#61 Take-Your-Pick Haikus

My Late Afternoon Pond

Slanting sun makes

Toy sailboats from floating geese.

Who is the child?

or

Sly slanting sun 

Makes toy sailboats out of the

Floating geese. Childish!  

jdmjr

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#59 "Yes, Virginia," Says the God Particle, "'There Really Is a ME."

Hiya, kids Hiya! ... or as I should say, 'Yea and Verily,' to keep up godish decorum here for the doubting Virginias and Thomases out there. That's Me, Your Everlovin' Holiness, sort of on the lower left--where FINALLY, after 3 million years of evolution, the humanoid brain of one Reverend Dr. Higgelty-Pigglety, as I playfully like to call him as only I can, got it right. To My mind--and I've got the biggest one--Peter Higgs will go down as a PROPHET surpassing Jesus or Mohamed any day of My week! And you guys at CERN, whatever that means, CONFIRMED it ...  bless your hearts--I'm  a QUARK!"

Of course, Mr. Yahweh's first statement was in the form of sparky and blippy things transmuted somehow onto computer machines at the Large Hadron Collider, someplace European. The resulting interview is a mathematical translation of literally TRILLIONS of the sparky-blippy things into readable Latin prose, then King James English, and finally--

That's right. [said the Subatomic One] I'm one in a trillion, upon more trillions ad infinatum--just loves Me that Latin, by the way, though I don't speak it very well--but then who DOES these days?! Ha, Ha  Not my native tongue, as if I had one. Sorry. But to get all quantumy on you: I GIVE the MASS.  .............

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#55 "The Bread Worked, Mr. Wilbur: One More Spring."

Or, Gaia Mater may have just skipped it all together--in deference to our suffering through so protracted a winter. We've been getting summer temperatures hereabouts, since April. Several: record-breaking.

I'm sure the record depredations of the Winter of 2010, which ended only a matter of a couple of weeks ago on the East Coast, had something to to do with the desperation behind "Ecclesiastes 11:1." This entitled poem appeared in the New Yorker about a month ago, and it is testimony to my slackitude lately that before I could get it to the Blog, the old man (89) has gone and done another one for this week's issue! (That one being a nice take on Arnold's "Dover Beach"--both of which recommended.) Twice Pulitzered Richard Wilbur has always been one of my favorites, noted for using traditional poetic forms--here the tercet stanza and even rhyme (a-x-a), of all things--to explore modern themes. (To oversimplify.) Thus:

We must CAST OUR BREAD
UPON THE WATERS, as the
Ancient preacher said,

Trusting that it may
Amply be restored to us
AFTER MANY A DAY.

That old metaphor,
Drawn from rice farming on the
River's flooded shore,

Helps us to believe
That it's no great sin to give,
Hoping to receive.

Therefore I shall throw
Broken bread, this sullen day,
Out across the snow,

Betting crust and crumb
That birds will gather, and that
One more spring will come.

It's a poem about spring, but mostly about Love, especially in the agape/caritas sort of way. Bread, birds, people connect transcendentally in the natural rhythm of give and take. Note the key word "sullen"--a people-adjective primarily, but here gloomily projected upon the natural landscape, "affective-fallacy"-wise. The speaker un-sullenizes himself and Nature by joining with Her in that very traditional love-gift: bread. An item, by the way, symbolically merging the Raw of nature's granary and the Cooked of the man-made world. And the birds mediate between the two.

For Sandro Botticelli and the Ancients, it was always the power of Love that moved the earth from fallow to fecund. The artist's famed "Birth of Venus" above (which I compared in a little different context to Farah Fawcett's immortal poster in MM #7) is really about the arrival of Spring. That's the titular Goddess of same offering Venus the cloak, and those on the left are the warm-west-wind Zephyrs blowing flowers all over the place.

The Greek mythos behind Aphrodite (= "foam-arisen") and transferred to the Roman Venus represented Love in the most primitive form. Not bread; rather the testicles of Uranus were cast into the sea by his son Cronus after he had so very Oedipally cut them off. Later, they emerged from the ocean on the shore of Cyprus quite logically in the fully-grown form of the Fertility Goddess herself. Spring in the mortal world could officially begin; Love had arrived. Sort of like:

Cast thy BROAD upon the waters, for she will amply be restored, after many a day.

