Time I'll never know.
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"Are you the new person drawn toward me?"
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?Do you think I am trusty and faithful?Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?
Walt Whitman.
Posted at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Samuel Pepys on this date, three hundred years before my birth:
And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand. And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!
With all the crap - including shrapnel from when my retina was detached a few years back - floating around in my eyeballs, it's likely at some point I'll have to close up shop here in similar fashion. Eh, I'm sure nothing I write will survive the passage of time, which is just as well.
Posted at 03:42 PM in History | Permalink | Comments (0)
Don't know much about the French I took, but I'll never forget the apocryphal story of an English soldier yelling, "God forgive us: we have burned a saint!"
Posted at 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
You were behind me, but when I turned
there was the wrangling of crows
and the long grass rising in the wind
and the swelling tips of grain
turning to water under a black sky.
All around me the thousand
small denials of the day
rose like insects to the flaming
of an old truth, someone alone
following a broken trail of stones
toward the deep and starless river.
Philip Levine.
Posted at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
McCarthy: We might have a child that has no job, no dependents but sitting on the couch, we’re going to encourage that person to get a job and have to go to work, which gives them worth and value. pic.twitter.com/HwUrHKXihb
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 30, 2023
I've got two such children, neither have dependents (sadly, Sadie cannot claim her American Girl dolls), and I can barely get them to put their trash and laundry in proper receptacles. Still don't want them to go work in the salt mines.
That said, Sam is actually rather excited about turning 14 so he can join UFCW 3000 and pick up some extra scratch at Thriftway. I look forward to his bringing home some TP or maybe a rotisserie chicken after work.
Posted at 03:18 PM in Local Color | Permalink | Comments (2)
Rejoice, O young man, while you are young, and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth.
Posted at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d:
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,But I saw they were not as was thought,They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
Walt Whitman.
Posted at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
George E. Stephens, who served in the 54th Mass as an NCO and officer (battlefield commission), concluded in Why Should a Colored Man Enlist?
When time's ample curtain shall fall upon our national tragedy, and our hillsides and valleys shall neither redden with the blood nor whiten with the bones of kinsmen and countrymen who have fallen in the sanguinary and wicked strife; when grim visaged war has smoothed his wrinkled front and our country shall have regained its normal condition as a leader of nations in the occupation and blessings of peace—and history shall record the names of heroes and martyrs who bravely answered the call of patriotism and Liberty—against traitors, thieves and assassins—let it not be said that in the long list of glory, composed of men of all nations—there appears the name of no colored man.
Sgt Henry F. Steward (pictured above/right) donned the blue suit:
A twenty-three year old farmer from Adrian, Michigan, Henry Steward enlisted on 4 April 1863 and was mustered in on April 23. Steward served as a non-commissioned officer and was actively engaged in the recruiting of soldiers for the regiment. He died of disease at the regimental hospital on Morris Island, South Carolina, on 27 September 1863, and his estate was paid a $50 state bounty.
Standing at attention with his sword drawn in this full-length study, Steward is posed in front of a plain backdrop, but a portable column has been wheeled in to add detail on the left. Hand-colored trousers and buttons highlight the uniform in this ambrotype of Sergeant Steward.
Survived the assault on Wagner only to be felled by disease (which caused 2/3 of the 600k+ deaths) in "the last large-scale conflict fought without knowledge of the germ theory of disease."
Posted at 04:10 PM in History | Permalink | Comments (0)
I liked this tune aeons before I became the old man.
Posted at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
You, created only a little lower thanThe angels, have crouched too long inThe bruising darknessHave lain too longFacedown in ignorance,Your mouths spilling wordsArmed for slaughter.The Rock cries out to us today,You may stand upon me,But do not hide your face.
Maya Angelou.
Posted at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Guy who has only seen Blair Witch Project, watching this video: Getting a lot of Blair Witch Project vibes from this…
Posted at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sometimes,when they say this to the child,when they murmur this tothe retreaters, when they chidethe innocents, when they mouth thisto the God-fearing, God-loving,(christe eleison) grow up. in this world.grow up, and not in the direction towardswhich stars burn. they mean grow evil. evil ...the morning glories wrap themselves as theycrawl up the grey garden fence.like snakes, they wrap themselves around thewooden planks.bless the Lord,oh, my soul.
Carolyn Marie Rodgers.
Posted at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
...and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion.
Posted at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I pouring derision hot upon my days,
Hurrying to solder twisted chords of this music,
Catching the threads with bitter broken fingers,
Could I affirm the common way?
Once it was measurement of laughter,
Song in the berry, wisdom in the wine,
Oblivion for hereafter, and to stumbling time
Whirlwind. Yes, we had made our madness holy,
Worshipped the witless feet, bought off the fates
Till they were aged to mellow languor.
I was a fool, eating the violet-colored flowers,
Bruising untasted fruit, or pretending to shadows.
And all the while the years swirled over me,
Eddied about the darkness of my eyes.
Clarence Weinstock.
Posted at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The mind has never been used to safety and stability, it is used to an emotional rollercoaster...
- Why Safe Relationships Can Feel Boring After Abusive Ones
While the kids and I have gradually become accustomed to more peace in our lives, we still have some chaotic patterns to unlearn. All good, but sometimes things will pop up in unexpected places/ways.
F'rinstance, this week I went to turn on a faucet, and there was no water. My mind immediately went to the worst possible interpretation: I fucked something up, and now have to quickly figure out what I did wrong and how to fix it.
Did I forget to pay the water bill (aside: it still feels so weird to not be on a well)? Uh, no, that's been on autopay for years. What about when the water company alerted me to increased usage? I could have missed a leak that maybe somehow lead to a burst pipe, so I scurried around the house and property looking for flooding or other telltales; I must have dropped the ball somewhere!
