Spark

Oh truly we are a fortunate few
Who turn on your axis, revolve around you
All spinning outwards from your sun
Passing your reflection on

Nipped

Just this week, we here in West Tennessee got the first hint of frost, which means that the roses will soon be done for the year. They have amazed me--since March, they've been putting out blooms of all shapes & sizes. I'm not all that good at tending them, but it's a lot of fun and oh, so rewarding when they're all going at once. Plus, blooming all the way into November: not bad. I must live in the South.

O Bemerton

Hope.

I gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he

An anchor gave to me.
Then an old prayer-book I did present:
And he an optic sent.
With that I gave a vial full of tears:
But he a few green ears.
Ah Loiterer! I'll no more, no more I'll bring:
I did expect a ring.

(George Herbert, 1633)

picture above is Herbert's church at Bemerton; thanks to JMA and WA for the photograph.

Ohayo gozaimasu

The summer after I graduated from college, I went to Japan for two months (thanks, Mr. Phipps!). One of the best experiences I've ever had. Sometimes, when I'm feeling more reckless than normal (stop laughing), I consider picking up everything and just moving there.

The soba noodles and ocha are awfully good.

Ambushed

So, I happen upon the above picture on a design/architecture blog. Nothing particularly remarkable about it, except that in looking at it, I am transported instantly back to my ten-year-old self, in Baguio City. Something about the large open windows and the bare wooden floor.

How much I'd give to go back.

Ingredients

concrete blocks
chicken wire
135-lb. butterflied hog
nine bags of charcoal
four bags of hickory chunks
two carafes of hot coffee
six metal fence rails
one sheet of rusty tin roofing
one wheelbarrow

12 hours of cooking
two pitchers of homemade NC-style sauce

=yummmeh!
I just can't believe that people are so squeamish about doing the actual pickin'!

Jitterbug.

So, one of the side-effects of the new drug regimen is that I feel jittery all morning long. My writing is sloppier, my typing is slower, and I feel like I'm shambling down the stairs! It's weird. I should probably quit drinking the coffee & see if that helps. But of course I downed about three cups this morning. Whoops!

Also, I'm shrinking. Most of my pants are now too big, which is really irritating.

#303

THE Soul selects her own Society--

Then--shuts the Door--

To her divine Majority--

Present no more--

Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--

At her low Gate--

Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling

Upon her mat--

I've known her--from an ample nation--

Choose One--

Then--close the Valves of her attention--

Like Stone--

--Emily Dickinson

Best sentence I've read today (so far).

from TMQ:

One of TMQ's immutable laws of football is: Don't Panic, There Will Be Plenty of Time for That Later.

haha, that's not just for football, folks.

Cakee, cakee, umm umm!

The Little Boy decorated my birday cake.

birthday tally

2,760 pages of reading bliss, huzzah!

Mobile Baby

Preface

(the stage-manager to the critics)

Art opens the fishiest eye
To the Flesh and the Devil who heat
The Chamber of Temptation
Where heroes roar and die.
We are wet with sympathy now;
Thanks for the evening; but how
Shall we satisfy when we meet,
Between Shall-I and I-Will,
The lion's mouth whose hunger
No metaphors can fill?

Well, who in his own backyard
Has not opened his heart to the smiling
Secret he cannot quote?
Which goes to show that the Bard
Was sober when he wrote
That this world of fact we love
Is unsubstantial stuff;
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness
And the ripeness all.

--W. H. Auden ("The Sea and the Mirror")

Booklust! Booklust!

October 28: A new novel from one of my absolute favorites!

Lithium

now we're getting serious.

The Mousetrap

But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of their own.

--the Player King

Keeyuhhteee

One of the manifold pleasures of visiting Chicago this past weekend was getting reacquainted with Edmund, the younger of R&S's two kitties. He is the funniest cat I've ever been around, and I've seen a lot of his idiosyncrasies, but this weekend I saw a new one:

Edmund drinks by scooping his left paw in the water bowl and then licking the water off his paw.

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to take video.

Oak Park, IL

Rock Band 2.
Hop Devil IPA.
Johnny's Italian Beef & Italian Ice.
Castle Crashers.
Coffeecoffeecoffee.
Edmund and Tali.

Sometimes I should just stop

Today in class, for some reason, the bit in Fox in Socks about the Tweedle Beetles came to mind.

And so, what did I do?

of course:

when tweedle beetles fight, it's called a tweedle beetle battle
and when beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle,
and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle, it's a
tweedle beetle bottle paddle puddle battle muddle.

One Simple Task

I have a set of phone calls to make.

I've been putting them off all week.

I have two hours in which I can sit here in my office and make those phone calls.

Yet I am still not making them.

It's like I have some mental block about making simple phone calls.

Geez. Sometimes I want to kick my own arse.

heeeeeeeeyyyyyyy

debate, shmebate

Spent my time last night in a much more worthy fashion:

Watching The Reduced Shakespeare Company

one of the happiest sounds on earth

A Good sign

It's a Very Important Day

Because the Most Important Person at the Hill house has a birthday today.

Be Still my Beating Heart!

on my desk:

Almost 400 years after they were first published in Cambridge by the 'printers to the Universitie,' Cambridge University Press is pleased to present the definitive scholarly edition of Herbert's complete English poems.

$180, on sale for $162.

Like so many other things, it seems, it's a Pisgah sight of Palestine.

Navel-Gazing; feel free to skip!

(excuse me, but it will out:)

I would love to wake up one morning just uncomplicatedly, unconflictedly, unconditionally happy. It would be something to hold onto, and maybe I could face the day without putting on the armor first. It gets heavy.

She is just that awesome

"No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person videlicet, in a love cause. Troilus had his brains dashed out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was "Hero of Sestos." But these are all lies. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

and...

"Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney."

"Democritus to the Reader"

When I first took this task in hand, et quod at ille, impellente genio negotium suscepi (and, as he saith, I undertook the work from some inner impulse), this I aimed at, vel ut lenirem animum scribendo, (or) to ease my mind by writing; for I had gravidum cor, foedum caput, a kind of imposthume in my head, which I was very desirous to be unladen of, and could imagine no fitter evacuation than this. Besides, I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itches. I was not a little offended with this malady, shall I say my mistress Melancholy, my Egeria, or my malus genius [evil genius]? and for that cause, as he that is stung with a scorpion, I would expel clavum clavo [a nail with a nail], comfort one sorrow with another, idleness with idleness, ut ex vipera theriacum [as an antidote out of a serpent's venom], make an antidote out of that which was the prime cause of my disease.

--Robert Burton (1628)