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#44 Haiku ...

On the occasion last week while on a walk after all the Feb/March snow had melted except for a few little self-insulating piles pushed off the sidewalk and observing the following which can only be described as some sort of divinely miraculous advent or at least darwinianly mysterious e-vent because it was at least a vacant square mile from any domesticated beds and these spring-harbinger perennials of the genus Narcissus and whose name is a playful corruption of the original pastoral nymph Asphodel need prior im-bulbing of some kind preferably underground by a few inches or so by someone or other of the non-plant kingdom to accomplish this and no sign of hominid habitation in evidence so that I'll entitle it simply "Daffy"--

Lone daffodil blooms

In a dingy railway ditch.

Son of a bitch ...

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#43 Boulder Bolder? Not Even in Las Vegas

Salacious curiosity aside, here are a couple of outre' news stories that happened to collide yesterday in the Blogman's idiocyberspace having everything, or nothing-at-all to do with life vs. art, and the education of children.

I'll get to the Colorado story in a minute. First, pictured here is a small segment of an expansive graffiti-style mural adorning one outdoor wall of the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas. The "pasties" affixed to the nipple-age are not part of the artists' (incl. a couple of women) original design. Some upright (sorry) citizen must have called the cops, because sometime after the mural's inaugural "unveiling" adhesive pastie facsimiles were now seen covering the naughty bits. Turns out, right there in Sin City, there's a county sign-code that prohibits the "showing of the aureola of female breasts" (full report here), believe it or not. Too titillating, I guess. The county claims that the wall-mural is signage, advertising a strip-club which just happens to be next door. In rebuttal, a clever but politically-incorrect lawyer on the museum's behalf might--if the thing went judicial-- have directed the court's eyes to the figure on the left. (If these were live models, Clark County must also be a strict enforcer of EOE laws.)

Now here is the AP report of life-imitating-art in Boulder. Colo.--

A nudist in Boulder who was threatened with eviction last spring for gardening outside wearing only PASTIES and a THONG has caused another stir by gardening topless. At least four callers told police 52-year-old Catherine Pierce was in her yard topless on Wednesday. STATE law prohibits exposed genitals, but Pierce was wearing a thong and gardening gloves.

Police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said an officer told Pierce to consider wearing a shirt because CHILDREN at the SCHOOL ACROSS THE STREET were playing outside.

Pierce's husband then complained to police. Huntley said a police supervisor agreed with Pierce wasn't breaking any laws.

Boulder is considering expanding its anti-nudity law. (3/18)

Note the fine distinction between pastie-bleeped nipples and "topless." No photos except after the fact, where ironically she's not only fully-clothed, but poses with mouth taped-over in protest of her free-speech = nudity being violated. (See full local reportage here.) However, only in their dreams could the prepubescent schoolboys across the street imagine such a randy sight: an obviously trim and handsome middle-aged mother-figure wearing only a yellow thong and pink (yes) gardening gloves (no coordinating color mentioned for the pasties). Otherwise, "sky-clad," as the new-age pagans might say. Youthful fantasies abundantly fulfilled.

And indeed there is some "signage"--some advertising going on here. Not for a strip-club, but for free-speech rights, and the LIBERTY to express one's way of life. "We're a naturalist family," says Mr. Pierce, "and we'll stay the way we are." Much to the relief of the young males on the playground across the street, I'm sure.

I'm also sure that there's some jealousy and fear involved too, resulting in a real test of parenting skills. For the most part, it's a flunk. Listen to Mary Ernest from across the street, who's not worried about her 5-year-old daughter seeing the naked lady--"That doesn't bother me"--but "If I had a SON, it might be a different situation," she said earnestly. How so? Well, a son or two might ask Mom some pointed questions that extend beyond simple nudity. Thus:

Lisa Sanchez who lives next door to to the Pierces, said she has mixed feelings about seeing the couple in public. "For me, I don't care," she said. But she is concerned that her two boys, 7 and 5, have ASKED her about the topless neighbor. "They say, 'Ma, that lady's crazy,'" she said. (Boulder Daily Camera 3/18)

