All that reading.

And I can’t remember a dang thing of what I read.

2.2.2022 – imaginative

imaginative
hilarious ludicrous
daft ridiculous

Sometime somewhere I read that if you like eating, you like reading about food.

Some of my favorite passages in my reading involved the planning, cooking and eating of fabulous dinners.

Small wonder that Jim Harrison, the author of A Really Big Lunch is one of my favorite writers.

Through Mr. Harrison I also read John Thorne’s wonderful essays on eating and cooking.

But it is the scenes in books not about cooking that talking about cooking that I look for.

CS Forester’s food scenes in his Hornblower Series or even the snatched meals on the bridge that Mr. Forester described in “The Good Shephard.”

The Whale Steak scene in Mr. Melville’s Moby Dick.

The King-eats-with-the-poor-people scene in Mr. Twain’s Connecticut Yankee.

The diner scene in Mr. Thurber’s A Couple of Hamburgers.

With this in mind I clicked on the article, Top 10 cooks in fiction.

The article was in a British Newspaper so I guess I should not be surprised that I wasn’t familiar with any of the books.

The description of the last book listed caught me eye.

The writer writes about the book, Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson, that “The plot is fast-paced but daft, the characters ludicrous but hilarious, and the recipes imaginative but ridiculous.”

For me, any book that can be described with all those wonderful words in one sentence is worth a look-see.

I got my copy this morning out of archive.org so I will add an update soon.

I offer the first paragraph as a window.

If you will insist on arriving at Pisa airport in the summer you will probably have to fight your way out of the terminal building past incoming sun-reddened Brits, snappish with clinking luggage. They are twenty minutes late for their Ryanair cheapo return to Stansted (“I said carry your sister’s bloody bag, Crispin, not drag it. If we miss this flight your life won’t be worth living… “). Ignoring them and once safely outside, you can retrieve your car in leisurely fashion from the long-term park and hit the northbound motorway following the “Genova” signs. Within a mere twenty minutes you are off again at the Viareggio exit. Don’t panic: you are not destined for the beach which stretches its tottering crop of sun umbrel¬ las like poison-hued mushrooms for miles of unexciting coast¬ line. No. You are heading safely inland through the little town of Camaiore.

So promise I think.