From whiskey river:
A Way to Look at Things
We have not yet made shoes that fit like sand
Nor clothes that fit like water
Nor thoughts that fit like air.
There is much to be done –
Works of nature are abstract.
They do not lean on other things for meanings.
The sea-gull is not like the sea
Nor the sun like the [...]

[Read more →]

From whiskey river (last two stanzas):
The American Sublime
How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?
When General Jackson
Posed for his statue
He knew how one feels.
Shall a man go barefoot
blinking and blank?
But how does one feel?
One grows used to the weather,
The landscape and that;
And the sublime comes down
To the spirit itself,
The [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve resisted. Oh, how I’ve resisted.
Really — it’s been, like, Thou shalt not… and Stay thy hand… and all the rest of those Biblical-sounding injunctions. I’ve been strong. I’ve cared. Ultimately, alas, although I wrestled with the angel, s/he has overcome me. It was never easy.
And in the end, it was not even possible.
Yes. It’s [...]

[Read more →]

[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with long histories. Part 1 -- on the song itself as finally recorded by numerous artists -- appeared on Tuesday.]
Hoagy Carmichael published “I Get Along Without You Very Well” in 1938. (The copyright date was November 18.) But the song’s history stretched back over 15 [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve never attended the annual Gel Conference in New York City, but I always know it’s being held. Afterwards, I always look forward to learning about the year’s events. (Actually, I look forward to that before the conference, too. But I tamp down that particular form of expectation because it makes me wish I were [...]

[Read more →]

[I'm working on a seasonal offering with my co-blogger. But, as you can perhaps imagine, complications abound in working on anything with a gargoyle. Communication problems, for one -- we're still getting used to each other's language. And no computer "hard"ware known is meant for handling by someone with fingers of stone and eyes incapable [...]

[Read more →]

During an… odd few years in my younger life, my friend Dean and I became absorbed in experiments involving a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The brand name which Dean and I both “owned,” in those days when electronics were still manufactured domestically, was “Recordio.” (And yes, all right: we didn’t own them; our fathers did.)
What “odd [...]

[Read more →]