Without Lifting A Finger

Redheads @ Colorado Lagoon. I think this is their second year, and it's nice to have them around. Happy 2024 & Read Some Poetry!!!🎈 #rlswihart13 #coloradolagoon #longbeachca #ducksofinstagram #redheads #solong2023 #herecomes2024 #nature #beauty #poetry #readanotherpoem2023 #readmorepoetry2024🎈

‘I can give you a question as good as that,’ he responded. ‘Can you notify me of the meaning of a bulbul?’ ‘A bulbul?’ ‘What would you say a bulbul is?’ This conundrum did not interest me but I pretended to rack my brains and screwed my face in perplexity until I felt it half the size it should be. ‘Not one of those ladies who take money?’ I said. ‘No.’ ‘Not the brass knobs on a German steam organ?’ ‘Not the knobs.’ ‘Nothing to do with the independence of America or such-like?’ ‘No.’ ‘A mechanical engine for winding clocks?’ ‘No.’ ‘A tumour, or the lather in a cow’s mouth, or those elastic articles that ladies wear?’ ‘Not them by a long chalk.’ ‘Not an eastern musical instrument played by Arabs?’ He clapped his hands. ‘Not that but very near it,’ he smiled, ‘something next door to it. You are a cordial intelligible man. A bulbul is a Persian nightingale. What do you think of that now?’ ‘It is seldom I am far out,’ I said dryly. He looked at me in admiration and the two of us sat in sil...

Wilson's Snipes @ Huntington Central Park. Lifer. It was worth the wait.:)🎈 #rlswihart13 #huntingtonbeach #huntingtoncentralpark #snipes #snipesofinstagram #wilsonsnipes #chubbybirds #waders #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023♥️ 🇺🇦🇮🇱🇵🇸

No matter in how exalted a place a human being may set his throne, no matter how firmly he may press the tiara of the exceptional, that is genius, upon his brow, he can never be sure that he may not, like Nebuchadnezzar, be seized with a sudden desire to go on all-fours and eat grass and herd with the common beasts of the field.

Music, however, was by no means Mr. Bigum’s chief interest. He was first of all a philosopher, but not one of the productive philosophers who find new laws and build new systems. He laughed at their systems, the snail-shells in which they dragged themselves across the illimitable field of thought, fondly imagining that the field was within the snail-shell!

He talked of painters and poets, too, and sometimes he would laud to the skies a name that she had never even heard. He showed her their pictures and read their poems to her in the garden or on the hill where they could look out over the bright waters of the fjord and the brown, billowing heath. Love made him poetic; the view took on beauty, the clouds seemed like those drifting through the poems, and the trees were clothed in the leaves rustling so mournfully in the ballads.

“Silence, child of man!” thundered Pastor Jens. “Is this language meet for one who has even now one foot in the grave? ’Twere better you employed the flickering spark of life that still remains to you in making your peace with the Lord, instead of picking quarrels with men. You are like those criminals and disturbers of peace who, when their judgment is fallen and they can no longer escape the red-hot pincers and the axe, then in their miserable impotence curse and revile the Lord our God with filthy and wild words. They seek thereby courage to drag themselves out of that almost brutish despair, that craven fear and slavish remorse without hope, into which such fellows generally sink toward the last, and which they fear more than death and the tortures of death.” Ulrik Christian listened quietly, until he had managed to get his sword out from under the coverlet. Then he cried: “Guard yourself, priest-belly!” and made a sudden lunge after Pastor Jens, who coolly turned the weapon aside ...

“Call ’em Christian, if you like, Gert Dyer, but Finns and heathens and troll-men have never been Christians by my prayer-book, and it’s true as gold what happened in the time of King Christian, God rest his soul! when the Swedes were in Jutland. There was a whole regiment of ’em marching one night at new moon, and at the stroke o’ midnight they ran one from the other and howled like a pack of werewolves or some such devilry, and they scoured like mad round in the woods and fens and brought ill luck to men and beasts.” “But they go to church on Sunday and have both pastor and clerk just like us.” “Ay, let a fool believe that! They go to church, the filthy gang, like the witches fly to vespers, when the Devil has St. John’s mass on Hekkenfell. No, they’re bewitched, an’ nothing bites on ’em, be it powder or bullets. Half of ’em can cast the evil eye, too, else why d’ye think the smallpox is always so bad wherever those hell-hounds’ve set their cursed feet? Answer me that, Gert Dyer, ans...

