Cairn

A cairn is a human-made stack or mound of stones, assembled from prehistoric times to the present, usually as a memorial, landmark, or spontaneous work of found art representing balance and harmony with nature. One might appear as a guidepost on a hiking trail, as a mile - marker on a walking path, or atop a hilltop to indicate the skyline. I came across the one above in a local cemetery -- and the one below on a wellness website.

Here is my little stack of
literary stones for today:
A couple of days ago, I quoted poet Philip Booth:

“I think survival is at stake for all of us all the time. … Every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, generously given, adds to our chances of survival."

Which in turn reminded me of this Tennessee Williams quotation that seemed so befitting a year ago:

"The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love."

Which made me think of the closing stanza of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach":

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the word, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Which then brought to mind what my friend and mentor Nancy wrote in her Harry Potter Christmas letter several years back:

"Even if you haven't read
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
you surely know Harry's life was saved by love."


As well as this gem
from Nancy, a card featuring
one of my favorite quotations from E. B. White:

Inside, Nancy writes: "Informed women have to keep talking, asking questions, challenging, encouraging others to think. . . . The woman depicted on this card, incidentally, is the true me."

I wondered for a minute if it was E. B. White's wife, Katharine Sergeant Angell White; or maybe the Queen of England, or maybe just an anonymous model from the archives, who represents "the true us."

Nancy's wise words, written in mid - June 2016, became our watchword a year ago in mid - November 2016 when our hopes for the presidential election were dashed. In January 2017, Nancy offered further encouragement:

"It has helped me a lot to find a group of like - minded women. My advice is to go to Washington and join the women's March. There is still time. In any case, find something that speaks to your most important issues and volunteer. No time to despair. We must be strong: Warrior Women! Get out of your head and emotions and Act! Righteousness and love have kissed."

In closing,
"let us be true to one another" . . .
"for we live in a perpetually burning building!"

Wisdoom

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with Tablet
by Matt Wuerker @ Politico
[one of many Seurat parodies]

Highlights from Dawn or Doom2
September 24 - 25, 2015
1.Lance Duerfahrd: "We all know what the light of Dawn looks like, but what is the light emitted by Doom? It is the light of a fading rectangle; the light of the cell phone is the light of Doom."

Duerfahrd began by showing a mural, similar to the above parody, in which all of Seurat's figures are holding cell phones, and comparing it to the original, in which all they gaze at the distant horizon:

In the parody, as in contemporary life, "Verizon has replaced horizon." Haha!

Dawn: the hypnotism of the horizon takes you outside of yourself

Doom: the hypnotism of the cell phone is a threat to attention

Dawn: the hypnotism of the movie screen allows you to access parts of yourself you hadn't thought about, it will to affect your perception if you let it

Doom: the cell phone is an "emerging technology" because, even though we put it away, it re-enters the atmosphere every 76 seconds (as opposed to Halley's Comet every 76 years -- get it?!)

2. Data Driven Artificial Intelligence

How about when you order a black turtleneck sweater online, and then for the next three weeks your computer screen is filled with ads for black turtlenecks? This doesn't make me feel that my computer is smart; it makes me feel that my computer is stupid. Otherwise, it might know that I'm only going to order a black turtleneck every year or so -- not every day.

The wry Deep Thoughts of Jack Handey illustrate the potential for error in data driven logic: "If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone."

My computer knows no irony and errs consistently in its choice of Flippy!

Humans can talk their way into a connection that's real; can computers do that?

3. Things to think about for next year's movie night:

Was Her --in which fictional computers discuss dental appointments and Great Books -- one of the most entertaining movies of 2013 or one of the scariest?

Or how about WALL - E (2008) with his capacity to democritize yet destroy via nostalgia

4. Melodramatic Movie Dystopias vs Reality

Instead of the Paranormal Activity film series, how about a movie called Normal Activity?

Or how about a cop show with no arrests? That would be more like it! Ha!

