Sitting Down to Read Keats

KEATS READING SHAKESPEARE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

1821 Portrait of John Keats
by Joseph Severn (1793-1879)
Oil on canvas ~ London, National Portrait Gallery

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)
[More on QK & FN]


To Humbly Assay
Keats has combined techniques from both the Petrarchan and the Spenserian sonnet forms in "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again." The sonnet is true Petrarchan in that it contains a definite octave and a definite sestet, and the rhyme scheme of the octave follows the traditional Petrarchan pattern: abbaabba. At this point, after the octave, the sonnet taks the traditional "turn," and there is a turn in the technique as well. Rather than choose any of the variable sestet patterns associated with Petrarchan sonnets, Keats switches to the Spenserian sestet rhyme scheme: cdcdee.

The sonnet concludes with another irregularity: the final line is not written in iambic pentameter (as are the first thirteen); it is in iambic hexameter, an Alexandrine appropriately split with a caesura: "Give me new Phoenix sings / to fly at my desire." Though this extra syllable is not characteristic of the Spenserian sonnet, it is characteristic of the 9-line Spenserian stanza which always concludes with an Alexandrine.

The form of any sonnet is related to its content. Of major importance in this sonnet are the apostrophes which begin both the octave ("O Golden-Tongues Romance with serene lute!") and the sestet ("Chief Poet!"). In the octave, Keats introduces the problem to be dealt with, the conflicting merits of Romance and Tragedy. The reference to Romance, in the initial apostrophe, is clear. He addresses Romance, only to bid it "Adieu!" Romance is "golden" and "fair," but the day is "wintry," so he feels compelled to turn to tragedy. The reference to tragedy is not as explicit, but surely "the fierce dispute / Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay" is the antithesis of anything romantic.

In this sonnet, Keats identifies our human tragedy as Byron does: "we are cooped in clay." Cooped in clay and filled with passions, we only ensure our damnation if we give in to passion. I think this is the "dispute" that Keats refers to. These lines are also his description of the play King Lear, and, though the title says "to Read," the verb has now become "to burn":
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
"Burn" is the verb for the comprehension of tragedy, while in earlier lines "melodizing" is the verb of romance. Also, the poet orders Romance to "Leave melodizing." It is Romance not he who is acting, but now he must act. Tragedy does not serenade nor present itself to him -- he must "burn through" it.

The exchange of the common verb read for the startling burn takes on even more significance if we glance ahead to the final image of the Phoenix consumed in fire. Keats has chosen one of the few things we know of that is never subject to damnation. The Phoenix may suffer in death, but not in afterlife. There is no time to punish or damn the Phoenix, for it must live afresh immediately.

The final image in the octave is inescapable in its appeal to our physical taste of bitter-sweet as well as our emotional grasp on the bitter-sweetness of human tragedy. Surprisingly but appropriately, Keats has picked something earthly, something of clay with which to compare the play -- a piece of fruit. This is another surprising exchange for the more common image of the written word as immortal, a fixed monument. Of course, fruit may be immortal in the same sense that the Phoenix is -- their shared cycle of continual regeneration: flowering, ripening, falling to the ground, then beginning again.

In the sestet, the sonnet turns with the Poet's address to Shakespeare. But it is imperative to notice that the apostrophe runs on beyond the exclamation point: "Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion." The reference to Albion, the old Celtic and wonderfully nostalgic name for England, is the poet's way of once more including the Romance he denounced in the octave. Shakespeare and Albion, Tragedy and Poetry: he beseeches them both, recognizing that they both are "Begetters of our deep eternal theme."

Still, the reader is inclined to conclude that his vote is finally cast for tragedy. For is not the "barren dream" he wishes to avoid the very Romance he ordered to "be mute"? He wants instead the fire. He wants to "burn through" tragedy and have another chance to "fly at his desire," perhaps this time without threat of damnation. As a Phoenix he will "burn through" the "fierce dispute betwixt damnation and impassioned clay. In this way does the sestet answer the octave.

My favorite painting of King Lear:
Cordelia's Portion (c. 1866)
by Ford Madox Brown (1821 - 1893)
English painter of moral and historical subjects
loosely connected to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

To the left are the malevolent sisters, Goneril & Regan, staring each other down; and kneeling at their feet, the Dukes of Cornwall & Albany, Lear's corrupt sons-in-law. To the right, are the fickle Duke of Burgandy; dear Cordelia, Pure of Heart, whose "love's more richer than her tongue," and the loyal King of France. In the center is King Lear, dejected, misguided; and at his feet, the Map of the Kingdom, divided. In this painting, the Fool is only a minor character. You can see his blue hood if you look closely behind the dark - haired sister. [More on QK & FN]

Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, April 28th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT: "Rest in Peace John Keats"
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.blogsppot.com

"Half in love with easeful Death"

NIGHTENGALE: "IMMORTAL BIRD"
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

The Nightingale Sings (1923)
by Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov (1862 – 1942)

"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain . . . "

from "Ode to a Nightingale"
by John Keats
To cease -- or maybe just to disappear, as did singer-songwriter Connie Converse, on August 10th, 1974, a week after her 50th birthday. That day, Converse packed her car with a few belongings and drove out of Ann Arbor for the last time. Whether she took her own life then or later; whether she started life anew somewhere else -- perhaps in Kansas City or New York City -- remains unknown. She was never seen again; neither her body nor her car has ever been found.

