12 rue de l'Odeon

Cat Friday

2012-02-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

Bobby (pup) and Mildred (kit), or Milly as she is known to her fans...
(Photos: Serena Marie McCarroll)

Cat Friday on Saturday!

2012-02-03T18:25:00.001-08:00

Orphaned Bali Kittens

Cat Friday

2012-01-26T18:11:00.001-08:00

Bali Cats

Selamat Pagi

2012-01-17T17:30:00.001-08:00

Things to love about Bali, in no particular order:
1. Geckos
2. Offerings to the spirits, found literally everywhere.
3. Home temples.
4. Every single Balinese baby.
5. Shadow puppetry.
6. Shadow puppeteers.
7. Fathers taking loving care of their babies while their wives are at work.
8. Kecak singing/chanting.
9. Sarongs.
10. All the thousands of sarong fabric designs.
11. Fish in the pond.
12. Our gorgeous, huge room, all dark wood and bamboo.
13. Spiders the size of softballs.
14. 12-year-old boys playing the gamelan.
15. Pineapple-banana lassie.
16. Mixed fruit lassie.
17. Cool swimming pools.
18. Coconut gelato!
19. Bali Animal Welfare Association.
20. Bali Dogs.
21. Little tiny girls teaching American women how to do the Balinese women’s dances properly.
22. Topeng dance.
23. Topeng mask.
24. Thick, dark, sugary coffee.
25. Plain cotton kebayas with brown embroidery on the edges.
26. Flip-flops.
27. Black rice pudding.
28. Skinny cats with huge eyes and stumpy, twisted tails.
29. Late night mini-mart runs to buy chocolate and Tupperware with Meridith.
30. Stone mask faces imbedded in a rock wall.
31. Only four names according to birth order—1st born: Wayan, Gede or Putu.  2nd born: Made, Nengah or Kadek. 3rd born: Nyoman or Komang.  4th born: Ketut.
32. Mosquito netting.
33. Polite drivers.
34. Children in their school uniforms, which always include a bright white blouse.
35. School girls wearing their hair in two long braids.
36. 5:45am yoga.
37. The view from the top of the long walk.
38. Hot chocolate at Casa Luna.
39. Dance teacher Iba Ayu.
40. Riding on the back of a motorbike.
41. Colorful money.
42. 50,000 rupia = $5.00.
43. Ceiling fans.
44. Riding in the bemo to and from puppetry class.
45. The Wantilan open air pavilion where daily practice is held.
46. Gorgeous Lontar manuscripts.
47. Hinduism + Animism + Buddhism = Balinese spirituality
48. Western men wearing Balinese clothes, especially the cloth headgear.
49. Mangosteen.
50. Pineapple.
51. The two squat, contemplative statues overlooking the swimming pool. I can see them from my room.
52. Nine-month-old babies clapping!

(Photos by: Meridith Anne Baldwin, Jane Grote, Sylvia Burton Schnople)

Cat Friday

2011-12-23T19:53:00.001-08:00

Hide and Seek
(photo: Evangeline Brown)

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-12-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

Lover Boy

(photo by Evangeline Brown)

Cat Friday

2011-12-09T23:47:00.000-08:00

Babies in a Box

Cat Friday

2011-12-02T06:02:00.000-08:00

Lou looks through...

Cat Friday

2011-11-25T22:16:00.001-08:00

Baby Lou

Cat Friday

2011-11-18T23:48:00.000-08:00

Daphne and her babies, May 2009

Cat Friday

2011-11-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

Cat Friday

2011-11-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Hushabye

True Love

2011-11-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

PET LOVERS, PATHOLOGIZED

by Kelly Oliver for the New York Times

In a 1991 interview titled “Eating Well,” Jacques Derrida wonders whether a head of state (chef d’Etat) could gain office by declaring himself or herself a vegetarian. He concludes, “The chief (chef) must be an eater of flesh.”

This is part of a complicated and often hypocritical view we hold toward animals.

In the United States, we often see our political leaders hunting, particularly bird-hunting, which seems to demonstrate their manly fortitude and bloodlust — qualities intended to persuade us that they can keep us safe. Hunting has become a tool of sorts within the realm of political image making. With few exceptions, President Obama among them, most presidents and presidential hopefuls have been seen hunting. Meat eating, too, is an act used to portray strength. Obama is known to enjoy his burgers, a fact that has helped counter his image as a green-tea drinking elitist. Even Sarah Palin’s so-called new brand of feminism revolves around the image of a tough “mama grizzly,” as she calls herself, shooting and gutting moose to feed and protect her family. As she says in her memoir, “I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.” But while politicians continue to channel “Joe Six-Pack” by hunting and killing animals to prove that they are tough providers, animal lovers are often infantilized, pathologized and derided. It is true that White House pets have often become celebrities, but they are usually there for the children, part of the pretty picture of the all-American family.

In popular culture, celebrities who take on animal causes are seen as a bit crazy — rich versions of the “crazy cat lady,” or dog-crazy Leona Helmsley. Not coincidentally, they are usually women. And, our relationships to the animals with whom (or rather which,to be grammatically correct) we live is given very little status in our society. Despite the proliferation of “cute” pet pictures and anecdotes on the Web, actual displays of affection toward one’s pet or companion animal, or grief expressed over their illness or death, is looked upon with ridicule.