 

 

Suddenly she turned back her sleeves, and laid her bare arms in the soft, moist coolness of the flowers. She turned them round and round under the roses, until the loosened petals fluttered to the ground, then jumped up and with one motion swept everything from the table, and went out into the garden, pulling down her sleeves as she walked. With flushed cheeks and quickened step, she followed the path to the end, then skirted the garden toward the turnpike. A load of hay had just been overturned and was blocking the way to the gate. Several other wagons halted behind it, and she could see the brown polished stick of the overseer gleaming in the sun, as he beat the unlucky driver. She put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sickening sound of the blows, ran toward the house, darted within the open cellar door, and slammed it after her. The child was Marie Grubbe, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Squire Erik Grubbe of Tjele Manor.

To-day everything seemed to have conspired with the memories of a hope which was dead and of sweet and lively dreams which had become disagreeable and nauseous; dreams which caused her to redden when she thought of them and which yet she could not forget. And what had all that to do with the region here? The blow had fallen upon her far from here amid the surroundings of her home, by the edge of a sound with changing waters, under pale green beech-trees. Yet it hovered on the lips of every pale brown hill, and every green-shuttered house stood there and held silence concerning it. It was the old sorrow for young hearts which had touched her. She had loved a man and believed in his love for her, and suddenly he had chosen some one else. Why? For what reason? What had she done to him? Had she changed? Was she no longer the same? And all the eternal questions over again. She had not said a word about it to her mother, but her mother had understood every bit of it, and had been very concer...

Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became audible quite near by:  "Flower in dew! Flower in dew! Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own. Does in them lie the same strange air The same wonderful elfin air, As in mine own? Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighing Amid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying, Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing: In longing, In longing, I live."

 

He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that he received a personal insult from destiny. His associates here were especially a horse-dealer, called "Mug-sexton," because he does nothing but sing and drink all the time, and a disreputable, lanky, over-grown cross between a sailor and peddler, known and feared under the name of Peter "Rudderless," to say nothing of the fair Abelone. She, however, recently has had to give way to a brunette, belonging to a troupe of mountebanks, which for some time has favored us with performances of feats of strength and rope-dancing. You have seen this kind of women with sharp, yellow, prematurely-aged faces, creatures that are shattered by brutality, poverty, and miserable vices, and who always over-dress in shabby velvet and dirty red. There you have his crew. I don'...

 

Nice, but where will nature be if we continue this idea much longer? Excerpt from Mogens: The councilor was a friend of nature, nature was something quite special, nature was one of the finest ornaments of existence. The councilor patronized nature, he defended it against the artificial; gardens were nothing but nature spoiled; but gardens laid out in elaborate style were nature turned crazy. There was no style in nature, providence had wisely made nature natural, nothing but natural. Nature was that which was unrestrained, that which was unspoiled. But with the fall of man civilization had come upon mankind; now civilization had become a necessity; but it would have been better, if it had not been thus. The state of nature was something quite different, quite different. The councilor himself would have had no objection to maintaining himself by going about in a coat of lamb-skin and shooting hares and snipes and golden plovers and grouse and haunches of venison and wild boars. No, the...

It seems unpardonable to me today that I had blocked off the investigation of my most distant past for so many years, not on principle, to be sure, but still of my own accord, and that now it is too late for me to seek out Adler, who had lived in London until his death in the summer of 1988, and talk to him about that extra-territorial place where at the time, as I think I have mentioned before, said Austerlitz, some sixty thousand people were crammed together in an area little more than a square kilometer in size—

Whenever we came home afterwards, I had to read aloud from your favorite book about the changing seasons, said Vera, even though you knew it by heart from the first line to the last, and she added that I never tired of the winter pictures in particular, scenes showing hares, deer, and partridges transfixed with astonishment as they stared at the ground covered with newly fallen snow, and Vera said that every time we reached the page which described the snow falling through the branches of the trees, soon to shroud the entire forest floor, I would look up at her and ask: But if it’s all white, how do the squirrels know where they’ve buried their hoard? Ale když všechno zakryje sníh, jak veverky najdou to místo, kde si schovaly zásoby? Those were your very words, the question which constantly troubled you. How indeed do the squirrels know, what do we know ourselves, how do we remember, and what is it we find in the end?

