The Solution to Global Warming

[_Doctor Steuss]

Global refrigeration? If Haliburton can secure the sole rights, we can proceed immediately!

I'll see if Gore can fly in on his private jet and work up a PowerPoint presentation in order to help facilitate this.

[_Moniker]

If the guys want to carry on with the various bodily fuctions that's fine by me, I'll ignore.

I Am in Need of Music
Elizabeth Bishop


I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

This one was always mine:


A Well-Worn Story
Elizabeth Bishop

In April, in April,
My one love came along,
And I ran the slope of my high hill
To follow a thread of song.

His eyes were hard as porphyry
With looking on cruel lands;
His voice went slipping over me
Like terrible silver hands.

Together we trod the secret lane
And walked the muttering town.
I wore my heart like a wet, red stain
On the breast of a velvet gown.

In April, in April,
My love went whistling by,
And I stumbled here to my high hill
Along the way of a lie.

Now what should I do in this place
But sit and count the chimes,
And splash cold water on my face
And spoil a page with rhymes?

[_Doctor Steuss]

I've never heard of, nor read Elizabeth Bishop before. Seems to be quite the heart-torn romantic (I'll have to look her up over the weekend and do a bit more reading). Right now I'm slowly making my way through the complete poems of Ogden Nash, and I'm loving it. I recently finished a "best of" Robert Service that I really enjoyed. My grandfather (who had an un-human memory) used to always quote "The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail" to me. It's too long to post, so here's a link: http://explorenorth.com/library/service/bl-iceworm.htm

This is the only poem I have completely memorized (Shakespeare's Sonnet 29). I've tried memorizing other poems, but for some reason this has been the only one to stick:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

[_The Nehor]

For you:

Last Words
by Sylvia Plath

I think these first lines are quite possibly some of the most powerful prose ever written:

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already--the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.
I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit!

There's probably only one other poem I hold in the same esteem as this one, and that's Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." One line in particular has always stood out to me:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

So simple, so true, and so damn brilliant.

And thus, this thread is now commandeered for the discussion of literature, and poetry (unless of course infymus still wants to discuss the current state of my flatus, and its effects upon not only the olfactory, but the environment).

Good memories of Coming and Going and Michaelangeloing, I need to reread that.

[_Moniker]

I've had to memorize a few works by Shakespeare. I haven't read The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail in ages!

Elizabeth Bishop is known for being a lesbian poet because of her long term relationships with 2 women.

I am very much a romantic sucker, yet I try not to be. I can't adequately express myself when it comes to love so I'll quote Neil Gamen:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

And to continue my melancholy here is Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney:

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/sidney01.html

Too long to quote, yet here's are favorite snippets:

Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot
Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed;
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got:

I saw and liked, I liked but loved not;
I lov'd, but straight did not what Love decreed.
At length to love's decrees I, forc'd, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.

Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;

And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell

Alas, have I not pain enough, my friend,
Upon whose breast a fiercer gripe doth tire,
Than did on him who first stole down the fire,
While Love on me doth all his quiver spend,

But with your rhubarb words you must contend,
To grieve me worse, in saying that desire
Doth plunge my well-form'd soul even in the mire
Of sinful thoughts, which do in ruin end?

If that be sin which doth the manners frame,
Well stayed with truth in word and faith of deed,
Ready of wit and fearing nought but shame:

If that be sin which in fix'd hearts doth breed
A loathing of all loose unchastity,
Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

[_Doctor Steuss]

[...]I'll quote Neil Gamen:

This part:

…so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart

Reminds me of the Cake lyrics:
To me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

End is the only part of the word
That I heard,
Call me morbid or absurd,
But

To me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

And to continue my melancholy here is Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney:

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/sidney01.html

Too long to quote, yet here's are favorite snippets:

Ok lady, you really need to take a break and read some Ogden Nash. ;-)

But, before you find some levity in Nash, since you're one of those romantics, I wonder if you are at all familiar with the writings/teachings of J. Krishnamurti. Here are some of his thoughts on love (it is all-in-all a rather lengthy address):

The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path?
We are not loved because we don't know how to love. What is love? The word is so loaded and corrupted that I hardly like to use it. Everybody talks of love - every magazine and newspaper and every missionary talks everlastingly of love. I love my country, I love my king, I love some book, I love that mountain, I love pleasure, I love my wife, I love God. Is love an idea? If it is, it can be cultivated, nourished, cherished, pushed around, twisted in any way you like. When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, `I love God', is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself - and that is not love.
[…]

Love is not the product of thought which is the past. Thought cannot possibly cultivate love. Love is not hedged about and caught in jealousy, for jealousy is of the past. Love is always active present. It is not `I will love' or `I have loved'. If you know love you will not follow anybody. Love does not obey. When you love there is neither respect nor disrespect. Don't you know what it means really to love somebody - to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing - don't you know what it means? Where there is love is there comparison? When you love someone with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your body, with your entire being, is there comparison? When you totally abandon yourself to that love there is not the other.

