Thursday, December 16, 2010

homecoming

He goes in and the door is shut. I think we will not open the door or follow him. I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away. At the end of the field, among the thin gold spikes of grass and the harebells and Gipsy roses and St. John’s Wort, we may just take one last look, over our shoulders, at the white house where neither we nor anyone else is wanted now.


Railway Children

Thursday, December 9, 2010

beginning, n.


 1.
 a. The action or process of entering upon existence or upon action, or of bringing into existence; commencing, origination.
c1400 Mandeville's Trav. 316Withouten begynnynge and withouten endynge.
1570 H. Billingsley tr. Euclid Elements Geom. i. f. 2,A line hath his beginning from a point.
1670 J. Swan Speculum Mundi (ed. 4) iii. §1. 17The world‥was not for everlasting, but took beginning.
1883 J. A. Froude Short Stud. IV. ii. i. 171The beginning of change, like the beginning of strife, is like the letting out of water.

 2. 
The point of time at which anything begins; absol. the time when the universe began to be.
a1425 (1395) Bible (Wycliffite, L.V.) (Royal) (1850) Gen. i. 1In the bigynnyng God made of nouȝt heuene and erthe.
1535 Bible (Coverdale) Hab. i. C,Thou o Lorde‥art from the begynnynge.
1611 Bible (A.V.) 1 John ii. 13Yee haue knowen him that is from the beginning.

 3.
 a. That in which anything has its rise, or in which its origin is embodied; origin, source, fount.
c1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 73Þe shame þe þe man haueð of his sinne‥is þe biginnigge of fremfulle sinbote.
1486 Bk. St. Albans, Her. A j b,Adam the begynnyng of man kynde.
1611 Bible (A.V.) Coloss. i. 18The head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the first borne from the dead.
1831 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus (1838) ii. i. 101Thy true‥Beginning and Father is in Heaven.

 4. 
The earliest or first part of any space of time, of a book, a journey, etc.
1297 R. Gloucester's Chron. 399In þe bygynnynge of Jule þys batayle was ydo.
1549 Bk. Com. Pr., 3rd Collect Grace,Who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day.
1611 Bible (A.V.) Num. x. 10In the beginnings of your monethes, ye shall blow with the trumpets ouer your burnt offerings.
1743 J. Morris Serm. ii. 35He explains himself in the begining of this chapter.
 
5. 
The initial or rudimentary stage; the earliest proceedings. Often in pl.
c1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 83Þerfore wurð here ende werse þene here biginninge.
1340 Ayenbite (1866) 72Þane dyaþ þet is to þe guoden begynnynge of liue.
1549 Coverdale et al. tr. Erasmus Paraphr. Newe Test. II. Gal. iiii. f. xiiii,Vnder the grosse beginnynges of this worlde.
1611 Bible (A.V.) Job viii. 7Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.
1690 W. Walker Idiomatologia Anglo-Lat. Pref. i,A considerable encrease to my beginnings.
1776 A. Smith Inq. Wealth of Nations I. i. x. 156People‥have aquired great fortunes from small beginnings.

6. 
An undertaking. Obs.
1481 Myrrour of Worlde (Caxton) iii. xxiv. 192In alle begynnynges and in all operacions the name of god ought to be called.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

That peculiar

chamˈpagny adj. resembling champagne or its exhilarating qualities.
1854 ‘C. Bede’ Further Adventures Mr. Verdant Green (ed. 2) ix. 86Similar champagney reasons.
1882 Macmillan's Mag. 46 67That peculiar champagney feel of mountain air.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

It's just not the same here without you.

Perhaps they already were all of these things and my father's fading was because he realized this: My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected that he was whittling at my skull--no, my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples form barrels.  I looked away and ran back upstairs, skipping the ones that creaked, so that I would not embarrass my father, who had not quite yet turned back from clay into light.