To love animals is to be soft, childlike, or pathological. To admit dependence on animals — particularly emotional and psychological dependence, as pet owners often do — is seen as a type of neurosis.

One telling aspect of this manifests itself in our legal landscape, in which we bestow approval of non-food animal dependence only in cases of illness, handicap or severe need. Relatively new subcategories of “service” animals have been designated to provide humans with, not only physical assistance (as guide dogs do) but with therapy — emotional, psychiatric and therapeutic support. “Comfort dogs” are now being used in court rooms to provide emotional support to children called to testify in difficult cases. Doctors can write prescriptions for emotional and psychiatric service animals that allow patients to take their animals with them into public places where they are usually banned, including public transportation, public buildings, and even to work. My sister, a liver and kidney transplant patient, has three dachshunds who accompany her everywhere to help her cope with the post-traumatic stress of her medical ordeals.

The regulations are very clear: these animals are not pets. They are “serving” an essential therapeutic purpose. The fact that these relationships are circumscribed by laws relegate animals to the role of tools or medication, an act that also pathologizes the people who rely on them. Animals, then, can enter our intimate family units only as pets, which is to say property, or as a result of trauma, disease or disability. This cultural attitude suggests that people who are dependent upon their animals for anything other than amusement or entertainment are abnormal or unhealthy. Loving animals as friends and family is seen as quirky at best and at worst, crazy.

Within philosophy, as we know, animals and our own animality has been denigrated and disavowed. After all, philosophy is regarded as a flight from our animal natures and into the realm of intellectual activity, knowledge and enlightenment. Traditionally, man has been seen as having dominion over animals because of his superior capacity for reason, language, technology and other intellectual characteristics valued in philosophy. Some feminists, notably Genevieve Lloyd, Susan Bordo, and Alison Jaggar, among many others, have challenged philosophy’s privileging of mind over body and reason over emotion, issues that bear directly on the question of the status of animals. Philosophers have asked not whether animals think or speak but whether they suffer; but some within the animal rights movement have argued that animals are capable of many of the same intellectual feats as humans. The animal rights and animal welfare debates continue to be dominated by discussions of whether and how animals have minds or intentions like we do. This discourse continues to measure animals against human standards in order to judge whether or not they deserve legal rights. The animals closest too us, namely our so-called pets, are often dismissed from these discussions as yet another example of our exploitation of animals. Even as our human usage of animals gains more scientific credence, within mainstream philosophy, our psychological and emotional dependence upon them remains “ghettoized” along with feminism.

Although there are philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett and Thomas Nagel, who also consider whether animals are capable of emotions or reason, love and emotional dependence — most especially the love of animals — are still seen as too feminine, too lightweight, to be serious philosophical issues. Even prominent philosophers, who have taken on issues like love and philosophy of emotions, rarely mention emotional attachment to animals.

Within our philosophy and within our culture, we cannot take seriously our love and dependence on animals without turning them into medicine and making ourselves sick. We can accept our dependence upon animals only if sanctioned by the medical or legal establishment, circumscribed by the regulations of these institutions, through which we subject ourselves to pathologization and further objectify our animal friends and family.

Think about it? Can we imagine a head of state not only as a vegetarian but also as a crazy cat lady?

(photo by Odeon)

Cat Friday

2011-10-28T22:51:00.001-07:00

Cut that out! I'm trying to read here!

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-10-22T15:50:00.001-07:00

Bates with Daddy
(photo by E. Brown)

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-10-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Happy sleeping boy...

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-10-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

Dreamland

Cat Friday

2011-09-30T07:43:00.001-07:00

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Frank and Louie the cat was born with two faces, two mouths, two noses, three eyes — and lots of doubts about his future.

Now, 12 years after Marty Stevens rescued him from being put to sleep because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed rag doll cat is not only thriving but has made it into the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the longest surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named for a Roman god with two faces.

"Every day is kind of a blessing, being 12 and normal life expectancy when they have this condition is one to four days," Stevens said, stroking Frank and Louie's soft fur as he sat on her lap purring. "So, he's ahead of the game — every day I just thank God I still have him."

Frank and Louie's breeder had taken him to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, where Stevens was working at the time, to be euthanized when he was just a day old. Stevens offered to take him home, but experts told her not to get her hopes up.

Janus cats almost never survive, and most have numerous congenital defects, including a cleft palate that makes it difficult for them to nurse and often causes them to slowly starve to death or aspirate milk into their lungs and die of pneumonia. The condition is the result of a genetic defect that triggers excessive production of a certain kind of protein.

But Frank and Louie did not suffer from most of the common Janus problems. Stevens used feeding tubes to nourish him for three months, hoping that would also save him from the danger of choking on food going down the esophagus from two mouths.

It turned out she didn't have to worry about him choking, because Frank and Louie just used one of his mouths to eat.

"The condition itself is very rare and I think that the fact that this cat became an adult, a healthy adult, is remarkable," said Dr. Armelle deLaforcade, an associate professor at Cummings and head of the emergency services section.

Colleagues at the veterinary hospital told Stevens that trying to raise Frank and Louie might not be good for him — or her.

Still, she "stood firm and stood by the cat, and I'm really glad she did because this cat really has fewer problems than many cats that have very normal anatomies," deLaforcade said.

