It is really a Great Blue Heron

"On the shore a bat, or possibly an umbrella, disengages itself from the shrubbery, causing those nearby to recollect the miseries of childhood."

from The Object-Lesson
by Edward Gorey

“The things that make us happy make us wise. ” John Crowley - Little Big

As an antidote to poor Marie Kondo, who just wants to bring us joy.

It's Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood" is Doktor's Leech's motto as he opens a haul of Creepy and Eerie Magazines, a forbidden delicacy from his childhood. Thanks to an on-line auction at Back to the Past Collectibles (http://gobacktothepast.com/) the Doktor is finally able to see what his mother warned him about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV1tpFqJnBU

While my childhood was not unhappy, I also never truly embraced adulthood.  

William Stafford

from Youth

“Remember when shadows played

because there were leaves in the wind?

And people came to our door from a land

where stories were real?

Barefood we traveled the roads

all summer. At night we drew pictures

of home with smoke from the chimney.

And we frowned when we read,

so we could understand.”

A few nights ago paging between the Poems of William Stafford’s 

 the Way It Is;  Graywolf Press ( Stories That Could be True; 

Harpercollins is also excellent, there is some overlap of poems) 

and John Koethe’s North Point North; Harpercollins, some poems 

I love. some not so much, I found two the two accounts of childhood 

I have used in this post. I have been asked why I like poetry so much 

and while reflecting on these choices I came up with the following.

I enjoy the brevity of poems. the beautiful language and imagery, 

their ability to change direction, the freedom from the restrictions 

of (good) fiction like plot, continuity, characterization, point of view. 

Poetry on the other hand easily weaves together memory, sensory 

experience, moods, descriptions, sounds, disparate phrases, points 

of view, changes in tone, dialogue into an instrument that closely 

mimics the way our mind interacts with the world around it, with 

all our changing moods, flashes of memory or nostalgia, moments 

of despair or of epiphany. I see the best poems not as fictional 

narratives but as vessels in which the feelings, the memories, 

the observations and experiences of both the poet and the reader 

combine to allow the reader to examine the world and their

 experiences  within it with fresh insights and understanding.

from From the Porch

by John Koethe

“As though one’s childhood were a small midwestern town

Some forty years ago, before the elm trees died.

September was a modern classroom and the latest cars,

That made a sort of futuristic dream, circa 1955.

The earth was still uncircled. You could set your course

On the day after tomorrow. And children fell asleep

To the lullaby of people murmuring softly in the kitchen,

While a breeze rustled the pages of Life magazine,

And the wicker chairs stood empty on the screened-in porch.”

  

   "I love the way the light falls over the suburbs
Late on these summer evenings, as the buried minds
Stir in their graves, the hearts swell in the warm earth
And the soul settles from the air into its human home.
This is where the prodigal began, and now his day is ending
In a great dream of contentment, where all night long
The children sleep within tomorrow’s peaceful arms
And the past is still,"

from  In The Park

by John Koethe

Walking the dogs thru the neighborhood or cutting

roses in the garden in the summer reminds me of

childhood summers with their green lawns, gentle

breezes and almost endless twilight. 

The passages in these poems spoke to those feelings and if

Koethe later changes the mood of his poem with the

habitual, pessimistic, qualifications I find frustrating in

his work, for me the (lovely) damage was already done

and I chose to focus on the evening light, the stillness and

the children asleep in tomorrow's peaceful arms.

the Garden

the Pond

As someone nearing 60 who still has my childhood

copy of Black Beauty. how could I not include this stanza

from Stafford's poem.

"Animals that knew the way to Heaven

wagged at the back doors of every house

when I was young, and horses told fences

the story of Black Beauty, and smelled of the good manger."

from When I Was Young

by William Stafford

 

"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

 

"Life is a long walk forward through the crowded cars 

of a passenger train, the bright world racing past beyond 

the windows, people on either side of the aisle, strangers 

whose stories we never learn, dear friends whose names 

we long remember and passing acquaintances whose
names and faces we take in like a breath and soon

breathe away."

from Local Wonders

Ted Kooser

When I decided to use the Kooser quote above I had intended

to end with another quote from one of his poems. However while

flipping through the The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English

Verse Chosen by Philip Larkin I found The Ice by Gibson and loved 

the  poem so much I decided to use it instead. Kooser's strength is 

always metaphor and the image of life as a walk through the cars of a 

moving train really spoke to me. I could not resist complimenting it

with Gibson's poems dealing with the stages of life where the elderly

women has attained the wisdom to ignore the jeers of others and 

experience the pure joy of childhood. I love the ability of literature to

allow us to share the experience of others or view the world from a 

different perspective. We all use a variety of sources and mechanisms

to guide our lives and make sense of the world whether it is personal 

experience,  family, community, religion, political ideology, science or 

art etc. I really enjoy using science, nature, literature and paintings 

to inform my world view and colour my experience. And of course

pets and science fiction.

In winter we tend to hibernate here we are going for it.

Saturday I had hoped to go to an Ivan Eyre show but the 

weather took a real turn for the worse so I took some photos

of the usual suspects enjoying the heated bird bath. Today

we started with -20 celsius and have warmed up to -11 so

I am watching the CFL playoffs and thinking about vacuuming. 

"HER day out from the workhouse-ward, she stands,

A grey-haired woman, decent and precise,

With prim black bonnet and neat paisley shawl,

Among the other children by the stall;

And with grave relish eats a penny ice.

