riding Amtrak from Chicago, IL, to Lafayette, IN.
Friday, August 1, 2014
August Sabbatical
riding Amtrak from Chicago, IL, to Lafayette, IN.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Front Porches: The Innocence Lost
by renowned and unique American folk artist
Grandma ~ Anna Mary Robertson ~ Moses (1860 - 1861)
"All this was before the big supermarkets
and shopping centers and affluent subdivisions
with no sidewalks and the monster highways
and the innocence lost.
It was even before there was television,
and people would not close their doors and shut
their curtains to watch the quiz games or the comedy
hours or the talk shows where everybody talks at once.
We would sit out on our front porches in the hot,
serene nights and say hello to everyone who walked by."
[emphasis added]
from My Dog Skip (p 6 - 7)
by endearing American author and pet - lover
Willie Morris (1934 - 1999)
These selections and more on my
CURRENT FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST:
~ The Front Porch of My Life ~
Thanks for reading
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Purdue Snazzy
A few years ago, on the invitation for a campus reception, down in the corner where it would usually say something like "Black Tie," it said "Suggested Dress: Purdue Snazzy." I just loved that! Now, whenever we have to get dressed up for a Purdue event, we always say, Purdue Snazzy!
[more fight songs with lyrics!]
To your call once more we rally,
Alma Mater, hear our praise;
Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise.
From the skies in swelling echoes
Come the cheers that tell the tale
Of your vic'tries and your heroes,
Hail Purdue! We sing all hail!
Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!
All hail to our old gold and black!
Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!
Our friendship may she never lack,
Ever grateful, ever true,
Thus we raise our song anew,
Of the days we've spent with you
All hail our own Purdue.
When in after years we're turning,
Alma Mater, back to you,
May our hearts with love be yearning,
For the scenes of old Purdue.
Back among your pathways winding,
Let us seek what lies before,
Fondest hopes and aim e'er finding,
While we sing of days of yore.
The Purdue Fight Song, Copyrighted 1913
Music by E. J. Wotowa, Class of 1912
Lyrics by J. Morrison, Class of 1915
P.S.
Purdue's very own Compliment Guys
who rose to national fame back in 2009:
More Compliment Guys ~ National Tour ~ New York Times
*************
My Friend Victoria Amador . . .
**********
Vickie as a Boilermaker, back in the day!
Thursday, July 24, 2014
A Pie For Your Thoughts
Pie Poem #16
"...the God who shows me unfailing love." Ps. 59:17
Before the hello I was almost without yearning,
yearning for what never was.
Leaving family, so no family, leaving husband, so no
husband, leaving babies, so no babies.
I watch my Gaura plant, pink flowers on long green stems.
two others killed in these harsh winters but this one,
oh this one is taller then I am, strong, swaying, blooming on and on,
It ignored the ninety-eight inches of
snow this year. With mercy,
I kill the aphids on it by
squeezing them to death.
And you,
You have all those things.
It's not for me to ask what do you cherish.
because I already know family and time.
Now I yearn. My Buddha says no yearning.
I look at old poems and I see
drunken illusion more then once.
Excused myself for love.
drop everything love
know nothing love
The Buddha within is not the
Laughing Buddha
sitting in my kitchen window,
watching and waiting for my blueberry pie, or
joy, my peace, my yearning less ness.
The Buddha in the living room says
yearn no more. Is there a weeping Buddha?
No. Effexior stopped the Buddha from any weeping.
He says make a pie to give away.
Give.
Yearning will go.
~ Cate DeLong
Further Thoughts From Cate's Nature Journal
Grilled corn from my past life, yes, but I've forgotten about it. I don't grill just for me but I think of the Thermidor huge grill we had in my last kitchen. A flick of the grill, a flick of that big fan and grill city. We had a grill vent on the side of the house that was restaurant size. Make grilled corn chowder next time, but use half and half, don't skimp.