Then I sat on a bench in the sun until nearly midday, looking out over the buildings of the Lesser Quarter and the river Vltava at the panorama of the city, which seemed to be veined with the curving cracks and rifts of past time, like the varnish on a painting. A little later, said Austerlitz, I discovered another such pattern created by no discernible law in the entwined roots of a chestnut tree clinging to a steep slope, through which, Vera had told me, said Austerlitz, I liked to climb as a child. And the dark green yews growing under the taller trees were familiar to me too, as familiar as the cool air which enveloped me at the bottom of the ravine and the countless windflowers covering the woodland floor, faded now in April, and I understood why, on one of my visits to a Gloucestershire country house with Hilary years ago, my voice failed me when, in the park which was laid out very much like the Schönborn gardens, we unexpectedly came upon a north-facing slope covered by the fin...

My poem "My Sweet Girl" (pp. 161 - 162) is in the current issue of Meniscus. Thanks to Jen Webb and Everyone at Meniscus. My Sweet Girl, Volume 11, Issue 2 #rlswihart13 #meniscus #mysweetgirl #readmorepoetry2023♥️

Our concern with history, so Hilary’s thesis ran, is a concern with preformed images already imprinted on our brains, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, somewhere as yet undiscovered. I myself, added Austerlitz, in spite of all the accounts of it I have read, remember only the picture of the final defeat of the Allies in the battle of the Three Emperors. Every attempt to understand the course of events inevitably turns into that one scene where the hosts of Russian and Austrian soldiers are fleeing on foot and horseback on to the frozen Satschen ponds. I see cannonballs suspended for an eternity in the air, I see others crashing into the ice, I see the unfortunate victims flinging up their arms as they slide from the toppling floes, and I see them, strangely, not with my own eyes but with those of shortsighted Marshal Davout, who has made a forced march with his regiments from Vienna and, glasses tied firmly behind his head with two laces,...

I only recently remembered this white pall over the manse, said Austerlitz, when I was reading the reminiscences of his childhood and youth by a Russian writer who describes a similar mania for powder in his grandmother, a lady who, although she spent most of her time lying on a sofa nourishing herself almost exclusively on wine gums and almond milk, enjoyed an iron constitution and always slept with her window wide open, so that once, after a night of stormy weather, she woke up in the morning under a blanket of snow without coming to the slightest harm.

Considerably alarmed by what I feared was the progressive decline of my eyesight, I remembered reading once that until well into the nineteenth century a few drops of liquid distilled from belladonna, a plant of the nightshade family, used to be applied to the pupils of operatic divas before they went on stage, and those of young women about to be introduced to a suitor, with the result that their eyes shone with a rapt and almost supernatural radiance, but they themselves could see almost nothing.

Reddish Egret @ Bolsa Chica. Almost always gets your "juices" flowing. TGIF and enjoy the weekend.♥️🎈 #rlswihart13 #bolsachicawetlands  #bolsa #egretsofinstagram #reddishegret #nature #beauty #poetry #TGIF #readmorepoetry2023♥️

The building of this singular architectural monstrosity, on which Austerlitz was planning to write a study at the time, began in the 1880s at the urging of the bourgeoisie of Brussels, over-hastily and before the details of the grandiose scheme submitted by a certain Joseph Poelaert had been properly worked out, as a result of which, said Austerlitz, this huge pile of over seven hundred thousand cubic meters contains corridors and stairways leading nowhere, and doorless rooms and halls where no one would ever set foot, empty spaces surrounded by walls and representing the innermost secret of all sanctioned authority.

The child had her first schoolday toward the end of winter, in midterm. This had not been planned by the adult, it just happened. The school also happened to be a special sort of school—intended, that is, only for children of the one “people” deserving of the name, the people of which, long before its dispersion to the four corners of the earth, it was said that, even “without prophets,” “without sacrifices,” “without idols”—and even “without names”—it would still be a “people”; and whom, in the words of a later biblical scholar, those wishing to know “the tradition,” the “oldest and strictest law in the world” would be obliged to consult. It was the only actual “people” to which the adult had ever wished to belong.

Besides, it was plain that some of the children, even the smallest, were not right for one another. There may have been no “wicked” ones, but certainly all were not “innocent” (at the most, there were some who had started at an early age to wash their hands in innocence). All knew what was wrong and did wrong, not only in passion but also with premeditation, yet even then without consciousness of wrongdoing—with the result that their actions were often more sinister than those of the most sordid scoundrels, and just as revolting. It couldn’t be denied that among the children—regardless of sex—there were some who from the start were quite at their ease playing the executioner in word and deed, with the adults looking on; they performed their act of destruction with cool expertness and when it was done walked calmly away as from an official function. And it was equally unquestionable that none of the children liked being scolded, made fun of, or beaten—in other words, victimized.