Frank and Louie does not seem to be bothered by his condition and has developed a very friendly personality. The breed is known for its soft and silky fur, docile temperament and penchant for relaxing in a person's arms like a rag doll.

He is "very, very laid back, not afraid of people, very friendly and he's actually more of a dog than a cat," Stevens said. "He walks on a leash, he goes right in the car, he loves car rides."
People often want to touch Frank and Louie's long, luxurious fur while Stevens is out walking him.

"It's funny because people walk up to him thinking it's a nice, fluffy white cat and they're walking up with a big smile on their face to pat him, like, 'Oh, what a beautiful cat' and I see a look of horror come over their faces when they actually see his face," Stevens said, laughing.

Thirty years ago, a cat like Frank and Louie might not have been given a chance to live.

Said deLaforcade: "You can look at a cat like this as either a very strange and bad omen, or you can look at this cat as a miracle."
___
Rodrique Ngowi can be reached at http://twitter.com/ngowi

Cat Friday

2011-09-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

Teddy's profile

Cat Friday

2011-09-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Resting on the rocker

Cat Friday

2011-09-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

A clutter of kittens
(photo: Odeon)

Cat Friday

2011-09-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Cats in the Bag

of flower pots and pea green boats

2011-09-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

TO MRS. PROFESSOR IN DEFENSE OF MY CAT'S HONOR AND NOT ONLY

My valiant helper, a small-sized tiger
Sleeps sweetly on my desk, by the computer,
Unaware that you insult his tribe.

Cats play with a mouse or a half-dead mole.
You are wrong, though: it’s not out of cruelty.
They simply like a thing that moves.

For, after all, we know that only consciousness
Can for a moment move into the Other,
Empathize with the pain and panic of a mouse.

And such as cats are, all of Nature is.
Indifferent, alas, to the good and the evil.
Quite a problem for us, I am afraid.

Natural history has its museums,
But why should our children learn about monsters,
An earth of snakes and reptiles for millions of years?

Nature devouring, nature devoured,
Butchery day and night smoking with blood.
And who created it? Was it the good Lord?

Yes, undoubtedly, they are innocent,
Spiders, mantises, sharks, pythons.
We are the only ones who say: cruelty.

Our consciousness and our conscience
Alone in the pale anthill of galaxies
Put their hope in a humane God.

Who cannot but feel and think,
Who is kindred to us by warmth and movement,
For we are, as he told us, similar to Him.

Yet if it is so, then He takes pity
On every mouse, on every wounded bird,
Then the universe for him is like a Crucifixion.

Such is the outcome of your attack on the cat:
A theological, Augustinian grimace,
Which makes difficult our walking on this earth.

Czeslaw Milosz
(photo by Srinath Dasari)

for marge

2011-08-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning -- because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

Cat Friday

2011-08-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Mocha Catte

Poet Laureate

2011-08-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

M. DEGAS TEACHES ART AND SCIENCE AT DURFEE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL--DETROIT, 1942

He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.
Philip Levine

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-08-20T11:12:00.001-07:00

Teddy, the Lion of the Senate

the inferno

2011-08-09T17:09:00.000-07:00

AARON ALTMAN (Albert Brooks): I know you care about him. I've never seen you like this about anyone, so please don't take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the Devil.
JANE CRAIG (Holly Hunter): This isn't friendship.
AARON ALTMAN: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing...he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.
~BROADCAST NEWS

Fine Dining

2011-08-06T17:21:00.000-07:00

He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump. Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the four legs down into the ground with his boot. Nick put the frying pan on the grill over the flames. He was hungrier. The beans and spaghetti warmed. Nick stirred them and mixed them together. They began to bubble, making little bubbles that rose with difficulty to the surface. There was a good smell. Nick got out a bottle of tomato catchup and cut four slices of bread. The little bubbles were coming faster now. Nick sat down beside the fire and lifted the frying pan off. He poured about half the contents out into the tin plate. It spread slowly on the plate. Nick knew it was too hot. He poured on some tomato catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil it all by burning his tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never been able to wait for them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was very hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.

"Chrise," Nick said, "Geezus Chrise," he said happily.

He ate the whole plateful before he remembered the bread. Nick finished the second plateful with the bread, mopping the plate shiny. He had not eaten since a cup of coffee and a ham sandwich in the station restaurant at St. Ignace. It had been a very fine experience. He had been that hungry before, but had not been able to satisfy it. He could have made camp hours before if he had wanted to. There were plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was good.

Nick tucked two big chips of pine under the grill. The fire flared up. He had forgotten to get water for the coffee. Out of the pack he got a folding canvas bucket and walked down the hill, across the edge of the meadow, to the stream. The other bank was in the white mist. The grass was wet and cold as he knelt on the bank and dipped the canvas bucket into the stream. It bellied and pulled hard in the current. The water was ice cold. Nick rinsed the bucket and carried it full up to the camp. Up away from the stream it was not so cold.

Nick drove another big nail and hung up the bucket full of water. He dipped the coffee pot half full, put some more chips under the grill onto the fire and put the pot on. He could not remember which way he made coffee. He could remember an argument about it with Hopkins, but not which side he had taken. He dedded to bring it to a boil. He remembered now that was Hopkins's way. He had once argued about everything with Hopkins. While he waited for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from spilling, then meditatively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.

