dual personalities

Tag: quotes

March 5, 2013

Things and the reason of things

by chuckofish

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality,
No one can acquire for another–not one,
Not one can grow for another–not one.

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him–it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own.

–Walt Whitman, A Song of the Rolling Earth

And in other news: my friend Gary’s band Sun Volt was featured in the Wall Street Journal the other day. You can read the article here.

via Wall Street Journal

via Wall Street Journal

Gary is the cool dude on the far left.

3 Comments
February 27, 2013

A cheerful heart

by chuckofish

stan-laurel-jeff11_angelod

A while ago I posted about the positive effects of a good cry. Well today we’ll consider the importance of being cheerful.

Every day I get an email from the Anglican monks of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. Yesterday’s message from Br. Mark Brown was about “Hilarity”. You can read the whole thing here.

“Perhaps we could think of cheerfulness,” he writes, “a gentle good cheer, as a spiritual practice, or, at least, as a spiritual good—as a way of being compassionate to those we live with (as Paul’s words suggest). A way of bringing the light of Christ, the gracious light of Christ into the lives of others. Cheerfulness can’t be an all day/every day thing. But if we’re between the storms of life and in a comparatively neutral zone, we might be more intentional about returning to a kind of emotional baseline of gentle good cheer. Rather than merely neutral, perhaps a baseline of gentle good cheer.”

I like to think of cheerfulness as a spiritual practice. One of the affirmative laws of the Boy Scouts, as you know, is “A scout is cheerful”–in fact he “smiles and whistles”. As we also know, practice makes perfect. Sometimes that means smiling when we don’t feel like it. This sign in my kitchen reminds all who enter to do so.

smile

The writer of the Book of Proverbs says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine”, which is so true. We all know people whose cheerfulness is contagious and makes proximity to them a definite benefit. Likewise a smile from a stranger can greatly improve your day. So go ahead and smile! Think of it as your Lenten spiritual practice and do it intentionally!

If you are having a hard time smiling, it is a good spiritual practice to watch a funny movie. But why is it that I have a harder time thinking of movies that make me laugh than ones that make me cry? Anyway, here are some funny ones: Ball of Fire (1941), Best in Show (2000), Ghostbusters (1984), Heaven Can Wait (1978), The Producers (1968), The Pink Panther (1963), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Annie Hall (1977), A Run for Your Money (1949), The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain (1995). What have I forgotten?

And if all else fails, try this:

4 Comments
February 22, 2013

Things happen

by chuckofish

One of the best things about being the Boss Lady is that I get to call a snow day every once in awhile. Well, yesterday was one of those days. It wasn’t Snowmageddon, but for our flyover state it was significant white stuff.

We started with sleet in the morning.

sleet

And continued as snow throughout the day.

SNOW

I hunkered down with my little home version of a potbelly stove:

potbelly stove

I read more of The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather and munched on Valentine’s candy.

Cather

I watched Stagecoach on TCM.

claire-with-john-wayne
Ringo: I used to be a good cowhand. But things happen.
Dallas: Yes. Things happen.

What a great movie! What a great day!

Unfortunately, although I called a snow day for our students today, I have to go in myself. C’est la vie!

4 Comments
February 21, 2013

Hot dog, I feel lucky today

by chuckofish

Mary Chapin Carpenter (born February 21, 1958), an American folk and country music singer, songwriter and musician, turns 55 today.

mcc1

Born in Princeton, NJ, she went to Princeton Day School and The Taft School and Brown, so she grew up in a world similar to the one I did, but she also has that bad-ass cowgirl alter ego with which I readily identify. Who else could have written:

Dwight Yoakam’s in the corner, trying to catch my eye
Lyle Lovett’s right beside me with his hand upon my thigh.

And her monogram is the same as my mother’s.

Anyway, I have been a fan of hers for many years. One of my favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter memories is of the time I (once again) was having a Girl Scout earning-a-patch event at our house. The plan was for Daughter #1 and her small troop to learn to line dance. Not that I was an expert. Uh huh. Priceless.