5. Wisdoom

I was unable to ascertain whether the word "wisdoom," as displayed on the overhead projector in one of the lectures, was an unintentional misspelling or an intentional pun. Either way, it captures the essence of "Dawn or Doom" and serves as a one - word reminder, in case we had forgotten, that "In much wisdom is much grief: and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow" (from Ecclesiastes 1: 18).

"Wisdoom" also brought to mind that old proverb: "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Even when something is bad, someone will usually benefit in some way. "For," as Tennessee Williams says, "there is no lie that contains no part of truth." Conversely, it would have to be an extremely good wind that blew no ill. No matter how good something is, it may bring harm as well.

Same with Dawn or Doom.

5. Xuedong Huang: To close the gap between machines and humans, the last mile is so hard; will it be possible? We overestimate what technology can do in one year and underestimate what it can do in ten years; so, best to focus instead on the five - year horizon.

Or, as Gerry McCartney has been saying for years: We always overestimate technology's impact in the short term and underestimate its impact in the long term.

Previous Posts

Twister

Dawn or Doom2

Dawn or Doom?

Safe Home


RE Lafayette Murals,
see also:

My blog
Mae's blog
Tin Can Telephone
Wabash

Time Traveler

The dates on their headstones
reveal that even in their graves
they grow older year by year
just as we do. They are all still with us.
We are all going in the same direction.

from the poem "Memorial Day"
by Ernest Sandeen

Willard M. Carriker, 1970s
A year ago, in observance of my father's birthday (18 July 1923), I wrote a post concerning Tennessee Williams' poem "The Summer Belvedere," including a footnote explaining that on "the day he died (Saturday, 27 June, 1987) we all watched Cat On A Hot Tin Roof that evening on TV. This was before the days of movie rentals, so it's not as if we planned or chose it; it's just what happened to be on. Although my dad's personality was nothing like the character of Big Daddy, we were all kind of mesmerized by the appropriateness of it." (See also my previous posts from "Father's Day" 2010 & "My Father's Birthday" 2010).

Even though I've never been one to put much stock in dreams or remember mine or analyze them or anything like that, a few years ago, I had an unforgettable dream in which my dad comes to a school picnic, wearing a white linen suit and Panama hat -- not like anything I ever saw him wear in real life -- with a camera around his neck -- again, nothing I ever saw my dad do. He looks like a tourist, which I guess is the point, as if he has traveled back from the afterlife.

In the dream, the school kids are all playing and the parents are sitting at picnic tables. When I see my dad come into the park, I say to one of the other parents, "Look, there's my dad." She says, "He can sit with us!" I say, as if it's just a minor setback, "Well, I have to tell you, he's no longer living." And she says, "Oh, that's okay. Tell him to come on over anyway," as if it doesn't matter in the least -- living or dead, all are welcome!

I've often felt sad that my father died before my boys were born; so what I want to do next in the dream is show him which of the children are Ben and Sam so that he can meet them, but when I look across the park, I see that he already has them standing side by side and is taking their photograph! That's when I realize, in the dream, that he already knows who they are! At that point, I woke up and, in real life, felt the same certainty.

I've shared this story with a few friends, one of whom pointed out that perhaps my father's uncharacteristic outfit was his way of saying, "Kitti would never pull this outfit out of her imagination for me, so I'll wear this. Just to let her know." I loved that interpretation, for truly, what I experienced that night did not feel like a dream from within so much as a visitation from without, a surprising, comforting visit from a time traveler.

I've had this same sensation only a couple of other times in my life; but I'll save those stories for another post. For now, Happy 89th Birthday, Dad!

The Summer Belvedere

" . . . and whisper faith to the summer belvedere . . .
clear to the belvedere, yes, clear up there . . . "~ a summer belvedere ~
somewhere in Cape May, New Jersey
The Summer Belvedere
I
Such icy wounds the city people bear
beneath brown coats enveloping withered members!
I don't want to know of mutilations

nor witness the long-drawn evening debarkation
of warm and liquid cargoes in torn wrappings
the ships of mercy carry back from war.