The coffee boiled as he watched. The lid came up and coffee and grounds ran down the side of the pot. Nick took it off the grill. It was a triumph for Hopkins. He put sugar in the empty apricot cup and poured some of the coffee out to cool. It was too hot to pour and he used his hat to hold the handle of the coffee pot. He would not let it steep in the pot at all. Not the first cup. It should be straight Hopkins all the way. Hop deserved that.
-Ernest Hemingway, from Big Two-Hearted River

(photo by automat)

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-08-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

Stanley loving Louis

(photo by Marjorie Madonne)

all that glitters

2011-07-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

"It won't be the sort of thing you have in mind. This man is a gentleman - he respects me. What he wants is my companionship. Having great wealth sometimes makes people lonely. A cultivated woman - a woman of breeding and intelligence - can enrich a man's life immeasurably. I have those things to offer, and time doesn't take them away. Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession. But beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all those things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years! Oh! Strange that I should be called a destitute woman when I have all these treasures locked in my heart. I think of myself as a very, very rich woman.

But I have been foolish - casting my pearls before...swine. Yes, swine!
Tennessee Williams

(photo by onkel_wart)

Cat Friday

2011-07-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

Willie on his back, snoozing...

(Photo by E. J. Brown)

a day away

2011-07-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

I am avoiding
I may be voiding
I avoid the void
of pressing
my mind
to a task
requiring
concentration and
interest and
precision

words like
dust
line
type
edit
No air inside
no room for
dromedary
agapanthus
cupola

No room for me

(photo by giorgiopè)

knocking on heaven's door

2011-07-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

There’s a woman named Anne who took her two-year-old child up to Tahoe during the summer. They stayed in a rented condominium by the lake. And of course, it’s such a hotbed of gambling that all the rooms are equipped with those curtains and shades that block out every speck of light so you can stay up all night in the casinos and then sleep all morning. One afternoon she put the baby to bed in his playpen in one of those rooms, in the pitch dark, and went to do some work.

A few minutes later she heard her baby knocking on the door from inside the room, and she got up, knowing he’d crawled out of his playpen. She went to put him down again, but when she got to the door, she found he’d locked it. He had somehow managed to push the little button on the doorknob. He was calling to her, “Mommy, Mommy, and Anne was saying to him, “Jiggle the door knob, darling,” and of course he couldn’t even see the knob to know what she was talking about. After a moment, it became clear to him that his mother could not open the door, and panic set in. He began sobbing. So Anne, his mother ran around like crazy trying everything possible, like trying to get the door to work, calling the rental agency where she left a message on the machine, calling the manager of the condominium where she left another message and running back to check in with her son every minute or so. And there in the dark, this terrified little child. Finally she did the only thing she could, which was to slide her fingers underneath the door, where there were a few centimeters of space. She kept telling him over and over to bend down and find her fingers.And somehow he did. So they stayed like that for a really long time – connected, on the floor, him holding her fingers in the dark. He stopped crying…

I keep thinking of that story, how much it feels like I’m the two-year-old in the dark and God is the mother and I don’t speak the language. She could break down the door if that struck her as being the best way, and ride off with me on her charger. But instead, via my friends and my church and my shabby faith, I can just hold onto her fingers underneath the door. It isn’t enough; and it is.

Anne Lamott

Saints and Sinners

2011-07-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

WHERE I LEARNED TO READ
I did my best to flunk out of high school. I failed English literature, American literature, Spanish, precalculus, chemistry, physics. Once, in a fit of melancholic vanity, I burned my report card in the sink of the KFC where I worked scraping carbonized grease from the pressure cookers. I loved that job the way a dog loves a carcass in a ditch. I came home stinking of it. It was a prudent first career in that I wanted with certainty only one thing, to get out of Ohio, and the Colonel might hire me anywhere in the world. The starting wage was $3.85 an hour. I was saving for the future.

But wasn’t it far-fetched, this notion of a future, when I could hardly get through eleventh grade? I always showed up at that job; why couldn’t I show up at the desk in my room and write a C-minus summary of the life of Woodrow Wilson? The television stayed on day and night, singing like a Siren in the crowded house. “Come sit by me and die a little,” it said.

I didn’t know what I was doing or what I believed in, except the United States of America and the Cleveland Browns. Sometimes, to break my addiction to the tube, I spent the night in a derelict shed with mushrooms growing from the rafter boards. Back-yard rehab. I used to read in there, or, anyway, swing my eyes over the pages of library books: “Out of Africa” (the girl I was in love with loved the movie); Donald Trump’s autobiography; Kierkegaard; “Leaves of Grass”; a book about how to make a robot from an eight-track player. As long as nobody had assigned the book, I could stick with it. I didn’t know what I was reading. I didn’t really know how to read. Reading messed with my brain in an unaccountable way. It made me happy; or something. I copied out the first paragraph of Annie Dillard’s “An American Childhood” on my bedroom’s dormer wall. The book was a present from an ace teacher, a literary evangelist in classy shoes, who also flunked me, of course, with good reason. Even to myself I was a lost cause.

