Sky-Blessed

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[Image: ‘Untitled, Hateruma-jima, Okinawa, 1971,’ by Shomei Tomatsu]

From whiskey river:

How to Grow Clouds

It takes a lot of work: it is necessary to weed very carefully, to toss out muck and small stones by hand, to kneel on the earth, bend over, dig about in the soil, water profusely, collect caterpillars, exterminate aphids, loosen the ground and serve the earth; when your back hurts from all this and you straighten up and look at the sky, you will have the prettiest clouds.

(Karel Capek, translated by Andrew Malcovsky)

…and:

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
in September or October, when the wind
and the light are working off each other
so that the ocean on one side is wild
with foam and glitter, and inland among stones
the surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
by the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
more thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
a hurry through which known and strange things pass
as big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
and catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

(Seamus Heaney, from The Spirit Level [source])

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What You’ll Never Know

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This utterly breaks with the whiskey river Fridays tradition here. But the most recent post there seems to demand passing around among ourselves. From whiskey river:

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

(W. S. Merwin)

For what it’s worth, the above are the closing stanzas of his “Berryman,” which you can read in full here, courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac.

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Real-Life Dialogue (Awkward Moments Edition)

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[The scene opens in the waiting room of Super Mega Giant medical center in a mid-sized city in northern Florida, USA. He is a middle-aged male, and has been for some time. This report includes two Shes: A, a medical assistant; and J, a nurse practitioner.]

A: Mr. He?

He: Right here.

A: Very good, come with me. [She leads him to an alcove with a scale, weighs him, makes note on chart.] All right, now, here’s the exam room you’ll be using. [Extends hand.] My name is A, and I’m Dr. B’s new medical assistant.

[He does not know what a “medical assistant” is, or where people with that title reside on the medical hierarchy, but believes He will be able to guess from what follows. He is right.]

A: Let me just take your blood pressure and your pulse…

[She does so, then moves to computer, sits down, and asks series of very basic questions about His medical history as she keys in His answers. He concludes she’s some sort of trainee. She checks computer screen.]

A: Okaaay… Looks like you’re due for EXAM* today, is that right?

[He wasn’t expecting it. He never is; its various surprises, after all, are essential features of EXAM.]

He: Um, I guess, sure.

A: Well, I’m pretty much done here. I’m not sure if J will do EXAM or if Dr. B will. I’ll let them sort that out. J will be in in just a minute. Nice to meet you!

[She exits. Five-ten minutes later, J, the nurse practitioner, enters.]

J: Good morning. Mr. He, nice to see you again.

[She sits at computer terminal. Asks him many questions about his prescriptions’ status. Asks if he has any questions about his lab results.]

He: Nope, I think I understood what I was looking at.

J: [Standing up.] All right then. I’ll just take care of this one last thing…

[She approaches the table on which He sits. He dismounts from the table, turns to face it, unfastens his belt and pants, lowers his pants—]

J: Wait! What the hell are you doing?!?

He: Uh, well, A said that either you or—

J: Oh, she did, did she? Well I’ll just straighten her out!

[She leaves exam room. He waits perhaps a minute and concludes that he should refasten his pants.]

[Five-ten minutes more, J re-enters exam room.]

J: Now, as I started to say, let me just get this stethoscope off the wall here so I can check your heart and lungs…

He: Ah. So then you aren’t going to, umm, do EXAM?

J: [Shakes head violently, makes “time-out” sign with both hands.] NO. Dr. B will be in when I’m done and he will take care of you.

He: You have to admit, this is pretty funny—

J: [Says nothing, but shudders exaggeratedly, and leaves.]

_____________

* Details of EXAM need not be spelled out, need they?

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Get to Know What Real Is

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From whiskey river (italicized portion):

People don’t realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature... I think a person finally emerges from all this nonsense when he becomes aware that his life has a much larger meaning he has been ignoring — a transcendent meaning. And that his life is, at its most serious, some kind of religious enterprise, not one that has to do with the hurly-burly of existence.

(Saul Bellow, from Conversations with Saul Bellow [source])

…and:

I
Don’t trace out your profile —
forget your side view —
all that is outer stuff.

II
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be who you aren’t.

(Antonio Machado, Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs)

…and (paired with the Bellow quote above):

That it doesn’t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see space perspectively or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It doesn’t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it’s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our world. What I wanted to say is it’s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea and never long to escape from it.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

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The Object of My Affectation

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[Alfalfa, of the Our Gang comedies, sings of his love for sweet little round-faced, soft-focus Darla. And yes, I know: the song title doesn’t have that extra syllable in it. :)]

Whom, exactly, do you try to impress?

Note that I’m not asking about classes or groups of people. Most of us would like to be regarded favorably by our families and friends, our co-workers, the critics and audiences, and maybe even — ha ha — total strangers on the bus and in, ahem, Genuine Joe’s coffee shop (little in-joke there). And I know we’re not all “on” all the time, even the most determined poseurs among us: everyone has moments of utter un-self-consciousness, when our guard is down, we’re at our easiest and most natural, and we’re not actively evaluating what someone might think of us.

