A prior president re. thugs wanting to destroy government in order to save it

Abraham Lincoln, Statesman - Cooper Union address - 1860

"... sometimes in the middle of the night ..." - Camus

"But sometimes in the middle of the night, their wound would open afresh.  And suddenly awakened, they would finger its painful edges, they would recover their suffering anew and with the stricken face of their love."

"Must I write?" - Rilke

[Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet]

...
You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. 

There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. 

Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty – describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember.

...

In a Miles mood this morning ...

Miles Davis & the Quintet - 'Round Midnight, 1967 - 44 minutes.

Herbie Hancock on piano, Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Tony Williams on drums and Ron Carter on bass.

'Round Midnight - YouTube

"I am an insane eye doctor ..."

Classic Gahan Wilson cartoon -

"Celebrate" Banned Book Week - really? Really??

#bannedbooksweek Come on, Google Store.  With all those books in your inventory, surely, you can find an appropriate word to use for observing Banned Book Week.  "Celebrate" certainly isn't it.

"Woo-hoo - books have been banned!  Let's celebrate!" Yeah, you're seeing it now, aren't you, Google?

Stephen King on getting the job done or "Writers write."

"So then, Mr. President, I told the Chairman ..."

"... You're thinking 'Did Vice President Garner fire six shots or only five?' Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a Colt .45 Peacemaker, one of the most powerful handguns in the world and will blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

Where yesterday used to live

There will be a slight delay ...

Stieglitz - "Fifth Avenue, Winter" 1893

"My picture ‘Fifth Avenue, Winter’ is the result of a three hours’ stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd, 1893, awaiting the proper moment,” Stieglitz wrote in 1897. 

“My patience was duly rewarded. Of course, the result contained an element of chance, as I might have stood there for hours without succeeding in getting the desired pictures.”

Rilke - "... poems amount to so little ... "

... Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life.  You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a lone one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines.  For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

I know it's not always the case ...

... but most of the time, the average male's conversational menu breaks down like this:

Michelle Obama and Drinking More Water

Are folks opposed to drinking plain water or to Mrs. Obama?

A new White House initiative (well, at least the First Lady's part of the House) has begun, encouraging everyone to drink more plain water.  Even just a glass more a day, they say.  Not "Stop drinking anything else!" or "Get 60+ ounces of water a day!" or even "For your good and the good of the country, the NSA is tracking your beverage habits."

Drinking more water sounds nice - and it's not an obviously horrible thing.  There are evidently some mixed opinions still about how much difference a shift to plain water will make, but it's still not a bad thing to drink more water and less of other things, assuming you don't drink so much that you develop water intoxication (no, really, it's called dilutional hyponatremia and it's real).  But it's very rare and you have to add a LOT of water to throw off your electrolyte balance.  The danger of hyponatremia is significantly smaller than running with scissors, let's put it that way.

Granted, some might point to the numerous companies involved in this initiative who make a very nice profit selling us three cents of water for two to three bucks.  That's a very fair reservation to have about this campaign and definitely can engender some criticism.

But you may recall that Mrs. Obama has already stepped into a hailstorm of criticism from conservatives and some libertarians for her so very radical opposition to obesity.  Some folks found it outrageous that any First Lady would try to tell them what they ought and ought not do with their bodies. Never before in our history has a First Lady done such a thing! Never ever .. well, except for nearly all the First Ladies back to Eleanor Roosevelt.  Sure, Bess Truman liked to keep to herself and stay out of the spotlight, but every other First Lady has been an unabashed opponent of things like unemployment, illiteracy, malnutrition, alcoholism, obesity, bad posture, and probably even running with scissors.  This is despite the fact that any reasonable person knows that all of those things (and more) are every American's God-given rights, guaranteed by the Constitution.

But few First Ladies encountered the derision and hyperbolic frothing for their pet projects that Michelle Obama has.  The notable exception was Hillary Clinton's abortive attempt to stop baking cookies, like she loved to do, and had even gone to university to study up on, and become an extra-governmental health czar.  Also, as I recall, a lot of people in the late 70s and early 80s thought it odd that anyone in Washington, D. C., would actually be opposed to alcoholism.  Betty Ford got a little flack for that.

So, really - what does make obesity and chronic dehydration so sacred to reactionary conservatives?  What is it that makes the dogs bark so loud on this issue?

One thing I'd like to mention at this point - and I'm sure a number of you have noticed this as well - is that Michelle Obama is African American.  Even people who regularly start complaints with "Well, you know, it doesn't bother me in the least, but ..." have noticed this fact, even though it doesn't bother them in the least, and they have a lot of African American friends.  Or they would if any of them lived in their neighborhoods or went to the same country clubs or tractor pulls as them - pick your vector. In a New York minute ... they might eventually invite them over to the house.

With all that being said about eventually kinda welcoming people, I still get the feeling that Dale and Judy Whitebread wouldn't be at all happy if "one of those people" were to be so "uppity" as to suggest that maybe they're not be doing all they might to combat obesity and less-than-optimal hydration.  They might even get belligerent and express their outrage, frothing at the mouth while they complain.

