[Image: “Looking Up the Yosemite Valley,” by Alfred Bierstadt.
For more information, see the Haggin Museum site.]
Note: Here for Poetry Friday (hosted today at the impossibly appealing Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast)? Never before been here on a Friday? Just plain confused by what’s going on in this post? You might want to read about my “whiskey river Fridays” series, at its own “About” page.
From whiskey river:
Thursday
I have had my dream — like others —
and it has come to nothing, so that
I remain now carelessly
with feet planted on the ground
and look up at the sky —
feeling my clothes about me,
the weight of my body in my shoes,
the rim of my hat, air passing in and out
at my nose — and decide to dream no more.
(William Carlos Williams [source])
…and, likewise (although whiskey river omits the first stanza):
A Blessing of Angels
May the Angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
to come alive to the eternal within you,
to all the invitations that quietly surround you.May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
into sources of refreshment.May the Angel of Imagination enable you
to stand on the true thresholds,
at ease with your ambivalence
and drawn in new directions
through the glow of your contradictions.May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
to the unseen suffering around you.May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
where your life is domesticated and safe,
take you to the territories of true otherness
where all that is awkward in you
can fall into its own rhythm.May the Angel of Eros introduce you
to the beauty of your senses
to celebrate your inheritance
as a temple of the holy spirit.May the Angel of Justice disturb you
to take the side of the poor and the wronged.May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you
in worth and self-respect,
that you may live with the dignity
that presides in your soul.May the Angel of Death arrive only
when your life is complete
and you have brought every given gift
to the threshold where its infinity can shine.May all the Angels be your sheltering
and joyful guardians.
(John O’Donohue [source])
Not from whiskey river:
PRIME TIME OVER TARGET
Petronella Page:…and welcome to our new Friday slot where we break our regular habit and cover the entire planet! Later we shall be going to Honduras for interviews right on the firing line, and by satellite to London for in-person opinions concerning the food riots among Britain’s five million unemployed, and finally to Stockholm where we’ll speak directly to the newly appointed secretary of the “Save the Baltic” Fund and find out how this latest atempt to rescue an endangered sea is getting on. But right now we have a very sad episode in focus, the kidnapping of fifteen-year-old Hector Bamberley. Over in our San Francisco studios — ah, I see the picture on the monitor now. Mr. Roland Bamberley! Hello!
Bamberley: Hello.
Page: Now everyone who follows the news is aware that your son vanished more than a week ago. We also know that a ransom demand of a very strange kind has been received. Are there any clues yet to the identity of the criminals?
Bamberley: Some things have been obvious from the start. To begin with, this is clearly a politically motivated crime. During the kidnapping a sleep-gas grenade was employed, and those aren’t found on bushes, so it’s plain that we have to deal with a well-equipped subversive group. And no ordinary kidnappers would have fixed on such a ridiculous ransom.
Page: Some people would argue that on the contrary such a grenade could have been obtained very easily, and that anybody annoyed with the notoriously poor quality of California water might have—
Bamberley: Bunkum.
Page: Is that your only comment?
Bamberley: Yes.
Page: It’s been reported that a first delivery of forty thousand Mitsuyama water filters destined for your company arrived yesterday. Are you intending to—?
Bamberley: No, I am not reserving any of them for this disgraceful so-called ransom! I am neither going to yield to blackmail, nor am I going to connive at the plans of traitors. […] I decline to collaborate with them in any way.
[Page continues to question the real reason Bamberley has acquired the purifiers, while he claims it was just a business decision.]
Page: But when it’s your only son who— Hello! Mr. Bamberley! Hello, San Francisco!… Sorry, world, we seem temporarily to have lost— Just one moment, let’s pause for — station identification.
(Breach in transcript lasting appx. 38 sec.)
Ian Farley: Pet, you’ll have to switch to the next subject. Someone’s put out our Frisco transmitters. They think it might have been a mortar bomb.
(John Brunner, from The Sheep Look Up)
While doing my usual free-association thing for this post, I came across a… well, it’s not exactly a performance-art piece. The artist, Sharona (Shin) Katan, calls her medium “photographic sculpture.” She’s a member of the Mannish Trousers art collective in Oxford; for a 2009 Mannish Trousers show, she contributed the piece Looking Up the Sky, documented in this video:
(For more information on Katan, see here. For more information on the Mannish Trousers collective, see their site, here, and their blog, here. “More information” in both cases includes still photos as well as text, and even another video or two.)
Jeannine Atkins says
Hi, I wanted to thank you for your woot over on the Poetry Friday post Jules did. And for showing up there! I enjoyed what I read here but am going to have to come back. Poetry Friday gives me too much to read, and I’m still in my pjs when I should be getting ready to leave the house. Hope to see you on Sunday!
Jules says
That John O’Donohue concoction is beautiful.
“May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
where your life is domesticated and safe,
take you to the territories of true otherness
where all that is awkward in you
can fall into its own rhythm.”
Acknowledging bumbliness (is that a word?) and even contradictions. My kind of blessing.
Laura Evans says
I, too, like John O’Donohue’s A Blessing of Angels. I hadn’t heard of him.
Thanks for sharing this!
Laura
all things poetry
marta says
Oh, I left a comment earlier and I must’ve screwed up the recaptcha because it isn’t here. Sigh.
Well, I liked how in the video it is the kid who comes up first to look into the mirror. I imagine all the grown-ups staying a respectful distance back and the kid just looks right in and calls for mommy to come see.
cynth says
And Marta, isn’t that just like kids to get to the heart of the matter, up close and personal, before the rest of us, trying so hard to be “above it all” join in the fun?
I liked the Blessing of the Angels, too. I hadn’t seen it before. But I really love that painting at the top. When you see it in a museum, it just has such depth and scope. Wow! Even the reflection in the lake/pond in the shadows at the front. You feel like you’re standing there and at the same time you’re in a cathedral of some kind. Great post John.
John says
Hello, Jeannine — good to see you here, and best of luck with the book! (Although, like a commenter said at 7-Imp, it does sort of suggest an almost mandatory follow-up. about fathers and sons. :))
Jules: I love the word “bumbliness” and hope it catches on. It seems to connote something more spectacularly inept than mere clumsiness… the sort of clumsiness which escalates into not merely dropped but launched plates and food…
Laura: Thanks for stopping by! O’Donohue’s book which the poem comes from itself looks like a wonderfully soothing read. (He’s one poet which I know for sure whiskey river has referred to more than once.)
marta: That cracked me up, too (about the video). The piece was interesting, the way it reflected the cloud/sky photographs on the ceiling making it appear almost to be a globe viewed from space. And then all of a sudden this giant figure of a kid appears superimposed over it!
cynth: You actually saw the painting in a museum?!? Jealous here. At the Haggin Museum site, it says the original is 3 feet high by almost 5 feet wide; landscape paintings at that scale (especially ones of the golden-lighting variety) have a way of completely stopping the chatter in my head.