When I lived in New Jersey, which requires annual vehicle inspections (unlike Florida, no doubt among others), I once went without getting a car inspected for almost a year.

(This was in my idiot youth days, also known as my 20s, a fact which barely excuses the following story.)

The NJ State Police were notoriously (and justifiably) unforgiving about lapsed inspection stickers, and notoriously eagle-eyed as well. Thus, for a while I stopped taking interstates and other highways, where troopers spent most of their time. Yet I’d gotten so paranoid about getting caught that whenever police cars passed me going in the opposite direction — even on two-lane country roads, in dusk’s dim light — as we blew by each other, I’d keep glancing at the rear-view mirror to be sure the officer wasn’t turning around to pursue me.

Once — just once — this tactic actually paid off.

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Today would’ve been your 200th birthday. Hard to imagine, eh, especially for someone with such a predilection for death at a young age?

For those who, like me, have something of a perhaps unhealthy attraction (and is there any other kind?) to EAP’s works, I heartily recommend two sources:

• Daniel Hoffman’s Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (yes, seven Poes). Sometimes maddening to read, until you sit back and realize how closely that… that maddeningness models the effect of reading Poe’s work itself. Hoffman is fully aware of Poe’s weaknesses as well as his strengths, his gimmickry as well as his style, and does not let himself be gulled into slavish hero worship. But the conclusion is inescapable: Poe (sometimes despite his worst instincts, sometimes because of them) was a master.
• Harry Lee Poe’s Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories. The Missus gave me a copy of this for Christmas, but I didn’t get around to reading it until last week. Amazing. (Expect a full review here or, more likely, at the Book Book blog in a few days’ time.) It’s been nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for a 2009 Edgar Award in the critical/biographical category.

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From whiskey river:

Making Poetry

“You have to inhabit poetry
if you want to make it.”

And what’s “to inhabit?”

To be in the habit of, to wear
words, sitting in the plainest light,
in the silk of morning, in the shoe of night;
a feeling bare and frondish in surprising air;
familiar . . . rare.

And what’s “to make?”

To be and to become words’ passing
weather; to serve a girl on terrible terms,
embark on voyages over voices,
evade the ego-hill, the misery-well,
the siren hiss of publish, success, publish,
success, success, success.

And why inhabit, make, inherit poetry?

Oh, it’s the shared comedy of the worst
blessed; the sound leading the hand;
a wordlife running from mind to mind
through the washed rooms of the simple senses;
one of those haunted, undefendable, unpoetic
crosses we have to find.

(Anne Stevenson, Collected Poems, p. 101)

…and:

I keep coming back to the statement because it gets at the truth. It’s another way of accounting for the fact that, if a poem is any good, you can repeat it to yourself as if it were written by somebody else. The completedness frees you from it and it from you. You can read and reread it without feeling self-indulgent: whatever it was in you that started the writing has got beyond you. The unwritten poem is always going to be entangled with your own business, part of your accident and incoherence — which is what drives you to write. But once the poem gets written, it is, in a manner of speaking, none of your business.

(Seamus Heaney)

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There are lots of traditions of “how to grow old” in less than pleasant ways:

• There’s the cantankerous strong-willed (and occasionally frolicsome) oldster. In my mind, the template for this tradition was Twin Peaks Mayor Dwayne Milford, as shown in this scene (“I don’t wanna talk. I wanna shoot!”):


(See what followed this scene by scrolling a little more than halfway down the page at the Twin Peaks Episode Guide: Episode 21. Search for the text string “Act 4” if you’re impatient.)

• Then there’s the sort of soft-focus aging depicted in movies like Cocoon and On Golden Pond.
• Of course, there are always plenty of news reports — no longer even remotely funny — of the aged wandering away from nursing homes, never to be seen again…
• …or, alternatively, of their getting behind the wheel of a car and plowing through markets filled with mothers and children.

Thank God for the counter-examples.

