dual personalities

Category: Quotes

January 27, 2017

The powerful play goes on

by chuckofish

 30a7e9faaa224c5e66c38ad0776ce7d0.jpg
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
                                       Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

When in doubt, folks, go back to Walt Whitman for a punch of optimism.

D’ailleurs, it is Friday and I am ready for the weekend. I have stuff to do per usual and the “Elegant Italian Dinner” to attend at church. This fundraiser for the youth mission trip is always a fun event, even if the menu never varies from the lasagna and bag salad of yesteryear. That is part of its charm I guess.

Weather-wise it is going to be a typical cold, gray flyover January weekend,

screen-shot-2017-01-26-at-10-30-45-am

but we’ll go see our two little rays of sunshine in the NICU unit.

Unknown.jpeg

Unknown-1.jpeg

They look so much bigger with their preemie clothes, don’t they?

I should also note that Sunday–January 29–is the birthday of our great-great uncle John Wesley Prowers (1838–1884), the Colorado cattleman.

John_Prowers_one_of_Colorados_first_businessmen (1).jpg

In honor of JWP, I think I will watch Lonesome Dove this weekend.  JWP was a friend and business partner of Charles Goodnight, upon whom the character Captain Call (Tommy Lee Jones) is based.  I meant to watch it a week or so ago in honor of Robert Duvall, but I could not find it, because, as it turned out, I had lent it to the boy! Life is complicated!

Other possibilities on the cattle drive theme would be Red River (1948) or The Cowboys (1972) or episodes from the old TV show Rawhide (1959–1965) starring a dreamy young Clint Eastwood.

So many choices. And, hello, here’s something I found while perusing the internet:

91RqbaFk3ZL._SX522_.jpg

The world is more than we know. Have a great weekend.

The painting is by Fairfield Porter, Broadway South of Union Square, oil on canvas 1974-1975

5 Comments
January 25, 2017

The moon is mine

by chuckofish

George Sotter (1879-1953)

I have a compact to commune
A monthly midnight with the Moon;
Into its face I stare and stare,
And find sweet understanding there.

As quiet as a toad I sit
And tell my tale of days to it;
The tessellated yarn I’ve spun
In thirty spells of star and sun.

And the Moon listens pensively,
As placid as a lamb to me;
Until I think there’s just us two
In silver world of mist and dew.

In all of spangled space, but I
To stare moon-struck into the sky;
Of billion beings I alone
To praise the Moon as still as stone.

And seal a bond between us two,
Closer than mortal ever knew;
For as mute masses I intone
The Moon is mine and mine alone.

–Robert Service, from “Moon-Lover”

In case you have forgotten, a tessellation of a flat surface is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellations can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries. A periodic tiling has a repeating pattern.

(I’ll admit, I had to look it up.)

The painting above (“Silent Night” c. 1923) is by George Sotter (1979-1952). The paintings that follow are by Maxfield Parrish, Bertha Lum and Albert Bierstadt.

e9c8e643777bab76efe6db2d1496f0b4.jpg

46c419dbea0e3d2945be715133263b10.jpg

fb74b07596c1d312091892baaf87b01c.jpg

All photos from Pinterest.

4 Comments
January 24, 2017

Some things never change dept.

by chuckofish

I become quite melancholy and deeply grieved to see men behave to each other as they do. Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice , self-interest, deceit and roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I’m furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.

―Moliere, The Misanthrope (1666)

24b301602ef12c218a4619cba6bb105e.jpg

Well, c’est la vie.

Happy Tuesday.

4 Comments
January 23, 2017

Grant us strength and courage

by chuckofish

Quelle busy weekend! The weather was beautiful on Saturday (72 degrees!) so everyone, including me, was out and about.

Grandpappy and I visited the wee babes at the hospital.

Lottie.jpg

Lottie is now big enough to fit into preemie clothes!

IMG_0452.jpg

Little boy is over 3 lbs! It won’t be long before he can wear pants too.

IMG_0423.jpg

On the social side we went out to dinner with old friends. I attended my church’s annual meeting and stayed for the service following. Afterwards I had lunch with my pal Carla.

In between all these activities I managed to work in the yard and go to an estate sale,  but there was not much time for puttering around the house.

IMG_2384.JPG

Having finished The Thin Man, I  moved into deeper water and started to re-read the wonderful A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly, a hero among Quakers and in the larger world of Christian mystics.

To this extraordinary life I call you–or He calls you through me–not as a lovely ideal, a charming pattern to aim at hopefully, but as a serious, concrete program of life, to be lived here and now, in industrial America, by you and by me.