We live on cliffs above such moaning waters!

Our eyeballs are starred by the vision of burning cities,
our eardrums shattered by cannon.
A blast of the dying,
a thunder of people who cannot catch their breath

is caught in the mortar and molded into the walls.

And I, obsessed with a dread of things corroded,
of rasping faucets, of channels that labor to flow
have no desire to know of morbid tissues,
of cells that begin prodigiously to flower.

There is an hour in which disease will be known
as more than occasion for some dim relative's sorrow.
But still the watcher within my soundless country
assures the pendulum duties of the heart
and asks no reason but keeps a faithful watch

as I keep mine from the height of the belvedere!

And though no eyrie is sacred to wind entirely,
a wall of twigs can build a kind of summer.

II
I asked my kindest friend to guard my sleep.

I said to him, Give me the motionless thicket of summer,
the velvety cul-de-sac, and quiet the drummer.

I said to him, Brush my forehead with a feather,
not with an eagle's feather, nor with a sparrow's,
but with the shadowy feather of an owl.

I said to him, Come to me dressed in a cloak and a cowl,
and bearing a candle whose flame is very still.

Our belvedere looks over a bramble hill.

I said to him, Give me the cool white kernel of summer,
the windless terminal of it, and calm the drummer!

I said to him, Tell the drummer
the rebels have crossed the river and no one is here
but John with the broken drumstick and half-wit Peg
who shot spitballs at the moon from the belvedere.

Tell the feverish drummer no man is here.
But what if he doesn't believe me?
Give him proof!
For there is no lie that contains no part of truth.

And then, with the sort of courage that comes with fever,
the body becoming sticks that blossom with flame,
the flame for a while obscuring what it consumes,
I twisted and craned to peer in the loftier room--

I saw the visitor there, and him I knew
as my waiting ghost.

The belvedere was blue.

III
I said to my kindest friend, The time has come
to hold what is agitated and make it still.

I said to him, Fold your hands upon the drum.

Permit no kind of sudden or sharp disturbance
but move about you constantly, keeping the guard
with fingers whose touch is narcotic, brushing the walls
to quiet the shuddering in them,
drawing your sleeves across the hostile mirrors
and cupping your palms to breathe upon the glass.

After a while anxiety will pass.

The time has come, I said, for purification.

Rub out the lewd inscriptions on the walls,
remove the prisoners' names and maledictions,
for lack of faith has left impurities here,

and whisper faith to the summer belvedere.

Draw back the kites of hysteria from the sky,
those struggling fish draw back from their breathless pool,
and whisper assurances cool
to the watchful corners, and whisper sleep and sleep
along the treads of the stairs, and up the stairwell,

clear to the belvedere, yes, clear up there, where giggling John
stood up in his onionskin of adolescence
to shoot spitballs at the moon from the captain's walk.

And then, at the last, he said, What shall I do?
The sweetest of treasons, I told him. Lean toward my listening ear
and whisper the long word to me,
the longest of all words to me,
the word that divides the sky from the belvedere.

by Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)
American Playwright
Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Twice awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award

Related Posts:

1. "The Shadowy Feather of an Owl"

2. "Shadowy, Feathery"

and

Unexpected Connections:

1. In Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, when the doctor informs the family that Big Daddy is dying of cancer, Big Daddy is outside taking a walk on the "belvedere." Also Big Daddy says, "I thought the old man made out of bones laid his cold and heavy hand on my shoulder!"

2. My father was born 88 years ago today (on 18 July 1923); the day he died (Saturday, 27 June, 1987) we all watched Cat On A Hot Tin Roof that evening on TV. This was before the days of movie rentals, so it's not as if we planned or chose it; it's just what happened to be on. Although my dad's personality was nothing like the character of Big Daddy, we were all kind of mesmerized by the appropriateness of it.

