Without Lifting A Finger

Got a few Kindle dollars for Xmas and, per usual, I was like a kid in a candy store. Loaded up on some favorites (e.g., preordered Frisch's Montauk -- release date is the end of March) and some older authors I've been planning to get to, e.g., Theodor Storm. Enjoyed his "The Rider on the White Horse" (the great story came through even with a cheap edition), and have started "Immensee" (I believe this was a freebie). Very little else available in English. *** Hans Theodor Woldsen Storm (14 September 1817 – 4 July 1888), commonly known as Theodor Storm , was a German writer. Life Storm was born in the small town of Husum , on the west coast of Schleswig , then a formally independent duchy ruled by the king of Denmark . [1] His parents were the lawyer Johann Casimir Storm (1790-1874) and Lucie Storm , née Woldsen (1797-1879). Storm went to school in Husum and Lübeck and studied law in Kiel and Berlin . [1] While still a law student in Kiel he...



    

Or a cormorant to be a cormorant.         

Only met her recently -- and I met her only via her Art. She has given me permission to post a few of my faves. All of her intriguing work can be viewed at her website: www.AmyGuidry.com . I asked her who her favorite artists are: she answered with Dali, Magritte, and also Kiki Smith and Lucian Freud (the first two seem to make sense, the last two I've got to google -- I don't know Smith and I only know Lucian via Sigmund and a trivia game I play when flying Delta). I asked her who her favorite writers are: she answered with "I read mostly non-fiction" and "I've been reading a lot of Stephen King." *                                          

  " Arte Moderne by Eleanor Norcross, c. 1920, oil on canvas - Fitchburg Art Museum - DSC08886 " by Daderot - Own work . Licensed under Public Domain via Commons . *** Wasn't aware of Amy Guidry until I saw her work in/on Fourteen Hills (one of my poems is there so I have a copy of the most recent issue). Wasn't aware of Eleanor Norcross until I read Guidry's bio.

Eleanor Norcross , born Ella Augusta Norcross (June 19, 1854 – 1923), was an American painter who studied under William Merritt Chase and Alfred Stevens . She lived the majority of her adult life in Paris , France as an artist and collector and spent the summers in her hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts . Norcross painted Impressionist portraits and still lifes, and is better known for her paintings of genteel interiors. Her father provided her a comfortable living, under the proviso that she would not sell her paintings. With a life mission to provide people from her hometown the ability to view great works of art, Norcross collected art, made copies of paintings of Old Masters , and systematically documented decorative arts from the 12th through the 19th century. Her funding and art collection were used to establish the Fitchburg Art Museum . In 1924, her works were shown posthumously in Paris at the Louvre and Salon d'Automne , where Norcross was the first American t...

Rereading some Beckett plays. Reading (for the first time) others. This is Vladimir (Didi) speaking toward the end of Godot . VLADIMIR: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? [ESTRAGON, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off again. VLADIMIR stares at him. ] He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. [ Pause .] Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. [ He listens. ] But habit is a great deadener. [ He looks again at ESTRAGON.] At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleepin...

Think it was last Monday (1/11/16) but it could've been Tuesday. Just got back to work. School. Was treated to this on the way home. Too busy to post till now. *           

Slept in till 6:30. Woke to this. The usual trek: Bucks, Lagoon, Back. *     

Have been reading some selected prose pieces of Rilke. Thought I'd start there and then reread Duino. Anyway, don't think I've ever come across this piece before: seemingly written in response to some Christian group. Much of it is interesting; much of it nebulous (like a lot of Rilke). I suppose the part that tickled me most is the part where he compares the sexuality of an adult (centered you know where) and the sexuality of a child (according to Rilke and his friend: scattered throughout the child's body). * An excerpt: The terrible untruth and uncertainty of our time has its foundation in our not acknowledging the happiness of sex, in this strangely mistaken guiltiness, which continually increases, and cuts us off from all the rest of Nature, even from the child, although, as I learned during that unforgettable night, his, the child's, innocence doesn't at all consist in the fact that he, so to speak, doesn't know sex,--"on the contrary,...

This morning I was again among coots, cormorants, and egrets. The usual circuit: Bucks, Lagoon, Home. I guess it was the recent rains (which I missed): the lagoon was exceptionally high. I don't know that I've ever seen the pontoon bridge so close to "perfectly horizontal." *           



      

        

          



Had another week to fill and Germany wasn't enough. Besides, I wanted to see some snow. And some old friends. *