Tout va bien
by chuckofish
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
–Kahlil Gibran
dual personalities
Tag: quotes
June 6, 2012
This is the day
by chuckofish
“Today is the day which the Lord has made,” says the 118th Psalm. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Or weep and be sad in it for that matter. The point is to see it for what it is because it will be gone before you know it. If you waste it, it is your life that you’re wasting. If you look the other way, it may be the moment you’ve been waiting for always, that you’re missing.
All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from them. Today is the only day there is.”
–Frederick Buechner “Whistling in the Dark”
June 4, 2012
Not a gentleman born
by chuckofish
Well, I have finished Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall and book two in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. It is, no surprise, wonderful.
You remember that Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485 – 28 July 1540) was an English statesman who served King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540 in many capacities and was his right hand man. He facilitated his marriage to Anne Boleyn and then arranged the annulment of that marriage. Oftentimes throughout history (and in historical fiction) he has been portrayed as a villain and hatchetman, but we know he indeed was not.
Here is a wonderful description by Cromwell of one of his friends, which really is a perfect description of him:
“He does not talk simply to hear his own voice, or pick arguments just to win them. He is not like George Boleyn: he does not write verses to six women in the hope of bundling one of them into a dark corner where he can slip his cock into her. He writes to warn and to chastise, and not to confess his need but to conceal it. He understands honour but does not boast of his own. He is perfectly equipped as a courtier, but he knows the small value of that. He has studied the world without despising it. He understands the world without rejecting it. He has no illusions but he has hopes. He does not sleepwalk through his life. His eyes are open, and his ears for sounds others miss.”
This is the kind of book I want to start over and read again right away. I think I will read Wolf Hall again. Hilary Mantel is brilliant, and as a writer reading her, I could weep for her brilliance. Brava, Hilary–you’ve done it again.
May 25, 2012
Knights and squires
by chuckofish
The boy (right) and the boyfriend (left) helped daughter #2 move her big stuff out of her college apartment yesterday.
“Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes, Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commoners; bear me out in it, O God!” (Moby-Dick, of course)
Thanks, guys! (For a more detailed post on the day see the boy’s blog.)
May 15, 2012
Reading Moby-Dick
by chuckofish
“Yes, there is death in this business of whaling–a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.”
Ishmael, “The Chapel”
May 11, 2012
Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry
by chuckofish
“We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste–sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill,–and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry.”
–Henry David Thoreau
April 17, 2012
The slob is loved
by chuckofish
The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn’t believe them or doesn’t want them or just doesn’t give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep on bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. Lear goes beserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth.
Frederick Buechner, “Telling the Truth”
April 16, 2012
Tout va bien
by chuckofish
“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
April 6, 2012
It ain’t no easy thing
by chuckofish
“Ever’one here think it easy for me. I be this good little church boy from Mississippi with my good little church-goin’ Mammy, and since I be this stupid country n**ger with the big faith, I don’t have no troubles. Well, it just don’t work that way. He paused. Jermain said nothing. “I see my friend Williams get ate by a tiger,” Cortell continued. “I see my friend Broyer get his face ripped off by a mine. What you think I do all night, sit around thankin’ Sweet Jesus? Raise my palms to sweet heaven and cry hallelujah? You know what I do? You know what I do? I lose my heart.” Cortell’s throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. “I lose my heart.” He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. “I sit there and I don’t see any hope. Hope gone.” Cortell was seeing his dead friends. “Then, the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believen’. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway.” He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. “It ain’t no easy thing.”
Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
A blessed Good Friday to all who “choose anyway”.
April 4, 2012
Be that as it may
by chuckofish
Today we take note of the birthday of our pater familias, who would be 90 today.
Wind on the Hill
by A.A. MilneNo one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.But if I stopped holding
The string of my kite,
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.
dual personalities 