Was she half in love with easeful death? More than half? What degree of hope was commingled with her sadness? She sent a few farewell letters to her closest friends and family telling them not to look for her:

"TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS: (If I'm Long Unheard From) . . .
Human society fascinates me & awes me & fills me with grief & joy;
I just can't find my place to plug into it. So let me go, please . . . ."
I am thinking also of Keats, who died so young, at age 25, but had already been "many a time . . . half in love with easeful death." The first time I read "Ode to a Nightengale" in 11th grade, I knew that I had always been and always would be half in love with easeful death -- but only half, or maybe just a quarter. Who isn't? Well, lots of folks, apparently, but that has never been my reality.

As a trusted counselor once advised me:
You're a writer, you're supposed to be sad.

How Sad, How Lovely
Album by Connie Converse (August 3, 1924)

Title song: How Sad, How Lovely

How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the day gathered in
To a single light
And the shadows rising
From the brim of the night
Too few, too few
Are the days that will hold
Your face, your face
In a blaze of gold
How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the lights going on
In the shops and the bars
And the lovers looking
For the first little star
Like life
Like your smile
Like the fall of a leaf
How sad, how lovely
How brief

Music & lyrics by Connie Converse

"What Converse seemed to know in her songs was that there was somewhere better, or a little more satisfying. . . . I find myself uncomfortable with how people — not just in the case of Connie Converse, but broadly — tend to flatten the idea of what sadness is, or looks like, without considering its varied face."

from the article "The Art of Disappearance"
by poet/essayist Hanif Abdurraqib
in The New York Times Magazine, August 11, 2022
My friend Jan* wrote: "I was so moved by Abdurraqib's article, that I wrote a letter to the NYT Magazine (published Sunday, August 28, 2022). If you suffer from depression, thoughts of suicide, or even sometimes wish you could simply disappear, you might find affirmation and hope in this beautiful article. You might also want to visit the music of Connie Converse."

Related Readings

Where could Converse live but days?

Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

by Philip Larkin
British poet (1922 - 1985)


Were the unkind voices berating her?

"You wake up and you feel -- what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head -- no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says "Turn left at the corner" or "Don't forget to stop at the post office," only now it's saying "I hate myself . . . you try to find pleasure in little things . . . but you can tell you're trying too hard. You have breakfast with your husband, your sweet unknowing husband, who can't see anything but the promise of a bright new day. And you say your apologies -- you're sorry, you're always sorry, it's a feeling as familiar as the taste of water on your tongue" (252 - 253).

from The Dogs of Babel
by Carolyn Parkhurst
American novelist (b 1971)
(see Highlights from 2006 & 2007 & 2019)


If only we could move through time as well as space:

"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!

Elizabeth Akers Allen
American poet and journalist (1832 - 1911)
*Additional thanks to Jan for her encouraging words: "All of these passages are so moving and apt. I love the way you pull literature together and make such meaningful connections. I always tell my students about my friend Kitti who said, very wisely, 'Literature helps me live my life.' " [More by Jan]

A beautiful explication of Keats' poem

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, November 30th ~ First Sunday of Advent

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Connie Converse & RIP
my shorter, almost daily blogs
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

Am I Dreaming?

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Thinking of the philosopher who did "not know
whether he was then a man dreaming he was a butterfly,
or whether he is now a butterfly, dreaming he is a man."
Zhūangzi (Chinese Philosopher, c. 369 BC – c. 286 BC)
A few weeks ago, I was so mesmerized -- as were many others -- by an inspiring philosophical post from my facebook friend Anna that I decided to record it here, along with a few additional connections of dreams and butterflies and reflective reality. On the way to school, her little daughter Clara had asked her, "Mom, am I dreaming? Am I awake? How can I ever tell if I am really awake?"

A variety of clever responses followed:

She's a philosopher!

A post - modern existentialist!

Definite Descartes moment. Proud.

I think I am; therefore, I think I am.

Very impressive! How did you reply?

I said she was having a Descartes moment. She said "what?" And then I didn't say anything else bc my younger kid started scooting off down the street. Seems appropriate enough.