No, I’m just wondering, well…

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Monday Bounce

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I’m pretty sure I posted a link to this on Facebook and/or Twitter a couple months ago, when I first encountered it. For some reason it’s found its way back into my head today, and has been positively ringing there for the last several hours. When a song will simply not leave me alone, my solution is to just, well, listen to it. It goes away immediately. So, as much for my own sake as for yours…

Here’s “Don’t Worry, I’m Yours” — DJ Dain’s ingenious mashup of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours.” (The ukulele accompaniment, as I understand it, actually makes this a three-way mashup: it came from a recording called “Wonderful World,” by the late Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.)

Lyrics to both songs are below, displayed side by side so you can (if you’re clever and, unlike me, somehow able not to get lost in the catchiness!) follow along with the interleaved audio.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy
(by Bobby McFerrin)

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy

Ain’t got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don’t worry, be happy
The landlord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don’t worry, be happy
Look at me I am happy
Don’t worry, be happy

Here I give you my phone number
When you worry call me
I make you happy
Don’t worry, be happy

Ain’t got no cash, ain’t got no style
Ain’t got no girl to make you smile
But don’t worry be happy
Cause when you worry
Your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don’t worry, be happy (now)

There is this little song I wrote
I hope you learn it note for note
Like good little children
Don’t worry, be happy
Listen to what I say

In your life expect some trouble
But when you worry
You make it double
Don’t worry, be happy
Don’t worry don’t do it, be happy

Put a smile on your face
Don’t bring everybody down like this
Don’t worry, it will soon past
Whatever it is
Don’t worry, be happy

I’m Yours
(by Jason Mraz)

Well you done done me
and you bet I felt it
I tried to be chill
but you’re so hot that I melted
I fell right through the cracks
Now I’m trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I’ll be giving it my bestest
And nothing’s going to stop me
but divine intervention
I reckon it’s again my turn
to win some or learn some
I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I’m yours

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart
and you’ll find love love love love
Listen to the music of the moment
baby sing with me
I love peace for melody
And It’s our God-forsaken right
to be loved love loved love loved

So I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I’m sure
There’s no need to complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I’m yours

Scooch on over closer dear
And I will nibble your ear

I’ve been spending way too long
checking my tongue in the mirror
And bending over backwards
just to try to see it clearer
But my breath fogged up the glass
And so I drew a new face and laughed
I guess what I’m be saying is
there ain’t no better reason
To rid yourself of vanity
and just go with the seasons
It’s what we aim to do
Our name is our virtue

But I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I’m sure

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart
and you’ll find that the sky is yours
Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t
There’s no need to complicate
Cause our time is short
This oh this this is our fate, I’m yours!
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Right Looking

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[Image of Fay Ray, by William Wegman (1988), found here, as well as elsewhere
on the Web (e.g., Style Me to the Moon)]

From whiskey river:

My Hand

See how the past is not finished
here in the present
it is awake the whole time
never waiting
it is my hand now but not what I held
it is not my hand but what I held
it is what I remember
but it never seems quite the same
no one else remembers it
a house long gone into air
the flutter of tires over a brick road
cool light in a vanished bedroom
the flash of the oriole
between one life and another
the river a child watched

(W. S. Merwin, The Shadow of Sirius)

…and:

And now here’s the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and, moreover, all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moiling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself? Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.

(Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March [source])

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Super Powers for the Rest of Us

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[‘Super Powers,’ by Mark Stivers. Click to view the full set of six.]

Given a choice, I think the caption below my portrait — in ten words or less — would say something like writes brilliant stories one hour at a time*. (My Kryptonite: the Internet.)

Yours?

_______________

* Edit to add: Just to make it plain — this is not a super power I have. (The operative words above: given a choice.) God, no. It’s a super power I’d love to have — a super power I’d have if I were my ideal superhero.

Edit to add, 2: Now that I’ve read all these other great ideas, I think maybe the super power I already have is something like: can spot important trends with 20/20 hindsight.

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BlogIt

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Every year around now, a large chunk of blogosphere real estate is turned over to posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and Flickr albums about a gathering called BlogHer. As the conference title suggests, the focus in on women who blog — it’s apparently attended by a number of guys, as well — and for the several days of BlogHer, attendees take in workshops and panel discussions, attend parties, and go out with friends to take in the sights of that year’s city. (This year, earlier this month, it took place in New York City.)

I’ve never gone to BlogHer, and never expect to, although I follow and admire the bejeezus out of maybe a half-dozen of the BlogHerers (?) with wide name recognition (Maggie, The Bloggess, Kelly…) and make occasional trips through the takeout windows of another half-dozen or so.

There are a few reasons while I’ll probably never get there:

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Surprised by What You Want

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[Video above: “Rio,” by Hey Marseilles. Lyrics at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and:

Born Thirty Years Ago

Thirty years ago I was born into the world.
A thousand, ten thousand miles I’ve roamed,
By rivers where the green grass grows thick,
beyond the border where the red sands fly.
I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
and today I’ve come home to Cold Mountain
to pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.

(Han-shan, Cold Mountain [source])

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