Paul Harding

tinkers
 

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

(time is passing)

Hello, everybody.  My name is John Bird and I live over in Tucson.  It took me fifty minutes to fly over here this evening.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Coyote turns on the lights.

In the history of the world there was Rome and there was Texas and the world remembers Rome.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Red, Brown, and Black

"towards nightfall," when "there's a feeling in the air of 
mystery, threat, frustration—all of these at once." 


Rothko

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

sudden

--glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way.  Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be.  The whole world was this symphony and there was not enough of her to listen.

Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Friday, October 1, 2010

snapdragon

Truth and illusion, George.  You don't know the difference.
No, but we must carry on as though we do.
Amen.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Bein' crazy about a woman like her's always the right thing to do.

The Other City

Hella famous artist:

The Other City

My favorite sister is in a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver opening October 15.

Hella famous artist.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Dear Mister Callahan,

I skinned my elbow and I bruised my knees.  As you say:

Spend a night with an owl and you'll see more blood than sleep.

Did you know that twice we've eaten in the same place at separate moments?

Sincerely,
Alice Coyote

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Friday, July 30, 2010

Don't be scared. I've done this before.

I give you the watchword for the future: Enjoy Yourselves.

Mr. Antrobus

What a stroke of luck.

“I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.”

György Ligeti

“It’s kickass or kissass, Don, and I’d be lying if I told you any different.”

I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

David Mamet

Monday, July 26, 2010

moon-eyed


1699 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc) 21 51 From their seeing so clear as they do in a moon-shiny night, we used to call them moon-eyed

1790 J. WOLCOT Compl. Epist. to Bruce in Wks. (1812) II. 358 Moon-eyed Wonder opes her lap to thee.

1972 G. LUKAS et al. Amer. Graffiti (film script) 72 (stage direct.) Carol watches him, moon-eyed and obviously flipped about him.

1992 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) May 144/3 The apple-cheeked, moon-eyed wife of the governor, staggeringly poised, effortlessly articulate, primly silk-scarved.

1737 Pennsylvania Gaz. 13 Jan. 2/1 He sees two Moons, Merry, Middling, Moon-Ey'd, Muddled, [etc.].

1940 Amer. Speech 15 447/2 Sid gits moon-eyed every Saturday night.


Saturday, July 24, 2010

existential gunslingers

"I saw that each of my compañeros had likewise assumed a solitary station on the ridge, so that the four of us stood in a row and squinted into the desert like existential gunslingers."

Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, 217

quicker than his own shadow: Lucky Luke

Joseph O'Neill's Netherland

I've done this before.

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again



- Frank O’Hara

Monday, July 19, 2010

40 Stories of Sheer Adventure

Hans Gruber: Mr. Mystery Guest? Are you still there?
McClane: Yeah, I'm still here. Unless you wanna open the front door for me.
Hans Gruber: Uh, no I'm afraid not. But you have me at a loss. You know my name but who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne?  Rambo?  Marshall Dillon?
McClane: I was always kinda' partial to Roy Rogers actually. I really dig those sequined shirts.
Hans Gruber: Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mister Cowboy?
McClane:Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
(Nothing Lasts Forever)

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Monday, July 12, 2010

plucky

French, from Italian svelto, from past participle of svellere to pluck out, modification of Latin evellere, from e- + vellere to pluck —

Saturday, July 10, 2010

1605 SHAKES. Lear IV. vi. 228 The bountie, and the benizon of Heauen To boot, and boot.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

settle down

"At least everything you got now, you know you got honestly. Wadn't no handouts."
"I guess that was, without me knowin', the good Lord's way of tellin' me I didn't need to work there."

--in line at the Frankfurt airport, US Army backpacks.

only connect

one+one
one+one
one+one

one+one

action/comic




Golden Banner

I'll live forever.

P.S. I'm taking the bags off the market. Because, I'd like to sit on a porch for a while and fill up some of these swiss cheese holes I've got. Gratitude.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Grace










There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding....If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.

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