"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture
and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words." ~Goethe

~ also, if possible, to dwell in "a house where all's accustomed, ceremonious." ~Yeats

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Advancing & Receding

VIBRANT HORIZON, ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Red Sky ~ or ~ Red Sea?
Advancing ~ or ~ Receding?

Painting by Leonard Orr

An literary exploration of the intriguing concept
of a perpetual redistribution of human emotion:


"We seem to have learned of the horizon
the art of perpetual retreating and reference."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
from "Experience" ~ 1844

"It was the tragic part of happiness;
one's right was always made of
the wrong of some one else
."

~ Henry James ~
Portrait of a Lady (Chapter 35, 357) ~ 1888


"The tears of the world are a constant quantity.
For each one who begins to weep
somewhere else another stops.
The same is true of the laugh."

~ Samuel Beckett ~
from Waiting for Godot ~ 1953


"Every moment of one's existence
one is growing into more or retreating into less.
One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

~ Norman Mailer ~
from Advertisements for Myself ~ 1959

"As in the fusion with Mercer, everyone ascended together or, when the cycle had come to an end, fell together into the trough of the tomb world. Oddly, it resembled a sort of biological insurance, but double-edged. As long as some creature experienced joy, then the condition for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. However, if any living being suffered, then for all the rest the shadow could not be entirely cast off. A herd animal such as man would acquire a higher survival factor through this..."
~ Philip K. Dick ~
from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ~ 1968

"So how do we seize the past? As it recedes, does it come into focus? Some think so. We know more, we discover extra documents, we use infra - red light to pierce erasures in the correspondence, and we are free of contemporary prejudice; so we understand better. Is that it? I wonder. . . .

“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves.

"Does the world progress? Or does it merely shuttle back and forth like a ferry?"
(100, 101, 105)
~ Julian Barnes ~
Flaubert's Parrot ~ 1984


"Their happiness is not her unhappiness. Unless it is.
What if there is only an equal ratio of happiness to
unhappiness in the world at any given time?"

~ Gabrielle Zevin ~
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry ~ 2014


"But life is not a zero - sum game.
There isn't a limited quantity of success or happiness,
meaning that if one person achieves something,
the rest of us take an automatic step backward."

~ Natalie Hanes ~ "Introduction" ~ 2015
to Extracts from The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir ~ 1949

It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.

"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
” (48 - 49)
~ Mitch Albom ~
from The Five People You Meet in Heaven ~ 2003


"It's the universe showing us that we're all connected
and feel the love, happiness, and pain oif one another
-- we just have to be ready to listen."

~ Peggy Carriker Rosenbluth ~ 2014


"One fire burns out another's burning.
One pain is lessened by another's anguish.
Tut man, one fire burns out another’s burning.
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.
Turn giddy, and be helped by backward turning.
One desperate grief cures with another’s languish.
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die."

~ Shakespeare ~
Romeo & Juliet ~ 1597
Quoted by Peter Abernathy in Westworld ~ 2016


Green Bird ~ and / or ~ Green Fish?
Sky ~ and / or ~ Sea?

Painting by Leonard Orr

*******************

Thanks Len for multiple appearances on my blogs!
Previously Posted Paintings & Poetry:

Fortnightly
Capturing the Ginkgo Light
Like An Ant
I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust
The Ides of Whatever
Advancing & Receding
2020 ~ The Essential Sincerity of Falsehood

Quotidian
End of Summer Sounds
Golden Paintings by Leonard Orr
Excellent Images
Happy Birthday Dylan Thomas
The same war continues . . .
The Magpie Waiting for his Beautiful Partner
An Ant and a Grain of Sand
Bursting Into Light
Sun ~ Flower ~ Moon
Days of Optimism
Life Without Poetry
What To Do
Star - Spanlged But Unsingable
That Lost Time & Place

Book List
Lovely As A Tree
Evening ~ Timing ~ Floating: Poetry by Leonard Orr

Poems: "Past Tense, Future Tense" ~ "Yiddish for Travellers"
"The Loop" ~ "Desperate Times" ~ "Optimist" ~
"Sun and Wheatfields" & "Russian Olives" ~ "Monet's The Magpie"

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, August 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Pie Safe
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Saturday, July 14, 2018

The Rough Places Plain

MOUNTAINS & VALLEYS, ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
~ Photo by Sam McCartney ~ Colorado ~ July 2018 ~

"Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places plain . . . "


Isaiah 40:4

****************

"For God has decreed the flattening
of each high mountain, of the everlasting hills,
the filling of the valleys to make the ground level
so that Israel can walk in safety . . . "


Baruch 5: 7

****************

". . . settle your mean heights down
a little to short heights . . . "
~ Adorable Tiana's Heartfelt Advice ~ with subtitles ~

How did this tiny little girl get to be so wise? She hardly looks old enough to have listened to a performance of the Messiah, yet she is able to understand the message of the prophets. She seems to have no trouble grasping the concept of a middle ground, of bringing the high low and the low high. Truly, "a little child shall lead them":
Mom, are you ready to be his friend?

~ Yes.

Try not to be that high up to be friends.
I want everything to be low. Okay?

~ Okay.

Just try your best.
I don't want you and my dad to be replaced and meanies again.
I want you and my dad to be placed as settled and be friends.

I'm not trying to be mean.
I just want everyone to be friends.
And if I can be nice, I think all of us can be nice too.

I'm not trying to be mean, but
I'm trying to do my best in my heart.
Nothing else than that.

I want you Mom, my dad, everyone to be friends.
I want everyone to be smiling,
Not like being mad. I want everything smile.
Especially when I see someone, I want them to smile.

Especially Nana, everyone. I want everyone to smile.
And if that's for my dad and you Mom,
I think you can do it.

I think you can settle your mean heights down
a little to short heights.

Then it's both. Okay?

I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm not trying to be a bully.

I'm trying to be steady, on the floor.
Not way down. On straight.
On the middle where my heart is.


My heart is something.
Everyone else's heart is something too.
And if we live in a world where everyone is being mean,
everyone is going to be a monster in the future.

What if there is a little bit of persons
and we will eat them?
Then no one will ever be here,
Only the monsters in our place.

We need everyone to be a person. Everyone.
Including me and my mom, everyone,

I just want everything to be settled down.
Nothing else.
I want everything to be good as possible.
Nothing else.

~ Thank you Tiana. I love you.

I love you too.
****************

"Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill made low,
the crooked straight and the rough places plain."


~ Handel's Messiah ~

~ Photo by Steven A. J. Kordenat ~ Mount St Helens ~ July 2012 ~

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, July 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com