Early senior year, a girl in homeroom passed me a brochure that a college had sent her. The college’s curriculum was an outrage. No electives. Not a single book in the seminar list by a living author. However, no tests. No grades, unless you asked to see them. No textbooks—I was confused. In place of an astronomy manual, you would read Copernicus. No books about Aristotle, just Aristotle. Like, you would read book-books. The Great Books, so called, though I had never heard of most of them. It was akin to taking holy orders, but the school—St. John’s College—had been secular for three hundred years. In place of praying, you read. My loneliness was toxic; the future was coleslaw, mop water; the college stood on a desert mountain slope in Santa Fe, New Mexico, fifteen hundred miles from home; I could never get into such a school; my parents couldn’t pay a dollar. And I loved this whole perverse and beautiful idea. I would scrap everything (or so I usefully believed) and go to that place and ask them to let me in. It felt like a vocation. It was a vocation.

Reader, I married it.

The summer before I started, the dean had the arriving students read the Iliad and memorize the Greek alphabet. A year before, I had not known that ancient Greek still existed. I had assumed that all we knew of the Greeks was hearsay. The other students came from Louisiana, Alaska, Malaysia. I could not recognize any of the splintery plant life here. After Greek, we would learn to read French. A teacher, a soft-spoken giant from Colorado in a yarmulke and a worn wool jacket, pointed to a figure in a differential equation from Newton’s “Principia” and said, “This is where our upper-middle-class prejudices about time and space begin to break down.”

Loans. Grants from the college and the government. Jobs from asbestos remover to library clerk. I carried bricks and mortar to rooftops during the summers, but if I hadn’t made time to read the night before, my legs wore out by noon. Even my body needed to read.

By senior year at St. John’s, we were reading Einstein in math, Darwin in lab, Baudelaire in French tutorial, Hegel in seminar. Seminar met twice a week for four years: eight o’clock to ten at night or later, all students addressed by surname. On weekends, I hung out with my friends. The surprise, the wild luck: I had friends. One sat in my room with a beer and “The Phenomenology of Spirit,” reading out a sentence at a time and stopping to ask, “All right, what did that mean?” The gravity of the whole thing would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so much fun, and if it hadn’t been such a gift to find my tribe.

In retrospect, I was a sad little boy and a standard-issue, shiftless, egotistical, dejected teen-ager. Everything was going to hell, and then these strangers let me come to their school and showed me how to read. All things considered, every year since has been a more intense and enigmatic joy. ♦
Salvatore Scibona, for the NEW YORKER

the girl who could not kneel

2011-07-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

"TUESDAY MORNING, HALF-PAST NINE, WINTER 1941. Something has happened to me and I don't know if it's just a passing mood or something crucial. It is as if I had been pulled back abruptly to my roots, and had become a little more self-reliant and independent. Last night, cycling through cold dark Lariesse Straat--if only I could repeat everything I babbled out then! Something like this:
'God, take me by Your hand, and I shall follow you dutifully, and not resist too much. I shall evade none of the tempests life has in store for me, I shall try to face it all as best I can. But now and then grant me a short respite. I shall never again assume, in my innocence, that any peace that comes my way will be eternal. I shall accept all the inevitable tumult and struggle. I delight in warmth and security, but I shall not rebel if I have to suffer cold, should You so decree. I shall follow wherever Your hand leads me and shall try not to be afraid. I shall try to spread some of my warmth, of my genuine love for others, wherever I go. But we shouldn't boast of out love for others. We cannot be sure that it really exists. I don;t want to be anything special, I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise. I sometimes imagine that I long for the seclusion of a nunnery. But I know that I must seek You amongst people, out in the world.'
And that is what I shall do, despite the weariness and dislike that sometimes overcome me. I vow to live my life out there to the full. Sometimes I think that my life is only just beginning. That the real difficulties are still to come, although at times I feel that I have struggled through so many already. I shall study and try to comprehend, i shall allow myself to become thoroughly perplexed by whatever comes my way and apparently divers me, yes, and I shall allow myself to be perplexed time and again perhaps, in order to arrive at greater certainty. Until I am no longer perplexed and a state of balance has been achieved, but with all paths still open to me. I don't know if I am able to be a good friend to others. And if I cannot be, because it is not in my nature, then I must face that as well. In any case I must try not to fool myself. And I must keep within my own limitations. And I remember that I alone can set these."
Etty Hillesum, 1914 - 1943

Note from the author...

2011-07-10T14:05:00.000-07:00

My Facebook Friend

For anyone who used to follow this blog when it was more than just Cat Friday photos, I apologize for not posting a more varied array of musings. Since starting school almost two years ago I have not had much time to spend on the blog. My goal is that it will pick up again, especially after I graduate in June of 2012. In the meantime, I hope you do indeed like the kitty photos. I am much besotted by them...

Cat Friday

2011-07-08T20:03:00.001-07:00

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr De Mille...
(photo by E. J. Brown)

Cat Friday

2011-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

2 x 4 = 8

(photo by E. J. Brown)

Cat Friday

2011-06-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hangin'

Cat Friday

2011-06-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

Willie Mays

Cat Friday on Saturday!

