Cheap, fast, good. Pick two.
Scrapbook
2008, March 12
All mankind is of one author
From Devotion 17, by John Donne
...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
2005, December 03
Excerpts from Ellis Peters
Winter sets in near Shrewsbury, from Ellis Peters, 1913-1995
Excerpts from Virgin in the Ice
They went out together into the cold and dark of the garden, and felt on their faces the first flakes of the first snow of the season. The air was full of a drifting unease, but the fall was light and fitful here. Further south it set in heavily, borne on a north-westerly wind, dry, fine snow that turned the night into a white, whirling mist, shrouding outlines, burying paths, blown into smooth, breaking waves only to be lifted and hurled again into new shapes. Valleys filled to a treacherous level, hillsides were scoured clean. Wise men stayed within their houses, clapped to shutter and door, and stopped the chinks between the boards, where thin white fingers reached through. The first snow and the first hard frost.
All those four days since the first snow the weather had followed a fixed pattern, with brief sunshine around noon, gathering cloud thereafter, fresh snow falling late in the evening and well into the night, and always iron frost. Around Shrewsbury the snowfalls had been light and powdery, the pattern of white flakes and black soil constantly changing as the wind blew. But as Cadfael rode south the fields grew whiter, the ditches filled. The branches of trees sagged heavily towards the ground under their load, and by mid-afternoon the leaden sky was sagging no less heavily earthwards, in swags of blue-black cloud.
Excerpt from The Confession of Brother Haluin
…December came in with heavy skies and dark, brief days that sagged upon the rooftrees and lay like oppressive hands upon the heart. In the scriptorium there was barely light enough at noon to form the letters, and the colors could not be used with any certainty, since the unrelenting and untimely dusk sapped all their brightness.
The weather-wise had predicted heavy snows, and in midmonth they came, not with blizzard winds, but in a blinding, silent fall that continued for several days and nights, smoothing out every undulation, blanching all color out of the world, burying the sheep in the hills and the hovels in the valleys, smothering all sound, climbing every wall, turning roofs into ranges of white, impassable mountains, and the very air between earth and sky into an opaque, drifting whirlpool of flakes large as lilies. When the fall finally ceased, and the heavy swags of cloud lifted, the Foregate lay half buried, so nearly smoothed out into one white level that there were scarcely any shadows except where the tall buildings of the abbey soared out of the pure pallor, and the eerie, reflected light made day even of night, where only a week before the ominous gloom had made night of day.
2005, November 26
Headache - Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
What might a headache become?
Having a tree growing up out of me
Is often a worrisome thing.
I'm twisty and thorny and branchy and bare
But wait till you see me in Spring.
Headache, a poem from A Light in the Attic, Shel Silverstein
WebSites:
Biography
Kid's Site
Banned Hamlet
Memorial
2005, September 25
Myth and Man
From Reflections by Idries Shah, June 1924 - November, 1996
Myth and Man
Man is a myth maker.
Myth, when manipulated by unregenerates, is an even more effective man-maker.
Man (as he imagines himself to be), in general, is a possiblity, not a fact.
For most people, the sort of man whom they imagine to exist, or assume themselves to be, does not yet exist.
2005, August 06
Once upon a time
An old short story, Margaret Greentree 1985
It was a nice day, late summer merging into fall. The sun was hot and bright; shadows were cut out, black with hard edges. The wide blue sky of Kansas made a limitless world. Someone was cutting grass. The odor of the new cut grass lay over the day.
The little girl was outside the small aluminum trailer where she lived with her father, mother and new baby brother. Her white-blond hair bounced around barretts, curling, not well controlled. She was just over four, sturdy, and strong with bony knees and elbows. She played ball, bouncing it off the fence next door. Her blue and white pin-striped shorts bounced with her body.
Ring ring ring a laryo
Ring ring ring a laryo
went the solitary ball game. Suddenly she spied Art, the young fellow next door lying under his car, legs out on the sidewalk.