Or did SHE explain it away that way? Okay, enough salivation over these two delicious stories of heartland-America's moral conundrums and insecurities. In fact, I've drooled over them so much as to cause "dry-mouth"--in medicalese: xerostomia = Gk. xero-, "dry" as in your office copier + stoma, "mouth" as extended to lower down the alimentary canal. Also called "cotton-mouth," and in many parts of the country: "the pasties."
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#40 February Footnote--Taking a Bath

By way of taking a break from the more-or-less serious business of Obama's State of the Union over at the DM, here's the State of my Duck Pond (full-disclosure: a reasonable facsimile) on several occasions this January and February--and more on the way, evidently. The latter month could never be called the "cruellest" (see recent posts)--especially not in the Carolinas, where I have always fondly matched the nigh-arrival of Spring with my third son's birthday of Feb. 19th. Most years it works. The Dogwoods usually get the the signal at about that time to get a-bloomin' and flood the the lower woodland canopy with their own version of snowiness.

Not this year. But then, the only thing predictable about Global Warming is its UNpredictable effect on traditional weather patterns. On average though, it has surely been responsible for our extraordinarily warm winters on a pretty regular basis for decades now. I can recall extended periods of teen-ish temperatures and below in the late 60's and early 70's--in SOUTH Carolina. In contrast, over the last half-dozen years or so here in NORTH Carolina, our central heating was in full operation on average only about a half-dozen times during the winter months. I've kept track.

Or you can always take a hot bath. That's originally what Kalendis Februarius was all about. Maybe not the "cruellest," but it is for sure the curiousest among the named months, historically. (And the only one virtually unpronounceable as spelled, at normal speech-speed.) Well, the Romans were fair obsessed with cleanliness--something quite new in the development of Western Civilization. Public baths, and all that. Their friendly-neighborhood Barbarian Invaders were forever baffled by it, and the later Christian authorities--once the Empire was de-paganized--were offended by it. One of the first things done in post-Constantine Rome was to outlaw public bath-houses. (Second: amphitheater performances--which is exactly what happened to Shakespeare et alia and the London Stage when the Puritans took over in Cromwellian England centuries later. Too much fun for mortal men and women.) Because it smacked of pagan ritual, too much bath-time (like even once-a-week, and of course never in public) was condemned in the Christian world well into modern times, incidentally.

But the early Romans loved it, and ended up naming a whole month after their favorite pastime. As you recall from earlier posts, until the reign of Numa there were 60 or so days between the end of December and first of March--also the first of the year for the "Romulans"--which were so "unspeakable" that they simply had no name, month-wise. The Numaian regime for whatever reasons revised the solar calendar (which would be tweaked-only-slightly into it's present form by Julius Caesar and later Pope Gregory), by giving the venerable god Janus the first 31 days, thereafter also designated the first month of the year. Twenty-eight days left over. Oops ... unlucky. For some lost-to-history reason, even numbers caused mild discomfort for the Romans, and thus should be avoided whenever possible. Not possible here, because the remaining months, now including January, all had a good-luck numbers of either 29 or 31, and you couldn't very well stick a deity with an unlucky number of days.

(I know--you with calculator in hand--that still leaves seven, if you're going for a total of 365. Well, to oversimplify a bit, these seven were always held in reserve as intercalary days for special celebrations which may present themselves over the course of a given year. The festival-loving Romans invariably used them up.)

Anyway ... What to name these 28 days, a potential month's-worth, which already has not only the weather but the numbers going against it?

--It's getting late. Let's go down to the bath-house and think about it. Naked men and women rub-a-dub-dubbing together always gives me ideas.
--Wait a minute! That reminds me. We've got a huge festival that comes up during that period.
--But we can't name that "month" after a god. The numbering and all.
--No, no--it's the Februatio, the day of ritual purification, when simply everybody goes a-bath-housing.
--You mean the holiday we got from the Etruscans?
--Yeah, our word februare, "to cleanse, purify," comes from them, originally.
--We do a lot of spring-cleaning then too.
--And it rains a lot. Water, water everywhere.
--Well then, why don't we just expand the idea to cover the entire month? We'll fix Februatio at Ides (Feb. 15th), right in the middle, and sanctify the whole unlucky megilla.
--Excellent! But, remember, I thought of it first.
--Okay, but I brought up the bath-house ...
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