Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. - Henry David Thoreau
Location: Auckland, New Zealand (former Boston native and Atlanta transplant) Gender:
Posted:
Oct 10, 2008 - 11:19am
oldviolin wrote:
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. - Henry David Thoreau
I once lost a bag of broccoli in Concord, MA. Does that count?
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. - Henry David Thoreau
Echoic minnesingers of the spirit realm Left the taste of rusty iron On the tip of my tongue Stayed by the bright sufferers And their broken arrows Embraced by the fear in autumn skies Enhanced by none but the weary
When we dine by candlelight When we part to part the night With the gift of life in sight Such fear finds the means to an end Victory contrasts the shades of grey Till there illumes a new day Bound by no one, and nothing
Frozen
Back before the clock struck 1942 I was a nine-year-old boy, my brother eight, and my sister twelve. We lived a life protected from the war by a dirt road and endless pine trees. The soldiers from Ft. Bragg were always training in the deep woods and were a comfort, since in my imagination I could see rows and rows of black boots goose stepping toward our house to gather us up for a long trip. We didn't know then about where those trips went.
The war was on the lips of the older ones; and in the shadows and the open spaces where all the older boys used to stand, walk, and run. It was in the way we used to save our toothpaste tubes and roll tires up to the depot on collection day.
There was another war in those days, as I recall; or as recalls me. That dirt road was our world in a nutshell. We knew every tree, fencepost and ditch. We rode our bikes up to the pavement and down to the invisible borderline that separated what I was to learn about impoverished spirits from skin color and hair texture.
My brother and I relished the insults hurled at the colored kids, especially that older girl, who passed through our territory on the way to their school, just up and over from our house.
In our world they had their own doctor, their own school, their own church, and their own cemetery, where mysteriously a headstone or two would occasionally be toppled over.
The fact that they shared the same dirt road, the same patched clothing, and the same stream for water never occurred to us. I doubt that it would have made any difference anyhow.
One day my brother and sister and I were riding our bikes. My brother was riding on my handlebars and we were chasing our sister down the road. An old truck came sliding around the corner and ran over our sister, right before our eyes. My brother jumped off and ran home screaming, but I just stood there, frozen in time.
The old colored man got out and stumbled around in front of his truck, and fell to his knees; sobbing and holding my sisters head in his hands.
The next hour or so was a blur; my mother running up, crying. My oldest sister and her boyfriend yelling at the old man....to much noise to recall.
The old man just stood there, as did I, alone, also frozen in time. My uncle was the county sheriff and showed up with his deputy and I remember them asking him a lot of questions and putting him in their car. All he said to my Mama was, "drunk."
I never saw him again except in my frozen nightmares. He took from me the one person in the world that represented sweetness, and hope for something besides this dusty road and the war in my little nine year old head.
About a year later, that older colored girl walked up our road as always with her little brothers and sisters as usual. We hated them even more now, and we threw rocks at them and called the usual taunts. Through my tears I screamed "You killed my sister! You killed her!" She yelled back "well, she shouldn't have been in the road!"
I was so angry that I screamed as loud as I could "NIGGER!!!" She turned around and glared at me and gave me the middle finger and said; "what is you, but that?"
...Some wounds never heal. Never. Slavery of the spirit will follow a course along a dry river bed; through a treeless forest; into a birdless sky; within a vengeful heart.
As the poet said, "Life goes on within you, or without you."
"Show me where it hurts," God said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before His tender eyes. - ~ Rab'ia ~
God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.
You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that He isn't really doing this to anyone but Himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago-never mind how long precisely -having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs-commerce surrounds it with her surf.
Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall northward. What do you see?-Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks glasses!of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster-tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand-miles of them-leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues, -north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
In the winter of 1901-02, while rummaging an old closet in the shed-chamber of my father's house, I unearthed a salt-box which had been equipped with leather hinges at the expense of considerable ingenuity, and at a very remote period. In addition to this, a hasp of the same material, firmly fastened by carpet-tacks and a catch of bent wire, bade defiance to burglars, midnight marauders, and safe-breakers.
With the aid of a tack-hammer the combination was readily solved, and an eager examination of the contents of the box disclosed: —
1. Fish-line of braided shoemaker's thread, with perch hook, to which adhered the mummied remains of a worm that lived and flourished many, many years ago.
2. Popgun of pith elder and hoop-skirt wire.
3. Horse-chestnut bolas, calculated to revolve in opposite directions with great velocity, by an up-and-down motion of the holder's wrist; also extensively used for the adornment of telegraph-wires, —there were no telephones in those days, —and the cause of great profanity amongst linemen.
4. More fish-hooks of the ring variety, now obsolete.
5. One blood alley, two chinees, a parti-colored glass agate, three pewees, and unnumbered drab-colored marbles.
6. Small bow of whalebone, with two arrows.
7. Six-inch bean-blower, for school use—a weapon of considerable range and great precision when used with judgment behind a Guyot's Common School Geography.
8. Unexpended ammunition for same, consisting of putty pellets.
9. Frog's hind leg, extra dry.
10. Wing of bluejay, very ditto.
11. Letter from "Beany," postmarked "Biddeford, Me." and expressing great indignation because "Pewt" "hasent wrote."
12. Copy-book inscribed "Diry."
The examination of this copy-book lasted the rest of the day, and it was read with the peculiar pleasure one experiences in reviewing some of the events of a happy boyhood.
Jan. 1, 186-Had an awful time in school today. me and Cawcaw Harding set together. when we came in from resess Cawcaw reached over and hit me a bat, and i lent him one in the snoot, and he hit me back. we was jest fooling, but old Francis called Cawcaw up front to lick him. i thought if i went up and told him he wood say, noble boy go to your seat, i wont lick neether of you. anyway i knew that Cawcaw wood tell on me, and so i told old Francis i hit Cawcaw first, and old Francis said Harry i have had my eye on you for a long time, and he jest took us up and slammed us together, and then he wood put me down and shake Cawcaw and then he wood put Cawcaw down and shake me till my head wabbled and he turned me upside down and all the fellers looked upside down and went round and round and somehow i felt silly like and kind of like laffin. i dident want to laff but coodent help it. and then he talked to us and sent us to our seats and told us to study, and i tried to but all the words in the book went round and round and i felt awful funny and kind of wabbly, and when i went home mother said something was the matter and i told her and then i cried, i don't know what i cried for, becaus i dident ake any. father said he wood lick me at home when i got licked at school and perhaps that was why i cried. ennyway when father come home i asked him if he was a going to lick me and he said not by a dam sight, and he gave me ten cents and when i went to bed i got laffin and crying all to once, and coodent stop, and mother set in my room and kept her hand on my forred until i went to sleep. i drempt i was fiting all the time. when i get big enuf there is going to be a fite between me and old Francis, you see if there aint.
Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted. I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.
An hundred ages we had been kept Cradled in visions of hate and care, And each one who waked as his brother slept Found the truth—
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, Pierce with song heaven's silent light, Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, To check its flight ere the cave of night.
Once the hungry Hours were hounds Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, And it limped and stumbled with many wounds Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now, oh, weave the mystic measure Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, Let the Hours, and the Spirits of might and pleasure, Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite— Shelley
I never saw that you did painting need And therefore to your fair no painting set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed The barren tender of a poet's debt; And therefore have I slept in your report, That you yourself being extant well might show How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute, Which shall be most my glory, being dumb; For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life and bring a tomb. There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise.
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer -
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
