Splash du Jour: Friday

 

A few years ago now, my immediate family had a sibling-reunion in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. . I'll never forget walking past this one store.
Yes, that's me, giving the thumbs-up right next to the store’s motto, “We won’t jerk you around!”
But I assure you, I BOUGHT NOTHING AT THIS STORE!
No, I did NOT just come out of that open door, my pockets full of Master bait!

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Mayor: "Drebin, I don't want anymore trouble like you had last year on the South Side. Understand? That's my policy."
Frank Drebin: "Yes. Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy!"
Mayor: "That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones."

-- From the movie The Naked Gun, starring Leslie Nielsen --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I gestured at my litre of fizzy red wine. “Want a drop of this?” I asked him.
"No thanks. I try not to drink at lunchtime.”
"So do I. But I never quite make it.”
"I feel like shit all day if I drink at lunchtime.”
"Me too. But I feel like shit all lunchtime if I don’t.”
"Yes, well it all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?” he said. “It’s the same in the evenings. Do you want to feel good at night or do you want to feel good in the morning? It’s the same with life. Do you want to feel good young or do you want to feel good old? One or the other, not both.”
"Isn’t it a tragedy?”
-- Martin Amis, Money --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

 

But you're wrong, so wrong to be down on love
You know you're not the only one
See I've been down on love
In matters of the heart
You better know before you start
You cant get down on love
So always be prepared
To be alone and a little scared
But never down on love…
-- Foreigner, Down On Love --



Have a great Tuesday!
*****

The Heavenly Vision: Part Two

I wanted to let a couple of poems illustrate the way in which a subjective (personally accepted) concept of God can be so easily universalized and made applicable to all.
First [last night] we looked at Yeats’s An Indian upon God, a poem in which it is overheard that a moorfowl, a lotus, a roebuck, and a peacock all are convinced that God is the embodiment of all that is most worthy of worship within their own species. An observer might note that they are each creating “God” in their own image.
Tonight I want to look at how another of my favorite poets approaches the same subject matter.
The poet is Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) and his poem is entitled Heaven.
In my opinion, the subtext of both of these poems (Yeats’s and Brooke’s) concerns itself with the ineffable nature of God. As soon as we try to describe God, and specifically, to define him, our words show themselves up as being inadequate.
Even the above sentence itself betrays the type of problems incurred in such a task as defining God, for I used the word “him” in it.
Someone may sense that this commonly accepted pronoun is evidence of a patriarchal favoritism.... in other words “Who said that God is a male?
Exactly!
And furthermore, there actually is an answer to the question.
The answer is: “MEN did!”

It can be very successfully argued that the fact that “He” has won out in the great Pronoun War is evidence of patriarchal influence and/or dominance and/or bias.
And yet, if we are to believe that God exists at all, surely we must realize that the heavenly nature transcends our own mutually exclusive aspects of maleness and femaleness.
He is no more a he, than she is a she!
In other words, it would be just as incorrect to call God “She”, would it not? Yet our language does not allow us an adequate trans-gender pronoun to ascribe to such a Being, other than the word “It” and we reject “It” because we want God to have relative (personal, communicative) attributes, and to call “Him” an “It” makes “Him” seem to be too much of a “Thing.” Something about “It” jangles our sensibilities.
The ineffable (“too great or extreme to be expressed in words”) nature of God is a topic that greatly, and I mean GREATLY interests me.
Why?
Because there are so many definitions!

Too much of me. Not enough of Rupert Brooke.
I am just about to shut my yapper!
But first, in my opinion, the really interesting thing about ineffability, (in reference to God) is not so much that we cannot adequately define this Being. It is that we so badly, and so often, WANT to. And feel that we can.
I sense that we, as humans, are not really all that much different than the anthropomorphized aquatic life here in Brooke's poem, as they themselves muse upon....

Heaven

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud! – Death eddies near –
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time.
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.

