Geoff Dyer's non-study of D. H. Lawrence is pitch-perfect. It was the only one of his books in the library when I went, and now I want to borrow the lot. I have no real interest in Lawrence - that is, no real interest in re-reading any of the novels, except out of duty mis-conceived, but this makes me want to read the letters and (maybe, perhaps), the poems.
Giles Duley
The courage of others is often astounding. Not just the courage displayed after sustaining his injuries, but to have travelled to these countries and taken these photographs.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
- James Wright
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
- James Wright
Castle in the Air
We never built our grand house on the edge
Of the Pacific, close to where we first
Drew breath, but high up in the cliffs, a ledge
Glassed in, with balconies where we would be
Enthralled to watch it hit the rocks and burst --
The ocean that still flows through you and me
Like blood, though many years have passed since we
Sailed separately away to keep our pledge
Of seeing what the world was like. Since then
We've been together and done pretty well:
You by your scholarship, I by my pen,
Both earned a living and our two careers
Paid for a house and a garden we could sell
For just enough to spend our final years
Out there where the last landscape disappears
Eastward above the waves, and once again
We would be home. We've talked about the view
So often we can watch the seagulls fly
Below us by the thousand. There's the clue
Perhaps, to what we might do for the best:
Merely imagine it. The place to die
Is where you find your feet and come to rest.
Here, all we built is by our lost youth blessed.
This is your gift to me, and mine to you:
Front windows on a trimly English park,
A back yard we can bask in, but not burn
As we loll in our liner chairs. The bark
Stays on the trees, no wood-pile is a lair
For funnelwebs. Small prospect of return
Once you're accustomed to the change of air,
The calm of being here instead of there --
The slow but steady way that it grows dark.
Sleep late then, while I do my meds and dress
For the creaking mile that keeps my legs alive.
In hospital I'd lie there and obsess
About the beauty of this house, and still
I love it. But I feel the waves arrive
Like earthquakes as I walk, and not until
I'm gone for good will I forget the thrill --
Nor will the urge to start again grow less
As always in my dreams I spread my chart
In the great room of the grand house on the cliffs
And plot my course. Once more I will depart
Alone, to none beholden, full of fight
To quell the decapods and hippogryphs,
Take maidens here and there as is my right,
And voyage even to eternal night
As the hero does, made strong by his cold heart.
- Clive James
Of the Pacific, close to where we first
Drew breath, but high up in the cliffs, a ledge
Glassed in, with balconies where we would be
Enthralled to watch it hit the rocks and burst --
The ocean that still flows through you and me
Like blood, though many years have passed since we
Sailed separately away to keep our pledge
Of seeing what the world was like. Since then
We've been together and done pretty well:
You by your scholarship, I by my pen,
Both earned a living and our two careers
Paid for a house and a garden we could sell
For just enough to spend our final years
Out there where the last landscape disappears
Eastward above the waves, and once again
We would be home. We've talked about the view
So often we can watch the seagulls fly
Below us by the thousand. There's the clue
Perhaps, to what we might do for the best:
Merely imagine it. The place to die
Is where you find your feet and come to rest.
Here, all we built is by our lost youth blessed.
This is your gift to me, and mine to you:
Front windows on a trimly English park,
A back yard we can bask in, but not burn
As we loll in our liner chairs. The bark
Stays on the trees, no wood-pile is a lair
For funnelwebs. Small prospect of return
Once you're accustomed to the change of air,
The calm of being here instead of there --
The slow but steady way that it grows dark.
Sleep late then, while I do my meds and dress
For the creaking mile that keeps my legs alive.
In hospital I'd lie there and obsess
About the beauty of this house, and still
I love it. But I feel the waves arrive
Like earthquakes as I walk, and not until
I'm gone for good will I forget the thrill --
Nor will the urge to start again grow less
As always in my dreams I spread my chart
In the great room of the grand house on the cliffs
And plot my course. Once more I will depart
Alone, to none beholden, full of fight
To quell the decapods and hippogryphs,
Take maidens here and there as is my right,
And voyage even to eternal night
As the hero does, made strong by his cold heart.
- Clive James
first day
So I've left the service, more with a whimper than a bang., and will be going to Harvard in mid-August. Which seems an improbably short time away.
There should, perhaps, be a sense of liberation, of exhilaration at limitless possibilities, of excitement. Sometimes there is, but increasingly I'm feeling a sense of dread. The real fear - apart from the obvious ones, and the practical ones, which perhaps don't worry me as much as they should, mostly because I have a limited imagination for them - is that I won't like it. This is getting out of one race to another, from one box to another, and the second is smaller, tighter, less forgiving, less indulgent. You can't run from what you're not willing to do, or have not the energy to do, or not the capacity.
There should, perhaps, be a sense of liberation, of exhilaration at limitless possibilities, of excitement. Sometimes there is, but increasingly I'm feeling a sense of dread. The real fear - apart from the obvious ones, and the practical ones, which perhaps don't worry me as much as they should, mostly because I have a limited imagination for them - is that I won't like it. This is getting out of one race to another, from one box to another, and the second is smaller, tighter, less forgiving, less indulgent. You can't run from what you're not willing to do, or have not the energy to do, or not the capacity.
The Unicorn in Captivity, from the Cloisters.
Something Like a Sky
Something in us has suddenly cleared.
-Robin Fulton
Like a sky.
Like a still-life, alive.
Behind us, our footsteps and voices.
Beyond the walls, a wide silence.
The air is white and open, ready for snow.
Jealousy
because it's hard to give and hazard all, without asking for all in return.
Painting from Edith Dora Rey.
Hipsters
Accidental Chinese Hipsters
Unhappy hipsters
Unhappy hipsters
 |
| Impersonating a Tenenbaum is rarely as satisfying as it would seem. |
Accidental Chinese Hipsters via Refinery 29.
Autumn Thoughts
To the tune of Sky-Clear Sand: Autumn Thoughts by Ma Chih-yuan (1260-1324)
Withered vine,
old tree,
crows.
A small bridge,
running water,
houses.
Ancient road,
west wind,
lean horse,
sun sinking
in the west --
and a man,
crushed,
at the sky's edge.
- trans. Arthur Sze
Withered vine,
old tree,
crows.
A small bridge,
running water,
houses.
Ancient road,
west wind,
lean horse,
sun sinking
in the west --
and a man,
crushed,
at the sky's edge.
- trans. Arthur Sze
island
How amazing would it be to stay here? For a night, or a summer, or a year (but avoid November). In a cabin for rent on a farmstead on the island of Spildra, in northern Norway. With a view of the fjords on your way here.
 |
| Norwegian sod roof! |
Via Idle Words.
Paying attention
Looking for Jonathan Franzen's 2011 commencement speech at Kenyon College (it's okay, somewhat belaboured), I find David Foster Wallace's from 2005:
And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
directions
There are good ideas, and there are terrible ideas, and graduate school is clearly one of the latter.
via stopping off place
via stopping off place
Words we don't say
Oh. Oh! Oh. Words not to be used when Kurt Anderson was editor of the New York Magazine.
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