"What are you doing?" she asked, running up to the car.
"Fixing the motor so's it'll run."
"Oh" she said, sitting down on the sidewalk and hugging her knees.
"Guess what."
"What?" said Art.
"I have a baby brother. He's mine. I carry him sometimes. Yesterday I helped with his bath."
"Is that right?" said Art.
Just then the trailer door opened and a small red-haired woman stepped down.
"All right, Hank. I'll be right back." she said.
"Mama, can I go?" called the little girl, running up to her.
"No, you stay and help daddy with the baby. I'm just going to the store and I'll be right back."
The red-haired woman walked on down the block and the child ran back over to Art.
"I have to go and get a drink. Bye. See you later."
She skipped to the trailer step, stopped for a minute to hitch up her shorts and went in.
Coming in out of the sun, it was dark inside and cool. She peeked at the baby and glanced at the tall thin young man sitting at the small counter where they ate.
"Hi" she said, reaching for the water glass.
He had not always been with them. He had been away for a long time in a place called France. Then they hadn't lived in the trailer, mama and the little girl, they had lived with grandma and grandpa and all the aunts and uncles. The big house was always full of open friendly people, grown-ups who were always there with the child and who knew everything that happened. When daddy came to live with them they moved into the trailer and then baby brother had come along.
It was dark and quiet inside the trailer. The tall man sat very quietly in the chair by the counter.
"Come here" he said.
"What--" she said as he took her head in his hands. Suddenly something was filling her mouth, a part of him, like a hand but not a hand. She couldn't breathe and choked but couldn't even choke. It was very slippery; she cried with no sound and no breath. He held her very tight. The thing shrank back and went away and he was shaking with sobbing as he kept holding her very close and not letting her breathe. He held on to her very tightly until he was quiet. He loosened up on her and set her back; she choked to get her breath.
His white face hung there, up in front of her. His face was very white and his voice shook as he held a knife in front of her eyes and said "You must not tell. If you tell, I'll cut you up. The knife is very sharp."
Unprepared for the sudden violence, she looked at him bewildered, her face blank with astonishment. Tell? Of course she couldn't tell. She was dazed, it went so fast and she had no words to know what had happened, how could she tell? But everything had always been known, mama would know, just as mama knew everything.
The days passed, mama didn't know. Something was wrong. In the dark of night the child curled up around a dull center on her bed on her small shelf. An incomprehensible thing had happened, so disconnected with anything she knew, with getting up and getting dressed, with eating and taking naps, that soon it seemed not to have happened.
The days passed, the sun grew weaker and the child more listless but no one saw. Mama did not know, so the secret could not exist. No one saw, so what had happened must be invisible. She withdrew. Her face seemed to her to have blurred, her features to have lost definition. The secret became a daydream and was forgotten.
2005, July 09
The Gooloo Bird - Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
Hopeful mother, without resources
The Gooloo bird
She has no feet.
She cannot walk
Upon the street.
She cannot build
Herself a nest,
She cannot land
And take a rest.
Through rain and snow
And thunderous skies,
She weeps forever
As she flies,
And lays her eggs
High over town,
And prays that they
Fall safely down.
Gooloo, a poem from A Light in the Attic, Shel Silverstein
WebSites:
Biography
Kid's Site
Banned Hamlet
Memorial
2005, May 10
Longmobile - Shel Silverstein
Buddhist transportation - destination Enlightenment
It's the world's longest car I swear.
It reaches from Beale Street to Washington Square.
And once you get in it
To go where you're going,
You simply get out, 'cause you're there.
Longmobile, a poem from A Light in the Attic, Shel Silverstein
2005, May 07
Gerhard Richter, painter
From Elizabeth Perry's WoolGathering, I found my way to Finkbuilt.
A comment on the entry led me to search for information about Gerhard Richter.
Two paintings:
Color squares
Candles
A book:
Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, Robert Storr