All in good time . . .

Put The Matrix in!

There's actually ways to test if you're in a dream . . .

I prefer to let her wonder . . . AHAHAHHA! Maybe that's not nice.

What you didn't pinch her?

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: -- do I wake or sleep?
~ Keats (English Romantic Poet, 1795 - 1921)
Not only did Clara's question remind me of Zhūangzi's parable of the butterfly and Keats' "Ode to a Nightengale," but I also suddenly remembered this mysterious prose poem tucked away in my autumnal saved files. Has the narrator dreamed up the entire conflicted relationship? Was she in his dream? Was he in hers?

Free
I was always thinking about her even when I wasn’t thinking. Days went by when I did little else. She had left me one night as a complete surprise. I didn’t know where she went. I didn’t know if she was ever coming back. I searched her dresser and closet for any clues. There wasn’t anything there, nothing. No lotions or creams in the bathroom. She had really cleaned out. I thought back on our years together. They seemed happy to me. Summers on the beach, winters in the mountains skiing. What more could she want? We had friends, dinner parties. I walked around thinking, maybe she didn’t love me all that time. I felt so alone without her. I hated dinners alone, I hated going to bed without her. I thought she might at least call, so I was never very far from the phone. Weeks went by, months. It was strange how time flew by when you had nothing to remember it by. My friends never mentioned her. Why can’t they say something? I thought. I remembered every tiny gesture of her hand, every smile, every grimace. Birthdays, anniversaries — I never forgot. But then something strange started to happen. I started doubting every memory. Even her face began to fade. The trip to Majorca, was it something I read in a book? The jolly dinner parties, were they a dream? I didn’t trust anything any longer. I searched the house for any trace of her. Nothing. I started asking my friends if they remembered anything about her. They looked at me as if I were crazy. I sat at home and began to cheer up. What if none of this happened? I thought. What if there was nothing to be sad about?

~ James Tate (American Poet, b 1943)

Floor Mosaics, here and above,
at the Wynn / Encore, Las Vegas

And lastly, this dreamy poem which my son Ben was asked to respond to several years ago on a college entrance essay. The prospective students were given the poem without the last line and asked to imagine how the poet might conclude his reverie:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

~ James Wright (American Poet, 1927 - 80)

P.S.
MORE CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE

Shortly after posting the above essay, I came across the following passages.
Two in two days! What's the odds?

1. Rereading an old favorite
on Monday, September 29th:
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Dai Sijie (Chinese–French Author & Filmmaker, b 1954)

"At this Luo broke away and started running, faster and faster, in a desperate headlong flight down the steep mountain in pursuit of the Little Seamstress. I went after him, taking a short cut across the rocks. The scene was like one of the bad dreams that had been troubling me lately, with the Little Seamstress losing her footing and falling into the void, and with Luo and me chasing after her, slithering down perpendicular cliffs without a thought of the risk to ourselves. For a moment I lost track of whether I was running in my dream or in reality, or whether I was dreaming as I ran" (193 - 94).

2. Starting a new favorite
on Tuesday, September 30th:
The Friendly Persuasion
by Jessamyn West (American Novelist, 1902 - 84)

"They rode into Vernon [Indiana] together . . . two rawboned farm boys . . . and saw it the way a man who thinks he has been dreaming wakes and sees the landscape of his dream lying all about him, the disaster real, hard and unmelting as sunlight -- and dreaming the only means of escape" (74).

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, October 14th

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

Sweet Basil Evermore

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1846
by English Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt (1827 - 1910)
Stanzas #32 and #53
from Isabella, or the Pot of Basil
by John Keats, English Romantic Poet (1795 - 1821)

In the mid days of autumn, on their eves
The breath of Winter comes from far away,
And the sick west continually bereaves
Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay
Of death among the bushes and the leaves,
To make all bare before he dares to stray
From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel
By gradual decay from beauty fell,
Because Lorenzo came not. . . .

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.

Lorenzo and Isabella, 1849
by English Pre-Raphaelite, John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896)

Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1879
by English Pre-Raphaelite, John Melhuish Strudwick (1849 - 1937)
Poor Isabella, left with nothing but a pot of fragrant, flourishing basil to show for her devotion to honest Lorenzo. Wrapped in a fine cloth and buried deep within the skull - embellished urn is the severed head of Isabella's murdered lover. Not only do her heartless, jealous brothers kill Lorenzo, but they further deprive their distraught sister of the pot of basil, her only remaining connection to the love of her life, her sole tenuous link to sanity.

