Without Lifting A Finger

 Long Beach. Colorado Lagoon. Dog Days. Pontoon Bridge. Egyptian Geese. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #coloradolagoon #LongBeach #dogdays #geese #egyptian #poetry #ReadMore 

 Long Beach. Belmont Shore. Bayshore. Herons Rule. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #heron #heronsrule #alderman #whitebird #woodhenge #pif #poetry #ReadMore #longbeach #belmontshore #bayshore #followtheheron

Paris 2019. Any Time You Like. Itching to travel. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #poetry #ReadMore #paris #time #art #travel #itching #clocks #sculpture 

 Oregon. Mt. Hood. Columbia River. #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #oregon #mthood #columbia #mountains #poetry #readmorepoetry

   By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto--that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her. Happiness continued from day to day, from morning to morning, I cannot stand. When every day I am told of the same thing, in the same tone of voice, I become furious. I am furious, for instance, in the society of S., because he is very much like a woman ("a clever and responsive woman") and because in his presence the idea occurs to me that my wife might be like him. I promise you to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear in my sky every day; I shan't write any better for being married....

 Long Beach. Colorado Lagoon. Batman's Return. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #poetry #readmorepoetry #readread #batman #batbird #return #repetition #LongBeach #coloradolagoon 

Long Beach. Marine Stadium (in View). Found Object: Mirror Fragment on Wood Chips + Morning Sun. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #poetry #art #science #chance #readmorepoetry #readchekhov #readbonnefoy #readread #LongBeach #mirrors #fragments #walking  

Long Beach Art Museum. Larry Shep (who studied with Voulkos). Near the parking lot and Ocean Blvd. Reminds me somehow of our world and also something Rilke wrote in his letters just before he died (if I can find it, I'll post). #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #art #sculpture #larryshep #voulkos #LongBeach #artmuseum #poetry #ReadMore #whitebird #woodhenge #followfollowsaidtheswallow  

Long Beach. Bluffs. Beach. White Pigeon.  #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #longbeach #bluffs #beach #pier #whitebird #whitepigeon #woodhenge #poetry #readmorepoetry #readchekhov #readbonnefoy

 Long Beach. Colorado. Sunset. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #coloradolagoon #sunset #whitebird #woodhenge #poetry #readmorepoetry #longbeach

Sedona. Chapel of The Holy Cross. Sunrise. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #poetry #readmorepoetry #sunrise #sedona #chapelofholycross 

 Lubeck, Germany. St. Catherine's. Ernst Barlach's sculptures: L to R: Woman in the Wind, Beggar, Singing Monastic Student. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #lubeck #germany #ernstbarlach #art #poetry #sculpture #readmorepoetry 

Long Beach. Belmont Pier Mascot. Pier in Fog. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #LongBeach #belmontpier #pier #fishing #mascot #alderman #heron #poetry #readmorepoetry #woodhenge #whitebird #walking #followfollowsaidtheswallow

Morning in Seal Beach. Flight = inspiration. Riding the wave = writing the poem.  #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #sealbeach #walking #pier #flight #waves #surfing #poetry #inspiration #readmorepoetry #readchekhov #followfollowsaidtheswallow 

 In Chekhov's "Three Years," the character Yulia stops in front of this landscape ("Quiet Abode") by Isaac Levitan. https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/isaac-levitan/crossed-destinies-anton-chekhov-isaac-levitan #rlswihart13 #chekhov #threeyears #levitan #tretyakovgallerymagazine #poetry #art #literature

   We passed Japan because the cholera was there, and so I have not bought you anything Japanese, and the five hundred you gave me for your purchases I have spent on my own needs, for which you have, by law, the right to send me to a settlement in Siberia. The first foreign port we reached was Hong Kong. It is an exquisite bay. The traffic on the sea was such as I had never seen before even in pictures; excellent roads, trams, a railway to the mountains, a museum, botanical gardens; wherever you look you see the tenderest solicitude on the part of the English for the men in their service; there is even a club for the sailors. I went about in a jinrickshaw--that is, carried by men--bought all sorts of rubbish of the Chinese, and was moved to indignation at hearing my Russian fellow-travellers abuse the English for exploiting the natives. I thought: Yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys, the Hindoos, but they do give them roads, aqueducts, museums, Christianity, and w...

Written from a boat on the Amur River. * Meteors are flying in my cabin--these are luminous beetles that look like electric sparks. Wild goats swim across the Amur in the day-time. The flies here are huge. I am sharing my cabin with a Chinaman--Son-Luli--who is constantly telling me how in China for the merest trifle it is "off with his head." Last night he got drunk with opium, and was talking in his sleep all night and preventing me from sleeping. On the 27th I walked about the Chinese town Aigun. Little by little I seem gradually to be stepping into a fantastic world. The steamer rocks, it is hard to write. To-morrow I shall reach Habarovsk. The Chinaman began to sing from music written on his fan.

 A young Chekhov (by Isaac Levitan). Writer & Painter were childhood friends and shared similar destinies. Both died young. (Levitan declined to travel to Sakhalin with Chekhov.) #rlswihart13 #rlswihart #chekhov #levitan #russia #sakhalin #art #poetry #ReadMore #childhoodfriends #destiny

 Morning in Seal Beach. Gangstas. The Pier. Walking. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart #poetry #pigeons #piers #readmorepoetry #ReadMore #sealbeach #walking 

 ... I shall be in Irkutsk in five or six days, shall spend as many days there, then drive on to Sryetensk--and that will be the end of my journey on land. For more than a fortnight I have been driving without a break, I think about nothing else, I live for nothing else; every morning I see the sunrise from beginning to end. I've grown so used to it that it seems as though all my life I had been driving and struggling with the muddy roads. When it does not rain, and there are no pits of mud on the road, one feels queer and even a little bored. And how filthy I am, what a rapscallion I look! What a state my luckless clothes are in! 