-- Rupert Brooke –

Splash du Jour: Monday

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
-- C.S. Lewis –

Have a great Monday!
*****

The Heavenly Vision: Part One

There are certain poems that just stay with you.
Once you have read them, they never leave. Though they may fade somewhat with time and neglect and with the displacement of things less important, they will not disappear.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, Robert Browning’s Youth And Art or his Meeting At Night... Hardy’s Darkling Thrush.
Never will they cease to exist.
Some poets strike the chord and you never forget the sound that they have made. So many times this has happened for me with the poetry of Nobel laureate, William Butler Yeats. (1865-1939).
Who can read his When You Are Old and not be moved?
And The Song of Wandering Aengus.... I can so relate to this poem! It speaks to my inner angler! And my inner wanderer/dreamer.
At any rate, today I have just been thinking of one of my all-time favorites.
Yeats’s The Indian Upon God.
I love this poem for its unassuming simplicity, its cadence, and its message.
By “message” I guess I mean it’s application.
If you can read this poem, you are a person.
And being human, you will readily know that this poem is not about the speaking characters within it. It is about the silent watcher, the observer.
It speaks volumes about the subjective nature of our concept of God, and does so better than any essay on the topic could have done. In a word, it is wondrous.
Tomorrow evening I will share with you one other poem, a favorite of mine, that does a very similar thing as this one.
Different poet, different style, different approach.
Same message or human application. And perhaps equally wondrous.
I think it is almost blasphemous to provide commentary after the reading of such a work of art, so I have done all my blabbing up top... up front. I am done.
Now...
Creep along with the watcher.... and listen....

The Indian Upon God

I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.
I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.
A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?
I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

-- William Butler Yeats --

Splash du Jour: Friday

I went to a restaurant with a sign that said they served breakfast at any time. So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.
-- Steven Wright --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

 
There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely -- or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
-- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I’m a city boy. In the big cities, they’ve set it up so you can go to a park and be in a miniature countryside; but in the countryside they don’t have any patches of big city, so I get very homesick.
-- Andy Warhol, 1977 --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I've been reading this great novel In The Kitchen by British writer, Monica Ali. That is to say, it's entitled In The Kitchen, I haven't been reading it….. in the kitchen.
Anyhoo, I thought this one interview segment with her was quite funny. Hope you like it, too.

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

 

I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.
-- Raymond Chandler --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Sunset on Sproat Lake: A Saturday Snapshot

 

I took many pictures of my vacation in British Columbia two weeks ago, but this is one of my favorites. We were just rounding out a perfect day of swimming off the boat in depths of over 800 feet of pristine, clear water.
Such a wonderful, relaxing day.
I think of it often, as I am now back to the grueling regularity of work!
Vive le vacation!
Thank you Darryl and Donna, for being the perfect hosts to this city-bound wretch!

And thank you, Alyce, for once again hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

 
Arcturus: Two Ages

On a night, follow the arm of The Big Dipper, left
and down. The next brightest thing you observe
has two ages, thirty-seven -- and many billions.

Much larger than our own sun, and older, bright
before anything ever known, was. Exploding
prior to a flagella quivering on Earth -- it burned.

Two ages. Thirty-seven -- and many billions.
The first has everything to do with your eyes.
The latter, a reminder, that the universe itself

is doing
quite well -- whether
we exist
or not.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

 
Letterman's Top Ten List:
John Gotti's Top 10 Tax Tips

10. You can deduct the entire piano even if you bought it just for the wire.
9. Guys who escape from the trunk of your car may be considered business losses.
8. No matter how much he relies on your business, a funeral director does not count as a dependent.
7. Another write-off: long-distance calls to Pete Rose.
6. You must actually kill someone in your home for it to qualify as "place of business".
5. Three simple words to the auditor: "How's your family?".
4. For a vacation to count as a business trip, return with 100 pounds of heroin.
3. Smart-guy talk show hosts may end up with more medical expenses than they thought.
2. When reporting income, be plausible. No pizzeria in the world takes in 3 billion dollars a day.
1. What H&R Block can't do, Smith & Wesson can.

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
-- Gore Vidal –
Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
-- Iris Murdoch --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Wilder Than Any Fiction

I've spent the weekend with a terrific book.
And terrific is such a weak adjective, for such a book as Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.
It's the true story of American Olympic track-and-field star and World War II veteran, Louis Zamperini.
I can't recall being so riveted to a story in a long long time. It's so unbelievable that at one point my reading partner said to me, "If this were fiction you would be critical of its believability", and I agreed.
The comment itself made me think of something that author China Mieville once said about fantasy fiction: "The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape."
Believe me, if you pick up Hillenbrand's book, you will not be able to put it down until you have read a few hundred pages. Leave yourself a lot of…. time!
It's a big book -- I'm 2/3rds through. It is so enthralling, and definitely "fantastic enough". Escapism, that escapes.
It will test, and most likely exceed [at times] your capacity to believe that a human being could have possibly survived what Louis Zamperini did.
The following clip says it all:

Blue Monster: A Saturday Snapshot

Well, I just finished my first full week of being back to work after a terrific holiday on Vancouver Island. My sister snapped this shot of me next to some sort of blue monster thing in front of a souvenir shop on Government Street in Victoria, B.C.
Whatever the expression on that monster's face is meant to represent, it matches EXACTLY the way I feel at the end of a week of work!
For yet another shot of me on the boat in some sort of non six-packed sepia-tinged wannabe-Ernest-Hemingway pose -- click HERE.

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****