Without Lifting A Finger

The essential thing to recognize, and enjoy, was the noble patina which rested on a work of art which had lasted beyond its own century. “That is also historical awareness. Nothing else is in our power, and that is enough,” maintained his colleague.

White-tailed Kite @ Harriett Wieder Park in Huntington Beach CA.  #rlswihart13 #huntingtonbeachca #harriettwiederpark #kitesofinstagram #whitetailedkite #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022 #ukraine 🇺🇦

I can say that, being a professor of literature, and say it to you, my colleague. My nerves shriek in dread at the thought of no longer possessing a historical consciousness, because it means that our day and age will disappear along with us, so when we stage Ibsen at the National Theater, my nerves relax, because if we can stage a play from the last century in one of the country’s finest buildings, with extensive publicity and often to a full house, then the coming generations may regard us in the same light. But it isn’t Ibsen’s work we perform, it’s Ibsen’s reputation. To the work as such, we are more or less indifferent, yes we are, now barely a hundred years after it was written. It’s the stage director’s work we see performed, Stein Winge’s or Kjetil Bang-Hansen’s. It’s Winge’s work and Ibsen’s reputation. My stomach churns in protest at the thought of there being no reputation so great that it can’t survive a hundred years. We want to have immortal works, but do such things exis...

 

"I was beside myself. I accused her of indelicacy. She made the same accusation against me, and the dispute broke out. In her words, in the expression of her face, of her eyes, I noticed again the hatred that had so astonished me before. With a brother, friends, my father, I had occasionally quarrelled, but never had there been between us this fierce spite. Some time passed. Our mutual hatred was again concealed beneath an access of sensual desire, and I again consoled myself with the reflection that these scenes were reparable faults. "But when they were repeated a third and a fourth time, I understood that they were not simply faults, but a fatality that must happen again. I was no longer frightened, I was simply astonished that I should be precisely the one to live so uncomfortably with my wife, and that the same thing did not happen in other households. I did not know that in all households the same sudden changes take place, but that all, like myself, imagine that it is ...

Almost at the same moment I felt two little arms about me — one of them touched my neck and the other lay upon my face — and at the same time an anxious, gentle, friendly voice uttered the question: “What ails you?” I was ready to believe that some one else was asking me this and not Natasha, who had just declared that all men were scoundrels, and expressed a wish for their destruction. But she it was, and now she began speaking quickly, hurriedly. “What ails you, eh? Are you cold? Are you frozen? Ah, what a one you are, sitting there so silent like a little owl! Why, you should have told me long ago that you were cold. Come … lie on the ground … stretch yourself out and I will lie … there! How’s that? Now put your arms round me?… tighter! How’s that? You shall be warm very soon now… And then we’ll lie back to back… The night will pass so quickly, see if it won’t. I say … have you too been drinking?… Turned out of your place, eh?… It doesn’t matter.” And she comforted me… She encourage...

  My poem "Here We Go 'Round" came out @ The Red Ogre November 1. Something about childhood. Ideas. Roses of all kinds.:) Give it a whirl! Here We Go 'Round

Reading. Finished Barnes ' Arthur and George (after watching the PBS series) and have moved on to Gorky. I've tried some stories before and gave up. This time starting with his autobio (I have two of three parts) and enjoying it. This snippet is about his grandmother (paragraphs be damned.:)): “But why do people abandon children?” “It is because the mother has no milk, or anything to feed her baby with. Then she hears that a child which has been born somewhere lately is dead, and she goes and leaves her own there.” She paused and scratched her head; then sighing and gazing at the ceiling, she continued: “Poverty is always the reason, Oleysha; and a kind of poverty which must not be talked about, for an unmarried girl dare not admit that she has a child people would cry shame upon her. “Grandfather wanted to hand Vaniushka over to the police, but I said ‘No, we will keep him ourselves to fill the place of our dead ones. For I have had eighteen children, you know. If they had al...

Lapland Longspur @ Pattinson Park in Huntington Beach CA. Hadn't heard of it before (breeds in the Arctic but comes down on holiday:)). Another fan (with binoculars) helped me locate it on the ground (in a shady patch not far from the finches) and I refound it later and luckily got one near-perfect pose. Made my morning.