This is something wholly different from mild, conventional religion which, with respectable skirts held back by dainty fingers, anxiously tries to fish the world out of the mudhole of its own selfishness. Our churches, our meeting houses are full of such respectable and amiable people. We have plenty of Quakers to follow God the first half of the way. Many of us have become as mildly and as conventionally religious as were the church folk of three centuries ago, against whose mildness and mediocrity and passionlessness George Fox and his followers flung themselves with all the passion of a glorious and a new discovery and with all the energy of dedicated lives. In some, says William James, religion exists as a dull habit, in others as an acute fever. Religion as a dull habit is not that for which Christ lived and died.

The weekend sped by and now it is Monday once again. I’m off to the salt mine. Enjoy your day, okay?

*BCP, Post-Communion Prayer

7 Comments
January 10, 2017

Now King David was old, advanced in age; and they covered him with clothes, but he could not keep warm.*

by chuckofish

 

11.jpg

Winter is here. I am grateful for my warm house and my Austrian wool coat and my heated car.

I often think of those brave pioneers facing the cold without Gore-Tex coats and down mittens.

“All day the storm lasted. The windows were white and the wind never stopped howling and screaming. It was pleasant in the warm house. Laura and Mary did their lessons, then Pa played the fiddle while Ma rocked and knitted, and bean soup simmered on the stove. All night the storm lasted, and all the next day. Firelight danced out of the stove’s draught, and Pa told stories and played the fiddle.”

–Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek

I  mean really.

American Farm Yard in Winter, 1867. Wisconsin, by George T. Lindeman..jpg

Take heart though–it’s supposed to get up to 61 degrees today!

*1 Kings 1:1

3 Comments
December 2, 2016

Father of minutes, Father of days*

by chuckofish

1c1be48907a04313734efdd0de56f8da

Well, the weekend is upon us. Sigh. I intend to check out our Grace Church Holiday Sale, go to a baby shower for daughter #3, and attend our Advent Lessons and Carols service. Maybe I will convince the OM to go with me to buy our Christmas trees…

In between the aforementioned fun activities, I plan to start watching Christmas movies. You know:

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

gallery-1450294722-miracle-on-34th-street-getty

The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

9e3c84f4d697e02cbc002cdc005b0969

or maybe Edward Scissorhands (1990)

vincent-large

There are so many to choose from! Meanwhile, maybe I’ll get started on those Christmas cards!

BTW, don’t forget to set your DVR this month, because TCM is, of course, showing a lot of Christmas classics! Here’s the schedule.

And this Instagram made me laugh:

screen-shot-2016-12-02-at-6-36-07-am

Enjoy your weekend!

6 Comments
November 1, 2016

Rescued from oblivion

by chuckofish

3fb3a4cf3388ec7871fa4f7f753cf10b

Even the most cursory of diaries can be of incalculable value. What the weather was doing. Who we ran into on the street. The movie we saw. The small boy at the dentist’s office. The dream.

Just a handful of the barest facts can be enough to rescue an entire day from oblivion — not just what happened in it, but who we were when it happened. Who the others were. What it felt like back then to be us.

“Our years come to an end like a sigh . . . ” says Psalm 90, “so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (w. 9,12).

It is a mark of wisdom to realize how precious our days are, even the most uneventful of them. If we can keep them alive by only a line or so about each, at least we will know what we’re sighing about when the last of them comes.

~ Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words

img_2225

The illustration of parked cars on a residential street is from This is New York by Miroslav Sasek.

4 Comments
October 25, 2016

On the way to knowing

by chuckofish

4ef9ad6caac765ce9e1a42315c59196b

I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something–whatever you like–you will be on the way to knowing more about Him; that is what I say to myself. But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence; and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more. That leads to God, that leads to unwavering faith.

–Vincent Van Gogh

3 Comments
October 19, 2016

To be a fool

by chuckofish

kansas

Today is the birthday of the great Quaker John Woolman (1720–1782).

I find that to be a fool as to worldly wisdom, and commit my cause to God, not fearing to offend men, who take offence at the simplicity of truth, is the only way to remain immoved by the sentiments of others. The fear of man brings a snare; by halting in our duty, and going back in the time of trial, our hands grow weaker, our spirits get mingled with the people, our ears grow dull as to hearing the language of the True Shepherd; that when we look at the way of the righteous, it seems as though it was not for us to follow them.

There is a love clothes my mind, while I write, which is superior to all expressions; and I find my heart open to encourage a holy emulation, to advance forward in Christian firmness. Deep humility is a strong bulwark; and as we enter into it, we find safety. The foolishness of God is wiser than  man, and the weakness of God is stronger than man. Being unclothed of our own wisdom and knowing the abasement of the creature, therein we find that power to arise which gives health and vigor to us.

–Journal, 1774

Celebrate accordingly.

2 Comments
August 23, 2016

We amuse ourselves

by chuckofish

a5ad98ded0023de7a1581a12c8ff4bc1

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterrupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy’s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads- because they once stood in their midst.

—Walden, chapter four, Henry David Thoreau

I don’t know about you, but  old HDT always cheers me up.

The painting is by Thomas Hart Benton.

1 Comment