We moved the dining room table against the wall so we could practice in a large space, which coincidentally had one wall that was a giant mirror, sort of like in a dance studio. The girls lined up and we played “Shut Up and Kiss Me” over and over and (yes) over again, carefully counting one, two, three, four before trying again. And remember, this was in the days of cassette tapes! So there was a lot of rewinding involved. Good lord, how I wish I had a videotape of this coolness.

Here she is singing this great song. In the original, Leroy Parnell was in her band, but oh well.

So happy birthday, Mary Chapin Carpenter! Salut!

6 Comments
February 20, 2013

This is great

by chuckofish

Have you ever run across this in your internet browsing? Well, a big hat tip to the New York Times for this wonderful tour of New York City: Walking in Holden’s Footsteps, which is from Peter G. Beidler’s book, “A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye” (Coffeetown Press, 2008).

I have no doubt that it is a sure sign of my unwavering immaturity, but The Catcher in the Rye never dims in my estimation. Nor does my devout love for old J.D.

jdsaljpg

The next time I am in NYC I want to walk the “41 gorgeous blocks” from Ernie’s to the Edmont Hotel. Maybe I’ll pay the big bucks and go inside the Museum of Natural History. Now that daughter #1 lives there, I am relaxed as hell about going there. Well, the Upper West Side anyway. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.

6 Comments
February 18, 2013

Music from the New World

by chuckofish

I am reading The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. It is very good. Here is a quote about going to see a concert in Chicago, which reminded me of my dual personality and how, when she was a very small child–3 or 4–she got a record of the “New World Symphony” for Christmas.

sarah

She loved it and insisted on listening to it over and over. She would walk around the house singing Dum dum dum dum de dum, dum dum dum dum duuuuuum.

She had been to so few concerts that the great house, the crowd of people, and the lights, all had a stimulating effect…During the first number Thea was so much interested in the orchestra itself, in the men, the instruments, the volume of sound, that she paid little attention to what they were playing. Her excitement impaired her power of listening. She kept saying to herself, “Now I must stop this foolishness and listen; I may never hear this again”; but her mind was like a glass that is hard to focus. She was not ready to listen until the second number, Dvorak’s Symphony in E minor, called on the programme, “From the New World.” The first theme had scarcely been given out when her mind became clear; instant composure fell upon her, and with it came the power of concentration. This was music she could understand, music from the New World indeed! Strange how, as the first movement went on, it brought back to her that high tableland above Laramie; the grass-grown wagon trails the far-away peaks of the snowy range, the wind and the eagles, that old man and the first telegraph message.

When the first movement ended, Thea’s hands and feet were cold as ice. She was too much excited to know anything except that she wanted something desperately, and when the English horns gave out the theme of the Largo, she knew that what she wanted was exactly that. Here were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the things that wakened and chirped in the early morning; the reaching and reaching of high plains, the immeasurable yearning of all flat lands. There was home in it, too; first memories, first mornings long ago; the amazement of a new soul in a new world; a soul new and yet old, that had dreamed something despairing, something glorious, in the dark before it was born; a soul obsessed by what it did not know, under the cloud of a past it could not recall.

Makes me want to listen to the “New World” symphony, how about you? Well, here you go!

4 Comments
February 12, 2013

“I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.'”*

by chuckofish

My mother was a middle child. She had an older and a younger sister. The younger sister was one of those “surprises” that comes along seven years after the second child and that everyone immediately loves. Born in 1933, Donna was the next best thing to Shirley Temple–adorable.

1935

1935

When my mother was a sophomore in college and her little sister was 12, she saved her money and had Donna’s portrait taken because she thought she was so beautiful. She gave it to her mother as a surprise for Christmas. Wow. (I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for Sister #1 who probably gave her mother a nice set of hankies or something and no doubt felt a little like Cal in East of Eden when his brother upstages him.) My mother, of course, only wanted to preserve the beauty of her sister for their mother.