In Millais's portrayal of happier times (except for the presence of that grim waiter who appears to be in cahoots with the conniving brothers), the pot of basil can be seen behind the lovers, blooming on the garden wall. In Strudwick's more somber portrayal, you can see the ornate, but empty plant stand to Isabella's left and the evil brothers outside the window, sneaking off with the morbidly treasured pot of basil.

In this poem, Keats veers away from his lush autumnal imagery of "mellow fruitfulness," focusing instead on the death and decay of the season's end. The breath of winter is sickly and bereaved, rendering the landscape as hopeless as Lorenzo's head, as barren as Isabella's heart. A sad story. A beautiful plant (Ocimum basilicum).

Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1907
by English Pre-Raphaelite, John William Waterhouse (1849 - 1917)O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us - O sigh!
Spirits in grief, lift up your heads . . .
And make a pale light . . .

Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;
For simple Isabel is soon to be
Among the dead
from Stanzas #55 and #56
**************
The esteemed essayist E. B. White (1899 - 1985) writes admiringly of his aging wife sitting in the autumnal garden:

" . . . hour after hour in the wind and weather . . . the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection."

from E. B. White's Introduction (xix)
to Onward and Upward in the Garden
by Katharine S. White (1892 - 1977)
long-time fiction editor for the The New Yorker magazine
Plotting the resurrection.

Or to put it another way:

" A garden is evidence of faith.
It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also
planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting."

~~Gladys Taber~~
American naturalist and columnist (1899 - 1980)
Author of the Stillmeadow Journals
For us as well, the chilly autumn breezes have begun to blow. The basil needs bringing in. Always one of our more successful crops, half will be hung to dry, the other half processed into pesto for freezing. It's thinning now, after several summer cuttings; but here's how it looked back in mid-July:

"Nothing can replace the shock of pleasure
given by a small mountain of fresh basil
in the summer kitchen."

~~Eleanor Perenyi~~
American gardener and writer (1918 - 2009)
Author of Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, November 14, 2010

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT: "Isabella & the Pot of Basil"
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

Melancholy and / or Properly Tormented

A MELANCHOLY MOON, ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
The Last Full Moon of Winter

Beautiful image
lunar melancholia
framed in leafless twigs
~ Haiku by Burnetta & Kitti
From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
By Oxford Scholar Robert Burton (1577 –1640)

"Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In disposition, is that transitory Melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing forwardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality... This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed."

There are many artistic depictions of Melancholy
to choose from, but I'm going with this one . . .

Melancholy, 1894

. . . because coincidentally, I saw this one recently in Chicago and
was drawn to the solitary girl, as she herself is drawn to the moon.

The Girl By the Window, 1893

~ both by Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944) ~
Without seeing the girl's face, it is hard to know just how sad she is, or if she is even sad at all. However, if she happens to be melancholy, that's okay. As contemporary American writer Laren Stover wonders in her article, "The Case for Melancholy": "Whatever happened to experiencing the grace of deeply tinted blue moods, which require reflection and mental steeping, like tea?"

Stover traces the role of melancholy from Burton's Anatomy (above) to Keats's 19th Century expression of "the wakeful anguish of the soul" to a sampling of contemporary movies, including one of my favorites, the animated Inside Out, in which Melancholy is not just a concept but an actual / virtual character. Stover's article concludes as mine begins -- with a melancholy moon; and as Munch's girl in the white nightdress silently conveys to the viewer: "I want moonlight."

When my friend Victoria Amador shared Stover's article on facebook, I was intrigued by the subsequent comments. Not only is Vickie an academic expert on the topic of melancholy, but she also offered her personal perspective: "This has been my natural humour my entire life. No getting around it, and I'm tired of trying and pretending."

Other friends responded similarly:

Billy Lord: You are loved, dear one, just as you are . . .

Patrick O'Brien: Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy -- Yes! Not a bad little read. Studies have shown we have a base level of happiness (or melancholy) that we return to despite external events. After the initial euphoria, lottery winners quickly settle back to their base level. And accident victims; paraplegics, etc., rebound to their previous level.

Sir-Igor Steinman: Certainly not "blue" as in "blue laws." I always did detect a "slight" limp. I had always assumed it was the weight of the crown, not a rebound from an accident.

Steve Stajich: All kidding aside, I think we must accept wider parameters of human mood or we're doomed to be either up or down, with outsiders attempting to adjust our down cycles into "productivity." See Soma in Brave New World. Jazz singers, for example. We love their art, but do we want to medicate them so that all they can sing is "Happy" or Christmas tunes? Gestalt theory might say, "Ask a squirrel if he feels funky today." Most critters on this planet don't even struggle with mood. [See my post "SSRI's & Walking Upright."]

