Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Mix (2019 Ed.)

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[Video: “Santa Claus Is Watching You,” by Ray Stevens. (Lyrics here and elsewhere.) Among its charms, the song has Santa’s sleigh towed not by eight, but by about two dozen reindeer, not all of them likely to be tiny. Rudolph isn’t among them, having been tasked with a surveillance project.]

Want to visit the pages for earlier playlists, which include videos, other songs, and some background material not in the “official” current list? Here y’go:

2008 2009
2010 2011
2012 2013
2014 2015
2016 2017
2018    
Welcome! Please dip your head when passing below the tacked-up greenery overhead here in the foyer — I’ve worked forever on that, and it just won’t stay in place…

As always beginning in 2008, I’ve added ten new songs; the list therefore now includes 120 songs (well, the first just a scrap of dialogue). Total time required to listen to the whole thing, start-to-finish: now around six-and-a-half hours of music. This means that — unless you’re interested in only this year’s ten — the best way to play the whole thing is in random order, as background so to speak. Then you can just close this window.

Yes, I know, bloggers are not really known for their eagerness to see you out the door. Consider it a holiday treat from me (heh).

So, first, here’s the complete playlist, presented in random order. Note: you can open it in a pop-out window by clicking (duh) the little “Popout” button at the top left (that’s the way to go, in my opinion) and if you don’t like this random order, just reload the page:  

…or, if you’re in a hurry, here are the ten 2019 selections only. Unlike the complete list, this player just runs through the songs in sequential order:

In either case, or even if you don’t want to listen at all, you might want to glance at the complete current list of song titles and performers. (Note: this is just a listing; you cannot play music from it.)

If you’re interested in why I recommend the random order, you can always check the 2018 post; it lays out my reasons in probably excruciating detail.

Enough of the mechanics, already: on to some thoughts which this year’s list engendered…

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Seeing It Whole, Savoring It Small

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[Image: “Athena’s Annex,” by John E. Simpson; #802 (December 8, 2019) in my #everydaybandw series. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Early Morning In Your Room

It’s morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasplike
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water—
It seems you’ve traveled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that’s over.

Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka’s Letter
to his Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That’s what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

(Robert Bly [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world and even guiding them a little as well, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all. That seemingly so many succeeded in this is no evidence to the contrary, for, first, there are not many who do, in fact, succeed, and secondly, these not-many usually don’t “do” it, it merely “happens” to them; although this is not that Utmost, yet it is still very great and very honorable (particularly since “doing” and “happening” cannot be kept clearly distinct), And finally, it is not a matter of this Utmost at all, anyway, but only of some distant but decent approximation; it is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.

(Franz Kafka, Letter to my Father [source])

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Sightings in a Fractal Mirror

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[Image: “Self Described and Self Defined (1965) – Joseph Kosuth (1947)”; photograph by Pedro Ribeiro Simões of the work so titled. (Found the photo at Flickr, and use it here via a Creative Commons license — thank you!) Kosuth‘s contribution to this photo is the neon “sign” spelling out its own title; the photographer’s, as nearly as I can tell, is the double, not-quite-self-referential layer of photograph superimposed on it: it’s one of those “pictures of someone taking a picture of someone else.” This would be such a dull photo if the wall behind the woman were blank — or displayed almost any other work of art!]

From whiskey river (italicized passage):

What gets called “the sixties” left a mixed legacy and a lot of divides. But it opened everything to question, and what seems most fundamental and most pervasive about all the ensuing changes is a loss of faith in authority: the authority of government, of patriarchy, of progress, of capitalism,of violence, of whiteness. The answers—the alternatives—haven’t always been clear or easy, but the questions and the questioning are nevertheless significant. What’s most important here is to feel the profundity of the changes, to feel how far we have come from that moment of Cold War summer. We inhabit, in ordinary daylight, a future that was unimaginably dark a few decades ago, when people found the end of the world easier to envision than the impending changes in everyday roles, thoughts, practices that not even the wildest science fiction anticipated. Perhaps we should not have adjusted to it so easily. It would be better if we were astonished every day.

(Rebecca Solnit [source])

…and:

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

(Stanley Kunitz [source])

…and (from whiskey river’s commonplace book):

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when you find out that something is not what you thought. Nothing is what we thought. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion. Love. Courage. These are code words for things we don’t know in our minds, but any of us could experience. These words point to what life really is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

(Pema Chödrön [source])

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What We Think We Want, and What the World Thinks About That

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[Image: photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simões of a portion of an exhibit (2015-16) at Lisbon’s Centro Cultural de Belem, by Colombian artist Nicolás Paris. The exhibit was called Four variations on nothing or talking about that which has no name, which — depending on your point of view — might say everything or nothing, or, really, anything in between. Quite a title, eh? (Found the photo on Flickr, naturally enough, and use it here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!)]

From whiskey river:

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed.

If you, not just you in this room tonight but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as but individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.

