Without Lifting A Finger

Someone had mentioned the lunar eclipse but then I forgot. The wife figured it out while she was walking the dog down at the lagoon. Many residents hanging out on the pontoon bridge. So: Couldn't do much with my camera phone, but I got a few shots to prove I saw something: veiling and unveiling, through the trees (post-veil), and a few glowworms (not to mention a night shot of the lagoon and a possible scrawl for help) to boot. *                               

Maybe I've been a little hasty. The last 2/3 of the text (IMHO) is closer to vintage Nabokov. Could that be the part of the text that got reworked the most (would perhaps be an interesting study)? Anyway, I'm enjoying the master enough to have downloaded The Eye  (another text I've overlooked? saved for later? all these years). * Excerpt from King, Queen, Knave : All right -- she should never have accepted to marry that clown with the foul-smelling monkey in his arms; all right -- she should not have been impressed by his money, she should not have hoped in her youthful naivete to make an ordinary, dignified, obedient husband out of that joker. But at least she had arranged her life the way she wished. Almost eight years of grim struggle. He wanted to take her to Ceylon or Florida, if you please, instead of buying this elegant villa. She needed a sedentary husband. A subdued and grave husband. She needed a dead husband.



Started off with Bucks in Sunset Beach (I didn't notice the barista from elsewhere because her hair was bobbed -- eventually her voice convinced me of our past connection, which she remembered: three petite vanilla bean scones and a grande bold). Sun-up at Bolsa Chica (Ol' Nessy or Gothic Swimmer -- take your pick -- is still holding the pose). * 

Don't know very much at all about Martin Amis (a friend has read him and praises him -- I've been looking but still haven't tested the waters). But apparently we can agree on one thing: Nabokov was a great writer. Ranking Nabokov's texts, admittedly a subjective thing, is another matter: We'll have to agree to disagree (Thus far -- I'm not even halfway through it -- I'd put King Queen Knave towards the tail).  Here's Martin's 100th birthday salute to Nabokov and  his personal Nabokov  playlist :  * Anyway, another lick that tickled me from  King, Queen, Knave : Piffke was burly, dignified, and smartly dressed. He had blond eyelashes, baby-colored skin, a profile that had prudently stopped halfway between man and teapot, and a second-rate diamond on his plump auricular.

I chose an excerpt from East Coker (2nd of the Quartets ) because it's named after the place where T. S. is buried. A place I've not visited yet (I'm a member of the Dead Poet Society but that's one grave I've not collected -- yet!). Anyway, this is the very last part of the poem. * Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album). Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark...

East Coker is the second poem of T. S. Eliot 's Four Quartets . It was started as a way for Eliot to get back into writing poetry and was modelled after Burnt Norton . It was finished during early 1940 and printed for the Easter edition of the 1940 New English Weekly . The title refers to a small community that was directly connected to Eliot's ancestry and was home to a church that was later to house Eliot's ashes. The poem discusses time and disorder within nature that is the result of humanity following only science and not the divine. Leaders are described as materialistic and unable to understand reality. The only way for mankind to find salvation is through pursuing the divine by looking inwards and realizing that humanity is interconnected. Only then can people understand the universe. [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coker_(poem )]

Coming up T. S. You're not getting any younger. The portrait is by Wyndham Lewis. 

                  

Certainly a nascent Nabokov. He's starting to flex his verbal muscles, but he's not there yet. Thus far the text doesn't jump out and grab me. (And of course it could all be ME.) Still, per usual, there are Vlad-is-tickling-me bits: E.g., There were lots of well dusted but uncaressed porcelain animals with glossy rumps, as well as varicolored cushions, against which no human cheek had ever nestled; and albums -- huge arty things with photographs of Copenhagen porcelain and Hagenkopp furniture -- which were opened only by the dullest or shyest guest. Everything in the house, including the jars labelled sugar, cloves, chicory, on the shelves of the idyllic kitchen, had been chosen by Martha, to whom, seven years previously, her husband had presented on its green-turfed tray the freshly built little villa, still empty and ready to please. She had acquired paintings and distributed them throughout the rooms under the supervision of an artist who had been very much in fas...

