“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.”
| — | Susan Sontag |
Daily Archives: April 29, 2013
Pain Recedes. More Snow on the Way!
Spring Planting Moon
Well, the glow of the morning has given way to a sore back, but not a painful back. Each day now movement grows easier and stays pain free longer. Just where I want it to go.
Another rest day today though. Took the truck in for a maintenance visit, 20,000 miles and we’ve had it almost 2 years now. Going slow on the odometer, thanks in part to renting cars but mostly to neither Kate nor I using the truck for work. My trips in and out of the city have diminished, a lot, since I took my leave of absence from the MIA.
Tomorrow morning, though. Ovid. Translating. Then some time on Nighthawks. I’m going to send my interpretation matrix along with the group to Chicago. But, I have to finish it first. Plenty of time, but it will take some work.
The 25th + annual retreat of the Woolly Mammoth clan is this week. We’re heading up to the north shore. We picked this time of year so we get out and about more. What’s that? Snow on Wednesday? Are you sure?
quotes
“Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.”
| — | G. Santayana |
“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract.”
| — | Holmes, Oliver Wendell |
“That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”
| — | G. Santayana |
Walking Upright in the World
Spring Planting Moon
Let me describe, before it gets away from me, submerged in the always been, how exciting and uplifting it was to realize I was walking across the floor at Carlson Toyota. Just walking. Putting one foot in front of the other. No flinching, no torquing to keep things stable. Just. Walking.
When we return to normalcy after a period of illness or trauma, there is a transition period, a time of grace if we take it, which can offer us a reminder about the wonder of the every day. To walk across a floor with no pain, to walk as one is used to doing. So powerful.
In fact, I took as my motto Walking Upright in the World reflecting back on the fact that I had to relearn to walk at the age of 2 and honoring that 2 year old guy for the gift of a normal, usually unregarded capacity to do that.
So much of what we do is really a wonder. Take grasping and holding. Typing on a keyboard. Lifting objects from the ground to over our heads. Breathing. Yes, think about breathing. Only to inhale is not enough to sustain life.
Sitting. Standing. Eating. All wonders, wonders often, perhaps usually, revealed only when they disappear from our repertoire either temporally or permanently.
So take a moment today and celebrate the walk. The jump. The high five. The low bow.
Congratulations!
Who Are We?
Spring Planting Moon
Hard to believe we move out of spring and into Beltane, the start of the Celtic summer or growing season, this week. We’ve only just got our cold weather crops in the ground. Fortunately for the cold weather crops temps are gonna drop again and rains will come in the plenties.
Finished reading a wonderful book by Nelson Algren, Chicago on the Make. This 1951 work renders a picture of Chicago from its underbelly, sympathetically. The writing reaches out from the page, grabs you by the lapel (if you have a lapel) and says, pay attention to this! It’s important. But also beautiful in the way a tractor coated with mud after a day in the field is beautiful, beautiful in the way a darkened coal miners face is to wife and children that night. Quick to read, long to forget.
Started another by Jack Cash, Mind of the South. This 1941 book, of which I was unaware, gets credit for nailing much about the south in an honest, intelligent analysis. The version I’m reading is a 50 year anniversary edition with a wonderful introduction, but no change to the main body of the text. Cash committed suicide six months after its publication.
Considering Chicago, as I have been for the trip I’d intended to take there in May, and now picking up Mind of the South, has left me wondering, again, about how to express the unique culture of the American Midwest, the Heartland of the world’s hegemon (for a few more months at least). This is my culture, the one that has shaped me, in ways often invisible to my own eye. What is our lederhosen and gingerbread cottage molding? What is our calligraphy, poetry and painting style? What is our wiener schnitzel? Our chicory coffee and beignets? How do we drive, compared to the biggest always wins philosophy of Mexico City? What do we want for our children? Ourselves? What dreams propel us? What fears haunt us? Who are we?