Just now I put together a set of storage shelves on wheels that I've been staring at for weeks getting ready to do it. Not at all as hard as I thought it would be --what is? Now finished, and found out why a Philips screwdriver tip is magnetized. Cool. I bought a set of screw drivers last year because I was tired of not having the correct driver.
Back to work. No pie. Making a peach crisp.
"We must have a pie.
Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie."
~ David Mamet ~
See also
"Kiss Pie!" & "Do I Dare To Eat A Peach?"
Monday, July 21, 2014
Water Jar
[artist's bio / previous post / fortnightly]
*****
We are the sweet cold water,
and the jar that pours. . . .
Those who don’t feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don’t drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don’t want to change,
let them sleep
Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Persian Spiritual Sage
*****
by John Singer Sargent, 1891
P.S.
Not forgetting Water Jar Boy!
I have loved this story ever since I first read it, many years
ago in Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Thunderbird
is the only one I have that includes a view of my dad's 1956 Thunderbird.
Today would have been my father's 91st birthday, so in honor of the occasion, here is a little story about one of his prized possessions, the peacock blue Thunderbird, seen above, to the right, under wraps. Believe it or not (even now, I can scarcely believe it myself), I was actually allowed to drive the Thunderbird one time in my life, when, for some reason that I can no longer recall, my dad was picking me up late after school instead of my taking the bus. He was driving the T-bird, which in itself was quite out of the ordinary, and although I surely did not have my license yet -- I must have just turned sixteen and had my learner's permit -- he slid over and said, "Why don't you drive home?"
Unlike the girl in the Beach Boys tune, this did not sound to me like "Fun, Fun, Fun." I was honored but puzzled by my dad's unfounded faith in my driving skills, and terrified of causing an accident. Petrified yet anxious to enter into the spirit of the enterprise, I gripped the steering wheel with all my might, having always held the flawed but firm belief that this is the best way to control a moving vehicle, and away we went!
Somehow we managed to arrive home safely with no harm done to the prized car! That afternoon is a happy memory for me now, but I've often wondered if Daddy regretted his offer, especially when I took the left turn from Highway 94 onto Highway N without slowing down, a technique unrealized by me at the time. I bet he was hanging on for dear life and doing a quick mental review of our auto insurance policy while I tried to keep it straight which was the brake and which the gas!
Whew! Crisis averted . . . for a time yet . . .
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
At Pere Lachaise
latest Fortnightly blog post,
one of several Summer Travelogues . . .
At Pere Lachaise ~ Steven, Victoria, Kitti, Gerry
Click to see more photos from Steven's album:
Paris Graves
Thanks to Victoria Amador for Parisian travel tips!
************************
Two Poems by Jim Barnes
from his book Paris
Sitting beside Wilde's
solid block of sandy stone,
I recall two things:
he was earnest and Gide would
not stay where he once had stood.
Flowers at the tomb
are never fresh: today there's
graffiti I see
the first time in all the years
that I have been coming here.
Down and to the right, there Gertrude and Alice lie,
a date and place cut
wrong, another graffitied stone,
and I recall other wrongs
too many artists,
dead, still suffer from; the words
that fools have sprayed on
stone not so much as the words
from the learned living dead.
***********
Finding Oscar Wilde
After the riot in Pére Lachaise, streams
of teenage tourists flood the gates. Shadows
of the plane trees gray their faces. It seems
as if they want to mourn but cannot go
beyond the nervous laughter of rock dreams
and Coca-Cola days. Few drink Nouveau
Beaujolais now: it's just not chic enough.
Two green-haired girls smoke Gitanes and act tough.
We see two others writing Morrison
lives beneath Balzac, in chalk. Our map takes
us past more famous lines and past the sun,
where we pause to grab our breath and then shake
the summer sweat from our hair. Somewhere down
the hill, Abélard and Héloïse wake
again to try to free themselves from the stone
bed they have lain in centuries too long.
All Paris is stone, and there are those graves
everywhere as lonely as Oscar Wilde's
broad tomb. Rioting Morrison fans behaved
as a herd behaves, coming in droves to mill
round redundancy. No solitaire to save
the senseless crowd the agony of hell
showed up. There will never be a crowd round
the other slab where Oscar Wilde kneels down,
the tall wings booked by his writing hand.
Nor need there be. The legend of his life
is not his work. The work, the art, remains.
We lean relaxed upon his stone. At five
we hear the whistles blow for our return,
a prelude to the closing gates and evening
song of sparrows. Leaving we touch a fast
farewell to his high brow and what may last.
"Paris: Ferlinghetti, Fenton & Forche"
And more poems by Jim Barnes on these previous posts:
Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy,
Missouri Poets, Parallax, No One With a Nose
Penelope, Shakespeare & Co.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
A Stemless Flower
and looking as pink as the April Moon!
#629 ~ I watched the Moon around the House
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane—
She stopped—a Traveller’s privilege—for Rest—
And there upon
I gazed—as at a stranger—
The Lady in the Town
Doth think no incivility
To lift her Glass—upon—
But never Stranger justified
The Curiosity
Like Mine—for not a Foot—nor Hand—
Nor Formula—had she—
But like a Head—a Guillotine
Slid carelessly away—
Did independent, Amber—
Sustain her in the sky—
Or like a Stemless Flower—
Upheld in rolling Air
By finer Gravitations—
Than bind Philosopher—
No Hunger—had she—nor an Inn—
Her Toilette—to suffice—
Nor Avocation—nor Concern
For little Mysteries
As harass us—like Life—and Death—
And Afterwards—or Nay—
But seemed engrossed to Absolute—
With shining—and the Sky—
The privilege to scrutinize
Was scarce upon my Eyes
When, with a Silver practise—
She vaulted out of Gaze—
And next—I met her on a Cloud—
Myself too far below
To follow her superior Road—
Or its advantage—Blue—
Another mysterious moon poem by Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
Reclusive, prolific American poet (see also)
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
The Size of Grief
Rest in Peace ~ 29 June 2014
You can see how she got her name -- look at those big fluffy mitts!
In the same vein, Ben & Sam used to refer to our cat
Josef's front paws as his "muffins"
and his strong back paws as "jack rabbits"!
My cousin Dodie writes: "Mittens was a great cat and has been a member of the Foothills Barton Family for about 7 years. She was an awesome hunter (run gophers, run!) and a fun, playful kitty. We loved her very, very much and miss her dearly. She had a different sort of pattern and her coloring was a great camouflage for our area!"
For the past few years whenever friends or relatives of mine have lost a dear pet, I have shared with them my favorite lines from a wonderful book-- My Cat Spit McGee by Willie Morris -- that I happened to read not long after my 19 - year - old cat Josef died, back in 2007. You may remember the Kevin Bacon movie a few years back: My Dog Skip, based on the book with the same title? Well, Spit McGee is the sequel.
Before beginning the story of Spit McGee, Morris refers briefly to the loss of Skip and a later dog Pete. He says: "I wish Skip and Pete had known each other. Someday if I make it to heaven I plan to go looking first for my mother and father, and my grandmother and grandfather, and Skip and Pete. I speculate now: How would my cat, Spit McGee, have gotten along with Skip and Pete? And in the very elemental asking I believe I know: they would have been an honorable triumvirate" (10).
Morris also includes this passage, which he quotes from "The Once Again Prince," a story in Separate Lifetimes by Irving Townsend: "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan" (see Spit McGee, 140 - 41).
I have typed, photo - copied, mailed, emailed, and posted these passages any number of times before today. But this morning, when I read about darling Mittens, it occurred to me that I should organize them into a blog post in her memory, and in honor of my cousin Dodie and her daughters Miranda and Clarissa who are grieving the loss of their special little friend.
I'm also reminded of the following poem, which came into my life around the time that we had to say farewell to Josef's brother Marcus. I am intrigued by Borges' idea of affection (and surely grief as well) being the size of the thing it's felt for. I know there can be tragedies more vast and many times worse, yet so often our grief is precisely the size of a dearly loved, recently departed, and much missed pet -- the size of Mittens, Marcus or Josef. I think the sentiments of this poem are appropriate to any number of situations, and I have a feeling that you will like it as much as I do and find a place for it, just the right size, in your heart:
The Disappointments of Childhood
"Perhaps a bird was singing and for it I felt
a tiny affection, the same size as a bird" ~Borges
Imagine now, an affection the same size
as the thing it's felt for: for the seed,
seed-like emoluments of liking and,
for the rain, droplets of tenderness
clustered in puddles at your feet.
And now remember how, as a child,
someone is telling you they love you.
"How much does daddy love you?" they
ask and you, childlike, spread
your arms as wide as a child can.
Little do you know it then, but the rest
of your life will be spent measuring
the distance between "that much"
and what love, in fact, is capable of --
The narrow width of a man or a woman,
their terrible thinness,
their small bones
growing constantly inward
from your spreading arms.
by Michael Blumenthal
on the size of grief
by Stephen Colbert:
“The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I've always liked that phrase ‘He was visited by grief,’ because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be OK with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.”
recommended by my sister Peg:
Dear Old Josef, in his Retirement Years
“What sort of philosophers are we,
who know absolutely nothing
of the origin and destiny of cats?”
~ Henry David Thoreau ~
PS ~ October 2014
Precious Little Beaumont
an artistic tribute from my friend Jan Donley
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Fond of Books and Watchful
" . . . meetings were held for conversation, with very little form,
from house to house, of people engaged in studies, fond of books,
and watchful of all the intellectual light . . . "
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
The Concord Transcendentalists in 1857 ~ Joshua Winer
Bringing you up to date on
kittislist.blogspot.com
April: Open the Book
Amazing multi - talented Elizabeth Bishop
May: Airplane Reading
Transcendentalism, history, romance, mystery, crime.
June: Books My Mom Suggested
United States History and North American Narrative
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Orchard House
Surely one of the best loved houses in America!
Orchard House ~ Concord, Massachusetts ~ Setting for Little Women
Favorite lines from Louisa May Alcott:
"Help one another is part of the religion of our sisterhood."
from An Old-Fashioned Girl, Chapter 13, "The Sunny Side"
"Housekeeping ain't no joke."
from Little Women, Chapter 11, "Experiments"
Way back before netflix streaming, I once heard a friend refer to “Commercial Quadrant Cleaning.” I thought it might be some fancy version of Merry Maids! But no! It was her term for cleaning one quarter of each room in her house, during each segment of tv commercials! She said it worked like a charm!
Here's a more romantic view of tidying up,
my girlish idea of what it would be
like to live in charming Orchard House!
this little tray back when we were kids
Monday, June 30, 2014
At the Breakfast Table
"Madchen am Fruhstuckstisch," 1846
by Johann Baptist Reiter (1813 - 1890)
Read more about Hanover on my
latest Fortnightly blog post,
one of several Summer Travelogues . . .
Friday, June 27, 2014
Princess on a Tower
This morning, inside cat Beaumont had a big adventure! Gerry took her outside onto the back porch and held her for a full minute, letting her look all around and take in all the sights and sounds of a summer morning. Nature! From a safe distance, of course! Just wait until the other cats, Pine and Fuqua wake up and Beaumont tells them all about her one adventure . . . but will they believe her?
The Princess Recalls Her One Adventure
[check out this cool blog]
Hard is my pillow
Of down from the duck's breast,
Harsh the linen cover;
I cannot rest.
Fall down, my tears,
Upon the fine hem,
Upon the lonely letters
Of my long name;
Drown the sigh of them.
We stood by the lake
And we neither kissed nor spoke;
We heard how the small waves
Lurched and broke,
And chuckled in the rock.
We spoke and turned away.
We never kissed at all.
Fall down, my tears.
I wish that you might fall
On the road by the lake,
Where the cob went lame,
And I stood with my groom
Till the carriage came.
~Edna St Vincent Millay
on the life and work of this favorite poet:
"Last the Night: The Abiding Genius of Edna St. Vincent Millay"
Millay is undoubtedly one of the most-mentioned writers in my literary discussions and always one of my top choices for desert island reading, if I had to pick but one or two. Previously on the Quotidian:
1a. Nightfall: The Moon of Late 5/20/14
1. Delicate Poison 5/17/14
2. Penelope, Who Really Cried 9/28/12
[more on the Fortnightly]
3. Love However Brief 3/1/12
[more on the Fortnightly]
4. Leap Day 2/29/12
5. The Full Truce Moon 12/10/11
6. Sad September 9/28/11
[more on the Fortnightly]
7. Moonrise, Sunset 9/13/11
8. Recuerdo: Apples and Pears 9/5/11
[more on the Fortnightly]
9. Gone On Ahead 3/10/11
10. Insidious Trauma 3/5/11
11. Philosophy of Fall 12/14/10
[more on the Fortnightly]
12. Scarred But Standing 10/13/10
[more on the Fortnightly]
13. The Little Door 7/28/10
[more on the Fortnightly]
14. Love In The Open Hand 5/28/10
[more on the Fortnightly]
15. Kiss Me 3/1/10
16. Thanksgiving Day Thoughts 11/26/09
17. The Spirit Grieves 10/12/09
18. I Do Not Approve, I Am Not Resigned 9/18/09
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
"A choir is a beautiful thing"
Foreground, St. Peter's Churchyard ~ Philadelphia
Background, St. Peter's School ~ 2004
Here's one more:
Journal of the Movement of the World No. 4
A choir is a beautiful thing
from The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
[more on my book blog & Fortnightly]
Yesterday afternoon was my school's choir performance. In my posh neighborhood school, there is a choir: nobody thinks it's square and everyone competes to join but it's very exclusive: Monsieur Trianon, the music teacher, hand picks his choristers. The reason the choir is so successful is because of Monsieur Trianon himself. He is young and handsome and he had the choir sing not only the old jazz standards but also the latest hits, with very classy orchestration. Everyone gets all dressed up and the choir performs for the other students. Only the choir members' parents are invited because otherwise there'd be too many people. The gymnasium is always packed fit to burst as it is and there's an incredible atmosphere.
. . . the choir arrived to thundering applause, dressed in red and white with bow ties for the boys and long dresses with shoulder straps for the girls. Monsieur Trianon sat down on a high stool, his back to the audience, then raised a sort of baton with a little flashing red light at the end, silence fell nd the performance began.
Every time, it's a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there's this life we're struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck -- it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of community, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers' faces are transformed: it's no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I'm looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Déborah Lemeur or Ségolène Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.
Every time, it's the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it's just too much emotion at once: it's too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing, I'm no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.
When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.
In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song. (pp 184 - 85)
McCartney Brothers, Spring 2004
In the fall of 2002, Ben & Sam had a choir / field trip to Trinity on the Green and spent the weekend with the New Haven choir families. Liz, Duo, Will, and Sam Dickinson were Ben's host family; and Ben managed to leave a pair of shoes behind, which Liz put in the mail for us. We've been BPPs (best pen pals) ever since! Thanks Dickinsons!
We also like to marvel over the parallels that both our elder boys are named "William" (our Ben is actually "William Benedict") and both younger sons are named "Samuel." The two older boys have both continued to focus on their music; while the two younger, taller sons focused on collegiate football. Will coincidences never cease?
More choir photos at Pew #41 & Happy Easter
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Factotum
& see the movie.
