Books and Love

I was talking with Matt on Skype a couple of weeks ago and he asked me what books I was reading.  I told him, I didn't read as much as any more, that my eyes make it hard to concentrate for more than an hour or so.  Maybe I don't have the attention span anymore, either.  Certainly books have receded in importance from our home.  When we were first married, I had a room (albeit a little room) that was filled with books: poetry and literature, philosophy and religion, history and everything in between. Dozen of tomato boxes of books were moved every time we moved.  But since we have been in this house, and even before - when I stopped working for Waldenbooks - books have slowly moved from bookshelves in the living room to bookshelves in a study in the basement to bookshelves in the storage room our basement has become.  And boxes and boxes of books have gone . . . to church libraries, to Goodwill, to the dump.  (Videos and games, on the other hand, grow and grow) Maybe it is not having time enough to devote to a book.  Matt mentioned going out to Aran with a pile of books for the weekend and doing nothing but read.  What a luxury that would be . . .  to have nothing to do but loaf and read.  When would I read my email? Post to my blog? Update my Facebook profile? Upload to Picassa? oh . . . . wait.

To be honest, I still read books. (I just finished a selection of stories about the Knights Templar edited by Katherine Kurtz.)  And I have a stack next to my bed that I have bought at library sales and that same Goodwill store I send so many to.  (I actually often have the experience of seeing a book I used to own in Goodwill and wondering if I donated it. . . or sold it sometime and it had come back to me.) I still read at least 4  times the average number of books read by Americans.  I just don't spend time reading the 'Great Books'.  If I don't get engaged in a book in 100 pages, I put it aside.  If I don't understand it, I leave it.  Life really is too short , and the number of books I have left to be able to read is finite.  If I read now, it is only for pleasure, not education.

I bought probably three new books this past year (sorry, Matt!) and this poem is from one of them, Intimacies, Poems of Love by Pablo Neruda.  I bought it for Dawn for Christmas because when I met her she had mentioned Neruda as a poet she liked and I thought I was going to be a poet at the time  . . . . well. . . . and Neruda writes so well about love.  Please find and read the poem in Spanish as well as it is the most beautiful of languages.  When I was in High School and college, I studied three languages: Latin, Spanish and German.  Of the three, the only one I can still understand is Spanish and that I learned 35 years ago. Next time, I promise some poetry of my own . . . though not as good as this at all.

Love by Pablo Neruda

So many days, oh so many days

seeing you so tangible and so close,

how do I pay, with what do I pay?

The bloodthirsty spring

has awakened in the woods.

The foxes start from their earths,

the serpents drink the dew,

and I go with you in the leaves

between the pines and the silence,

asking myself how and when

I will have to pay for my luck.

Of everything I have seen,

it's you I want to go on seeing;

of everything I've touched,

it's your flesh I want to go on touching.

I love your orange laughter.

I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?

I don't know how others love

or how people loved in the past.

I live, watching you, loving you.

Being in love is my nature.

You please me more each afternoon.

Where is she? I keep asking

if your eyes disappear.

How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt.

I feel poor, foolish and sad,

and you arrive and you are lightening

glancing off the peach trees.

That's why I love you and yet not why.

there are so many reasons, and yet so few,

for love has to be so,

involving and general,

particular and terrifying,

joyful and grieving,

flowering like the stars,

and measureless as a kiss.

That's why I love you and yet not why.

There are so many reasons, and yet so few,

for love has to be so,

involving and general,

particular and terrifying,

joyful and grieving,

flowering like the stars,

And measureless as a kiss.

Por eso te amo y no por eso,

por tantas cosa y tan pocas,

y asi debe ser el amor

entrecerrado y general,

particular y pavoroso,

embanderado y enlutado

florindo como las estrellas

y sin medida como un beso.

There is so much of Neruda's poety on the Internet, including some great videos.  Here is one of my favorites.

Sub Heaven

This past Friday night, I stopped at Santoro's Sub-Villa in Saugus MA for sandwiches. I usually get the Sub Villa Special with everything but hots (chopped onions, chopped pickle,chopped tomatoes, ham, cheese, capacolla and salami (I think) on a crusty rolls with 'saltpepperoil', of course). For Dawn, I forgo the onions and hots. These subs (italians in Maine, hogies in PA, etc) are the GREATEST sandwiches ever made, bar none. The bread is crunchy and chewy like good french bread, the onions are redolent and the pickles (my favorite part) are tart and sweet. Along with the rich capacolla it is just is unbelievable!

The picture above is of the old sign for Sub Villa and is gone now. This morning, I was in bed thinking about Santoro's and I realized that I have been eating sandwiches from that sub shop for probably over 40 years! When I was a kid, my grandfather ("Grampie Earle") had lung cancer and went to Boston to have one of his lungs removed. Every year thereafter, he went down to Boston for a checkup and often we all went along. My father had gone to dental school at Tufts and we had lived for some time in Rockland, so he knew the area well. I am not sure why or when we first began stopping on Route One in Saugus at Santoro's, but I can clearly remember this old sign and the 'Jetson's-like' shop. I seem to remember at one time that you could get a sandwich and add your own condiments and vegatables self-service. In any event, when I began to travel to Boston for work, I made a point of taking Route One out of the city so I could stop in Saugus at Santoro's to bring home sandwiches for the girls. When we used to travel to Boston with my grandfather and family, the second stop was Putnam's in Danver's for Ice Cream Smorgasbord. For years, I had no idea where Putnam's was, since I used to jump on Route 95 before Danvers on my way home. Only recently did I finally find Putnam's, nestled in between superhighways. I haven't had a chance to stop there yet, but I hope to soon.

I was researching Santoro's for this blog and I found out that apparently part of the family left the North Shore of Massachusetts and opened a shop in Burbank California. You can read more about it at this link . The sandwich he shows certainly looks like a Santoro's sub. I have to agree with the blog post that if I was stranded on a desert island and had to chose one restaurant, it would be Santoro's. The Burbank shop is located at 1423 W Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA, so maybe when I am out to visit my sister, we can make a pilgrimage and I can compare with the original.


THE ARMFUL by Robert Frost

So, this poem is especially for Alice, though I doubt she reads my blog. We had dinner in Cambridge recently, and I know she has a lot on her plate right now. When I was her age, I hoped too to have a specific plan and direction for my life. I didn't and so have pretty much drifted from experience to experience. I don't think that is such a bad thing. It is how I came to be here anyway. I think Alyssa will do fine. She is bright and passionate; inquisitive and loyal. Whatever she decides to do, she will glean wisdom from it, I have no doubt. And isn't that the real purpose of life, to accumulate wisdom? Anyway, as I often tell my clients, "nothing is set in stone". Life is a moving river, not a mountain.

I used to carry this poem around in my wallet and read it from time to time. To me, Frost is talking about that same juggling of hopes and expectations, his own and others for him. Sometimes it is necessary to drop everything and start over - reboot the system.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize,
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with, hand and mind
and heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced on my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.  

                                                                                (1928)

Happy New Year 2009

So I thought in keeping with the theme of Laika, I would post this Soviet-era New Years Day card. You can see more at this link. It has been interesting investigating Soviet-era art. I can remember as a child when the Soviet Union was our geo-political equal. "The Russians", it seems to me, tempered our ambitions in the world. The notion of nuclear war hung over my childhood as a real possibility. We always (eventually) understood our proxy wars in Africa and Asia to be engagements with the USSR. For some, the USSR represented a hope and an inspiration. For others, and I am particularly thinking of my own circle in college, understood Russia to be the failure not of Marxism, but a betrayal by politicians of the principals of Communism. We had to look beyond Soviet Communism to . . . . Chinese Communism for the better model of what Communism could be. Of course, now we realize that Mao was every bit as ruthless as Stalin. And what country in the world is more intertwined with world capitalism than China? The fortunes of the nation rise and fall on the fortunes of the USA and Europeans as much as any nation.

But I think I always had a soft spot for Russia. I suppose it was fueled by Dr. Zhivago and growing up in a similar climate. Those long trudges across open fields to get home from school in January, it was easy to imagine myself as a young poet Zhivago crossing the steppes to be with Laura. The movie was released for Christmas 1965. I would have been eight years old, but I have a distinct memory of going as a family to see it in the movie theater. Is that possible? Watching it now, I must have missed a good deal of the plot. I am sure, however, that I had a huge crush on Julie Christie. so maybe I did. The movie also has special resonance with me because it was what we saw on Dawn and my first date together. We saw it in the Fall of 1975 (ten years after its release) at the University of Maine.

Fairy Tales

I have been listening to a great podcast by a Jungian analyst in which he describes using Jungian techniques to interpret fairy tales. You can subscribe to the podcast here . Here is a tale I found while looking for images this week. A more detailed version is also available here.

The Snow Maiden

A Russian tale tells of a woodcutter and his wife who were childless. They were a good and kind couple but they were lonely. One winter day, to ease their loneliness, they began to roll large snowballs. together, and in short while they made a “snequrochka“, a Snow Maiden. She looked so beautiful that they called her their ‘daughter’.

At that same moment, hiding and crackling among the fir trees, was Grandfather Frost. He was an old winter god with a long, white beard and he carried a great staff that was filled with wonderful magic. He had overheard the couple and felt sorry for them. For people who were kind and good always touched his heart. And so he raised his great staff and suddenly the Snow Maiden came to life.

Some said the Snow Maiden was the daughter of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow, sent to comfort the couple for a time. Others said she was really a spirit-princess come to earth. Whatever her nature, she remained with the couple as a true and dutiful daughter would be.

Now as spring approached and people began to leave their houses, the Snow Maiden fell in love with a young man from the village. But the price of surrendering her heart in love would be to lose her human mortality. Grandfather Frost continued to watch her from a distance for he knew what would soon happen to her.

One day she was walking with her beloved through a birch wood. The youth played his flute; the Snow Maiden walked beside him turning her face to the sun. Suddenly she gave the faintest sigh and began to melt. She was still a creature of ice and snow and could not stand the springtime sun. Soon there was nothing left but an icy mist, drifting upward into the blue sky. The frail creature could not survive the breath of spring.

But her spirit had leapt into the waiting arms of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow and they carried her away over the stars to the far north where she plays all through the summer on the frozen seas.

But each year in winter, on the first day of the New Year, Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden return to Russia. And they continue to work their magic for those who are kind and good. And they visit, in particular, the children, bringing them gifts and helping them to make their dreams come true, as they did long ago for the woodcutter and his wife.

Edmund Dulac, The Ice Maiden, 1915, watercolour, The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton

Clay Lies Still, but Blood's a Rover

I haven't memorized much poetry, for all my love of it.  My brother-in-law has memorized huge gobs of Shakespeare (or had, I'll have to ask Jim how much he still remembers). But I can't seems to make them stick, as much as I try.  When I was in school, our class had to recite Invictus by William Ernest Henley ("Out of the night that covers me. . . . "), The only thing worse was twenty of us, each giving the poem our own halting translation,   but I have remembered it, for all these years.  The second bit of poetry I found as a Freshman at the University of Maine written on a desk in an auditoreum.  I had no idea who wrote it or where it came from.  For years I assumed that it was a verse from a rock song which I was, naturally, ignorant of.  (Funny sidebar, when I came to school, I wrote my name on each record in my collection of mostly Gregorian chants and movie soundtracks, just in case anybody wanted to borrow them.  Oh Lord, what a simpleton!)

So it was with great joy that years afterwards I was reading a copy of the Collected Poems of A. E. Housman and realized that at last I had found the source of my quote.  I don't know how many times I had drug myself out of bed with the last stanza of this poem in my ear.  There is good anglo-saxon alliteration in the rest of the poem, I realize now.  The same marching of syllables that makes Beowulf such a joy (in good translation anyway).  Well, here is the poem, whole cloth.  I don't think I will ever remember the rest of the poem, or forget the end.

REVEILLE

by A.E. Housman

Wake: the silver dusk returning

Up the beach of darkness brims,

And the ship of sunrise burning

Strands upon the easter rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,

Trampled to the floor it spanned,

And the tent of night in tatters

Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:

Hear the drums of morning play;

Hark, the empty highways crying

'Who'll beyond the hills away?'

Towns and countries woo together,

Forelands beacon, belfries call;

Never lad that trod the leather

Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber

Sunlit pallets never thrive;

Morns abed and daylight slumber

Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;

Breath's a ware that will not keep.

Up, lad: when the journey's over

There'll be time enough to sleep.

Ice Storm and Gettin' In Wood

The ice storm this past week took down part of one of the trees in my front yard. I heard the 'limb' (it was 18" in diameter), fall and went out to find the limb across the road. It brushed the telephone and power lines across the street, but didn't take them down. It did send a whiplash that pulled services from several houses across the street. About 200,000 Mainer's lost their power for part or all of Friday (ours was back by the end of the day). My parents lost power until Saturday night and as of tonight, there are still folks without power.

This afternoon, I went over to the Farm to help my Dad get up wood from the woodlot. He sold wood to a person in return for stove-length cut wood left in the lot. We still needed to split the wood and get it under cover. I worked there for the afternoon and we got up about a half a cord, split and stacked and probably another cord, unsplit. I thought I might find a good Robert Frost poem this week about chopping wood or something. But as I was looking through my copy of Come In and Other Poems, I found a poem I had written to a friend of mine in 1978. The title refers to the Fryburg Fair and the closing in of the season after October. I tried in that image of the smooth turn of a hawk's head to capture the inevitable turning of the seasons. The images of the farm are for the most part autobiographical. - real or imagined. At the time, I was pretty certain that I was going to live on a farm, learn to play the fiddle and smoke good dope with my friends for the rest of my days. I blame John Denver. But actually, people were flocking back to the land in Maine in the 1970's and it really wasn't so far fetched a future. Seems like another century . . . oh wait?! Well, maybe it would not be a bad idea to get a decent Jotul in the house after all?