Shadowy, Feathery

"Brush my forehead with a feather,
not with an eagle's feather, nor with a sparrow's,
but with the shadowy feather of an owl."
~~Tennessee Williams~~
from his poem "The Summer Belvedere"

NEW POST TODAY ON
THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER:
LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE
"THE SHADOWY FEATHER OF AN OWL"
BETTER MOUSETRAP
by American Artist Charley Harper
See the little mouse in the above painting by popular bird artist, Charley Harper? At first, it looks like another leaf, but the title provides a hint. Likewise, the owl in this poem by John Haines preys upon mice but is a friend and silent companion to the narrator. The eerie, prophetic tone here is similar to that of "Listening in October" (mentioned recently).

If the Owl Calls Again
at dusk
from the island in the river,
and it's not too cold,

I'll wait for the moon
to rise,
then take wing and glide
to meet him.

We will not speak,
but hooded against the frost
soar above
the alder flats, searching
with tawny eyes.

And then we'll sit
in the shadowy spruce
and pick the bones
of careless mice,

while the long moon drifts
toward Asia
and the river mutters
in its icy bed.

And when the morning climbs
the limbs
we'll part without a sound,

fulfilled, floating
homeward as
the cold world awakens.

poem by John Haines (b. 1924)
American poet and professor
Poet Laureate of Alaska, 1969 - 1973

"If the Owl Calls Again" and "Listening in October" can both be found in The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems

MORE OWL POETRY & CHARLEY HARPER OWLS:
"THE SHADOWY FEATHER OF AN OWL"

&

~ Superb Owls ~

The Wrong Answer

Statues Being Repaired, outside the Pergamon Museuem ~ Berlin
MYTH
Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded walked the roads.
He smelled a familiar smell. It was the Sphinx.

Oedipus said, "I want to ask one question,
Why didn't I recognize my mother?"

"You gave the wrong answer," said the Sphinx.

"But that was what made everything possible," said Oedipus.

"No," she said. "When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered Man.
You didn't say anything about Woman."

"When you say Man," said Oedipus,
"you include women too. Everyone knows that."

She said, "That's what you think."

by Muriel Rukeyser, 1913 - 1980
American poet and political activist
Oedipus did give the wrong answer. His general answer, "Man," should have been, more specifically, "Oedipus." Sure, everyone walks on four legs at first (crawling instead of walking), but even more so Oedipus because his feet were bound at birth. We all grow up to walk on two legs, but Oedipus even more so because in his prime, he strode the earth as King. And the elderly may require a cane in their twilight years, but Oedipus, having blinded himself, even more so. Tragically, Oedipus, figuratively, as well as literally, is blinded, incapable of recognizing his own fate.

Rukeyser, cleverly, finds his answer, "Man," wrong for an entirely different reason. According to the original myth, the Sphinx kills herself after Oedipus answers the riddle. But Rukeyser devises a latter day reunion, in which a defeated Oedipus confronts the Sphinx and she chides him for his gender exclusive language and blanket use of masculine nouns and pronouns, informing him that this failure to recognize women is the root of all his subsequent trials.

Would a revision of this blatantly subtle linguistic oversight have altered the fate of Oedipus? Perhaps not, but it could certainly alter ours, which is, of course, Rukeyser's point. That "familiar smell" -- is it the remains of the dead (remember, the Sphinx killed anyone who answered incorrectly), or is it the odor of sexism and exclusion (similar to the "odor of mendacity" that Buck and Big Daddy can smell in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)?

Such is the situation Rukeyser describes in her poem "Myth." I don't know that anyone has ever summed up the whole foul situation better than she does in this poem. If you don't have a word for something, how do you acknowledge its existence? How can you recognize your mother / daughter / wife if you don't have a word for her? Everyone needs a name! Everyone needs to be called by her name! If you can't do that, you diminish her existence.

Come to think of it, though, poor old Oedipus didn't recognize his father either. . . .

Not Oedipus, Not the Sphinx
Gerry in Berlin, 2003