Tag: Photography

head up in the bright morning air

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swan

But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,
the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.

Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—

forty-eight if we count their white reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to throw in me
and the dog running up ahead,

who were at least smart enough to be out
that morning—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the bright morning air.

– Billy Collins, Genius from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems

Notes:

 

Saturday Morning: ‘idlesse oblige’

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back-hair-neck

Aristotle said, ‘Nature requires us not only to be able to work well but also to idle well.’ Sigh. It’s so hard. The Idea of the Idle which disses and rejects the clock is an ambition harder than it seems. To really play is to let go of the hand of the clock, to dive deep into the fathoms of time – a state of water this, deep play, with affinities to music, art, sex, deep drinking and deep thought. It is a chancy, risky, fluxy, underwater world where immersion in the moment is all. This wild time is far richer, though far flukier, than clock-time, this is time enlivened and various, time as fast and slow as a waterfall’s cascade. It is not necessarily easy to be in, for its waters are uncontrolled by a clock, uncommanded and uncharted. Without a clock you are on your own and it is a difficult but rich experience, this, the beautiful duress of ludic creativity – idlesse oblige.”

– Jay Griffiths, A Sideways Look at Time

Notes:

Truth (In the morning edition)

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newspaper-coffee-morning-rain-raining

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition
is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
yet approved decisions,
soak in.
I don’t need to name the countries,
ours is among them.
What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

— Mary Oliver, “The Morning Paper” in A Thousand Mornings

Notes:

  • Sources: Poem: Thank you Whiskey River. Photography: Newthom
  • Post inspired by Frank Bruni in A Culture of Sore Losers: “But there’s more at work. The refusal to grant victors legitimacy bundles together so much about America today: the coarseness of our discourse; the blind tribalism coloring our debates; the elevation of individualism far above common purpose; the ethos that everybody should and can feel like a winner on every day. Our system for electing presidents is indeed a mess. It estranges voters and is ripe for reform. I explored that last week. But pushing for change is different from rejecting any unwelcome outcome as the bastard fruit of a poisoned tree. If grievances are never retired, then progress has no chance. If everything is rigged, then all is fair, not just in love and war but on the banks of the Potomac, where we can look forward to four more years of inertia and ugliness.“

It’s been a long day

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mist-fog-burn-portrait-Rob-Woodcox

I emphasize this.
I will do anything to avoid boredom.
It is the task of a lifetime.
You can never know enough,
never work enough,
never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough,
never impede the movement harshly enough,
never leave the mind quickly enough.

—Anne Carson, “Introduction.” Short Talks, 1992

Notes:

Today I’m flying low

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photography-birds-breeze-hair-back
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

— Mary Oliver, “Today” in A Thousand Mornings

Notes: