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DAYS GO BY, GO BY, GO BY
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Today is the feast day of Kathryn
of Alexander – patron of philosophers, scholars, spinsters, millers, tanners, and
rose tender. On this date in 1877 the first exhibit of sword swallowing took place in New
York City. In 1913 President Wilson’s daughter was married in the East Room of The
White House. With 300 invited quests looking on.
1952 on this day in London the producer of Agatha Christie’s new play, The Mousetrap,
says that he hopes to get a years run out of the show. 46 years later it’s still
going strong.. Romulous Films bought the rights to film it in 1956 with the one
stipulation that the movie could not be released until six months after the play closes in
London. There are no plans for a casting call anytime soon.. 1970 Yukio Mishima, 45,
commits seppuku (ritual suicide), hours after completing his tetrology "The Sea of
Fertility."
Happy middle of the week and if you are having seppuku in a Japanese restaurant it
isn’t necessary to have more than one..
- RM
11/21/98 |
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Christina Applegate o
Steve Brodie o Andrew Carnegie o Kathryn Crosby o Bucky Dent o Joe DiMaggio o Helen Gahagan Douglas o Amy Grant o
Haken Hagegard o Jeff Hunter o Wilheim Kempf o John F. Kennedy Jr. o John Larroquette o
Ricardo Montalban o Carry Nation o Ben Stein o Lewis Thomas o Virgil Thomson o Tina Turner o Leonard Woolf |
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Genius is a matter of
opinion.
Genius understands the work of genius.
The best friend Genius has is order.
Invention is powerful. Reinvention, genius. |
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DRIVING THROUGH DAVIS |
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I woke up listening
where swallows
had been known to sing
and I heard nothing.
The morning followed the sun
not the sun the morning.
And as the day slipped
from out the last
into the next
nothing happened but the grey
moving in to take the whiteness.I find any sleep
that claims to be
a sleep of reason
unreasonable and fitful,
yet each night
I fall down in darkness
all the same
wondering what new land
knows the sound
of singing swallows.
I wonder too
at teachers who demand
instead of teach.
One man - a professor now
( a sort of poet once
until his talent dried and died
from lack of any nourishment
or truth or understanding ) -
makes a proper living
out of damning me
because the God that I believe in
lets me damn no man.
He wrote that I
was fostering unrest.
So I am.
And so I am.
Do not rest until you reach
a pair of friendly arms.
That’s radical and wrong for him
but right for those of us who love.
And I say kill no man
nor murder his ideas
before they’ve had a chance
to surface from his mind.
Let men think and speak
even that poor white-haired loser
whose thoughts are lost
on children he would chain
and minds he’d not mind plundering
it even that skill he could master.
Let him help to foster masons
at his school
instead of militants with matches.
Man has learned by building
but even superman
cannot see past a fire.
The clergy
who drum into their congregations
litanies that have
no bond with common speech
have begun to worry me as well.
Until my life began to move
across the hill and down
I was unaware that God
was such a complicated man.
He was never Latin for me
nor Sanskrit till translation.
I want a man
that I can understand
to govern me,
for I need love
and understanding too.
And so I hope that God the friend
and not the father
will come banging at my door.
Were I your preacher
your teacher or your dad
I’d ask that you hate no man,
but yourself sometimes.
That can be of use
if only in putting on the brakes.
Stumble if you need to
but stumble on your own ground only.
Consider any man that you can help
your friend,
and double friend
that man so selfless
as to offer help to you.
I’ll never be a proper teacher
for I’ve learning yet ahead of me
far beyond my years.
But place my small brain
in the feeble hands
of some white-haired loser
operating still without a learner’s permit
in the love of all mankind ?
Not a chance.
One day I’ll make a pilgrimage
to his dusty desk
if only just to take him
this year’s calendar.
Surely all men need to know
what year it is they’re living in.
- from "Fields of Wonder", 1971 |
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