A month has gone by Without updating my blog Oh, for shame good sir!
A canoe exposed On the resevoir's dry bed - How long since it sank?
Beard Envy
Mr Marx with a fine salt and pepper combo!
'A beard appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties'
Shed Wisdom
‘If a man can walk, he may walk in any direction. If he’s sensible however, he will stay in his shed.’ Napoleon Bonaparte
Oldy timey dog avec briar!
So impressive is the sweep of his moustache even his bike attempts to emulate it.
James Joyce – Finnegan’s Wake
‘Night deepens And sleep in the villages; Sounds of falling water.’ Buson
Lunch was hours ago Why did nobody tell me There's soup in my beard?
Snacks on the way home Dorito crumbs in my beard Give the game away!
Whiskers in my tea Now I know the true meaning Of eating hair pie
Beard Envy
When a man has reached this level of pogonotrophic excellence he may simply attach a pair of wild stallions to either side of his beard and bid them charge for no other reason than that he can. Thus is achieved the fabled 'twin peaks'.
Shed Wisdom
‘Great things are done when men and sheds meet’ William Blake
Hot Daaaayng!
R. S. Thomas – Iago Prytherch
Ah, Iago, my friend, whom the ignorant people thought The last of your kind, since all the wealth you bought From the age of gold was the yellow dust on your shoes, Spilled by the meadow flowers, if you should choose To wrest your barns from the wind and weather’s claws, And break the hold of the moss on roof and gable; If you can till your fields and stand to see The world go by, a foolish tapestry Scrawled by the times, and lead your mares to stable, And dream your dream, and after the earth’s laws Order you life and faith, then you shall be The first man of the new community.’
Am I coming in? Why would I on a Sunday? What? It's Tuesday!? Shit!
Daily Limerick
There once was a girl so unique Who’s approach to the world was oblique She was employed by the Met But they neglected to check Whether she knew her day’s of the week
Beard Envy
I must agree, Sunday is a nice day for a full beard! (or Tuesday for that matter, it's all much of a muchness).
Shed Wisdom Sunday, Tuesday, everyday's good for a visit to the shed!
Especially for Shweta...
...especially Tuesday.
Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens (apparently it was originally called 'Tuesday Morning' but he got confused. I think it works better this way).
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measure destined for her soul.
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind. He moved among us, as a muttering king, Magnificent, would move among his hinds, Until our blood, commingling, virginal, With heaven, brought such requital to desire The very hinds discerned it, in a star. Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be The blood of paradise? And shall the earth Seem all of paradise that we shall know? The sky will be much friendlier then than now, A part of labor and a part of pain, And next in glory to enduring love, Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
She says, 'I am content when wakened birds, Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields Return no more, where, then, is paradise?' There is not any haunt of prophecy, Nor any old chimera of the grave, Neither the golden underground, nor isle Melodious, where spirits gat them home, Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured As April's green endures; or will endure Like her remembrance of awakened birds, Or her desire for June and evening, tipped By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
She says, 'But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss.' Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires. Although she strews the leaves Of sure obliteration on our paths, The path sick sorrow took, the many paths Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love Whispered a little out of tenderness, She makes the willow shiver in the sun For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. She causes boys to pile new plums and pears On disregarded plate. The maidens taste And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang? Why set pear upon those river-banks Or spice the shores with odors of the plum? Alas, that they should wear our colors there, The silken weavings of our afternoons, And pick the strings of our insipid lutes! Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn Their boisterous devotion to the sun, Not as a god, but as a god might be, Naked among them, like a savage source. Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, Out of their blood, returning to the sky; And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, The windy lake wherein their lord delights, The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, That choir among themselves long afterward. They shall know well the heavenly fellowship Of men that perish and of summer morn. And whence they came and whither they shall go The dew upon their feel shall manifest.
She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, 'The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.' We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Oh ye miscellaneous lump of meat, with multifarious tubes and a cleft. How is that you could taste oh so sweet, that not one morsel there was that was left? Solid ambrosia, heavenly sent! To my palette you were as sweet nectar. On first sight my will to you was full bent, from the shelves you arose as a spectre. Could you be real? I was taken aback, I knew then that I fast must uncover your sensuous curves, encased in cold fat, to my stomach you were as a lover.
Alas all too soon my fine feast was gone, though soon you returned (it didn’t take long).
Beard Envy
A Chinese gentleman sporting a 'Contemplative Confuscian' mit pipe.
Beard / Pipe / Straw Hat Envy
I can't help but feel a grudging respect for a man whose pogonotrophic zeal is such that he will cut off his own ear before he cuts off his beard. Not that it was necessarily a straight choice between the two, but you know what I mean.
Shed Wisdom
‘The whole world is a shed' - William Shakespeare
Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood
'Half-asleep on horseback I saw as if in a dream A distant moon and a line of smoke For the morning tea.’ Basho
We walk together Descending to the valley - The mountain remains
Beard Envy
Shed Wisdom
‘The senate house of ancient Roman was basically a giant stone shed, likewise the Japanese Imperial palace, and indeed the institutions of power of most previous and subsequent civilisations. The shed may therefore accurately be said to be the cradle of the majority – if not all - of human civilisation.’
Oldey timey chimp on an oldey timey bicycle! That pretty much covers it.
Pippa's Proverbs
Cows are as scary close up, as they are exciting at a distance. Perspective can make fools of us all...
Corey Harris – Frankie and Johnny
'Sleeping on a grass pillow I hear now and then The nocturnal bark of a dog In the passing rain’ Basho