My contribution was to pass on the advice that a counselor once wisely told me: "You're a writer; you're supposed to be sad." Not to mention a couple of my Modern British professors at Notre Dame: one who reminded us every semester that we were called upon as students of literature to be "properly tormented human beings," and the other who lectured regularly on "the ache of modernism" -- an ailment from which we all suffered.

Or the fictional professor who tolls Isadora Wing:

"You're not a secretary; you're a poet.
What makes you think your life is going to be uncomplicated?
What makes you think you can avoid all conflict?
What makes you think you can avoid pain?
Or passion?
There's something to be said for passion.
Can't you ever allow yourself and forgive yourself?"
from Fear of Flying (170)
by Erica Jong


What, after all, is a writer's life without a dose of despair?
from Dear Committee Members (p 68)
by Julie Schumacher

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing
is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
Tom Waits

“I drank to drown my sorrows,
but the damned things learned how to swim.”
Frida Kahlo

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues
David Bowie

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul: The mean reds. You mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat, and maybe it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid, and you don't know what you're afraid of.
Do you ever get that feeling?

from the screenplay ~ Breakfast at Tiffany's
based on the novel by Truman Capote

After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning,
excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I never wake without finding life a more
insignificant thing than it was the day before.
Jonathan Swift

"Life is only on Earth. And not for long."
from the psycho - science - fiction movie Melancholia
So, it seems that no matter the century or decade, whether you're young or old, whether it's a "Melancholy Moon" or a "Melancholy Baby," from cradle to grave, in order to be a properly tormented human being . . .

"You've got to win a little, lose a little,
always have the blues a little. . . . "

Haiku by Basho
Gravestone at Cedar Grove Cemetery
University of Notre Dame
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Always Have the Blues a Little"
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

Sighs A Plenty

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Pained Heart or Sigh No More Ladies, 1868
by Engish Artist Arthur Hughes, 1832 – 1915
[To view more from Arthur Hughes]

Sigh No More
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sigh no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny, nonny.

William Shakespeare, English (1564 - 1616)
from Much Ado About Nothing

A few more poems on the significance of a sigh . . .
1. O Blush Not So!
O blush not so! O blush not so!. . .

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't,
And a blush for having done it:
There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught,
And a blush for just begun it.

O sigh not so! O sigh not so! . . .

There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
And a sigh for I can't bear it! . . .

~ John Keats, English (1795 - 1821)

2. When Love Flies In
When Love flies in,
Make – make no sign;
Owl-soft his wings,
Sand-blind his eyne;
Sigh, if thou must,
But seal him thine.

Nor make no sign
If love flit out;
He’ll tire of thee
Without a doubt.
Stifle thy pangs;
Thy heart resign;
And live without!

Walter de la Mare, English (1873-1956)

3. When I Was One - And - Twenty
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

~ A. E. Houseman, English (1859 - 1936)

4. A Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

~ William Butler Yeats, Irish (1865 - 1939)

And a couple of songs . . .

My Love
Sung by Petula Clark

My love is warmer than the warmest sunshine
Softer than a sigh
My love is deeper than the deepest ocean
Wider than the sky

My love is brighter than the brightest star
That shines every night above
And there is nothing in this world
That can ever change my love . . .

As Time Goes By
Performed in the movie Casablanca

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by . . .

[Spring Break Disclaimer: I feel a little lazy this time, just posting these poems and not contributing a single word, but maybe sometimes the connections can stand on their own without an editor.]

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
On Thursday, March 28th
~ Paintings by Marc Chagall & Poetry by E. E. Cummings ~

The Small Drawing Room

". . . arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here . . ."

The Galaxy Will Manage

A GALAXY WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The September (Sunday night, 9 - 27 / 28 - 2015) Supermoon
aka Perigee Moon -- when the day of the Full Moon coincides with
the day when the Moon is nearest to Earth in its orbit.
Last month's Harvest Moon was the nearest, largest, brightest
Supermoon of the entire year
The various lunar events -- supermoons, eclipses, waxing, waning -- like so many things, are not ours to initiate or control. They belong to themselves, to the galaxy, to the universe. We can bear witness, record, describe. We can seek wisdom and gain understanding, not forgetting our role in the scheme of things (as aptly described in the Nature is Speaking videos by "Conservation International").

In his book Sabbath, community advocate Wayne Muller invites us to consider our world and our work in a larger perspective:

"Sabbath requires surrender . . . The old, wise Sabbath says: Stop now. . . . We stop because there are forces larger than we that take care of the universe, and while our efforts are important, necessary, and useful, they are not (nor are we) indispensable. The galaxy will somehow manage without us for this hour, this day, and so we are invited -- nay, commanded -- to relax, and enjoy our relative unimportance, our humble place at the table in a very large world. . . . [emphasis added]

We feel how large the universe is, and how small our labors. Our work is simply one offering among countless others that have come before and will come again, when all we have planted has been grown, harvested, eaten, and forgotten.

