| e.e. cummings, i carry your heart |
[16 Jul 2009|01:14pm] |
|
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
— e.e. cummings.
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| . |
[16 Jul 2009|10:51pm] |
The Night, The Porch
by Mark Strand
To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing---
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us much, and was never written with us in mind.
from Blizzard of One
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| looking for neruda quote, soul recognition |
[16 Jul 2009|02:03pm] |
Sorry for the annoying entry, but: I'm looking for a quote, I think it's from a Neruda poem, something along the lines of "when my soul recognised something from your soul"? I've been looking all over for this & can't find it anywhere, but I could swear I didn't just make it up.
As a trade-off, here's a gorgeous poem by Mull poet Carla Jetko.
Advice to Virgins
When planting, consider the moon.
Trees : never place an oak and a walnut together.
wear blue velvet gloves to garden in,
Decorate your hope chest with origami birds,
Do the ecstatic hand dance.
Your roots go all the way down to zero.
plant horsehair in your bean trench to catch the cutworm.
Brush against the magnetic fields of purple sprouting broccoli.
To fulfil your desires, weave a hazel chaplet and wear it in your hair.
A necklace of violets is your charm against deception.
Feel the waterplant tides, xylem, phloem,
through the ebony of your otter hands.
Fatal to mint, is the ash from the fire.
Cradle armfuls of vervain for power over locks.
Use tea leaves leftover from fortune telling as a mulch for poems.
Pour yourself into the space between breaths.
Make wearing your wellies a walking meditation.
When planting consider the moon.
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| simeon dumdum jr: the value of modesty |
[16 Jul 2009|05:00pm] |
The Value of Modesty
Simeon Dumdum Jr.
As when a half-clad dockhand, blinded
By hunger, steps into the dusk of
A shack selling food, and while he
Trains his eyes at the naked girl
in the wall calendar, a woman
In a fresh and bright house dress motions
Toward the pots lined up below it,
Some of them without lids, and then
she warns, waving the flies away,
"Food's the same in all of them, but
Pot with cover will cost you more."
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[15 Jul 2009|10:59pm] |
i have to say, so far i really like sonia sotomayor. of course, at this point i can't tell whether that's because it seems like she'll be really good on constitutional protections, or just because she seems so sane and reasonable compared to most members of the senate judiciary committee.
in other news, i got home about 15 minutes ago. the downside: i paid for the cab myself, i have given up on cooking tonight and ordered a pizza, and i won't be paid overtime because i'm not being paid at all. the upside: i really care about what i'm doing.
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| sara teasdale, i shall not care |
[15 Jul 2009|03:04pm] |
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
-- sara teasdale, i shall not care.
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| sylvia plath, daddy |
[15 Jul 2009|02:50pm] |
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
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| jorge luis borges, the art of poetry |
[15 Jul 2009|09:55am] |
To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness—such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there’s a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
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| so you think you can dance: season overview |
[15 Jul 2009|10:02am] |
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mood |
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 sleepy |
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man, i've been meaning to write this for weeks. apparently i am so lazy that hunting for youtube videos seems daunting. i doubt anyone will read this since few of you watch this show, but i actually recommend that you watch some of the videos even if you don't watch (especially if you like dance) . . . there is some pure crazy here. tiffany and i just take the show for granted, but whenever you make someone unfamiliar with the show watch the best dances on youtube, we realize anew how very weird some of this shit really is. you've got to love a show that makes americans suffer through WALTZES and FOXTROTS. not to mention truly bizarre jazz routines.
my first fav dance of the season - caitlin and jason dancing bollywood. unfortunately it's to that jai ho song, but we can't always get what we want. caitlin has some insane upper body strength, check out that handstand.
( tons of videos and my thoughts on the top 10 )
thoughts?
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| A Valediction Forbidding Mourning |
[15 Jul 2009|02:23am] |
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.
To do something very common, in my own way.
–Adrienne Rich.
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[15 Jul 2009|12:04am] |
hey, the american league won the all-star game again! this is always the day of the year on which i acknowledge that it is pretty fucking reassuring to get to a 9th inning and have mariano rivera on the mound on your behalf.
anyway, if you have been following my twitter, and by following i mean if you have been inundated with twitters from me (sorry), you have already realized that i'm watching the sotomayor confirmation hearings. i'm watching them for work, which unfortunately means that when something is making me really, really angry i have to keep watching it anyway.
(this is in stark contrast to how i get through reading bowers any time i have to, which is basically to get up and walk around the room and sneak peeks at the dissent every other page.)
which brings us to lindsey graham.
i am really, really, really angry about lindsey graham.
there are a lot of problems with confirmation hearings, and most of them i am willing to accept while rolling my eyes at the process. there are the questions about legal issues that the questioners don't understand (dear chuck grassley: believe me, no one wants judges to run around analyzing constitutional questions for kicks when a suit is being dismissed because the statute of limitations has run out - trust me on this, and we won't even get into your attempt at discussing chevron), or have confused (dear jeff sessions: ricci was about title vii - it was about neither affirmative action nor the equal protection clause), or can't possibly expect the nominee to answer (herb kohl, i know you mean well, but did you seriously ask what she thinks of bush v. gore? seriously?). (and those are just examples! i took notes! actually, i had to take notes! feel free to contact me for so many more examples!)
i have even been able to let go of all of the deliberate misunderstandings of sotomayor's "wise latina" comment and her statements about accepting that one has prejudices, although i almost fainted with relief when someone - i think it was russ feingold - actually read out the entire contexts of those statements, because it felt like we spent a good part of the day with republicans saying "shouldn't you identify biases so that you can avoid them?" and sotomayor saying "yes, that's what i meant!" and republicans saying "we don't believe you!" over and over and over again.
(incidentally, gene robinson (the washington post columnist, not the gay bishop) has an excellent column pointing out what we were discussing at the office today during this spectacle, which is that somehow all of the old white men on the judiciary committee are under the impression that their being old, and white, and male doesn't bias them at all, because somehow those attributes are neutral.)
so i was basically doing ok, with the occasional eyeroll and some soothingly snarky commentary from scotusblog and some soothingly catty exchanges with coworker nick...and then lindsey graham showed up.
so, first, let me just say that i know a lot of people - where values of a lot of people seem to equal the relatively critical left of center press - seem to like lindsey graham. he's "honest" apparently, and refreshing in some way, and...i don't know, something else probably. i don't get it. i found him to be almost worse than the likes of jeff sessions, who probably realizes that he's being a partisan hack. i think lindsey graham might actually think that he is above being a partisan hack, and that he is fairer than that, and that he is very very pleased with himself for being so much more forthright than his republican colleagues.
the problem, of course, is that the opinions that he is being refreshingly blunt about are totally noxious.
this is a man who got up today in the u.s. senate and scolded a sitting federal appellate judge as though she were in the principal's office. he read a list of anonymous complaints that she is mean, and a bully, and condescending, and aggressive. (gee...i can't imagine that a list of anonymous reviews by lawyers of judges could be anything but scientific. in fact, i am shocked to learn from emily bazelon that in 1994 sandra day o'connor wrote that such reviews are often biased against women and minorities.) he said that he wouldn't want to appear in front of a bully. he asked, earnestly, "do you think you have a temperament problem?" he reassured that he likes her - which, he said, maybe doesn't mean much, but it should, "because [he] might [vote] for her." and then he opined that perhaps these hearings were the time for her to do a little self-reflection.
and i'm sorry, but my only real response to that is: are you fucking kidding me? temperament? are you also going to suggest that she only wear skirt suits, something former chief justice william h. rehnquist tried to require of female lawyers appearing before the supreme court on behalf of the government during the clinton administration? or, for that matter, are you going to suggest that she sit in a corner and think about what she's done? maybe, if she admits that she has a temperament problem, she can choose her own punishment, so that she can learn her lesson even better!
and the thing i am most upset by is how completely unfazed the rest of the members of the judiciary committee looked! (granted, i was watching on new york 1, and they weren't exactly zooming in on dianne feinstein, but still.) it is apparently totally ok for a u.s. senator to talk to a federal judge as though she is a recalcitrant 5 year old prone to temper tantrums during a hearing of the u.s. senate judiciary committee that is being broadcast on national tv!
now, granted, there wasn't really a lot that i expected pat leahy to do. he was hardly going to be able to stop the whole thing. but i was definitely as disturbed that the liveblog on scotusblog seemed to think that the questions were perfectly OK, and that i see no mention of anything being amiss in the washington post or new york times coverage.
(dahlia lithwick, of course, notes much of this in her column about today's hearings, and she also points to a column by andrew seward in the american prospect making similar points. unfortunately, dahlia lithwick doesn't write headlines for the new york times.)
are we really still at a point where a woman can be called out as "misbehaving" for doing exactly what her male counterparts do and have it suggested that that makes her unsuited for a job even when she has already shown that she is a capable federal judge, which is not exactly an easy job to get? really? the fact that the answer to that is apparently so obvious is something i find to be unspeakably depressing.
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| The Holy Longing by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
[14 Jul 2009|03:55pm] |
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love-nights,
Where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
A strange feeling comes over you
When you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught
In the obsession with darkness,
And a desire for higher love-making
Sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter,
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
And, finally, insane for the light,
You are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven't experienced
This: to die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth.
-(translated by Robert Bly)
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| love's distresses, johann von goethe |
[14 Jul 2009|12:44pm] |
WHO will hear me? Whom shall I lament to?
Who would pity me that heard my sorrows?
Ah, the lip that erst so many raptures
Used to taste, and used to give responsive,
Now is cloven, and it pains me sorely;
And it is not thus severely wounded
By my mistress having caught me fiercely,
And then gently bitten me, intending
To secure her friend more firmly to her:
No, my tender lip is crack'd thus, only
By the winds, o'er rime and frost proceeding,
Pointed, sharp, unloving, having met me.
Now the noble grape's bright juice commingled
With the bee's sweet juice, upon the fire
Of my hearth, shall ease me of my torment.
Ah, what use will all this be, if with it
Love adds not a drop of his own balsam?
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| where i am on the internet |
[13 Jul 2009|11:02am] |
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mood |
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 calm |
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ok. i did it. i joined twitter. yes, i am ashamed. no, it does not mean i will not post here.
so far i do not really like twitter. it is inane though it is useful to know what some people are doing in real time. i don't know guys. I AM AN OLD FART AND DON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE CRAZY KIDS ARE DOING GET OFF MY LAWN
anyway, i thought i'd do a quick sum-up of my various pathetic social media accounts, so y'all can add me.
twitter (lexie complains that my url is too long, but TOO LATE MOTHERFUCKER [her twitter: http://twitter.com/a0k]) - let me know if there are any cool twitter people i should add . . . i think i found most of you already but am not sure.
flickr
good reads
kaboodle (i never update this - some of you should join so i have a reason to do so. it's a wish list site, basically.)
last.fm (i have bad taste, don't judge me)
poupee girl
youtube (i don't upload videos, but i do favorite stuff a lot and i'd love to watch your videos if you make any)
my selling lj
i think i'm on sparkpeople.com also but i don't really use it and don't know how to set up my home page. if you're on it, leave your url here and i'll add you when i figure it all out.
and i made a polyvore but haven't done anything with it either. (http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/profile?id=897846)
um yeah, i think that's it. i do plan to eventually make a blog or website, but who knows when i will have time to do so. also i don't know if it will be on tumblr or wordpress. i have an insanejournal but it only exists in case lj falls into a crevasse. i will not join facebook or myspace, sorry, but feel free to recommend other things i should join or whatever. i'm kind of in that mood these days.
here is a bone for those of you uninterested in my navel gazing - youtube video of north korea's mass gymnastics spectacular. i am both mesmerized and frightened. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hankshiny says that the best moment is at 5:27.
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[13 Jul 2009|07:40am] |
Elms
All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understood
it will make no forms but twisted forms.
-Louise Gluck
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| love that dirty water |
[12 Jul 2009|04:30pm] |
now this is what i'm talking about. beckett gets his 100th career win with a 3 hit complete game shut out. strikes out 7 (including the final batter), walks no one, throws only 94 pitches, 66 of which were for strikes. improves to 11-3.
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| The Sleepers |
[12 Jul 2009|08:23am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 amused |
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No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French window ajar
Curtained with yellow lace.
Through the narrow crack
Odors of wet earth rise.
The snail leaves a silver track;
Dark thickets hedge the house.
We take a backward look.
Among petals pale as death
And leaves steadfast in shape
They sleep on, mouth to mouth.
A white mist is going up.
The small green nostrils breathe,
And they turn in their sleep.
Ousted from that warm bed
We are a dream they dream.
Their eyelids keep the shade.
No harm can come to them.
We cast our skins and slide
Into another time.
-Sylvia Plath, 1959.
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| To A Mathematician, In Defense of Drunkards;Jan Kochanowski |
[12 Jul 2009|12:00am] |
To A Mathematician
He discovered the age of the sun and he knows
Just why the wrong or the right wind blows.
He has looked at each nook of the ocean's floor
But he doesn't see that his wife is a whore.
In Defence Of Drunkards
Earth, that drinks rain, refreshes the trees:
Oceans drink rivers: stars quaff up the seas:
So why should they make such a terrible fuss
Over insignificant tipplers like us?
- Jan Kochanowski
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| . |
[12 Jul 2009|12:25pm] |
Essay on the Personal
by Stephen Dunn
Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses—
until we're ready. Always
it's a matter of precision,
what it feels like
to kiss someone or to walk
out the door. How good it was
to practice on stones
which were things we could love
without weeping over. How good
someone else abandoned the farmhouse,
bankrupt and desperate.
Now we can bring a fine edge
to our parents. We can hold hurt
up to the sun for examination.
But just when we think we have it,
the personal goes the way of
belief. What seemed so deep
begins to seem naive, something
that could be trusted
because we hadn't read Plato
or held two contradictory ideas
or women in the same day.
Love, then, becomes an old movie.
Loss seems so common
it belongs to the air,
to breath itself, anyone's.
We're left with style, a particular
way of standing and saying,
the idiosyncratic look
at the frown which means nothing
until we say it does. Years later,
long after we believed it peculiar
to ourselves, we return to love.
We return to everything
strange, inchoate, like living
with someone, like living alone,
settling for the partial, the almost
satisfactory sense of it.
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