Was indecisive about which Bucks and where to walk. Anyway, walking-wise I ended up in Seal Beach CA (parked in front of the old Bay Theater which looked a bit lonesome, except for some ghoulish pics on display). Walked a serpentine path winding through a grassy "park" and ended up face-to-fence with the naval yard. Then I walked on concrete along the beach and back to Main St. *                         

Went up a little earlier than expected. Three titles: "A Little Romance," "Moore on the Good," and "Midi." Follow the LINK .

Tiring of De Quincey (for now), waiting for a new Coetzee, so I picked up (e-picked) one of the few Nabokov texts I've yet to read. * King, Queen, Knave is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov (under his pen name V. Sirin ), while living in Berlin and sojourning at resorts in the Baltic in 1928. It was published as Король, дама, валеT (Korol', dama, valet) in Russian in October of that year; the novel was translated into English by the author's son Dmitri Nabokov (with significant changes made by the author) in 1968, forty years after its Russian debut. [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King,_Queen,_Knave ]

Woke late (7-ish), Bucked, and cut my walk short because it was already cloudless and sticky. Did walk over and take a peek at all the tents around the bandstand in the park (kitty corner from Bucks, across from Wilson, off 7th). Asians and perhaps Pacific Islanders(?) were crossing 7th and spilling into Bucks so I was a bit curious. It was early (8-ish) and the little camp was just waking and warming up. I heard a little music -- for lack of a better term, I'll call it "praise" -- and it seemed to have a Hawaiian twist. I heard the phrase "name above all names" and thought: better still "unpronounceable" or "unnamable" (stealing from Beckett?). Anyway, soothing. I snapped a pic and walked on. * 

Meant to post these yesterday but got involved in other things. *     



I'm not a great fan of reading out loud, but I used to love reading this to some of my older students (and I'm a math teacher by trade!). Anyhow, am thinking about this poem today, and so far as I can tell, I've never  posted it until now. * The Terrorist, He’s Watching The bomb in the bar will explode at thirteen twenty. Now it’s just thirteen sixteen. There’s still time for some to go in, and some to come out. The terrorist has already crossed the street. The distance keeps him out of danger, and what a view – just like the movies: A woman in a yellow jacket, she’s going in. A man in dark glasses, he’s coming out. Teen-agers in jeans, they’re talking. Thirteen seventeen and four seconds. The short one, he’s lucky, he’s getting on a scooter, but the tall one, he’s going in. Thirteen seventeen and forty seconds. That girl, she’s walking along with a green ribbon in her hair. But then a bus suddenly pulls in front of her. Thirteen eighteen. The...

Nice venue (except more grass with my bluegrass would be nice). We got there a bit early (only canned music till 7) so we toured the various booths (the owl was the best!) and took a turn around the lagoon and came back. We didn't stay for the whole hour but it was a nice change-of-pace. Went home and watched a very so-so movie. *                                                       

I guess it's considered his best work. Read it years ago and am enjoying it even more now. Seemingly. Full of detours and interesting curlicues. * An excerpt (really, any random section will do): ... Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time; and sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a northwest passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae , and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts o...

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ( 1821 ) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey , about his laudanum ( opium and alcohol ) addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him fame almost overnight..." [ 1 ] First published anonymously in September and October 1821 in the London Magazine , [ 2 ] the Confessions was released in book form in 1822, and again in 1856, in an edition revised by De Quincey.   [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opium-Eater ]



A few objective correlatives (more like subjective). :)             

Not good at memorizing poems, never have been. Not even my own. Still, the fragments that come back must be the bits that really stuck (even if they come back piecemeal and/or distorted). Was walking today and "Teach us to care and not to care" came flying back. Why? Well, that's another question to ponder. * Must be Eliot's month (Sept not April). * Ash Wednesday I Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?   Because I do not hope to know The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power Because I cannot drink There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing ag...