When we stop, we see that the world continues without us . . .

The world seduces us with an artificial urgency . . .

But Sabbath says, Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. . . .

You are not going anywhere. Millions have done this before you, and millions will do it after you are gone."

Muller also quotes from the Holocaust Diary of Esther Hillesum:

"Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world."

See "Let It Be," 82 - 85 & "The Book of Hours," 88 - 90
in Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
by Wayne Muller (b 1953)
Contemporary American author, speaker, and therapist
A humorous rendition of a very similar sentiment appears in the musical My Fair Lady, when Eliza Doolittle reminds Henry Higgins of his insignificance to the workings of the universe:

"Without You"
. . . No, my reverberating friend
You are not a beginning and the end

There'll be spring every year without you
England still will be here without you
There'll be fruit on the tree
And a shore by the sea
There'll be crumpets and tea without you

Art and music will thrive without you
Somehow Keats will survive without you
And there still will be rain on that plain down in Spain
Even that will remain without you, I can do without you

You, dear friend, who talk so well
You can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire

They can still rule the land without you
Windsor Castle will stand without you
And without much ado we can
All muddle through without you

Without your pulling it the tide comes in
Without your twirling it, the Earth can spin
Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by
If they can do without you, ducky so can I. . .

Lerner & Loewe

And yet again the point is made in the movie Birdman, which features an impassioned speech from a troubled, insightful daughter (portrayed by Emma Stone) to her confused, striving father (Michael Keaton) about the value (or not) of his life's endeavor:

"Means something to who? You had a career before the third comic book movie, before people began to forget who was inside the bird costume. You’re doing a play based on a book that was written 60 years ago, for a thousand rich old white people whose only real concern is gonna be where they go to have their cake and coffee when it’s over. And let’s face it, Dad, it’s not for the sake of art. It’s because you want to feel relevant again. Well, there’s a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day. And you act like it doesn’t even exist! Things are happening in a place that you willfully ignore, a place that has already forgotten you. I mean, who are you? You hate bloggers. You make fun of Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it."

Gerry often tells the parable of sticking your hand into a bucket of water and taking it out again, in order to gauge how much you might be missed when moving on from one workplace to another. I googled for background information only to discover pages of entries, all pointing to this poem:

The Indispensable Man
by Saxon N. White Kessinger

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego's in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You're the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you'll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable [woman or] man.

Well, now we know!

Indispensable? Perhaps not: "If you lie down, no one will die." Still, it would be nice to make a small dent of some kind, if nothing else, to leave this world a slightly better place than we found it, a modest goal.

~ September 27 / 28, 2015 ~
~ Night of the Total Eclipse ~ Super Blood Moon ~

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, October 28th

Between now and then, read Daniel's In Memoriam on
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

Rios and Capote in Scottsdale

SKYSPACE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Knight Rise ~ 2001
at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
by Installation Artist James Turrell (b 1943)
One of the charms of taking a trip -- or even walking out into your own backyard (just ask Dorothy) -- is the opportunity to look up and see the sky in a whole new way. I can promise you this is what happens when you enter the little indoor - outdoor alcove at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and gaze upward through Turrell's oval Skyspace. There you have a little piece of the Arizona sky, perfectly sized for for you alone.

Not only does the Scottsdale Museum have its own skyspace, it has its own poem. Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Rios was commissioned to write a celebratory poem when the museum opened on February 14 (Valentine's Day!) 1999. Upon the occasion, Rios observed:

“I know many poems about things in museums, but few about the museum itself. This writing, then, is a hopeful act of stark public purpose, a poem about museums, museums as themselves, these simple houses that hold and keep our lives, and into whose living rooms we welcome each other.”

The Museum Heart

We, each of us, keep what we remember in our hearts.
We, all of us, keep what we remember in museums.
In this way, museums beat inside us.

What we have seen and been fed,
What we have smelled and then wanted,
What hair we have touched
And what hands have touched our own;
What fires have burned red,
What rifles-fire echoes still,
What blue mountains rise
On the horizon’s orange and gray spine;
What day-moon mornings, what June beetled evenings,
Simple heat moving, finally, into simple coolness,
A single long drink of good water,
My mother’s yes, your father’s chin.

What we remember,
What we have remembered to keep,
Where we put what we keep:
Sometimes in buildings we find
Pieces of the heart.
Sometimes in a heart we find
The shelter of a building.

Alberto Rios (b 1952)
Arizona Poet Laureate

On a recent trip to Arizona, I visited not only the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, but also the Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, and the Old Adobe Mission, seeking out impromptu skyspaces along the way:

“It’s better to look at the sky than live there.
Such an empty place; so vague.
Just a country where the thunder goes.”

~ Truman Capote ~ "Breakfast at Tiffany's" ~
As I returned to the hotel, over - warm and over - tired at the close of each museum adventure, I thought of Truman Capote's description of the perfect traveling companion. In my determination to absorb the Sonoran ambience, no matter what the daily temperatures, I was like Mrs. Williams, while Gerry embodied the opposite disposition:

"Mrs. Williams and I got along extravagantly well, and as a result became lifelong friends. We had only one point of disagreement. She had read a considerable number of books in preparation for our journey and, regardless of the August Turkish heat ashore, was an unflagging, totally dedicated sightseer. I hate sightseeing; one old rock is just another old rock -- I'm probably one of the few people who has visited Athens, not once but many times, and never once ventured near the Parthenon.

[Not like Keats who
" . . . mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time . . . "]
So, when my companion wandered off into the broiling Turkish interiors to inspect a crumbling mosque or a bunch of old graves, I simply refused to accompany her. Instead, I swam, sunbathed, swam some more, fished, read, ate delicious trifles prepared by the jolly chef, kept my diary up to date, swam some more, and so, in consequence, was fresh as a daisy when Mrs. Williams, sweat-soaked and heat-crazed, returned from her cultural excursions."

from the essay "Yachts and Things"
by Truman Capote (1924 - 1984)

Here's Gerry,
reading Capote, fresh as a daisy in the
ZuZu Restaurant at the Hotel Tally Ho

Antoinette, thanks for the reading suggestion!
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Groundscape & Skyscape
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.blogsppot.com

When Your Book Matches
your bracelet -- and the Upholstery!

Born Only Once

CATHEDRAL WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral ~ Sydney, Australia
I have to completely agree with business writer Brett Nelson who wrote that the phrase "'Come To Jesus Moment' Is The Most Annoying Business Expression On Earth." I understand that the concept has some currency in the common parlance, with connotations of humor and threat; but if you were subjected to the real thing as a child and urged repeatedly to "come to Jesus," it is not even remotely funny, and the threatening aspect falls sickly flat.

American poet Langston Hughes -- also, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri (not far from where I grew up) -- explains it much better than I ever could. For anyone who was not brought up in an evangelical tradition, Hughes provides a glimpse of the impact that fundamentalism can have on the heart of an impressionable innocent child, black or white. His description certainly rings true to my experience. I did not come across this essay until I was an adult, but it made me feel less lonely and bizarre about my religious upbringing in the Church of the Nazarene -- such a strange way to be raised, such a harsh thing to do to a kid or to an adult:

"Salvation" by Langston Hughes

I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed's church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds. Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, "to bring the young lambs to the fold." My aunt spoke of it for days ahead. That night I was escorted to the front row and placed on the mourners' bench with all the other young sinners, who had not yet been brought to Jesus.

My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me.

The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold. Then he said: "Won't you come? Won't you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won't you come?" And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners' bench. And the little girls cried. And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there.

A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands. And the church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song.

Still I kept waiting to see Jesus.

Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. He was a rounder's son named Westley. Westley and I were surrounded by sisters and deacons praying. It was very hot in the church, and getting late now. Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: "God damn! I'm tired o' sitting here. Let's get up and be saved." So he got up and was saved.

Then I was left all alone on the mourners' bench. My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting - but he didn't come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened.

I heard the songs and the minister saying: "Why don't you come? My dear child, why don't you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you. He wants you. Why don't you come? Sister Reed, what is this child's name?"

"Langston," my aunt sobbed.

"Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?"

Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.

So I got up.

Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led me to the platform.

When things quieted down, in a hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic "Amens," all the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. Then joyous singing filled the room.

That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old - I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn't stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me.

"First Confession," by Irish author Frank O'Connor is more often / more popularly anthologized:

"But the worst of all was when she showed us how to examine our conscience. Did we take the name of the Lord, our God, in vain? Did we honour our father and our mother? (I asked her did this include grandmothers and she said it did.) Did we love our neighbours as ourselves? Did we covet our neighbour's goods? (I thought of the way I felt about the penny that Nora got every Friday.) I decided that, between one thing and another, I must have broken the whole ten commandments, all on account of that old woman, and so far as I could see, so long as she remained in the house, I had no hope of ever doing anything else.

I was scared to death of confession."

I have always preferred the Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) essay because it captures the existential angst through the eyes of a child. O'Connor (1903 – 1966) manages to be more light - hearted and find some humor in the situation, but his narrative speaks less to my experience. I find it an interesting twist that the Irish Catholic writer is the one to describe the "hellfire & damnation" method of scaring children into religion (or, should that be scaring religion into children) rather than the Southern American writer. They both make the point that trying to force kids into some kind of mystical religious experience might make them more cynical rather than increasing their faith.

Like young Langston, I decided long ago that if I kept waiting around for a conversion experience or a personal relationship with God, I'd end up waiting forever. Maybe it's a literary thing, but over the years, I have decided to cast my lot with ritual and liturgy over abstract faith. I've never been able to latch onto the idea of a personal god / goddess who cares for me individually. I don't understand what people are talking about when they say "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Perhaps it is a matter of personality or nature, i.e., maybe it's "just my nature" to doubt or be unmoved by emotional appeals to the supernatural, while other people have a deep response to those methods. In the Church of the Nazarene, experiencing these emotions was the central act of faith, so I always felt really excluded -- a goat, not a sheep -- because I never felt the hand of god move or heard Jesus speaking to my heart. Again, I ask, what on earth do those phrases mean? I, for one, could never figure out.

Every time I re-read "Salvation," I am reminded that Hughes also said:

"Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true."
And in a related thought, Czeslaw Milosz writes,

"We are born on earth only once
and we indulge in much mimicking and posing,
dimly aware of the truth, but with pen in hand
it is difficult to escape that awareness:
then, at least, one wants to keep one's self-respect."
(To Begin Where I Am, p 9)
So in a bid for self - respect and truth, I thought I'd go out a limb here -- although I'm not a minister of the Gospel, nor do I play one on TV -- and compile a few posts about religious experience, especially since it has been in the news a lot lately, though, sadly, not in a good way. For example:

1. "Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors
ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord."
-Andy Crouch‬
2. Mike Pence: The servile schemer who would be president"
by Richard North Patterson
American fiction writer, attorney and political commentator

"Trump, not Jesus, became Pence’s personal savior: Cravenly, Pence proclaimed Trump a model paterfamilias and man of deep faith. To cognoscenti, the reflexive alacrity with which Pence swathed Trump in pieties confirmed a surreal obliviousness to his own moral smallness. Even so, he swiftly elevated serial hypocrisy to unforeseen heights."

3. "Mike Pence and the rise of mediocrity"
by Richard North Patterson

"The effect is that of an unctuous church elder selling pyramid schemes to credulous parishioners, never doubting he is doing God’s work. Every self-serving self-deception reveals the depths of his shallowness, the breadth of his hypocrisy. His salvation is not ours."

4. "Trump Can't Reverse the Decline of White Christian America"
by Robert P. Jones

"Two-thirds of those who voted for the president felt his election was the "last chance to stop America's decline." But his victory won't arrest the cultural and demographic trends they opposed."

So according to Michele Bachman, Trump is "somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles." Heaven Help Us!

Wow! Talk about a deeply held belief: "In a head-spinning reversal, white evangelicals went from being the least likely to the most likely group to agree that a candidate’s personal immorality has no bearing on his performance in public office." Hypocrisy takes the day.

"Like Esau, who exchanged his inheritance for a pot of stew, white evangelicals have traded their distinctive values for fleeting political power. Twenty years from now, there is little chance that 2016 will be celebrated as the revival of White Christian America, no matter how many Christian right leaders are installed in positions of power over the next four years. Rather, this election will mostly likely be remembered as the one in which white evangelicals traded away their integrity and influence in a gambit to resurrect their past."

My friend Olynn responds: "He instead actually hastens a decline that is now real - but wasn't before."

5. "Mike Pence’s New God"
by William Saletan

"The Christian conservative was supposed to bring morality to Trump’s campaign. Instead he caved to Trump."

"The idea that’s being projected for public consumption is that Pence’s values somehow rub off on Trump. But what’s actually happening is the reverse. Pence came into the Trump campaign with some firmly stated principles. In less than a week, to conform to his new boss, he has bent them."

"This scene, this genuflection of one man before another, is a warning. It’s what happens when you worship power. It’s what happens when you use religion to glorify a man rather than change him."

6. "Why people believe Trump's lies, fake news, and conspiracy theories"
by Linette Lopez

"Science writer and historian Michael Shermer believes that human beings are conditioned to believe, rather than disbelieve, things. . . . And so we believe. But more than that, in that belief we create patterns. That helps us structure our lives. It gives meaning to what could easily be random. It is from there that Shermer believes we develop things like superstition and conspiracy theories. They make sense of what is random."

7. Awaiting Someone Like Mike Pence as a Messiah
by Kieryn Darkwater
Interesting discussion regarding Christianity, culture wars, and home schooling.

A Different Kind of Salvation:
A Fairy Piper by Richard MacDonald

"Forever piping songs forever new . . ." ~ John Keats
from "Ode On A Grecian Urn"
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS
FOR A CONTINUATION OF THIS DISCUSSION ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, 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