Seeing Things

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From whiskey river:

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.

(Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

Shadow

So the dead are among us again
even here where Halloween is not celebrated
and the moon flies through the skeletons of trees
and men in rowboats fish for souls on the river
There is a woman with spidery hair swinging a lantern
disappearing down the colonnade
a row of buildings tilted like gravestones
in which a single window is lit
a wall from whose depths shadows emerge
assuming the contours of bodies they will follow
all night and abandon at dawn:
a revelation to you
that each day we take on a new shadow

(Nicholas Christopher, from Crossing the Equator: New and Selected Poems 1972-2004)

Not from whiskey river:

Fezzik: Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid, or something like that?
Man in Black: Oh no, it’s just that they’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.

(The Princess Bride)

Also not from whiskey river: Jim Carrey’s not to everyone’s taste. But this is pretty memorable:
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Placeholder Post: Defeating the Aliens

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[Working today on tomorrow’s post — my contribution to tomorrow’s Halloween Blogapalooza blog party, hosted by travel writer Angela Nickerson.

In the meantime, I thought you might find this useful. For, y’know, when They land and we have to, like, fight our way out of impending intergalactic apocalypse and stuff. Dude, these people know.]

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Has John Cusack Ever Made a Bad Movie?

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Kidding. Sort of.

I mean, look, the guy’s made almost 60 movies, in a career spanning more than 25 years (per his Wikipedia filmography, at least). It’s pretty much impossible to make that many films and have nary a stinker in the bunch.

Granted, I haven’t seen all or even most of those five dozen films. (Which surprised me, actually; I’d been prepared to open this post by flashing my Cusack credentials, daring anyone to challenge me.)

But I’ve seen a lot of them. And I honestly cannot think of a single film, even the ones he hasn’t “starred” in, which he has not boosted by a sly, assured performance.

Lord knows, there’s nothing conventionally movie-star about his looks — his soulful-hangdog looks (like in the above photo) or (as at left) his crazy looks or (as below right) affable, laughing, and apparently relaxed. (I’ve never seen Rachael Ray’s talk show, but I’ve seen her manic 30-Minute Meals routine. It’s hard to imagine anyone could ever really be relaxed around that person, but I remain open to the possibilities of an infinite universe.)

And Lord knows, in one of his profession’s true injustices, he doesn’t have shelves full of acting awards.

But damn, the guy is a pleasure to see on the screen.

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Salvaging the Honey at Heaven’s Edge

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You know how in the Warner Brothers “Road Runner” cartoons, the coyote is forever running (or riding a rocket, or pogo-sticking, or being launched by an ACME Giant Slingshot) off a cliff? and at some moment he realizes that he’s done so, and as soon as he realizes it he loses all forward motion, waves morosely to the audience, and drops out of the bottom of the frame?

For this Friday’s meditations from whiskey river and elsewhere, I wanted to do a “theme post.” This is a tribute to people who’ve recently shot off the edge of a personal or professional cliff, with plenty of forward momentum — and who know better than to look down.

From whiskey river:

It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw the old ones away.

(Kenichi Ohmae)

…and:

Nothing can hold you back — not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it.

If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power.

The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged.

(Tzvi Freeman, The Illlustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe)

…and:

Withered vines, gnarled trees, twilight crows,
river flowing beneath the little bridge,
past someone’s home.
The wind blows from the west
where the sun sets, it blows
across the ancient road,
across the bony horse,
across the despairing man
who stands at heaven’s edge.

(Ma Chih-Yuan, “Meditation in Autumn”)

Finally (lyrics below — not from whiskey river), a sort of meditation on dilemmas in general:

Crossfire
(words & music by Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton,
Reese Wynans, B.Carter, and Ruth Ellsworth;
performance by Stevie Ray Vaughan)

Day by day, night after night,
blinded by the neon lights
Hurry here, hustlin’ there,
no one’s got the time to spare
Money’s tight, nothin’ free,
won’t somebody come and rescue me
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire
Stranded, caught in the crossfire

Tooth for tooth, eye for an eye,
sell your soul, just to buy buy buy,
Beggin’ a dollar stealin’ a dime,
come on can’t you see that I
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire

I need some kind of kindness,
some kind of sympathy — oh no
We’re stranded, caught in the crossfire

Save the strong, lose the weak,
never turning the other cheek,
Trust nobody, don’t be no fool,
whatever happened to the golden rule?
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
Stranded, caught in the crossfire
Help me

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Beacon

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Whitford lighthouse, very low tide (click for enlarged version)

[In the wake of yesterday’s post (which began as a study of someone else’s neurosis but ended as a study of my own), I’m really feeling the need today to just write about something completely free (for me) of any, y’know, import. Here’s what floated to the surface, as it were.]

A while back, I participated in one of those “blog parties” which seem to come along periodically. The topic (selected by the party’s organizer, Rebecca Ramsey) was Wonders of the World, in which participants celebrated, well, wonderful things or occasions which held some special appeal for them.