This is not "the" picture--I don't have a copy--but here she is graduating from high school.

This is not “the” picture–I don’t have a copy–but here she is graduating from high school.

Daughter #3 was their mother’s favorite and that never bothered my mother. It seemed perfectly natural and understandable. Her good looks were more than matched by her sweet, yet spunky, personality.

Through the years, because my Aunt Donna lived on the east coast and we lived far away in our flyover state, we didn’t see each other very much. When we did, though, she was always glad to see me and made me feel loved and appreciated. When I had long hair, she would ask to brush it and would do so as if it was a privilege. I can’t say that I have ever known anyone else like her in my life. She is like someone out of the Bible. Ruth or Priscilla.

Since my mother died almost 25 years ago, Donna has always been there when our own mother would be particularly missed. She went all the way to England for my sister’s wedding and, as usual, rolled up her sleeves and asked what she could do to help.

Donna89

I remember she spent hours with 4 1/2-year old daughter #1 making some sort of floral arrangements and sat with the poor sick 2-year old boy on her lap on the long plane ride home. She was here last summer for the boy’s wedding.

Today my Aunt Donna turns 80. Bless her heart. This calls for champagne!

* The quote is from Jane Eyre, in case you’ve forgotten!

6 Comments
February 8, 2013

This and that

by chuckofish

February is a month for catching up on dormant needlepoint projects,

Progress!

Progress!

organizing drawers,

drawer

and reading

febbooks

I am almost finished with Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter and I highly recommend it.

“As I have told it over, the past visible again in the present, the dead living still in their absence, this dream of time seems to come to rest in eternity. My mind, I think, has started to become, it is close to being, the room of love where the absent are present, the dead are alive, time is eternal, and all the creatures prosperous. The room of love is the love that holds us all, and it is ours. It goes back before we were born. It goes all the way back. It is Heaven’s. Or is it Heaven, and we are in it only by willingness. By whose love…do we love this world and ourselves and one another? Do you think we invented it ourselves? I ask with confidence, for I know you know we didn’t.”

What have you been doing?

5 Comments
February 5, 2013

“Here’s to the sunny slopes of long ago.”

by chuckofish

It snowed in our flyover town over the weekend!

SNOW2

As an antidote to the cold winter weather (and because I had no real interest in the Super Bowl), I watched Lonesome Dove (1989) on Netflix Watch Instantly on Sunday and Monday nights. I had not seen it in a very long time. I read the book about two retired Texas Rangers who decide to take a herd of cattle on a 3,000-mile trek north to Montana in 1876 when it came out in paperback back in 1988 and loved it. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. (Various sequels and prequels by Larry McMurtry are, in my humble opinion, unequal to the original, due to their being way over the top in grossness and violence. But the original LD got it just right.)

The miniseries I associate with the year after my mother died when solace in any form was welcome and hard-to-come-by.

lonesomedove

Gus McCrae and Captain Call were a balm to me–at least for the four days in February 1989  the series aired. Gus was even a bit of a philosopher, handing out good advice right and left, such as this:

Lorie darlin’, life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it’s likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.

Thank you, Gus and Woodrow. And thank you, Pea and Dish and Deets and Newt and July and Roscoe and Lorena and all the rest. It was nice to see you again.

4 Comments
January 29, 2013

A hat tip to Jane

by chuckofish

Sunday, January 27 marked the 200th anniversary of the publishing of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. My how time flies!

jane-austen

I first read this book in the sixth grade. It is the first book I remember reading all day with only minor interruptions. It is really saying something that this 200 year old book (and many of the author’s other books) still can rivet a 12-year old to that degree and also interest that same girl 40 years later. Well, that’s how it is, right, with great literature?

You can check out the Wikipedia page here to read about the many film versions and theatrical adaptions that have been made and the rip-offs that have been perpetrated on this excellent book over the years. Amazing. I think she would be pretty horrified by some of them. So many sequels by other authors. There should be a law.

I will leave you with this.

Elizabeth, feeling all the more the common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face, became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.

3 Comments