Long Beach. Jetty. Fishing. Sunday morning (coming down). Walking. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart #poetry #readmorepoetry  #LongBeach #jetty #sundaymorning #fishing #walking 

Long Beach: Redondo & PCH. Birds & Bikes. Walking. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart #redondo #pch #poetry #readmorepoetry #LongBeach #walking 

 Long Beach: Urban Cowboy. Redondo & PCH. Walking. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #longbeach #walking #urbancowboy #poetry #readmorepoetry #woodhenge #followfollowsaidtheswallow 

 Versailles 2019. Fountain. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #versailles #france #poetry #readmorepoetry #travel #art #beauty #history 

Morning in Seal Beach. The pier. Walking. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #poetry #readmorepoetry #whitebird #woodhenge #pier #sealbeach #followfollowsaidtheswallow

Madrid 2019. Glass Palace. More Charles Ray. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #poetry #readmorepoetry #art #charlesray #whitebird #whiteanything #madrid #followfollowsaidtheswallow

   But what was worst of all, and what I shall never forget, was crossing the rivers. One reaches a river at night.... One begins shouting and so does the driver.... Rain, wind, pieces of ice glide down the river, there is a sound of splashing.... And to add to our gaiety there is the cry of a heron. Herons live on the Siberian rivers, so it seems they don't consider the climate but the geographical position.... Well, an hour later, in the darkness, a huge ferry-boat of the shape of a barge comes into sight with huge oars that look like the pincers of a crab. The ferry-men are a rowdy set, for the most part exiles banished here by the verdict of society for their vicious life. They use insufferably bad language, shout, and ask for money for vodka.... The ferrying across takes a long, long time ... an agonizingly long time. The ferryboat crawls. Again the feeling of loneliness, and the heron seems calling on purpose, as though he means to say: "Don't be frightened, old man,...

From Chekhov's letters. A nearly fatal collision on his way to Sakhalin Island and early signs of the "consumption" (TB) that would eventually kill him: My mother must have been praying for me that night, I suppose. If I had been asleep, or if the third troika had come immediately after the second, I should have been crushed to death or maimed. It appeared the foremost driver lashed on the horses, while the drivers in the second and the third carts were asleep and did not see us. The collision was followed by the blankest amazement on both sides, then a storm of ferocious abuse. * The overstrain, the constant worry with luggage and so on, and perhaps the farewell drinking parties in Moscow, had brought on spitting of blood in the mornings, which induced something like depression, arousing gloomy thoughts, but towards the end of the journey it has left off; now I haven't even a cough.

    Did you really not like the "Kreutzer Sonata"? I don't say it is a work of genius for all time, of that I am no judge; but to my thinking, among the mass of all that is written now, here and abroad, one scarcely could find anything else as powerful both in the gravity of its conception and the beauty of its execution. To say nothing of its artistic merits, which in places are striking, one must be grateful to the novel, if only because it is keenly stimulating to thought. As one reads it, one can scarcely refrain from crying out: "That's true," or "That's absurd." It is true it has some very annoying defects. Apart from all those you enumerate, it has one for which one cannot readily forgive the author--that is, the audacity with which Tolstoy holds forth about what he doesn't know and is too obstinate to care to understand. Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hospitals, the aversion of women for the sexual relation, and so on...

 More from Versailles. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #poetry #readmore #beauty #france #followfollowsaidtheswallow

  Last night I drove out of town and listened to the gypsies. They sing well, the wild creatures. Their singing reminds me of a train falling off a high bank in a violent snow-storm: there is a lot of turmoil, screeching and banging.    ... I bought Dostoevsky in your shop and am now reading him. It is fine, but very long and indiscreet. It is over-pretentious.

 Morning in Seal Beach. Walking. Bay Theater. Empty (COVID-closed) Playground. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #poetry #readmorepoetry #sealbeach #playgrounds #ocean #COVIDclosed #walking #exercise #pier #followmetothepier 

Versailles: Window. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart @rl_swihart #poetry #readmorepoetry #versailles #windows #art #history #paris

What do I call good? The images which seem best to me, which I love and jealously guard lest I spend and spoil them for the sake of some "Party" written against time.... If my love is mistaken, I am wrong, but then it may not be mistaken! I am either a fool and a conceited fellow or I really am an organism capable of being a good writer. All that I now write displeases and bores me, but what sits in my head interests, excites and moves me--from which I conclude that everybody does the wrong thing and I alone know the secret of doing the right one. Most likely all writers think that. But the devil himself would break his neck in these problems.

 Morro Bay Collage. #rlswihart13 #rlswihart  @rl_swihart #morrobay  #morrorock  #horses #sanddollars  #poetry #readmorepoetry 

   Her eldest daughter, a woman doctor--the pride of the whole family and "a saint" as the peasants call her--really is remarkable. She has a tumour on the brain, and in consequence of it she is totally blind, has epileptic fits and constant headaches. She knows what awaits her, and stoically with amazing coolness speaks of her approaching death. In the course of my medical practice I have grown used to seeing people who were soon going to die, and I have always felt strange when people whose death was at hand talked, smiled, or wept in my presence; but here, when I see on the verandah this blind woman who laughs, jokes, or hears my stories read to her, what begins to seem strange to me is not that she is dying, but that we do not feel our own death, and write stories as though we were never going to die.

  Downtown Long Beach. Walking. (AQ still UNHEALTHY.) @rl_swihart #rlswihart #rlswihart13 #poetry #ReadMore #downtownlb #LongBeach #walking #followbutwearamask

Harmony. Glass half full, please. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #harmony #harmonyca #poetry #readmorepoetry #glasshalffull