2011-06-04T00:14:00.001-07:00

Half Nap

Cat Friday

2011-05-27T22:44:00.001-07:00

Interloper

Cat Friday

2011-05-20T23:08:00.000-07:00

Le Bistro de Trois Chats

Trois Petits Chats
(Chanson pour frapper dans les mains)

Trois petits chats
Trois petits chats
Trois petits chats, chats, chats

Chapeau de paille
Chapeau de paille
Chapeau de paille, paille, paille

Paillasson,
Paillasson
Paillasson, son, son

Somnambule,
Somnambule,
Somnambule, -bule, -bule

Bulletin
Bulletin
Bulletin –tin, -tin

Tintamarre,
Tintamarre
Tintamarre, -marre, -marre

Marabout,
Marabout,
Marabout – bout, -bout,

Bout de ficelle
Bout de ficelle,
Bout de ficelle, -celle –celle

Selle de cheval
Selle de cheval
Selle de cheval –val, -val

Cheval de course,
Cheval de course,
Cheval de course, course, course

Course à pied,
Course à pied
Course à pied, pied, pied

Pied à terre,
Pied à terre
Pied à terre, terre, terre

Terre de feu
Terre de feu
Terre de feu, feu, feu

Feu follet
Feu follet
Feu follet –let – let

Lait de vache
Lait de vache
Lait de vache, vache, vache

Vache de ferme
Vache de ferme
Vache de ferme, ferme, ferme

Ferme ta gueule
Ferme ta gueule
Ferme ta gueule, gueule, gueule

Gueule de loup
Gueule de loup
Gueule de loup, loup, loup

Loup des bois
Loup des bois
Loup des bois, bois, bois

Boîte aux lettres
Boîte aux lettres
Boîte aux lettres, lettres, lettres

Lettres d'amour
Lettres d'amour
Lettres d'amour –mour, -mour

'mour à trois
'mour à trois
'mour à trois, trois, trois

Trois petits chiens
Trois petits chiens
Trois petits chiens, chiens, chiens

Chien de garde,
Chien de garde,
Chien de garde, garde, garde

Garde à vous,
Garde à vous
Garde à vous, vous, vous

Vous voulez,
Vous voulez
Vous voulez, -lez, -lez

Lait de vache…

Cat Friday on Saturday

2011-05-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

Kid Brother

Cat Friday

2011-05-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

Once a certain cat and cock,
Friendship founded on a rock,
Lived together in a house
In the land of Fledermaus.
Each loved music in his way,
And the cock, at break of day
Chanted: Cock-a-doodle-do!
Kiki-riki--Kuk-ru-koo!"
While his cat friend, in the middle
Of the night, would play the fiddle.
Sometimes they would play together
--Handsome fur and fancy feather--
And the pair would dance and sing
While the house with joy would ring.

-From Vikram Seth's The Cat and the Cock

Cat Friday

2011-04-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

Pretty in Pink

(photo by Vajra)

Cat Friday

2011-04-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

Cat-in-the-Box

Cat Friday

2011-04-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

Teddy has a sinking feeling...

(photo by Odeon)

Cat Friday

2011-03-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

"Oh, little sleepy boy, do you know what time it is?"

(photo by Vajra)

Cat Friday

2011-03-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

Bates is well-loved in Oaktown. And what's not to love?

(photos by E. Brown)

Cat Friday

2011-03-11T21:44:00.001-08:00

TOTEM POLE

Cat Friday

2011-03-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

Bates goes to his Forever home tomorrow. Chris is the best godfather ever...

Cat Friday

2011-02-25T18:06:00.000-08:00

I need a name! Nelson? Bates? Javier? Hmmm...

Cat Friday

2011-01-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Stanley and Stella

since there are so many who think as I do--

2011-01-17T19:57:00.000-08:00

Bless you, Dr. King...

A "fool," Wally? Yes, I suppose so. Always have been. A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people wanna be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation, and desperation is energy--and energy can MOVE things...
LORRAINE HANSBERRY

Photo: Night March in Albany, Georgia

Cat Friday (on Saturday!)

2011-01-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

Miss E and the Professor on Christmas morning...

Cat Friday--on Saturday!

2011-01-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

Isabella is a ray of sunshine...

Cat Friday

2010-12-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

Remembering her one true love...

Cat Friday

2010-12-10T23:09:00.000-08:00

missed a spot...

Cat Friday (on Saturday!)

2010-12-04T23:09:00.002-08:00

Willie and the Cat House

for Janet S.

2010-11-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

RUMI

(photo by IcK9s)

Cat Friday (on Saturday!)

2010-11-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

Tama, stationmaster at Kishi Station on the Kishigawa Line, Wakayama Electric Railway (Japan)

'Til the sun is goin' down

2010-11-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

WHAT WORK IS
Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.

Cat Friday

2010-11-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

Teddy and Lila survey the acreage...

Cat Friday

2010-11-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

Brother's keeper...

Cat Friday

2010-11-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

Teddy working his magic on Ronlin...

(photo by Odeon)

Cat Friday

2010-10-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

Jasper, 1998 - 2010
Beautiful Boy

Internet troubles for the past two days, so I'll post this now...

2010-10-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of feeling of premonition, when you look back at it now. But I was very worried about him. And...in fact, I told John, "It's getting very busy. And it's a strain on us. The schedule is a strain on us and I think you need a rest. And you and Sean should go back to Bermuda." And...he said, "Not this time. I'm going to be with you, no matter what." And...that's how it was.

He was my husband, he was my lover. He was my friend. He was my partner. And...he was an old soldier that fought with me.

Cat Friday

2010-10-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

Louis and Esther

(photo by Odeon)

Cat Friday (on Saturday!)

