9.17.2023 – and if I laugh at

and if I laugh at
any mortal thing, it is
that I may not weep

The actual line from the poem Don Juan by George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) is:

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
‘Tis that I may not weep.

(Don Juan (1819–24) canto 4, st. 4 – btw FRS means Fellow of the Royal Society)

I had to change ’tis to ‘it is’ to fit what I call Haiku.

My blog my rules.

You can read the “What is …” section for further discussion on this point.

It is said that Abraham Lincoln read a lot of Byron.

Mr. Lincoln read a lot of Byron and then used it as inspiration but with an understanding of his audience.

Where Lord Byron writes:

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
‘Tis that I may not weep.

Mr. Lincoln said that he felt … “Somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.“

9.16.2023 – whatever word phrase

whatever word phrase
comes in your head, write it down
don’t worry about

From the article, In these troubled times we all get the ‘bothers’ but I have a surefire cure: write them down by Michael Rosen in the Guardian, (9/15/2023).

Mr. Rosen takes the point that writing is great for dealing with bothers.

I first thought he said brothers and I have 7 of them so this caught my eye.

Mr. Rosen writes:

Whatever word or phrase comes into your head, write it down. Don’t worry about whether it fills the whole line (part of the tyranny of the sentence!). Don’t worry if it sounds unfinished.

Now wait.

Whatever next thought comes into your mind, write it down underneath that previous line. I call this “unfolding”. Now repeat this unfolding for as short or as long a time as you want. Remember that you can nick anything you.

Now, a moment to think about what you’ve done. You’ve taken something out of your mind – a feeling, a thought, an idea – found some words for it, and put it outside yourself. You can now look at it, as if it is separate from you, even though it is connected to you. Now what? You can consider whether you’ve “got it right”. Have you been true to yourself, to that feeling? If not, you can change it. You can reflect on it in any way you like: is that really where I’m at?

I might have to give this a try.

Find those bothers in my day and go and write down something that’s bothering me.

9.14.2023 – timeless nostalgic

timeless nostalgic
at the same time be a bit
sad to see them go

What else might any one be talking about but the, Generations in the making, the new, sleeker receptacles will soon replace the iconic green mesh bins, trash cans in New York City.

According to the article, Behold: New York City’s Trash Can of the Future, by Dodai Stewart, “The wire litter baskets are iconic, but they are well past their useful life in New York City,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s sanitation commissioner. “They are vestiges of a different time.”

There are 22,000 litter baskets on the streets of New York City and the plan is, over time, to replace all of them with what Ms. Tisch calls “this new, more modern litter basket of the future.”

And there are those who will miss the iconic green mesh bins.

“I will be a bit sad to see them go,” Micah Belamarich, 38, the co-founder and creative director of OnlyNY, wrote in an email. The company, an independent clothing brand offering New York City-inspired apparel, sells a tiny version of the green mesh litter basket that can be used as a pen holder. It is one of the company’s top-selling products.

Mr. Belamarich, who was born and raised in Morningside Heights, added that the mesh basket’s design “feels timeless and nostalgic at the same time.

You know what the man said?

Politicians, public buildings and prostitutes all gain respectability with age.

Timeless, nostalgic!

Guess you can include iconic green mesh bins.

Recently the maintenance AND office staff at my apartment complex walked off the job.

At the same time the trash compacter broke.

Well, not totally broke but you have to have lived here long enough to know that you can use this long pole by the compacter to reach out press the button and turn the thing on.

I train someone as often as I can but it is a losing battle and the trash is piling up.

It is kind of scary down here in South Carolina to approach a pile of trash in the dark as I guess it is anywhere.

Still the last time a raccoon jumped out at me, I was thinking ‘alligator’ and I said see you later without sticking around too long.

The trash is piling up and all the strategically placed green canisters that are set out for the convenience of dog owners are filled to overflowing.

Seems that some how dogs and dog stuff was handled without being gift wrapped back when I was a kid but I read recently that dog ownership (and the population) is at an all time high.

I also read recently that if meat-eaters were a nation, American pets would be the 5th largest country on earth, just behind Germany.

I believe it and I bet the Germans don’t bag up their German stuff and leave it outside.

Did I mention it is still in the 90’s down here?

Let’s go to the thesaurus.

Start with just plain on smelly.

I could also also say that the air down here is foul-smelling, evil-smelling, stinking, stinking to high heaven, reeking, fetid, malodorous, pungent, acrid, rank, putrid, noxious, off, gamy, high, musty, fusty, frowsty, fresh, stinky, reeky, niffing, niffy, pongy, whiffy, humming, funky, noisome, mephitic, olid, miasmic, miasmal.

I like frowsty the best.

When we go out for a walk later tonight I will work it into our conversation.

“It just seems so frowsty out here tonight. You know, the atmosphere is so stale, warm, and stuffy.“

That spell check is tossing out frowsty is frosting on the cake!

Timeless!

Nostalgic!

