[Untitled photo by Henri Prestes. First saw it on Tumblr, then double-checked his Instagram account for further description. All he says there is, “At the top of the highest portuguese mountain the dense mist is an almost perpetual occurrence.”]
From whiskey river:
Humility, therefore, is absolutely necessary if man is to avoid acting like a baby all his life. To grow up means, in fact, to become humble, to throw away the illusion that I am at the center of everything and that other people only exist to provide me with comfort and pleasure.
(Thomas Merton [source])
…and (italicized lines):
Am I Not Among the Early Risers
Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers?Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing,
free to everyone, and everything?Have I not thought, for years, what it would be
worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail,
to gather blueberries,
thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer?What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly
at the top of the field,
her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine,
has not already done?What countries, what visitations,
what pomp
would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods
on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?Here is an amazement — once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.Above the modest house and the palace — the same darkness.
Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.
Above the child who will recover and the child who will
not recover, the same energies roll forward
from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.I bow down.
Have I not loved as though the beloved could vanish at any moment,
or become preoccupied, or whisper a name other that mine
in the stretched curvatures of lust, or over the dinner table?
Have I ever taken good fortune for granted?Have I not, every spring, befriended the swarm that pours forth?
Have I not summoned the honey-man to come, to hurry,
to bring with him the white and comfortable hive?And while I waited, have I not leaned close, to see everything?
Have I not been stung as I watched their milling and gleaming,
and stung hard?Have I not been ready always at the iron door,
not knowing to what country it opens — to death or to more life?Have I ever said that the day was too hot or too cold
or the night too long and as black as oil anyway,
or the morning, washed blue and emptied entirely
of the second-rate, less than happinessas I stepped down from the porch and set out along
the green paths of the world?
(Mary Oliver [source])
Not from whiskey river:
We Are of a Tribe
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.
(Alberto Rios [source])
…and:
Hora Inmensa
Only a bell and a bird break the stillness…
It seems that the two talk with the setting sun
Golden colored silence, the afternoon is made of crystals
A roving purity sways the cold trees
and beyond all that
a transparent river dreams that trampling over pearls
it breaks loose
and flows into infinity
(Juan Ramón Jiménez [source])
…and:
The reason [parallel universes] are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn’t actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did.
The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn’t mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home.
(Douglas Adams [source])
…and:
#36: The novitiate approached the one who had been charged with their instruction.
“Sensei,” the young man said, “I am but one of your dozens of students. We all seem so different from one another. We come from different parts of the world, from different bloodlines; some of us are quick learners, some of us slow; some of us face the world eagerly, and some of us quail before even the small challenge of getting out of bed. With such sharp differences among its parts, how can your school be considered whole — a single entity?”
The instructor laughed. “Yes,” he said, “I myself have often wondered about this.” And dismissing the student, he returned to his work in the garden.
(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)
Froog says
I am often struck by how many poets of more recent times – particularly, perhaps,, the sort of poets that ‘whiskey river’ generally favours – go for a stream-of-consciousness approach, where they let themselves go on and on…. and lose sight of things like succinctness, neatness of form, satisfying conclusion of thought. Oh yes, all that other stuff you throw in later on may be very nice as well, and you could use it in some OTHER poem some other time, but why could you not appreciate the near-perfection that you’d achieved at point x? For me, the first poem here peaked just before the bit excerpted by ‘whiskey river’! I really wanted to say, “Oi, Oliver – NO! Call it a day at ‘… or, equally, in the rain.” (Reference: https://youtu.be/UN3C22ga-Z4)
And while I’m in a slightly curmudging mood, this week’s ‘Maxim’ seems a bit of a cheat. Many of them have been more about memory than nostalgia per se; but that’s OK, since the two concepts are obviously closely inter-linked. But this one seems to be about neither. It looks more like the start of a follow-up series, ‘Maxims for Buddhists’. (I look forward to that too. But it is does seem like a distinct genre. You know how we Classicists – and librarians – get hung up on our category distinctions.)
John says
I confess to having assembled that week’s post in haste — the source of the mangled Maxim. (And boy, if THAT doesn’t sound like the germ of a Perry Mason “The Case of…” episode title…)
As for the Oliver poem: one of the differences between the way whiskey river‘s anonymous blogger and I handle these snippets is that w.r. frequently posts excerpts not just from long prose works, which is understandable, but also from poems. I try very hard not to do that, to the point where (as here) I hunt down the entire poem for posting, and simply highlight the w.r. excerpt. This lets me honor both the original source (the poem, as delivered by the poet) and the medium through which it came to me (w.r.).
For many years, I was the webmaster for a successful regional poetry press. This sensitized me to “honoring the poem” in ways which I sometimes would have preferred NOT to honor it. For instance, formatting poetry for the Web — when the poet is determinedly anti-formalist, with phrases scattered here and there on the physical page — can be a godawful nightmare. (It’s even worse when trying to format such poetry for ebooks; I experimented with that some, but have always been secretly grateful that the press never pursued the project while I was still associated with them.)
Anyhow, I do understand what you’re saying about “poets of more recent times.” But I also feel an obligation that if I’m going to quote them, I need to grant them the favor of quoting them in unedited form. Just foible, I guess, but at least one rooted in good intentions!