"The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,

Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection,

Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—

We had the experience but missed the meaning,

And approach to the meaning restores the experience

In a different form, beyond any meaning

We can assign to happiness"

from The Dry Salvages

Eliot

Both Saturday and Sunday when I finally hauled myself out

of bed the temperature in the backyard had warmed up to 

about -28 C or -18 F. I am not sure how cold it was earlier

but even after the temperatures had risen to a balmy -20 or so

they still proved too much for the heated birdbath which has 

frozen over. The birds and the squirrels still appear at the feeder 

but only the magpies who have pecked a hole through the ice

can get a drink.

My reading on epiphany or revelation in poetry continues

yesterday it lead me to the works of T.S. Eliot, enjoy.

I am off the the library you can never have too many books 

around.

"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—"

from Little Gidding 

Eliot

"After the park and the street the interior of the building

seemed very silent. A long beam of sunlight, in which small

particles of dust swam about, all at once slanted through an upper

 window on the staircase, and struck the opaque glass

panels of the door. On several occasions recently I had

been conscious of approaching the brink of some

discovery; an awareness that nearly became manifest,

 then suddenly withdrew. Now the truth came flooding in with

 the dust infested sunlight. The revelation of self-identity was

inescapable. There was no doubt about it. I was me.'

 

Anthony Powell

quoted in Christopher Hitchens

An Omnivorous Curiosity

The Atlantic June 2001

 

I still seem to have lapsed into some form of winter doldrums

and am marooned in my own personal version of the horse latitudes.

I have spent, what is probably too much time thinking and reading too

 little doing, that said I will indulge in another trip down memory lane.

I have periodically in my life come to remember an experience

I had in my youth. I would probably have been in public school

possibly 9 or 10 when I came home from school and was looking

out the dining room window which faced our driveway. However it

was not the view that caught my attention but the golden light striking

the wide oak radiator cover under the window. In this instance I

experienced a moment of such clarity and strength that I remember

it to this day although nothing of significance occurred and it had no

lasting effect on my life. There are a number of words that might

encompass such an experience revelation, satori, epiphany ( indeed

epiphany has apparently become a staple of poetry and I have begun
reading Ashton Nichols The Poetics of Epiphany to explore this idea )
but all these terms seem to indicate some new found knowledge or
direction stemming from this experience. While I remember the power
of this experience I then or now eached no conclusion as to it's

significance if any in my life.

 

One thing that I do enjoy about reading and why I love literature and poetry

is that I  I feel a commonality with authors who are recording their own or

their characters experiences in a attempt to understand their lives or the

lives of the world around them. Even if the experiences or their conclusions

do not match my own I still find it a worthwhile experience. So while I have

nothing as yet to share about my experience I am offering quotes by some

excellent authors that may offer their "take" on such an experience.

 

"Against the gateway, against some cedar tree I saw blaze bright,
 Neville, Jinny, Rhoda, Susan and myself, our life, our identity.
 ...,. But we--against the brick, against the branches, we six, out
of how many million millions, for one moment out of what measureless
abundance of past time and time to come, burnt there triumphant. The
moment was all; the moment was enough."

 

                                 The Waves

                                          Virgina Woolfe

 

I have not blogged for some time and the winter ice and cold  has limited my 

taking photographs. A few weeks ago I came across some cards based on 

Nick Bantocks's Griffin & Sabine Trilogy. If you have not read it it is the story

 of a couple who have never meet exchanging cards and letters when they

 discover they have a "magical connection" They basically tell each other 

the story of their  lives and then begin to share the stories of their current 

travels. The stories are accompanied by postcards, letters and stamps with 

striking images. I have to admit I liked the third book the least when an 

antagonist was introduced and a more conventional plot was introduced. 

I preferred just hearing their personal histories and the narratives of their 

travels.  I had not been rereading them  long before I began to sense a 

connection, at least for me to the works of W.G. Sebald and I reread my 

copy of Austerlitz, his works largely avoid conventional plot, consisting 

instead of personal histories, chance encounters, descriptions of places seen 

while traveling or snippets from his reading and he includes B&W photos 

in the books.

Both authors dealt with personal history, art, conversation, descriptions, 

memory and I think convey a sense of what I, at least, feel in the internal 

mental dialogue we conduct with ourselves.

For my quotes I have chosen one from Sebald's Austerlitz about how the things

 that comprise our mental landscape will fade with time and the second a quote 

by the astronomer Martin Rees about how much our memories mean in the great 
scheme of things.

“...the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as 

I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly 

lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as 

it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects 

which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never 

described or passed on.” 

Austerlitz

"Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans 

who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that then exist 

will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.” 

Martin J. Rees

"White faced cattle lowing, sagebrush everywhere

Granite spires are standing all around

I'll tell you folks it's heaven to go ridin' down the trail

Just to watch the desert sun go down"

from Riding Down the Canyon

   as performed by Arlo Guthrie

As always when on the farm I went out to marvel

at the mismatched horns and coat palettes that

constitute Ralph's herd I did notice the Angus Black

seems to be disapperaing. 

Again with a tip of my hat to Roy 

(at roynaturelogbook see my  links )

I have declared a Cow Day.

Dreams of Disarmament

Harry the great polled Charolais

swollen as the sin of pride,

heavy with muscle and vitality

counts his kingdom of one

way out in the far field.

He spares us only one baleful glare

for his thoughts are far away

down to the main corral where

Morely the half-pint Hereford

flashes his horns for an admiring throng.

Guy

" It is a winter's tale
That the snow blind twilight ferries over the lakes
And floating fields from the farm in the cup of the vales,
Gliding windless through the hand folded flakes,
The pale breath of cattle at the stealthy sail,

And the stars falling cold,
And the smell of hay in the snow, and the far owl
Warning among the folds, and the frozen hold
Flocked with the sheep white smoke of the farm house cowl
In the river wended vales where the tale was told. "

from A Winter's Tale

Dylan Thomas

More from the farm.

                                       

"When for too long I don't go deep enough
into the woods to see them, they begin to
enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the
pinewoods of my inner life. I want to live a life
full of modesty and praise. Each hoof of each
animal makes the sign of a heart as it touches
then lifts away from the ground. Unless you
believe that heaven is very near, how will you

find it?"

from The Faces of Deer

Mary Oliver

" Now do U understand what heaven is

it is the surround of the living"

                                             The Changing Light at Sandover

                                                          James Merrill

"In the small beauty of the forest

The wild deer bedding down—

That they are there!

                              Their eyes

Effortless, the soft lips

Nuzzle and the alien small teeth

Tear at the grass

                              The roots of it

Dangle from their mouths

Scattering earth in the strange woods.

They who are there."

from George Oppen

           Psalm

We were able to get out to the farm over 

Christmas but a mixture of lots of snow, very 

cold temperature and the colds we brought 

with us meant we did not drop by the cabin and 

I did not get as many good photos as I had hoped.

However we did get in lots of visiting and  saw

the family so that was good.

Deer were abundant  this year their trails running

thru the garden across the lane and over to where

Ralph has stacked his bails. They were making great

headway in ripping them apart and you could see 

deer passing back and forth from the windows.

"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon."

from The Gift

                                  William Stafford

"then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel" "

 

       From [little tree]

        E.E. CUMMINGS

 

 

From my family to yours all the best for the holidays.

 

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

 

 

The Oxen

                       Thomas Hardy