Found out on one of our local Facebook pages that there was a water main break just north of us (soon thereafter I started getting official notification and updates). Couple hundred of us were without water for about 12 hours as the water folks fixed the issue.
Up until just a few years ago, our lives were plagued with a great deal of financial insecurity. At various points during that tumultuous period, we'd had water, electricity, phone, and gas shut off. I swear 90% of my cognitive energy was expended trying to juggle bills, pushing off disaster as long as I could, often wondering how I might be able to stretch 8 bucks (literally) to last until the end of the month (we owe scores of people online for our survival at times).
The source of all that trauma is in our rearview mirror, but that doesn't stop me from being gripped by absolute panic when the slightest anomaly arises (or a Pearl Jam song comes on). As Eddie sings: It wasn't my surface most defiled.
Posted at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
She did the things that we both did before now, but who forgave her?
Posted at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It is unbecoming for a sea
To be without hurricanes.
A mountain without the intimacy of clouds
Is a mountain in exile.
A river unable to nurse a flood-child
Has been conventionalized with mortar and iron.
How much can a hurricane worry a whale, a lion?
In this bosom courage has found its fourth dimension.
Though the world is an avaricious uncle,
Fear has become an outward instinct.
Through the underbrush of societies
I am an eternal prowler.
Leon Herald.
Posted at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Following up on that "virtuous Republicks" post from yesterday, I wanted to briefly hit on how bigots conflate 'virtue' with 'moral' in the context of governance. Really it's all about how a society can function to protect rights (not just the 2A), resist corruption (looking at you, SCOTUS), etc (thanks, Rome).
It ain't about fucking, or which god you worship, or your unfettered power to do whatever you want at the expense of everybody else. There's a significant difference between, say...guns that can vaporize many lives in mere seconds vs one-off beer can designs.
Consider, for starters, that our Constitution TWICE explicitly refers to promoting/providing for the "general Welfare": first in the Preamble, essentially the mission statement explaining why we upgraded from those suboptimal Articles of Confederation; second in the powers of Congress delineated in Article I, Section 8, right up front before borrowing money or regulating commerce. The very cornerstone of our democratic republic is the notion that it ain't all about you.
As I noted a while back, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1641 spelled it out thus:
If any of you meet with some law that seems not to tend to your particular benefit, you must consider that laws are made with respect to the whole people, and not to each particular person: and obedience to them must be yielded with respect to the common welfare...
That's the essence of civic/republican virtue, which demands that citizens think of society as a whole if this self-governance thing is gonna work at all:
Citizens who have cultivated the virtue of fortitude are likely to oppose persistently and strenuously government officials who behave corruptly or unconstitutionally and to encourage other citizens to do likewise. Citizens who have learned the virtue of prudence are inclined to deliberation and reflection in making decisions rather than to reckless and destructive action, and they influence other citizens by the excellence of their civic behavior. Citizens with a well-formed sense of justice are habitually disposed to support community-wide standards for the protection of human rights and the promotion of the common good, and to prompt others to behave similarly. The core civic virtues are integrated within the character of the good citizen, who brings them in concert with other citizens of similar disposition to civic and political participation in a constitutional democracy.
This is not to suggest that our founding generation didn't also have some morality of a Christian sense in mind generally, but that certainly isn't a pillar of virtue as they conceived it. Like, here's randy ole Ben Franklin writing in 1787:
[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
He clearly wasn't thinking that such virtuous freedom precluded his affairs with women like Madame Helvétius. I mean, so long as his sexual partners didn't leverage their relationships to corruptly influence legislation or other aspects of governing, at any rate.
Since the original post directly addressed a perversion of something John Adams said, imma throw a few additional quotations from him into the mix, to wit:
Virtue implicates the public good/interest, and is juxtaposed against the stuff of greed and ambition and whatnot. I'm squinting real hard, yet I don't see how somebody's sex and/or gender making you uncomfortable figures into anything from a republican standpoint, let alone says you ought to harass workers at Target over Pride merch.
Selah.
Posted at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Getting older means losing more, it seems.
Posted at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The evening of life is a strange place, where forever
The things that we started and never achieved return to
plague us:
Strange movements in the air, smiles, groans, indirections
Pursue the heart through life's evening. Here will assemble
Those who have died and gone before us. They seem now
close at hand.
We almost can touch them sometimes. Their shadows stead-
ily mock us
With the works we might have done and did not; the forever
unaccomplished.
One who went out after years of pain, and one who went
too sudden:
It was as if he vanished—both are equal now as age
Hobbles into our dwelling place, not to be driven away.
John Gould Fletcher.
Posted at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The right-wing is very thirsty for a Hitler of our time: pic.twitter.com/R0fIO1JLKv
— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) May 23, 2023
Let's zoom in:
Yeah, no, that's not what John Adams said:
In virtuous Republicks, it is a Maxim sacred and fundamental, that the Will of the Majority shall be the Will of the whole. But in all Republicks vicious and criminal, the Minority always resorts to foreign Influence for support, and for assistance. To overthrow and take Vengeance on the Majority.
Indeed. I would also turn Mr Pro-Forced-Birth-and-Dictatorship's attention to something Abigail Adams said:
Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
Selah.
Posted at 06:32 PM in History | Permalink | Comments (0)
I thought, ahistorical as it was, Besson's 1999 Joan of Arc flick was wicked trippy and quite underrated.
Posted at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
You, functional spacevariants in voltage, the only lightTransitory effect of Loveseveral different lightsSustainSustain themyou sustain them.
Omar Pérez.
Posted at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)