9.13.2023 – could do anything

could do anything
wanted to do but found there
was nothing to do

Live oaks and Spanish Moss – over the ancient shell ring on Hilton Head island …

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider — those in actual destitution or physical suffering — this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone.

But at three o’clock in — the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work — ; and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

At that hour the tendency is — to refuse to face things as long as possible by retiring into — an infantile dream — but one is continually startled out of this by various contacts with the world.

One meets these occasions as quickly and carelessly as possible and retires once more back into the dream, hoping that things will adjust themselves by some great material or spiritual bonanza.

But as the withdrawal persists there is less and less chance of the bonanza — one is not waiting for the fade-out of a single sorrow, but rather being an unwilling witness of an execution, the disintegration of one’s own personality …

So there was not an ‘I’ any more — not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect — save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.

It was strange to have no self — to be like a little boy left alone in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing that he wanted to do –

And in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

As Big Bill put it, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.

(From The crack-up with other pieces and stories, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1945, James Laughlin, New York.)

9.12.2023 – its own nodule

its own nodule
of permanent rage at the
root of consciousness

The death of his sister at nineteen in an auto crash with his father was still unacceptable fifty years later.

It had created its own nodule of permanent rage at the roots of his consciousness. It was ultimately the cause of his becoming a writer.

If this can happen to those you love you may as well follow your heart’s wishes in your time on earth.

So writes Jim Harrison in short story The Ancient Minstrel published in the book by the same name, The Ancient Minstrel, Grove Press: (2017).

… created its own nodule of permanent rage at the roots of his consciousness may be one of the most honest lines of words in the English language.

So many of us have a nodule of permanent rage at the roots of our consciousness.

But how many of us can pin the source of the rage down.

Mr. Thoreau described it as a life of quiet desperation.

But Mr. Thurber pointed out that most of us live lives of noisy desperation as well.

Enraged, infuriated, beside himself, seeing red and thinking black, creating its own nodule of permanent rage at the roots of his consciousness.

The Grizzly and the Gadgets

A grizzly bear who had been on a bender for several weeks following a Christmas party in his home at which his brother-in-law had set the Christmas tree on fire, his children had driven the family car through the front door and out the back, and all the attractive female bears had gone into hibernation before sunset returned home prepared to forgive, and live and let live. He found, to his mild annoyance, that the doorbell had been replaced by an ornamental knocker. When he lifted the knocker, he was startled to hear it play two bars of “Silent Night.”

When nobody answered his knock, he turned the doorknob, which said “Happy New Year” in a metallic voice, and a two-tone gong rang “Hello” somewhere deep within the house.

He called to his mate, who was always the first to lay the old aside, as well as the first by whom the new was tried, and got no answer. This was because the walls of his house had been soundproofed by a soundproofer who had soundproofed them so well nobody could hear anybody say anything six feet away. Inside the living room the grizzly bear turned on the light switch, and the lights went on all right, but the turning of the switch had also released an odor of pine cones, which this particular bear had always found offensive. The head of the house, now becoming almost as angry as he had been on Christmas Day, sank into an easy chair and began bouncing up and down and up and down, for it was a brand-new contraption called “Sitpretty” which made you bounce up and down and up and down when you sat on it. Now thoroughly exasperated, the bear jumped up from the chair and began searching for a cigarette. He found a cigarette box, a new-fangled cigarette box he had never seen before, which was made of metal and plastic in the shape of a castle, complete with portal and drawbridge and tower. The trouble was that the bear couldn’t get the thing open. Then he made out, in tiny raised letters on the portal, a legend in rhyme: “You can have a cigarette on me If you can find the castle key.” The bear could not find the castle key, and he threw the trick cigarette box through a windowpane out into the front yard, letting in a blast of cold air, and he howled when it hit the back of his neck. He was a little mollified when he found that he had a cigar in his pocket, but no matches, and so he began looking around the living room for a matchbox. At last he saw one on a shelf. There were matches in it, all right, but no scratching surface on which to scratch them. On the bottom of the box, however, there was a neat legend explaining this lack. The message on the box read: “Safety safety matches are doubly safe because there is no dangerous dangerous sandpaper surface to scratch them on. Strike them on a windowpane or on the seat of your pants.”

Enraged, infuriated, beside himself, seeing red and thinking black, the grizzly bear began taking the living room apart. He pounded the matchbox into splinters, knocked over lamps, pulled pictures off the wall, threw rugs out of the broken window, swept vases and a clock off the mantelpiece, and overturned chairs and tables, growling and howling and roaring, shouting and bawling and cursing, until his wife was aroused from a deep dream of marrying a panda, neighbors appeared from blocks around, and the attractive female bears who had gone into hibernation began coming out of it to see what was going on.

The bear, deaf to the pleas of his mate, heedless of his neighbors’ advice, and unafraid of the police, kicked over whatever was still standing in the house, and went roaring away for good, taking the most attractive of the attractive female bears, one named Honey, with him.

MORAL: Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.

From Further Fables for Our Time by James Thurber (Illustrated by the Author) First published in Great Britain 1956, by Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 90 Great Russell Street London W.C.1.