Without Lifting A Finger

Went from Miss Julie to The Father . Haven't researched this hymn fragment (I don't know it), but I enjoyed it. NURSE. Ah, yes, ah yes! [ Reads half aloud ] Ah woe is me, how sad a thing Is life within this vale of tears, Death's angel triumphs like a king, And calls aloud to all the spheres -- Vanity, all is vanity. Yes, yes! Yes, yes! [ Reads again ] All that on earth hath life and breath To earth must fall before his spear, And sorrow, saved alone from death, Inscribes above the mighty bier. Vanity, all is vanity. Yes, Yes.  

Vincent van Gogh - Sunflowers, 1889 at the Museum of Art Philadelphia PA , a photo by mbell1975 on Flickr.

With all the concrete around, these flowers have helped soften the landscape. Of course I always think of Van Gogh.       

Heard live only once: in Prague. St. Nicholas Church in the Old Town (if memory serves). Literally: I was transported. I heard it this morning on the radio and remembered (half-remembered) the past. *** The Requiem Mass in D minor ( K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer's death on December 5. A completion dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg , who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife's death. The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated introit in Mozart's hand, as well as detailed drafts of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies Irae as far as the first nine bars of "Lacrimosa" , and the offertory . It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost "scraps of paper" for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus Dei ...

Midsummer , also known as St John's Day , [ 1 ] is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice , and more specifically the Northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 21 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between different cultures. Because he was alleged to have been born on that day, the Christian Church designated June 24 as the feast day of the early Christian martyr St John the Baptist , and the observance of St John's Day begins the evening before, known as St John's Eve . These are commemorated by many Christian denominations . [ 2 ] Midsummer is especially important in the cultures of Scandinavia , Finland and the Baltics . In Sweden the Midsummer is such an important festivity that there have been serious discussions to make the Midsummer's Eve into the National Day of Sweden , instead of 6 June. It may also be referred to as St. Hans Day. Sweden In modern Sw...

He's still holding my attention -- both as an author and personality. Just finished The Son of a Servant and am back to the plays: Just started Miss Julie . JEAN [ Inquisitive but polite ]. Is it some troll's dish that you are both concocting for mid-summer night? Something to pierce the future with and evoke the face of your intended?

  [From Wikimedia Commons] 



I bet neither William S. or Rilke fathomed its beauty (not to mention smell). The homeless guy who made it said he learned the trade in Santa Barbara. He didn't have a vendor's license but said I could leave a "donation" if I wished. Hey, it's something.     

Was waiting for my dinner (tgif). Why not?             

Coming over the bridges from San Pedro (missed a lot of good photos because I was driving) I thought it could be a toxic yellow smoke from somewhere in the harbor. Weirdest thing, but wonderful. ***                                   

   [From Sweden and the Holy Land: pietistic and communal settlement , by Ruth Kark]

This is hardly a review (I wouldn't need to see the film again), but I thought I'd reproduce Eliot's "The Hollow Men" (Sam Shepard quotes from it at least twice: Life is very long and Here we go round the prickly pear... ). *** The Hollow Men Mistah Kurtz—he dead. A penny for the Old Guy I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging ...

Can't find much on him in English, but this seems to be the Beskow Strindberg is alluding to. *         [From Pilgrims and Travellers in Search of the Holy , edited by Rene Gothoni]   

     He was also a pietist from spiritual pride, as all pietists are. Beskow, the repentant lieutenant, had come home from his pilgrimage to the grave of Christ. His Journal was read at home by John's stepmother, who inclined to pietism. Beskow made pietism gentlemanly, and brought it into fashion, and a considerable portion of the lower classes followed this fashion. Pietism was then what spiritualism is now--a presumably higher knowledge of hidden things. It was therefore eagerly taken up by all women and uncultivated people, and finally found acceptance at Court.

Not sure exactly when they landed (just discovered it myself), but I have two poems -- "Where's Waldo Now" and "Killing Me Softly" -- up at MadHat 15: Eye on the World .

    [From Wikimedia Commons] 

  [From Wikimedia Commons] 

        



     These memories lie in confusion, unformed and undefined, like pictures in a thaumatrope. But when it is made to revolve, they melt together and form a picture, significant or insignificant as the case may be.

A thaumatrope is a toy that was popular in Victorian times . A disk or card with a picture on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image due to the phi phenomenon and persistence of vision . [ 1 ] Examples of common thaumatrope pictures include a bare tree on one side of the disk, and its leaves on the other, or a bird on one side and a cage on the other. They often also included riddles or short poems, with one line on each side. Thaumatropes were one of a number of simple, mechanical optical toys that used persistence of vision. They are recognised as important antecedents of cinematography and in particular of animation . The coined name translates roughly as "wonder turner", from Ancient Greek : θαῦμα "wonder" and τρόπος "turn". The invention of the thaumatrope is usually credited to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget ...

Picked up my car (it was in the shop for 3 days!) and zoomed down to the coast. Birds weren't as "present" as in the past. Still took a few photos. It was enough to merge with the landscape. Exercise. ***                                                     



Got this on the way back from Starbucks. 

Have left the plays for now (I've read three thus far) to return to Strindberg's autobiographical work. The beginning of The Son of a Servant :      In the third story of a large house near Clara Church in Stockholm, the son of the shipping agent and the servant-maid awoke to self-consciousness. The child's first impressions were, as he remembered afterwards, fear and hunger. He feared the darkness and the blows, he feared to fall, to knock himself against something, or to go in the streets. He feared the fists of his brothers, the roughness of the servant-girl, the scolding of his grandmother, the rod of his mother, and his father's cane....

ALICE. Riddles! Riddles! But do you notice that there is peace in the house now? The wonderful peace of death. Wonderful as the solemn anxiety that surrounds the coming of a child into the world. I hear the silence -- and on the floor I see the traces of the easy-chair that carried him away -- And I feel that now my life is ended, and I am starting on the road to dissolution! Do you know, it's queer, but those simple words of the Lieutenant -- and his is a simple mind -- they pursue me, but now they have become serious. My husband, my youth's beloved -- yes, perhaps you laugh! -- he was a good and noble man -- nevertheless!



Just a few... More can be found in Wikipedia and elsewhere on the Net.