“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, 

We fell them down and turn them into paper,

That we may record our emptiness.” 

Kahlil Gibran

Sand and Foam?

We have been alternating here between the hopeful signs 

of spring and the return of winter. Helen and I have managed

to finish a long delayed project and converted one room in 

the basement into a library for some mysteries, science fiction,

my Darwin/biology books and the bulk of my poetry collection.

two more libraries and a wood working shop to go.

 

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

from The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

"My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun 
was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you 
went along in the stillness, every now and then masses 
of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! 
making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and 
snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night
--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed 
and played with them for hours. Here and there great 
branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of 
the snow, and robins perched and hopped on them in 
their perky conceited way, just as if they had done it 
themselves."

from The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame

Friday the temperature went up and the snow has been melting.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'   He chortled in his joy."

Though some might miss it.

Did someone say Release the Kraken(s) 

"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

From The Stolen Child
W.B. Yeats



 

"The deepest sleep holds us

to something immutable.

We have fallen

into place, and harmony

surrounds us. We are carried 

in the world, in the company 

of stars. But as day comes

I feel the waking of my hunger

for another day."

from From The Crest

Wendell Berry

Friday Night a new pack member joined us.

Nina is a rescue from Mexico arranged through

a Calgary group that brings smaller dogs, which

are often in short supply in Calgary, from rescue

groups in the US and Mexico. Since we wanted

a young companion for Whateley and Shaun

we contacted them and decided Nina would fit

would right in. At present she is sleeping in 

with the rest of the pack.

The wonder of the world

The beauty and the power,

The shapes of things

Their colours, lights and shades

These I saw,

Look ye also while life lasts

from an old gravestone in Cumberland England
from the introduction to the book

Eliot Porter In the Realm of Nature.

"Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; 

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty 

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; 

All pleasures and all pains, remembering 

The bough of summer and the winter branch. 

These are the measures destined for her soul. "

    from  Sunday Morning 

                   Wallace Stevens

"Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness

Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing

But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.

Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains?

Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope

For a thousand years? "

from As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter
I think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor

                   James Wright 

"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