Last summer, I received the following note and word - a - day definition from my brother:
I was assigned to 3rd Recruit Training Battalion at MCRD San Diego.
They set me up with a desk just inside the office complex where I
was supposed to "greet" and direct personnel to the correct clerk
for assistance. In addition to that I was given about 12 or 15
unrelated tasks such as ID cards, etc.
Now I find out after all these years that I had a real job title.
Wish I had known this word then!"
Brummbaer aka Sgt Carriker, USMC
********************
factotum
PRONUNCIATION:
(fak-TOH-tuhm)
MEANING:
noun: A servant or a low-level employee tasked with many things.
From Latin factotum, from facere (to do) + totus (all).
Earliest documented use: 1573.
USAGE:
"Now, a reporter trying to interview a business source
is confronted by a phalanx of factotums."
David Carr; The Puppetry of Quotation Approval;
The New York Times; Sept 16, 2012.
********************
How timely for me that my brother shared factotum when he did because I was right in the middle of reading a novel -- The Elegance of the Hedghog by Muriel Barbery -- in which I encountered this unusual word not once but twice. Without his note, I would surely have had to look it up!
In one passage, Barbery says that the housekeeper of a fancy Paris apartment "found herself reigning over a laughable kindgdom whose subjects were the cleaning lady (Manuela), the part - time butler (an Englishman), and the factotum (her husband)" (49).
In another, a young man is describing his work at a "ship's chandler's." A childhood friend asks him, "What do you actually do at your job?" And he replies: "I'm sort of a factotum, stock man and messenger boy, but I'm learning as I go along, so now from time to time they give more interesting things to like repair sails or shrouds, or put together the provision inventory" (293 - 94).
Thanks to Dave, I was able to read through those passages without skipping a beat! Of course, I still had to look up "ship's chandler." But it made more sense than it would have had he not written to share the day's vocabulary word. Thanks Dave!
Building Well, Thrilling Quotidian and Bouquet
See also
Fortnightly & Book Blog
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Building Well
Go can take on other meanings to its devotees:
an analogy for life, an intense meditation, a mirror of one's personality,
and exercise in abstract reasoning, a mental "workout"
or, when played well, a beautiful art in which black and white
dance in delicate balance across the board."
~ from the American GO Association
Above photo from: Yin Yang Principle
See also: The Philosophy of GO
Learn more: GO vs OTHELLO
****************************
Profound Thought No. 7
To build
You live
You die
These are
Consequences
from The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
[more on my book blog]
. . . Other than the fact that it’s a board game and that two adversaries face off over black and white pieces, it’s as different from chess as cats are from dogs. In chess, you have to kill to win. In go, you have to build to live. . . . The aim of the game is not to eat the other, but to build the biggest territory. The rule regarding taking stones says that you can “commit suicide” if it is to take your adversary’s stones and not that you’re strictly forbidden to go anywhere you might be automatically taken. And so on. . . .
When I think of go -- Any game where the goal is to build territory has to be beautiful. There may be phases of combat, but they are only means to an end, to allow your territory to survive. One of the most extraordinary aspects of the game of go is that it has been proven that in order to win, you must live, but you must also allow the other player to live. Players who are too greedy will lose: it is a subtle game of equilibrium, where you have to get ahead without crushing the other player. In the end, life and death are only the consequences of how well or how poorly you have made your construction . . . you live, you die, these are consequences. It’s a proverb for playing go, and for life.
Live or die: mere consequences of what you have built. What matters is building well. So here we, are I've assigned myself a new obligation. I'm going to stop undoing de . . . structing, I'm going to start building. . . . What matters is what you are doing when you die . . . I want to be building.
(pp 111, 112 - 114)
scroll down to Thrilling Quotidian and Bouquet
P.S.
Whenever Barbra Streisand sings "Play Othello,"
I always wonder, does she mean the play
by Shakespeare or the black and white board game?