2010-10-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

Stella and Gilbert

(photo by Alison Lara)

A Poem, A Song 3: postage due

2010-09-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Any Old Time (lyrics)
Jimmie Rodgers

I just received your letter
You're down and out you say
At first I thought I would tell you
To travel on the other way
But in my memory lingers
All you once were to me
So I'm gonna give you one more chance
To prove what you can be

Any old time you wanna come back home
Drop me a line and say no more you'll roam
You had a chance to play the game fair
When you left me sweetheart
You only left a load of care

Now that you're down
I'm gonna stick by you
If you would only tell me
Your roaming days are through

You'll find me here like the day you left me alone
Any old time you wanna come back home

(painting by Johannes Vermeer)

A Song, A Poem 2: the photo I'm sending

2010-09-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

mr youse needn’t be so spry
e. e. cummings

mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party

gimme the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues

(photo by Imogen Cunningham)

A Song, A Poem 1: skol

2010-09-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

THREE WISDOM POEMS
II. Physics Defeats Me Once Again, But Wisdom Saves the Day
Kathleen Norris

My sailor friend,
a useful man named Pete,
took me to meet her in a waterfront bar.

We sat in darkness,
away from the neon horseshoe
and I must have looked asstern
as a schoolmarm, because she stood there stark naked
and winked and called out,
"Smile honey. This is serious."
"Yes," I replied, "I know."

For her finale,
she rotated her breasts
in opposite directions.
"I've always wanted to do that," I told her
when she joined us for a drink.
She looked at me appraisingly.

"You're too small," she said.
But she said it kindly,
and that's what matters.

(photo by chachahavana)

Cat Friday (on Saturday!)

2010-09-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

Gilbert and Stella

(photo by Alison Lara)

Cat Friday

2010-09-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

Still Life: Kitten with Kettle

(photo by Odeon)

postage paid

2010-09-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

"You're going to be the life of me."
Thomas E. Rouze

(photo by this is limbo)

dreaming in whispers

2010-09-10T22:59:00.001-07:00

SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE TALK
Lucinda Williams

If I had my way I'd be in your town
I might not stay but at least I would've been around
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk
Does this make sense It doesn't matter anyway
Is it coincidence or was it meant to be
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk
Conversation with you was like a drug
It wasn't your face so much as it was your words
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk
Well I can't stay round cause I'm going back south
But all I regret now is I never kissed your mouth
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk

(photo by ARTeTǝTЯA)

Cat Friday

2010-09-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

True Love...

(photo by Odeon)

Cat Friday

2010-09-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

Willie Mays Brown

(photo by Odeon)

danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día

2010-08-30T23:48:00.000-07:00

BREAKFAST AT THE ROAD RUNNER CAFE
William Notter

Cafe still burning in neon after sunup,
and a bird's gangly silhouette stretched out
with speed—the sign draws me in.
The walls inside are hung with Spanish prayers,
kachina dolls, chili pepper bundles,
and a three-foot Christ sanctifies relief
from the bluster of New Mexico spring.

The waitress brings coffee and cream.
The gaunt, mustachioed cook
whets his spatula against the grill
scrambling huevos Mexicanos
with chopped green chilies, tomatoes, onion,
tortillas and beans on the side.
A whiskered man at the counter brags
to the waitress about the money he can make
selling copper wire for scrap,
and how he drank thirteen beers
the night before, and wasn't even drunk.
Highway patrolmen talk knockdown power
and calibers, a courthouse blown apart
by a fertilizer bomb in the back of a truck.
A skittish Navajo woman, Drug Free and Proud
printed on her shirt, opens a letter
and swirls ice cubes with her butter knife.

The letter might be from a son locked up
for stealing cars in Albuquerque,
a power disconnect notice, or news
her sister died of exposure out in the hills.
Maybe she's just back to the world
from a stay in detox, chewing ice
to keep from thinking she could walk downtown
and be served a bottle of gin
or eighth-ounce bag of weed
as easily as eggs and toast.

A stranger can only say so much
in the open noise of sputtering grease,
small talk, spoons clacking in coffee mugs.
If she can just hold tight to something,
those cravings will disappear the way wind
blows mountains of cloud across the sky.
She could find comfort in a place like this,
the silvery riffle of cottonwood leaves outside,
a novena candle flickering by the door
to keep Jesus lit at night, find pleasure
in good food and desert light across the tables.

The woman lays a few bills down
by her plate of half-eaten eggs,
and walks outside to the payphone.
She holds her black hair with one hand
against the lashing wind. What can a stranger say?
The Santa Fe's red and yellow engines
come thrumming west beside the highway
as I go out the door. Hang on. She turns
and I shout again, Just hang on.
Past the train is sandstone sunbleached yellow,
knobby juniper clutching at the hills.

(photo by sfgamchick)

Cat Friday

2010-08-27T13:59:00.001-07:00

Gilbert, Flora, Stella, and Louis...

(photo by Odeon)

against my window

2010-08-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

THE RAIN
Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

Cat Friday

2010-08-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

Louis and Stanley, in their toddlerhood...

(photo by M. Madonne)

Cat Friday

2010-08-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

STANLEY ON PLACITA DE VIDA

French novelist Colette was a firm cat-lover. When she was in the U.S. she saw a cat sitting in the street. She went over to talk to it and the two of them mewed at each other for a friendly minute. Colette turned to her companion and exclaimed, "Enfin! Quelqu'un qui parle francais." (At last! Someone who speaks French!)
ANONYMOUS

(photo by Vajra)

...but I couldn't resist

2010-08-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

"A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations."