In one generation, all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Caesars and Mussolinis and Stalins, and all the other tyrants who want power and aggrandizement, and all the simple politicians and time-servers who themselves are merely baffled or ignorant or afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslavement, will have vanished from the face of it.

(William Faulkner [source])

…and:

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows.

And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge.

(Hannah Arendt [source])

…and:

What We Want

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

(Linda Pastan [source])

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Multiplicative Wonder

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[Image: “Stuttering Flashmob,” by John E. Simpson; #741 (October 7, 2019) in my #everydaybandw series. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) No trick photography involved: this was just a glassed-in exhibit under construction at Epcot — I just turned around and there it was. Although it appears to show several reflections of the scene, there are really only two (see the light poles and tree trunks?) — all the others, I’m pretty sure, seem to be there just because there are a good number of human figures, close together and moving in the same direction.]

From whiskey river:

To Live in This World Requires

To live in this world requires
that you leave your house every morning
and step into the wind
Every morning: with all your memories
on file and the future pinned to some wall
you will have to build and tear down and
build again. If you get there. If. If.

Into the wind: first you walk the dog whose
blessed face belies the beast it is built upon
Millennia behind you, that beast enters a cave
and decides whether or not to kill a child sleeping
by a fire. It does not kill the child
because its heart has been surprised by love
Both softened and sharpened by it, inexplicably
Inexplicably, to this day

And on this day, the wind relents
The morning star lifts itself into a changeable sky
and you, carrying extra weight, wearing
last year’s clothes, start walking towards the train
Seeds that grew from ancient science digest in your stomach;
your bones begin to separate because science did not plan
this length of life; your heart slows down and you feel
the pressure of dragging a million, billion years
behind you. A million, billion lie ahead that you
will know nothing about

Thus, harnessed to time, facing the inevitable,
constructed by science and fed on inexplicable events
taking place somewhere in the middle of history,
your day goes by. Miles away, the ocean
murmurs to its own beloved creatures, a mountain
applies pressure to the weaving of a golden seam
And in your house, the dog wonders
if you will make it home again. And each day,
despite or because the performance of this feat
is both a mystery and a triumph, somehow
you will. You do

(Eleanor Lerman [source])

…and (from whiskey river’s commonplace book):

I have learned to be happy where I am. I have learned that locked within the moments of each day are all the joys, the peace, the fibers of the cloth we call life. The meaning is in the moment. There is no other way to find it. You feel what you allow yourself to feel, each and every moment of the day.

(Russ Berrie [no definitive source, but see here for one citation])

…and (italicized portion):

In the course of our development, red begins to attract public and private meanings to itself.

Red flag, red-light district, red-blooded, Red Cross, red herring, red-bait, red- eye, red man, red-hot, red-faced—these are all variations on a theme that goes far beyond the simple association of color and word. To make these images, we must pass the words through our own consciousness and particularity. And in this act of trying to know something else in its specificity, our own particularity is likewise revealed.

Some people fear seeing or feeling anything about which there is no general agreement. For others, it is thrilling to be aware of innuendo, shading, complexity. For those who do not wish to step away from consensus, the creative is useless at best; at worst, it is dangerous. But for those who are intrigued by the multiplicity of reality and the unique possibilities of their own vision, the creative is the path they must pursue.

(Deena Metzger [source])

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Poured Water, Struck Match

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[Image: “The Greatest Transformation in My Life,” by Irmeli Hasanen. (Found it on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) The title of the photo is an excerpt from a quotation ascribed to William James. For more about this quotation, see the About the image note at the bottom of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Transformation

I haven’t written a single poem
in months.
I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,
pondering the riddle of power
and the reasons for obedience.
I’ve watched sunsets
(crimson, anxious),
I’ve heard the birds grow quiet
and night’s muteness.
I’ve seen sunflowers dangling
their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman
had gone strolling through the gardens.
September’s sweet dust gathered
on the windowsill and lizards
hid in the bends of walls.
I’ve taken long walks,
craving one thing only:
lightning,
transformation,
you.

(Adam Zagajewski [source])

…and:

We all got holes in our lives. Nobody dies in a perfect garment. We all got to face the nothingness before us and behind. Call it sleep. We all begin in sleep and that’s where we find our end. Even in between, sleep keeps trying to claim us. To stay awake in life as much as possible—that may be the point…

Pain comes to us from deep back, from where it grew in the human body. Pain sucks more pain into it, we don’t know why. It lives and we harbor its weight. When the worst comes, we will not act the opposite. We will do what we were taught, we who learnt our lessons in the dead light. We pass them on. We hurt, and hurt others, in a circular motion…

There is no trace where we were. No arrows pointing to the place we’re headed. We are the trackless beat, the invisible light, the thought without a word to speak. Poured water, struck match. Before the nothing, we are the moment.

(Louise Erdrich [source])

…and (third stanza):

Leaves

1

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony
isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—
the trees don’t die, they just pretend,
go out in style, and return in style: a new style.

2

Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far
enough away from home to see not just trees
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks
like rain, or snow, but it’s probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder,
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the
most color last year, but it doesn’t matter since
you’re probably too late anyway, or too early—
whichever road you take will be the wrong one
and you’ve probably come all this way for nothing.

3

You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You
can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop.
It’s what you’ve come for. It’s what you’ll
come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll
remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt
or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last.

(Lloyd Schwartz [source])

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Let It Go, Let It Go

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[Image: “Puerto de Corral (Corral Gate),” by Miquel Fabre. (Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) After describing how he came to find this gate/door, the photographer concludes: “No more to say, a door is a door, just caught my attention textures and contrasts”… which felt very much in tune with today’s theme here at RAMH. I do love the textures and colors in this photograph, and rather wish I could claim that I’d taken it myself.]

From whiskey river:

Enough

It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you’ve never said circling inside you.

The rising wind pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.

(Jeffrey Harrison [source])

…and:

I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves — not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?

(Emilie Autumn [source: cited in many places as an excerpt from this book, but I haven’t confirmed])

…and:

My time does not come in large, focused blocks, but in fragments and shards. The fault is my own, arguably, but it’s yours too — it’s the fault of everyone I know who rarely finds herself or himself with uninterrupted hours. We’re shattered. We’re breaking up. It’s hard, now, to be with someone else wholly, uninterruptedly, and it’s hard to be truly alone. The fine art of doing nothing in particular, also known as thinking, or musing, or introspection, or simply moments of being, was part of what happened when you walked from here to there alone, or stared out the train window, or contemplated the road, but the new technologies have flooded those open spaces. Space for free thought is routinely regarded as a void, and filled up with sounds and distractions.

(Rebecca Solnit [source])

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Taking Off #7: Borders

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[Image: Belgium (Brussels) airport entry passport stamp, per Wikipedia]

Here’s how I’ve imagined getting around among the countries in the European Union: just like getting around among the states in the US. Y’know — walk across a narrow bridge and bam, there you are. Drive on an interstate highway, or the European equivalent, and keep your eyes peeled for the Welcome to the Next State! billboard. And so on.

Well, it is like that. Kinda.

The biggest difference lies in the fact that you’re crossing international borders — not mere political subdivisions of a single nation. The word “international” comes with teeth which the phrase “state-to-state” does not — specifically, the teeth bared to ward off excessive immigration.

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All Souls

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[Image: “Gratte Ciel’s ‘La Place des Anges,’ a French aerial spectacular,” by Peter Tea. (Found it on Flickr; using it here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) Says one preview of the show (2018): “This weekend Botanic Park will be transformed nightly into a white wonderland as angels appear above the crowd for WOMADelaide. French company, Gratte Ciel (which means skyscraper in English) will perform its show ‘La Place des Anges’ between the trees of Botanic Park.” The park in question was this one.]

From whiskey river:

(a) Are the skies you sleep under likely to open up for weeks on end? 
(b) Is the ground you walk on likely to tremble and split? 
(c) Is there a chance (and please check the box, no matter how small that chance seems) that the ominous mountain casting a midday shadow over your home might one day erupt with no rhyme or reason?

Because if the answer is yes to one or all of these questions, then the life you lead is a midnight thing, always a hair’s breadth from the witching hour; it is volatile, it is threadbare; it is carefree in the true sense of that term; it is light, losable like a key or a hair clip. And it is lethargy: why not sit all morning, all day, all year, under the same cypress tree drawing the figure eight in the dust? More than that, it is disaster, it is chaos: why not overthrow a government on a whim, why not blind the man you hate, why not go mad, go gibbering through the town like a loon, waving your hands, tearing your hair? There’s nothing to stop you—or rather anything could stop you, any hour, any minute. That feeling. That’s the real difference in a life.

(Zadie Smith [source])

…and:

Then as regards the actual connection between spirit and body I consider that the body by reason of being a living body can “attract” and hold on to a “spirit” whilst the body is alive and awake and the two are firmly connected. When the body is asleep I cannot guess what happens but when the body dies the “mechanism” of the body, holding the spirit, is gone and the spirit finds a new body sooner or later perhaps immediately.

As regards the question of why we have bodies at all; why we do not or cannot live free as spirits and communicate as such, we probably could do so but there would be nothing whatever to do. The body provides something for the spirit to look after and use.

(Alan Turing [source])

…and:

Humans are indeed frightful beings.
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky:
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness
Have a good look
stop the breath,
peel off the skin,
and everybody ends up looking the same.
No matter how long you live,
the result is not altered.
Who will not end up as a skeleton? Cast off the notion that “I exist.”
Entrust yourself to the windblown clouds,
and do not wish to live forever.

(Ikkyu (translated by John Stevens) [source])

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Dreaming Real: The Empty Shelves

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Image: empty shelves
I woke up this morning at about ten minutes to five, needing to answer (as they say) the call of nature. But it took me several minutes to get out of bed, because I’d awoken from a dream of startling clarity — everyday clarity, at that, with nothing fanciful or otherwise “dreamlike” about it — and for whatever reason, I thought I needed to hang onto the details. The dream went like this…

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