To wizened toothless gums, with quaking hands

She holds it, shuddering with deliscious cold;

Nor heeds the jeering laughter of young men --

The happiest, in her innocense, of all:

For, while their insolent youth must soon grow old,

She, who's been old, is now a child again."

The Ice

Wilfred Gibson

"Memories from age three or age five put on the costumes of dreams.

Things were happening then just exactly the way they happen now,

 but those things seem to be rich with inner life and happy 

discovery, and a fuzzy sense of the world."

 from Love and Irony: 

Postcards from a Child of the New 

York School

Katherine Koch

A few weeks ago the aphids were 
flying everywhere I noticed that they were 
particularly thick on my Red Leaf Rose, 
but help was nearby, the House Sparrows
 flocked to the rose alternating between the 
bird feeder and grabbing mouthfuls of aphids.
This allowed me to enjoy their antics and 
quiet beauty.

This also encouraged a bit of research on aphids. 
Spring aphids are parthenogenetic, the population 
hatching from eggs is comprised entirely of females
who then switch to vivipary or live birth without males.
Towards the end of summer they produce a winged 
population consisting of both males and females which
allows them to spread to new host plants.

The Prairie Gardener Book of Bugs
Nora Bryan & Ruth Staal

One thing that I noticed while watching the sparrows was

this Grey Squirrel, it came directly down the Amur Cherry 

ran thru the area under the feeders where the squirrels normally

feed grabbed a piece of gravel, bit it and ran away with it.

A week of so later it did the same thing.

I still have a fuzzy sense of the world.

"I watch 

the lamplight's clear pool 

on the ancient pinewood planks 

fall through cracks and knotholes 

onto the lives of mice as starlight 

filters through the window 

and falls on me."

from How I Understand Eternity

Brian Swann

“It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change

something from the way it was before you touched

it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

As one gets older the deaths of many of the people

who formed the cultural landscape of your youth 

start to add up. I always watch the clip at the 

Academy Awards show of actors who have 

passed away with some interest and much sadness.

As the death of Ray Bradbury in June of 2012 the

death of the great stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen

today at 92 was a great loss from that landscape. The two men

were lifelong lifelong friends and as with Bradbury's stories

Harryhausen's films were a great joy to me and influenced 

my choice of the books and films I love today.

There are many tributes to Harryhausen on the web today so

I will not repeat the information here. 

Some years ago Ray Harryhausen spent some time at the

Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta upon learning

that he would be giving a talk and sign films Helen and I 

rented a car and went off to spend a weekend with friends in the

area, one of whom worked at the museum, thanks Tim, Laraine 

and of course Helen. Ray gave a talk, showed his figures of  

sword-fighting skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts 

the chess playing baboon from Sinbad and the Eye of the 

Tiger, and I think the Medusa form Clash of the Titans. He also 

patently signed VHS tapes, okay it was a while ago, the event

poster mine is framed and in the basement, and in my case 

he also signed the dedication page of Bradbury's A Graveyard 

for Lunatics which had a character based on Harryhausen and

was dedicated to, among others Ray Harryhausen.

So I have put together some photos of items fron my collection.

The Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and two of

my favorite of Ray's  films.

“I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog 

that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty

bed beside you all night long, and like an empty

house when you open the door, and like trees in

autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying

south, crying, and a sound like November wind and

the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's

so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it

will weep in their souls,

                                                             From the story The Foghorn by Bradbury

                           which became part of Ray’s film

                         The Beast from 20 Thousand Fathoms

Talos from Jason and the Argonauts.
The small figure is the Ymir from 20
Million Miles to Earth.

My signed copy of Graveyard. 

Goodbye Ray you brought myth  and magic
to life and gave pleasure to a lot of people.

"Once upon a time there were two cities within a city.

One was light and one was dark. One moved restlessly

all day while the other never stirred. One was warm

and filled with ever-changing lights. One was cold

and fixed in place by stones. And when the sun went

down each afternoon on Maximus Films, the city of

the living, it began to resemble Green Glades cemetery

just across the way, which was the city of the dead.

As the lights went out and the motions stopped and

the wind that blew around the corners of the studio

buildings cooled, an incredible melancholy seemed

to sweep from the front gate of the living all the way

along through twilight avenues toward that high brick

wall that separated the two cities within a city. And

suddenly the streets were filled with something one

could speak of only as remembrance. For while the

people had gone away, they left behind them

architectures that were haunted by the ghosts of

incredible happenings.

For indeed it was the most outrageous city in the

world, where anything could happen and always did.

Ten thousand deaths had happened here, and when

the deaths were done, the people got up, laughing,

and strolled away. Whole tenement blocks were set

afire and did not burn. Sirens shrieked and police cars

careened around corners, only to have the officers peel

 off their blues, cold-cream their orange pancake makeup,

 and walk home to small bungalow court apartments out

in that great and mostly boring world.

Dinosaurs prowled here, one moment in miniature,

and the next looming fifty feet tall above half-clad

virgins who screamed on key. From here various

Crusades departed to peg their armor and stash their

spears at Western Costume down the road. From here

Henry the Eighth let drop some heads. From here Dracula

wandered as flesh to return as dust. Here also were the

Stations of the Cross and a trail of ever-replenished blood

as screenwriters groaned by to Calvary carrying a

backbreaking load of revisions, pursued by directors

with scourges and film cutters with razor-sharp knives.

It was from these towers that the Muslim faithful were

called to worship each day at sunset as the limousines

whispered out with faceless powers behind each window,

and peasants averted their gaze, fearing to be struck blind."

                              
  from A Graveyard for Lunatics

                                         Ray Bradbury