"Hud Bannon: You still got that itch?
Alma Brown: Off and on.
Hud Bannon: Well let me know when it gets to bothering you. "

PATRICIA NEAL

retrato

2010-08-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

"I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint."

(photo by Nickolas Muray)

Yes, but don't hold that against me

2010-08-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

PETER WARNE: Sure I've thought about it. Who hasn't? If I could ever meet the right sort of girl. Aw, where you gonna find her? Somebody that's real. Somebody that's alive. They don't come that way anymore. Have I ever thought about it? I've even been sucker enough to make plans. You know, I saw an island in the Pacific once. I've never been able to forget it. That's where I'd like to take her. She'd have to be the sort of a girl who'd... well, who'd jump in the surf with me and love it as much as I did. You know, nights when you and the moon and the water all become one. You feel you're part of something big and marvelous. That's the only place to live... where the stars are so close over your head you feel you could reach up and stir them around. Certainly, I've been thinking about it. Boy, if I could ever find a girl who was hungry for those things.

ELLIE ANDREWS: Take me with you, Peter. Take me to your island. I want to do all those things you talked about.

(SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS/ROBERT RISKIN)

fires banked down in you

2010-07-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Devereux Farm, near Marblehead

We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,
The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;

The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.

The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips,
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
We thought of wrecks upon the main,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
And sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames,
The ocean, roaring up the beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
All mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part
Of fancies floating through the brain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
They were indeed too much akin,
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

(photo by Einar Ragnarsson)

Star light, star bright!

2010-07-20T09:16:00.001-07:00

Audrey was known for something which has disappeared, and that is elegance, grace and manners … God kissed her on the cheek, and there she was.
Billy Wilder

2010-07-18T23:37:00.001-07:00

TALENT
Carol Ann Duffy

This is the word tightrope. Now imagine
a man, inching across it in the space
between our thoughts. He holds our breath.

There is no word net.

You want him to fall, don't you?
I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.
The word applause is written all over him

(photo by Matt Ricardo)

Cat Friday

2010-07-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

AS TIME GOES BY
Herman Hupfeld

This day and age we're living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like fourth dimension.
Yet we get a trifle weary
With Mr. Einstein's theory.
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax relieve the tension

And no matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of life are such
They cannot be removed.

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

And when two lovers woo
They still say, "I love you."
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.

Moonlight and love songs
Never out of date.
Hearts full of passion
Jealousy and hate.
Woman needs man
And man must have his mate
That no one can deny.

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.

Oh yes, the world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.

(photo by SIne 86)

but you can do something in between

2010-07-12T12:52:00.001-07:00

NOT FADE AWAY
Buddy Holly

I'm a-gonna tell you how it's gonna be
you're gonna give your love to me
I wanna love you night and day
you know my love a-not fade away
a-well, you know my love a-not fade away

My love a-bigger than a cadillac
I try to show it and you drive a-me back
your love for me a-got to be real
for you to know just how I feel
a love for real not fade away

I'm a-gonna tell you how it's gonna be
you're gonna give your love to me
a love to last a-more than one day
a love that's love - not fade away
a well, a-love that's love - not fade away

(photo by damonabnormal)

Cat Friday

2010-07-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

Willie returns from the Land of Oz to a hero's welcome, 3 July 2010, Saturday, 11pm...
(photo by Odeon)

you away

2010-07-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

what's the opposite of sugar?
-loneliness

(ask another...)

where is fancy bred-
in the heart or in the head?
-in the heart, of course; in the heart's imagination

what's the opposite of turnstile?
-a violin

what is on the other side of eternity?
-a polaroid camera
what is on the other side of eternity?
-a universe the size of a needle
(photo by avotiya)

the waves

2010-07-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind —
As if my Brain had split —
I tried to match it — Seam by Seam —
But could not make it fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before —
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls — upon a Floor.
EMILY DICKINSON
(photo by Monceau)

his face so soft and wondrous fair

2010-07-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

"My hair was matted, but the knots of my heart were untied..."
(photo by tenguspengus)

cat Friday (early Saturday morning)

2010-07-03T01:15:00.000-07:00

Listen...do you want to know a secret?...do you promise not to tell?...
(photo by Odeon)

You and me Sunday driving

2010-06-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

"In a 2004 essay, Glenn Albrecht, the Australian philosopher coined the term 'solastalgia,' which he defined as 'the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault . . . a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at 'home.' '... In the past five years, the word 'solastalgia' has appeared in media outlets as disparate as Wired, The Daily News in Sri Lanka and Andrew Sullivan's popular political blog, The Daily Dish. In September, the British trip-hop duo Zero 7 released an instrumental track titled 'solastalgia,' and in 2008 Jukeen, a Slovenian recording artist, used the word as an album title. 'Solastalgia' has been used to describe the experiences of Canadian Inuit communities coping with the effects of rising temperatures; Ghanaian subsistence farmers faced with changes in rainfall patterns; and refugees returning to New Orleans after Katrina."
—Daniel B. Smith, "Is There an Ecological Unconscious?," The New York Times, January 31, 2010
(photo by tobyadamson.co.uk)

to Jericho

2010-06-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.
Vincent van Gogh