My topic was waterfalls. As I explained in an aside there, for some unknown reason I’ve been fascinated by the country of Wales, which I’ve never visited. (Nor, as far as I know, has anyone I know ever visited there.) (Okay, you can all announce yourselves now.) Although I’m not actively looking for information on the Welsh language, Welsh countryside, Welsh history or folklore, whatever, my mind still goes into heightened-interest mode when I come across any of that stuff.

The lighthouse shown here has not been operational for some time. It’s referred to as the Whitford (or alternatively Whiteford) lighthouse. Built in 1866 to replace the original (which was in turn erected in 1854), it was deactivated in 1926. It’s 130 feet high, made of cast iron, and at low tide — as shown here — requires a five-mile walk to reach. The Whitford lighthouse watches over the Burry Inlet, on the southern coast of Wales.

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Somebody Else’s Perfect Moment

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There’s a particular category of human experience unlike any other. It’s got nothing to do with personality or intelligence; it crosses geographic and linguistic borders as if they didn’t exist (because they don’t, except in our minds and on the paper where we record the products of those faulty machines). Such an experience comes and goes so quickly that a single blink of the eye, the least distraction can cause us to miss it. It’s grounded in the senses, not in words — nor even in the heart, except in retrospect.

There’s really no way to sum up this category except via the facile phrase the perfect moment.

The work of the late, great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson came to be associated with the phrase “the decisive moment.” He adopted it as the title of his 1952 collection (all of which is online), having borrowed it from a seventeenth century Cardinal de Retz:

There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.

I’ve been considering a series of occasional posts on this subject for a couple of months now. The essence of what I hope to get at with these perfect-moment posts is embodied in a passage from Cartier-Bresson’s introduction to the great book:

…the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.

He was speaking of photography, of course, and therefore speaking of the visual sense. But we’re awash in sensory experiences of all kinds, tumbling through them as though bobbing and thrashing about in whitewater rapids. Every now and then, without conscious thought, we grab hold of a rock. For a fraction of a second, we’re completely engaged with it — the way the light darts over its wet surface, the feel of its grainy bumpy surface beneath our fingertips or against the palm of our hands, the background roar of water and its smell as it floods our nostrils and its taste in our screaming mouth, perhaps the sixth-sense fear of what will happen when we lose our hold on the rock…

Then we’re moving on, tugged away by the rush of events and voices, the sheer force of all the moments still blasting by. We never go back to that rock. But we never forget it, either.

Those are the perfect moments I’m going to be seeking out here.

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The Thing That Happened, Once

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From whiskey river:

At Blackwater Pond

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

(Mary Oliver)

And:

In the tea ceremony, the expression “once in a lifetime, this one encounter” is often used. The usual way this is interpreted is “a one-and-only encounter.” In Zen, though, we interpret this expression in the following way: In the course of our lifetime, there is one person we must meet. No matter through which grasslands we may walk or which mountains we may climb, we must meet this person. This person is in this world. Who is this person? It is the true self. You must meet the true self. As long as you don’t, it will not be possible to be truly satisfied in the depths of your heart. You will never lose the sense that something is lacking. Nor will you be able to clarify the way things are.

This is the objective of life as well as of the teaching of Buddhism — to meet yourself.

(Sekkei Harada)

And the obvious musical bit (lyrics follow), although the video is a bit… unusual:

Once in a Lifetime
(words and music by Talking Heads;
performance is emphatically not)

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself: Well… how did I get here?

Letting the days go by/Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/Water flowing underground
Into the blue again/After the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/Water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/Water flowing underground
Into the blue again/After the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/Water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was… same as it ever was …same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was… same as it ever was… same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was… same as it ever was…

(Followed by Statler and Waldorf: “Same as it ever was! Same as it ever was! Yeah—” “An hour ago!” [laughter])

Original, longer version, from the concert film Stop Making Sense, can be viewed here.

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The Engaged Photographer

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I’m working on a two-part series of posts at the moment, with Part 1 due up tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought you’d appreciate this. It’s a promotional video for the New York Public Library Photography Collection:

Among the photographers discussed, you can find more information at these Web sites (besides Wikipedia, of course):

  • Dorothea Lange: her work and life is documented in various places around the Web. You can get a good introduction from the site of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s “About Life” exhibit of 2002-2003. (The Goethe quote which the narrator mentions says, “Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.”)
  • The NYPL’s own Berenice Abbott site
  • Stephen Dupont

And of course, if you’re interested in documentary photography, you could do much worse than visit the Library’s own online Digital Images Collection.

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Happy Birthday, Lester Dent

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Today marks the 104th anniversary of the birth of Lester Dent, a/k/a Kenneth Robeson.

Not exactly a household name these days, eh? But in his time, which occupied a substantial chunk of the first half of the last century (he died young, in 1959), Dent was one of the most prolific and most successful writers on the planet. And it all came from a single character, the protagonist of — according to Wikipedia — 190 novels to date, and scads of stories. (Nearly all the books are credited exclusively to Dent, with the majority of the others, even those published long after his death, giving him at least partial credit. The “Kenneth Robeson” whose name actually appeared on the covers, though, was just a pseudonym.)

That protagonist: Doc Savage.

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