This doesn’t really have anything to do with “love,” but while I’m on the topic of Krishnamurti, this is one of my favorite quotes by him:

You haven't changed. You may say: 'I'm full of love, I'm full of truth, I'm full of knowledge, I'm full of wisdom.' I say: 'That's all nonsense. Do you behave? Are you free of fear? Are you free of ambition, greed, envy and the desire to achieve success in every field? If not, you are just playing a game. You are not serious.'

[_Moniker]

No, I'm not familiar with J. Krishnamurti. I'll have to do some reading myself. Thanks for posting those. :)

I particularly liked this line:

Is love an idea? If it is, it can be cultivated, nourished, cherished, pushed around, twisted in any way you like.

Well, this is some Ogden Nash I'm quite familiar with ;)

Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

Love this! Pretty Halcyon Days

http://www.westegg.com/nash/halcyon.html

[_Moniker]

I'm listening to Ryan Adams and it reminded me of this poem, for some reason, that I just read a few days ago:

Swim in the Present
Suzanne Nielsen

Clovis Sweeney inflates her air mattress,
a free gift for filling her Clomid Rx at Walgreen’s,
and immediately feels dizzy.
The ground’s stomach churns under foot
yet she’s been known to ride a wave
or two in her time so the inflatable hits
bottom with her on top, a heavy damp mess,
treading the dirt with her hands in an attempt
to dig up yesterday

[_Doctor Steuss]

*Snicker* [edit: to Nash, not the other post]

Right now I’m on a chapter (of Nash's poems) that’s pretty much devoted to Lindell (one of his daughters). I love how freely (and often) he makes up words in order to make a rhyme.

My introduction to Krishnamurti was during one of my "lost" times. One of my close friends (an ex-Mormon who is basically what I would call a Spiritulaist now) gave me a copy of Meeting Life: Writings and Talks on Finding Your Path Without Retreating from Society by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Some of it is Eastern thinking/philosophy (i.e. "don't see a tree as a tree, for when you see the tree and think of a tree, you are not seeing the tree but insteed the word by which you know the tree by..."), but for the most part, there's a lot in his writings that make you kind of sit back and think about your life and how you process things. And ultimately just how un-free you may be.

Here's a website where you can find the majority of his writings (if you don't want to buy a book): http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/. Interestingly, today's "daily quote" is an excerpt from that little dilly I posted earlier.

The earth is full of sound. And we seek silence.

[_Moniker]

*Snicker* [edit: to Nash, not the other post]

Right now I’m on a chapter (of Nash's poems) that’s pretty much devoted to Lindell (one of his daughters). I love how freely (and often) he makes up words in order to make a rhyme.

My introduction to Krishnamurti was during one of my "lost" times. One of my close friends (an ex-Mormon who is basically what I would call a Spiritulaist now) gave me a copy of Meeting Life: Writings and Talks on Finding Your Path Without Retreating from Society by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Some of it is Eastern thinking/philosophy (I.e. "don't see a tree as a tree, for when you see the tree and think of a tree, you are not seeing the tree but insteed the word by which you know the tree by..."), but for the most part, there's a lot in his writings that make you kind of sit back and think about your life and how you process things. And ultimately just how un-free you may be.

Here's a website where you can find the majority of his writings (if you don't want to buy a book): http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/. Interestingly, today's "daily quote" is an excerpt from that little dilly I posted earlier.

The earth is full of sound. And we seek silence.

Ha! Yah, it's the same quote. Thanks for posting that link. I've bookmarked it and just scanned through a few pages of the site and found it appealing.

Here's a zen poem by Ryokan that I'll follow by something upbeat :)


Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.

Here's In Summer's Heat Ovid:

http://www.poetry-archive.com/o/in_summers_heat.html

Stu, post the Nash poem that made you snicker!