Hopefully, though, if they find themselves parched, or if their throats get a little scratchy, they might take a few extra sips of water.  That's just a little suggestion from me.  Mrs. Obama didn't ask, commission, or otherwise authorize me to say it.  I'd hate to get y'all fired up again.

Back home, one way or the other

I was born and spent the first 14 years of my life in Pueblo, Colorado, a smallish blue-collar town on the plains in central Colorado. While my time there was by no means idyllic, it was childhood, so relatively simple and uncomplicated.

During a DOD rif, my dad's job was phased in the summer before I started 8th grade, well not so much phased out as relocated 800 miles east near Texarkana.  He could follow it or search for something else in the crumbling local economy.  So he followed.  And we followed.

For two years, we lived in the piney woods of east Texas – big culture shock.  Actually, we lived about a hundred yards across the state line into Arkansas, but we much preferred to think of ourselves in Texas than in Arkansas.  Next, we moved to central Oklahoma for a stormy summer, and then west Texas for my high school years. In truth, all three moves brought significant differences in culture and climate. 

I went to college in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and got married, had two kids, had marital struggles, career struggles, etc. Typical stuff. Through all of that, a part of me longed to return to a home that hadn’t been home in a very long time. It wasn’t a new longing. We drove out of Colorado with the moving truck already hours ahead of us, and all along the road from Pueblo to Texarkana, I left my own trail of breadcrumbs, expecting to one day follow them back, expecting my own Babylonian exile to end.  In time, the breadcrumbs turned to baggage and I came to understand that I had a lot of unresolved issues about all the changes that precipitated our departure from Colorado. If nothing else, I wanted closure.

From college to my late twenties, I didn’t go back. It was on the list of things to do, but there were plenty of things ahead of the list, and it didn’t help that I’d never gotten along, even as a kid, with virtually all the relatives still there.

Then, one fall, I had a conference in Colorado Springs, which is only about 45 minutes north. I decided I’d take an extra day after the conference, go down to Pueblo, and scout around, checking out all the old places I remembered from childhood. I hoped somehow to find at least a little closure. I'd been carrying what had and hadn’t happened for fifteen years, and I was ready to be done with it. Over the years, I’d written stories and poems about a man’s search for a lost child, a child who was in fact, himself.

I set out in the morning, getting into town just past breakfast time, wandering my old neighborhood. Typical return home – it looked pretty much the same, and somehow very different. The neighborhood looked barren, even though it wasn’t – there were plenty of trees and plants in the yards, and most had been around at least fifty years. Also the houses looked smaller, both in height and volume, like they had shriveled up and shrunk down in the intervening years.

I drove to our old houses and found myself feeling curiously detached from them, then headed toward my favorite park and my elementary school.

The park was a nice experience – much bigger trees than those surrounding the houses, including some very memorable ones. I had an early flirtation at one, I faced a bully down at another, and at a third I had established myself as the best climber in my circle of friends. It was in a much better mood that I continued on to my old elementary school, just two blocks away.

I drove around it once, then parked over by the playground next to the gym. I’d walk around a little, then maybe go inside and see what teachers and other staff, if any, were still around.

As I was standing at the fence, about to begin my stroll, a long stream of kids, second or third graders, burst out from the gym, running along the fence line in front of me. Clearly, a gym class had just started, and the first order of business was running a lap or two.

They all trailed by me, one by one. When the last one was easily ten feet past me, the next to the last child, a boy, peeled off from the group and walked back to me very casually.

From about five feet away, he settled himself as though he expected a long conversation, then said to me, “I think I’m supposed to know who you are.” He was studying me, not in a suspicious way, but just like his statement implied – there was something about me that made him wonder what he might know me from.

In that moment, I was enlightened. I had my epiphany, my little slice of samadhi.

No, I told myself, there was no need for him to know me, because I was no longer of that place. All that was essential to me really had moved on years ago. Everything I had come to recover was already in my hands, and had been there all along.

I said, “No, actually, there’s no reason for us to know each other. I haven’t been here since long before you were born.”

He gave a slow, deep nod, like I was really just confirming something he had actually known all along to be true. He was the master challenging the student to speak out and either defend his search or reject his flawed perceptions that had brought him down that path. He compelled me to accept and assert my truth.

After his nod, with no more said by either of us, he turned and trotted back into the stream of children, retaking his place in the line.

I stayed into the afternoon in town, wandering more widely, curious how other places I had known had changed. I drove back to Colorado Springs satisfied that I had seen everything of interest.

The next day, I got on a plane and within hours, I was home.

Really home.

I still had plenty of struggles back home, mostly trying for way too long to make an unworkable marriage work, but a great many things were better in a great many ways.

That moment took place about twenty years ago, now.  Even today, that encounter brings me back to center when I catch myself drifting off.