The Telegraph (UK) recently reprinted an interview with someone with her head screwed on straight about getting older: “At 91, Diana Athill has moved from a distinguished career in publishing to success as a memoirist — and has now won the Costa prize for biography.” Excerpts:

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Need to do a fairly simple post today — too much going on for a real thought-y one:

• Complete virus/spyware/adware scan of The Stepdaughter’s PC, which I have to keep swiveling around to monitor (I stab at thee, Internet Explorer!);
• Urgent post-holiday cleanup needed, primarily attributable to:
  • New Year’s Eve dinner and, er, aftermath
  • a Christmas tree which has mysteriously opted not simply to go dry, really fast, but seems actively to be flinging its needles (and the ornaments which depend on them) to the floor; and, especially,
• Tonight’s postponed edition of the annual “Christmas date” with The Missus (more on which later, at some point), which not only will require some prep time but also imposes a deadline on everything else.

So I’m pulling out the cheapest stunt in the lazy blogger’s bag-o’-tricks: wondering about the site’s cumulative statistics — page visits and such, and what it all “means” (to the extent it can be determined to mean anything).

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Author Sara Lewis Holmes tells us, at her Read Write Believe blog, of a worthy New-Year’s-resolution of a cause:

Flying Horse Farms is a magical, transforming and fun camp for children with serious illnesses and their families. It’s an Ohio based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and working to become a member of Hole in the Wall Camps, the world’s largest family of camps for children with serious illnesses.

I talked with the director, and he said that rather than one central library, he would love to have books available at several spots around the camp—the stables, the craft room, the main activity hall, the cabins, maybe even the dining hall.

The books would be…

For kids to read while they wait for their turn on a horse.
For kids who suddenly discover they love pottery or archery or fishing and want to know everything about it.
For kids to share and discuss a cool quote or an inspirational person during nightly reflection times.
For kids who need a fast idea for a drama skit, or a nature craft, or a easy recipe.
For kids who need to rest.
For kids who love to read.
For kids who are kids and want to be kids and must be kids even if a serious illness complicates their lives.

Sara offers several suggestions for supporting Flying Horse’s “horse and camp books for kids” project, including making purchases from her Amazon Wish List, blogging about one’s own experiences with horses and/or camps, and so on.

Now, I was convinced I wanted to help somehow, but none of those suggestions were really options for me, for one reason or another. What to do, what to do…?

I’d heard about the Flying Horse project via the Seven Impossible Things… blog, so there I posted my characteristically muddled questions: what if I can’t, for now, make a purchase or donation? what if I can’t blog about horses because I don’t know jack about them?

An answer came from Sara Lewis Holmes herself:

If it helps, I know nothing about horses either, except that I’m rather scared of them. :) I imagine it’s the same for some of the kids who will come to camp too.

Heck, blog about what you DON’T know if you want. Any little bit that spreads the word helps. I’m thrilled by all the ideas so far, and I’ve updated my original post with the links.

And that provided the (ha ha, hehe, I crack myself up) spur I needed for the rest of this post — with a twist.

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From whiskey river:

Remember
That to have the eyes of an artist,
That can be enough,
The ear of a poet,
That can be enough.
The soul of a human
just pointed
in the direction of the divine,
that can be more than enough.
I tell you this to remind myself.
Every gesture is an act of creation.
Even empty spaces and silence
can be the wings and voices of angels.

(Michele Linfante)

Not from whiskey river:

Salthouse

When we walked up the hill above Salthouse
and saw, looking down where we’d been

ourselves on the beach waving back —
we were here and there and no-place

coming and going at once, perceiving
the speckled clouds as sleeping seals,

as we dipped our toes in the breeze
and watched from the hill’s shoreline

a kestrel come in with the tide,
and hold his stillness open

over the ship weathervane
of a church that was floating and drowned,

his shadow on the ground beneath him
the anchor that kept him aloft.

(by Charles Bennett)

And:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

(T.S. Eliot, from Four Quartets: Little Gidding)

Finally, speaking of empty space and the voices of angels…

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Running After My Hat and many, many other blogging sites use the SiteMeter service to track statistics — not just the number of visits and page views, but where they came from, how long they stayed, and so on. I thought the following news might be of interest to anyone who uses SiteMeter and might have missed the information.

First, SiteMeter is moving to a new platform — probably different hardware, certainly different software — next weekend, September 13th-14th. You can read about the upcoming changes, including the reasons for them and so on, in a couple of entries at the SiteMeter blog. But I thought these items would be of special interest:

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