Category: Words

8.5.2020 – wooden planks, wet wood

wooden planks, wet wood
wet sand, plastic mat, hot sand
walking to the beach

I walked out to the beach the other day.

My bare feet started on wooden planks with the thumb thumb thumb sound of feet on wood.

Further along, I came to the faucets for spraying sand off your feet when you are going the other way.

My bare feet felt the unsure slipperiness of wet wood.

Further along, the wet sand on the wooden deck stuck to me feet and there was the kind of a ‘give’ to my steps and the wet sand crunched under my feet.

Further along, I stepped on to the blue plastic beach mat that led out to the beach.

The plastic poked at my feet and the sand was loose on the plastic screen.

On to the sand.

White and soft.

Hot and hotter.

Footprints on footprints.

I could not pick out my trail if I looked back at the path behind me.

The loose hot sand changed to hot hard packed sand of the tidal beach.

It was hot on my feet.

Hot on my feet all the way.

Hot on my feet all the way down to the ocean.

As much as the experience of different tastes during a meal, the experience of different surfaces under my feet.

Taking that path.

To the beach.

7.28.2020 – what you don’t do, what

what you don’t do, what
you don’t say, games you don’t play
your smile all I need

From the song, What You Don’t Do, by Lianne La Havas;

Heavy words, little lies
Telling everything but the truth, the truth
Three little words over time overheard and overused, used
No sweet nothing could ever be turned into something new
No grand gesture could ever be made to measure you
I know what I got and I know where we’re going
You don’t need to show it, I already know it all
It’s what you don’t do, it’s what you don’t say
I know you love me, I don’t need proof
It’s what you don’t do, the games you don’t play
I know you love me, I don’t need proof
I’ve been saving up my time so I could spend it all on you, on you
Oh, all I need is to see you smile, I’ve forgotten how to be blue, blue

7.13.2020 – When I get old, I

When I get old, I
shall read Proust, was the thought – will
I see with new eyes?

I like stories about people and their books.

Maybe because I feel more at home in the world when there other people who regard books as parts of their lives instead of props.

Young Abraham Lincoln reading a borrowed copy of the Life of George Washington at night and placing in between the logs of the cabin for safe keeping.

Then it snows and water seeps in and ruins the book.

Young Abe walks 50 miles and offers to split thousands of fence rails to make up for the loss.

When he finishes the chore and reports to the owner that he is done, the owner presents him with the somewhat waterlogged copy of the book.

Paul the Apostle, writing a reminder in one of his letters to please send his coat AND don’t forget the books!

Thomas Jefferson selling his library to the US Government to establish the Library of Congress and also pay off some personal debts.

As soon as he gets the notified that the money from Congress is in the bank, Mr. Jefferson orders more books.

James Thurber getting his nerve together and going over to an ex-wfe’s house to reclaim his collected works of Henry James.

There is a marvelous video of an interview with historian Shelby Foote on YouTube.

CSpan’s Brian Lamb has Mr. Foote walk the viewer on a tour through his personal library where he did most of his work.

What surprised me is that Mr. Foote stopped at a set of the collected works of Marcel Proust.

It is a set that Mr. Foote says his mother gave him for his 17th birthday.

Mr. Foote said, “Everytime I feel the right to do it, I quit everything and re-read Proust.”

One reason he says if for the pure enjoyment.

And the other is that a writer can always learn from Proust.

I was intrigued to say the least.

Don’t much besides a few quotes from the writings of Marcel Proust.

Like Calculus and Neils Bohr’s heavy water and the Taft family of Ohio, Proust, or at least his name, is floating around in my brain like an ice berg.

Something I was aware of but didn’t know much about.

And aware that a lot more of it was below the water line if I cared to find out.

Cricket was like that and one summer I decided I would learn to understand what cricket was all about.

Now I am hooked on cricket. T20, ODI or TEST?

Mr. Foote, in the sweet Mississippi voice of his, recalls the pleasure of reading the 3000 pages.

When would I have time for Proust?

Every summer I try to read a famous classic that I have never read.

The Way of All Flesh.

Sinister Street.

War and Peace.

Last summer I hit Look Homeward Angel but got lost in the slog.

After hearing Mr. Foote I promised myself that when I got old I would read Proust.

This is the summer I turn 60.

I an thinking I have earned the right.

Stay tuned.

6.23.2020 – music heard with you

music heard with you
more than music, without you
all is desolate

Adapted from the Conrad Aiken’s Music I Heard.

I like his work though I had never heard until Savannah attached itself to myself late in life.

Yet the words, Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread, describe life with my wife that it seems like I have known his work for years.

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!

Like Johnny Mercer, the poet Conrad Aiken was known as Savannah’s own.

Mr. Aiken, according to his entry in Wikipedia, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, taught briefly at Harvard, and served as consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress.

Somehow, he was also largely responsible for establishing Emily Dickinson’s reputation as a major American poet.

Yet, in Savannah, he might be best know for recognizing a word combination in the daily newspaper where one day under SHIPS – ARRIVALS – DEPARTURES, he saw the notice;

Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown.

Mr. Aiken took notice of the notice.

Mr. Aiken recognized the pure accidental poetry of the words.

He like the arrangement.

He like the rythym.

He liked it so much you that can read to this day as he had it carved into a marble bench.

A marble bench that sits next to his grave in a Savannah.

A bench where anyone can sit and watch the ships come and go from the port of Savannah.

Maybe one of them might be the Cosmos Mariner.

And its destination might be unknown.

Maybe I am the Cosmos Mariner.

Going out through the Cosmos.

Destination unknown.