Thursday, April 21, 2005
Springtime Blues
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses--
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting."
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night,
So many verses before bed-time,
Because it was the Bible.
From Lilacs by Amy Lowell
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
We Interrupt the Regularly Scheduled Programming for a Brief Burst of Utter Outrage
There is not much that Will Ferrel has said that I would classify as profound, but here, a bit past midnight, reading through Tom DeLay's attack on the judiciary, his hoarse, plaintive voice from Zoolander rings like a temple bell, "Doesn't anybody notice?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
The judiciary is activist and out of touch with the American people for not bending to the pressure of the legislature, which intervened in a specific case to do something an overwhelming majority of the American people did not want them to do?
Has this man never heard of checks and balances?
Read this, but only after arming yourself with the appropriate sedative of your choice.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Covetousness
The Complete Works of Jane Austen, all first edition. 1811-1818.
Yummy...
See the listing here.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Ah Spring, when a young woman's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of exercising artistic control over her immediate environment. Or maybe it's just me. :)
Ten months after moving in, I have sufficiently marinated in the feng and shui of my house to have a master plan for decorating it: warm peach in the entry way, blue and butter birds in the kitchen, creamy vanilla in the living room. Mmmm... colors. In some alternate universe I am probably very happily occupied as an interior designer.
Ten months after moving in, I have sufficiently marinated in the feng and shui of my house to have a master plan for decorating it: warm peach in the entry way, blue and butter birds in the kitchen, creamy vanilla in the living room. Mmmm... colors. In some alternate universe I am probably very happily occupied as an interior designer.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
I Believe in Unicorns
There are some things that make me believe that the world is a beautiful and magical place.
This article is one of them.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
No words left...
will happily drown in other seas.
Love and Sleep
Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-colored without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said--
I wist not what, saving one word--Delight,
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Friday, April 01, 2005
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