Everything
I want to learn what life is for
I don’t want much, I just want more
Ask what I want and I will sing
I want everything (everything)
I’d cure the cold and the traffic jam
If there were floods, I’d give a dam
I’d never sleep, I’d only sing
Let me do everything (everything)
I’d like to plan a city, play the cello
Play at Monte Carlo, play Othello
Move into the White House, paint it yellow
Speak Portuguese and Dutch
And if it’s not too much
I’d like to have the perfect twin
One who’d go out as I came in
I’ve got to grab the big brass ring
So I’ll have everything (everything)
I’m like a child who’s set free
At the fun fair
Every ride invites me
And it’s unfair
Saying that I only
Get my one share
Doesn’t seem just
I could live as I must
If they’d
Give me the time to turn a tide
Give me the truth if once I lied
Give me the man who’s gonna bring
More of everything
Then I’ll have everything
Everything
written by Randy Scruggs & Nikki Williams
sung by Barbra Streisand
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Summer Travelogues
28 May ~ #1 BERLIN
14 June ~ #2 BERLIN vs PHILLY
28 June ~ #3 HANOVER
14 July ~ #4 PARIS
Thanks for reading
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Thrilling Quotidian
Thinking back to the beginning of this blog,
exactly five years ago today!
Andy Warhol: “You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”
Bertrand Russell: "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
Brian Andreas: "It's hardest to love the ordinary things, she said, but you get lots of opportunities to practice."
Muriel Barbery: “When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”
~ from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, 91 [see also Bouquet, Go, Factotum & The Tree Wins]
Susan Cheever: Little Women, Louisa May "Alcott's greatest work was so powerful because it was about ordinary things -- I think that's why it felt ordinary even as she wrote it. She transformed the lives of women into something worthy of literature. Without even meaning to, Alcott exalted the everyday in women's lives and gave it greatness."
~ from American Bloomsbury, 192
Arundhati Roy: “Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house---the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture---must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstitutred. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”
~ from The God of Small Things
“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
William Martin
The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents
[Thanks to Jason Dufair & Malcolm Eastler for this one!]
Monday, June 9, 2014
Reduced Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
with its shows, architecture, customs, and traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there,
who detain’d me for love of me;
Day by day and night by night we were together,
-- All else has long been forgotten by me;
I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;
Again we wander — we love — we separate again;
Again she holds me by the hand — I must not go!
I see her close beside me, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.
~ from "Children of Adam," in Leaves of Grass
~ Preface, 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass (see paragraph #7)
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Bouquet on the Kitchen Counter
Journal of the Movement of the World No. 7
This broken stem that for you I loved
from The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
[more on my book blog & Fortnightly]
. . . I was having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter. I don't believe I was thinking about anything. And that could be why I noticed the movement; maybe if I'd been preoccupied with something else, if the kitchen hadn't been quiet, if I hadn't been alone in there, I wouldn't have been attentive enough. But I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in.
There was a little sound, a sort of quivering in the air that went, "shhhh" very very very quietly: a tiny rosebud on a little broken stem that dropped onto the counter. The moment it touched the surface it went "puff," a "puff" of the ultrasonic variety, for the ears of mice alone, or for human ears when everything is very very very silent. I stopped there with my spoon in the air, totally transfixed. It was magnificent. But what was it that was so magnificent? I couldn't get over it: it was just a little rosebud at the end of a broken stem, dropping onto the counter. And so?
I understood when I went over and looked at the motionless rosebud where it had fallen. It's something to do with time, not space. Sure, a rosebud that has just gracefully dropped from the flower is always lovely to look at. It's so artistic: you could paint them over and over! But that doesn't explain the movement. The movement...and we think such things are spatial.
In the split second while I saw the stem and the bud drop to the counter I intuited the essence of Beauty. . . . I have been incredibly lucky because this morning all the conditions were ripe: an empty mind, a calm house, lovely roses, a rosebud dropping. . . . Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.
. . . does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance?
Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying. (pp 272 - 73)
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