New Year's Eve

On New Year's Eve, it's my custom to write about the year's lessons. Well, there's a little less than 15 hours left of 2008, and I'm still trying to make sense of it.

The only lesson that I can gather out of the entropic noise of 2008 is this — Grace only goes so far. The rest is up to you.

I'm a blessed man, truly, even though depression remains a challenge. I just need to remember to keep breathing. So, I will be putting my shoulder back to the wheel in 2009. I have plans to make, things to do.

In the meantime, I'm saying goodbye to Knoxville for a few days. Am heading north to start 2009 in joy. So goodbye for now. See ya'll next year.

... a dark composure of words ...

I will speak of one man ... that went about in King James his time ... who called himself, the Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus tabantus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery.

"A Candle in the Dark," Thomas Ady. 1655

"a place of mystery"

Even now, after centuries of reductionist propaganda, the world is still intricate and vast, as dark as it is light, a place of mystery, where we cannot do one thing without doing many things, or put two things together without putting many things together.

From "Distrust of Movements" by Wendell Berry. Found via O'Reilly Radar and the irresistible fleet of bicycles.

From "For John Clare"

 It is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long,
        barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The
        whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you
        could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an
        uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before
        you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the
        wind--and yet it's keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky.
        Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it's their time
        too--nothing says they aren't to make something of it. 

--"For John Clare" by John Ashberry.

Cortez the Killer

It's an interesting combination.

He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun.

OMFG

There was a video for "Always With Me Always With You". And it's like all ... um ... post-Apocalypse mariachi band aesthetics.

O.o

Searching

Joe Satriani is, of course, my teenage guitar crush.

Not as clean, melodically, as "Always With Me Always With You" or catchy as his breakout work, but it's got all the Joe tones, the characteristic run and screams. Ah. Nostalgia.

secret path

secret path, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

liftoff

liftoff, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

I know a secret, which I rarely remember. Breathe long enough and there is exaltation.

Tyrannosaurus wrecks

The fully fleshed-out head of a Tyrannosaurus rex may have weighed more than 1,100 pounds, but much of that volume came from air cavities that likely created painful sinus infections.

No. 35 of the "50 Things We Know Now (We Didn't Know This Time Last Year): 2008 Edition" from the Tampa Bay Online.

Electricity for Boys ...

Electricity for Boys A Working Guide ...:



One day, yes, I will build my mad scientist's lab in the basement.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas, God Jul, Merry Merry, Party Hearty ...

Bonefires

At work, I joke about the messiness of my desk, referring to my approach to organization as archaeological. It makes a certain sense. Loosely grouped records become strata as the pile grows. To find a particular item, I estimate the passage of time elapsed since last reading it and then dig down to the appropriate depth.

Perhaps I do exaggerate, but it's a method that more-or-less meets the needs of my medium-term storage requirements. Every few months, I purge, making sure I have more-carefully filed copies of the truly important information. When someone comments about the relative lack of clutter, I usually say it was time for the desk's annual clear-burn.

Am currently pondering how to remove a great deal of stress from my life by getting the house uncluttered. My erratic reporter's schedule plays hob with my ability to keep the house clean. It's not like I don't have "time" available, but I usually don't have the energy to mess with it during those hours.

Probably need to just start boxing things up. If I could deal with a box of stuff a day, it'll eventually solve the problem.

Julaftonsdag

Heading to White Pine later today. Am tired but refusing to invest in needless stress about the state of my house. What gets done, gets done. Need to wrap a few more presents, and then I'm as ready for Christmas as I'm going to be.

Moments

I feel good at the moment.

That is all. :)

And, then suddenly ...

The words come back. And, the bloody effort of writing becomes, instead, a function of blood and breath. Something that flows.

A lesson from the frog in the pot.

Sometimes a depressive episode can sneak up on you. You don't realize that your thinking is askew, but you're pumping energy into a feedback loop and things get muddled. You finally realize what's going on, but, by then you've got a good head of dark built up and ... it's just not fun negotiating day-to-day life.

Then the loop finally breaks. Clear-headed is a lovely feeling. I hope it lasts.

anachronism

anachronism, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Third person

Joel is thinking boiled new taters and turnips, some steamed greens, and a sauce of buttermilk, rosemary, and garlic.

(Im)permanences

"When we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, not for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stone will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! this our fathers did for us.'"

— From "Seven Lamps of Architecture" by John Ruskin.

"In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,—some of them,—and are eager to give us a sign and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,—not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets, all alike."

— From "Books" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Two responses to entropy:

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/holtorf/7.4.html

On gardens ...

Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;
Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

From "Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington" by Alexander Pope.

SP2

Scandinavian pop

Spectres ...

The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated From Imagination and enclosing itself as in steel in a Ratio Of The Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities To destroy Imagination ...

--"Jerusalem" by William Blake.

"The fall of man in Socrates"

The American Journal of Psychology By Granville Stanley Hall, Edward Bradford Titchener, Karl M. Dallenbach, Madison Bentley, Edwin Garrigues Boring, Margaret Floy Washburn

Snapshots

Joel just drooled neon orange on his keyboard.
... discovered a trail of peanut butter leading to his desk.
... is going to lick phones.
... wonders whether mucus is generated on demand?
... is all canned soup and a granny cake, sinus pain and a shot of rum.
... is making Ramen noodles for breakfast.
... is hung over from 6 a.m chocolate cake.
... says the Davis boys are wearing ties and smell of Old Spice.
... got his 'cocktail dress' on.
... is eating Italian Christmas cookies for breakfast.
... is playing with lightsabers.

Fragments

Thou art the law;
The gospel has no revelation
Of peace and hope until there is response
From the deep chambers of thy mind thereto

--From "Gnothi Seauton" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

--From "Milton: And did those feet in ancient time?" by William Blake.

The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

--From "The Poems of Our Climate" by Wallace Stevens.

Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge And the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Morley

Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge And the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Morley: ""

like old times

like old times, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

windshield

windshield, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.