quotes | dual personalities

Don’t you just love clouds? I can’t imagine living in a place where the sky is always blue. Driving home the other day, the sky was amazing. A storm was building, but it blew right over to Illinois and nothing happened after all. Disappointing, but awesome anyway.

“Aren’t the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton… I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by… If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations… What do you think you see, Linus?”

“Well, those clouds up there look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean… That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor… And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen… I can see the apostle Paul standing there to one side…”

“Uh huh… That’s very good.”

“.. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?”

“Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind!”

― Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 5: 1959-1960

Sometimes I do feel like Linus. But I feel a lot like Charlie Brown most of the time.

6 Comments

September 24, 2012

Tout va bien

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? I kept remembering where I was last weekend and what I was doing. (Last Saturday I was in Brooklyn having a bagel and coffee–you know how it goes.) Sigh. My response was to get busy.

I got my hair cut, went to an estate sale, checked out one of my favorite antique malls, caught up with my far-flung family members on the phone, scrubbed a shower, opened windows to let in the wonderful fresh air, went to Target, washed the kick plate on the refrigerator, changed sheets and did laundry, trimmed the ivy in front of the house, took a couple of walks, and finished the Anne Tyler book I was re-reading.

You get the idea. I find that the best thing for when you are sad or depressed is to clean and/or organize. Even if you don’t feel better afterward, you have a clean(er) house!

The Anne Tyler book, by the way, was Earthly Possessions, an early novel written in 1977, which is not (in my opinion) one of her best. But you know, any Anne Tyler book is much better than most, so I still enjoyed it. She always supplies a few golden nuggets. Here is one of them:

“Sometimes,” he said, “I believe we’re given the same lessons to learn, over and over, exactly the same experiences, till we get them right. Things keep circling past us.”

Maybe so. Food for thought anyway.

6 Comments

September 13, 2012

Why I love Bob Dylan

by chuckofish

From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog:

Bob Dylan, who just released a new album titled “The Tempest,” is taking aim at critics who think he is taking too much artistic liberty by incorporating the work of others into his own. Reportedly, some of the lines on Dylan’s 2006 album “Modern Times” bore a resemblance to lines written by Henry Timrod, who was considered the poet laureate of the Confederacy and died in 1867. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the 71-year-old Dylan declared, “…in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It’s true for everybody, but me. There are different rules for me. And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who’s been reading him lately? And who’s pushed him to the forefront? Who’s been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it’s so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and p#$sies complain about that stuff. It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherf*&kers can rot in hell.” 71-years-old and going strong!

By God, I do love him. And for the record, I totally agree: All those evil motherf*&kers can rot in hell. Oh that felt good.

4 Comments

September 6, 2012

Why study literature?

by chuckofish

Why study literature?

College books from the 1970s

M. H. Abrams, founding editor emeritus of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, answered this way: “Ha — Why live? Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable. There’s no end to the response you can make to that question Why study literature…”

Here’s the whole interview.

Henry Beetle Hough, the celebrated editor of the Vineyard Gazette, put it this way: “Any one person’s life is inexperienced and narrow, straight through to the end–poorly informed, too. Books are the only hope.”

And then, as we’ve mentioned before, there’s C.S. Lewis, who said, “We read in order to know we are not alone.” We are always looking for spiritual kin. And the amazing thing is, we find them, don’t you?

7 Comments

September 5, 2012

In case you haven’t noticed

by chuckofish

It’s September!

The summer, of course, is not officially over, and, yes, it was 93-degrees yesterday and they’re saying it’ll be 96-degrees today. But it is September.

Oh boy. Ol’ John Updike covers a lot about September in this poem:

“The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.”

Yes indeed. Soon it will be time to get out the sweaters and the black tights. Maybe someday soon we will be able to open a window at home and in the car! I shouldn’t get carried away, but October is just around the corner.

What are you looking forward to?

5 Comments

September 4, 2012

The power of love

by chuckofish

Continuing on the “I found it stuck in a book” thread that was started yesterday, I found this scribbled note in The Selected Letters of William Faulkner (no less).

Love letter from Ed Norton*:

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Signed,
Your Lover

P.S. I love you.

Sometimes the direct approach is best. Priceless.

*This Ed Norton (not the actor)

5 Comments

August 30, 2012

Comfort food for the soul

by chuckofish

It’s been a stressful summer. One way I have dealt with it is by re-reading some of my old favorites. Right now I am reading Out to Canaan, 4th in Jan Karon’s Mitford series, having just read These High Green Hills (#3).

These books are not for everyone (although they have been perennial bestsellers), but for me, these simple stories of the adventures of an Episcopal priest in a small town in North Carolina peopled by wonderful and endearing characters, are the only kind of fantasy I enjoy.

They had a good life in Mitford, no doubt about it. Visitors were often amazed at its seeming charm and simplicity, wanting it for themselves, seeing in it, perhaps the life they’d once had, or had missed entirely.

Yet there were Mitfords everywhere. He’d lived in them, preached in them, they were still out there, away from the fray, still containing something of innocence and dreaming, something of the past that other towns had freely let go, or allowed to be taken from them.

The books are also very funny, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. And they are filled with the Holy Spirit. Yes, and Karon quotes the likes of Bonhoeffer and Pascal and Wordsworth (freely)–all right up my alley.

I also enjoy the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith about a wonderful lady detective in Botswana. These books, like the Mitford books, seemingly simple and straightforward, are full of truth.

The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them–wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one’s time in tears–and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own little life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their solution?

And, as you know, when in doubt, it’s always a good time to re-read Raymond Chandler. But, look, someone seems to have “borrowed” my Chandler volume 1. (Ahem.)

What do you read for comfort?

6 Comments

August 29, 2012

Though he with giants fight

by chuckofish

John Bunyan (28 November 1628 – 31 August 1688) was, of course, an English Christian writer and preacher, who is well known for his wonderful book The Pilgrim’s Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, he is remembered in the Church of England with a Lesser Festival on August 30, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (US) on August 29.

I have mentioned before that we had a daily chapel service at the private school I attended. I remember our English headmaster telling us that the hymn “He Who Would Valiant Be” was a favorite (if not the favorite) hymn of Winston Churchill. That struck me as significant and I paid close attention to the words.

He Who Would Valiant Be Hymn

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound – his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,
We know we at the end, shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

I tried to find a Youtube video of the hymn, but they all featured the wrong tune (Monk’s Gate). Here is one that at least plays the St. Dunstan’s tune, so you can sing along!

2 Comments

August 27, 2012

A good thought for Monday

by chuckofish

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I especially like the line about taxing our lives with “forethought of grief.” Why do we do that? Lord, help me to rest in the grace of the world!

5 Comments

August 24, 2012

Send out your light and your truth

by chuckofish

Well, it’s Friday once again. Time to look back over the week and to remind ourselves of some important things. Here’s Frederick Buechner with some wise words:

“We must be careful with our lives, for Christ’s sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.”