AFTER THE FAIR

For David

The closure of a hawk's eye
Compass the stone field, dead leaf
Trampled path of cattle, woodchuck, cat.
All within the twisting fence road
Curl into the barnyard, closing
Like the last rose before the frost.
The herd deserts the lower pasture
For the barnyard feed bunk, jostling for
Summer's grass corpse of measured
Nourishment.

Hard wood, potato, beef in the freezer;
Short days, lamp light, laughter;
Cold curses, chores, wool and woodsmoke.

In the ice-flowered morning, the fox
Cannot hear the empty chicken coop,
Nor mice the sleeping bees.
Quicker than sunrise, the hawk's
Studied glance comes round

And it is Winter.

Is There, For Honest Poverty

Is there for honest poverty,
Wha hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by;
We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, -
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin gray, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stare, and a' that, -
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star and a' that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might, -
Guid faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that;
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks that a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may, -
As come it will for a' that, -
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that, -
When man to man, the warld o'er,
shall brothers be for a' that!
Robert Burns

The video below is pretty good. Just wait for the music.


This song is a personal anthem of mine (Andy Stewart's version is the best, but this one is not bad). I like the spirit of the thing. To know how Burns struggled all his life and how wonderful his songs are is kind of sad. But then, I guess it adds to the power of them to know from whence they came - the man and the land. I can certainly sympathize with Burns as I listened to the wind howl around my crumbling chimney and thought about how my home is falling around my head. "Three o'clock thoughts", I call them , when the world seems bleakest and the litany of problems seems as long as the sea.

"We dare be poor for all that . . . our toils obscure and all that . . . the man is the gold for all that."

I guess many of us are feeling 'honest poverty' and setting ourselves above those bastards in their private jets and silk shirts coming to pretend to beg for money from those they own. Let's hope they get all they deserve.

At Grass

I started this blog one year ago and I am afraid I haven't done a very good job of keeping it up. In my defense, I would note that I work on computers all day and sometimes it is hard to face the screen again at night. Lately, too, my attention has been on Facebook and following friends and family there. Well, so be it. Here is a new start at least. Isn't that what birthdays are, an assessment and a prediction? I wanted to find a poem to post and I like this one very much. I have never been much of a horse racing fan, but certainly can sympathize with the subjects. I remember thinking that I could do anything, be anything, when I was young. I was certain that fortune waited just around the corner. Well, I have wandered in that maze for some time now and I haven't turned that particular corner.

At Grass, by Phillip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
--The other seeming to look on --
And stands anonymous again.

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
to fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes --

Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass: then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowds and cries --
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies;
Only the groom, and the groom's boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

The Philosopher's Stone

I am reminded of the story of a boy walking along the road (don't they always start that way?) and encountering an old man weeping by the side of the road. The Boy stops to inquire why the man is so inconsolable and he notices that in spite of the pitiless rags the Old Man is wearing and his general look of poverty that his belt buckle is of purest gold. The Old Man tells his story, "I was once a great thinker and alchemist. I have sought my entire life for the Philosopher's Stone, that magic stone that will turn anything it touches into gold. I sought high and low, from Kings and Sages and Wizards of all kinds. Surely the Stone must exist! Every pebble and rock I touched to my buckle, in hopes of finding the Stone and so securing my fortune. I have wandered the Earth for years in search of the Philosopher's Stone."
The Boy cocks his head and scowls, "But Sir, surely you have found the Stone, since your buckle is of purest gold! Why do you weep so?"
And the Old Man answers, "Yes, my buckle is purest gold. But for years I tested hundreds, nay, thousands of stones. Every one was a failure. Over the years, I acquired the habit of picking up stones and touching them to my belt, one after another, and knowing they were not the Philosopher's Stone, I eventually ceased even looking at my buckle to confirm another failure."
"So you see", the Old Man goes on, " I kept on my quest until one day I chanced to look down and see my golden buckle. Then I realized I had found the Philosopher's Stone . . . yes, found the Stone. . . and had cast it away." With this the Old Man rises stiffly and hobbles down the road, picking up pebbles, one by one.