He was later to come into contact with far worse prophets of childlessness, singly and in pairs. For the most part they were sharp-sighted, and thanks to their own terrifying freedom from guilt, they were able to say in technical language what was wrong with the child-parent relationship; some of them actually made a profession of their insight. In love with their own childhood and its continuance, they proved on closer acquaintance to be grownup monsters. After every encounter with them, it took the man a long time to purge his mind and soul of their analytical certainties, which cut into him like cankers. He cursed those mean, self-righteous prophets as the scum of modern times, and swore to hate them and combat them forever. The ancient dramatist supplied him with the appropriate curse for them: “Children are the soul of all men. He who has not learned this suffers less, but his well-being is of the wrong kind.” (Something else again, it goes without saying, is the good-hearted, lov...

Yes, I wanted to tell a story (and I enjoyed studying dissertations). For often, in reading and writing, I had seen the truth of storytelling as a clarity in which one sentence calmly engenders another and in which the truth—the insight that came before the story—is perceptible only as a gentle something in the transitions between sentences. Moreover, I knew that reason forgets, the imagination never. For a time I thought of treating particular aspects—the mountain and me, the pictures and me—and setting them down side by side as unconnected fragments. But then I rejected such fragmentary treatment because it would have resulted not from a possibly unsuccessful striving for unity but from a deliberate method, known in advance to be safe. Then, in Grillparzer’s The Poor Minstrel, I read: “I trembled with a longing for unity.” A desire for the One in All was rekindled in me. For I knew that unity is possible. Every single moment of my life hangs together with every other—without intermed...

Night's Falling and I'm Eating at VONS (Sign & All) #rlswihart13 #vons #vonssign #atthebeach #😎 #longbeach #mitredparakeet #parakeetsofinstagram #nature #poetry #beauty #flashparakeets2023 #readmorepoetry2023♥️ 🎈🦜

Ospreys @ Bolsa Chica. What's the only thing better than an osprey eating a fish -- you guessed 'er, Lester: an osprey catching a fish.:) Here's to "next best" things, and TGIFs. Have a great weekend! (And, GO BLUE!, even if my team cheats.😥) #rlswihart13 #bolsa #bolsachica #nextbestthing #goblue #osprey #ospreywithfish #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 ✌️

The mountain comes into sight before you even get to Le Tholonet. It is bare and monochrome, more radiance than color. The outlines of clouds can sometimes be mistaken for high mountains: here it is the other way around.

There is a painting by Cézanne which has been referred to as The Great Pine. (He himself never gave his paintings titles, and seldom signed one.) It shows a tall, solitary pine by the Arc River southeast of Aix. This was the river of his childhood. After bathing, he and his childhood friends would sit in its shade; later, at the age of twenty, he asked Emile Zola, who had been one of these friends, in a letter: “Do you remember the pine on the bank of the Arc?” He even wrote a poem to the tree. In it the mistral blows through the bare branches; and the picture, too, suggests the wind, particularly in the way the lone tree slants. That tree, more than just about anything else, might be titled: “Out in the Open.” It transforms the ground from which it rises into a plateau, while the branches, twisted in all directions, and the infinitely varied green of its coat make the empty space around it vibrate. The Great Pine is depicted in other paintings, but never is it so solitary. In one of t...

Like primeval man, he moved on to partake elsewhere of the daylight that was beginning anew on every object. The eyeball of a man coming toward him, a shimmering metal box, and the pale moon seemed joined into a triangle. Too much light.

 

Sorger had gone outside with the cat, which was following him and seemed that day “to know a thing or two.” On the beach, sticks of driftwood had been set down, or perhaps been accidentally washed ashore, in a circle. It occurred to him that the Indians might have made these circles to demarcate themselves from this holiday and what it commemorated, and at that point the whole settlement struck him as a secret magic circle in which he, now initiated, was making his last rounds.

Baby Blue (Little Blue Heron) @ Bolsa Chica. He's back and as beautiful as ever. I didn't get many shots, but we had him close for a while before he flew to the Pocket and out of range. I'm sure we'll meet again.:) #rlswihart13 #socal #socalbirds #wintervisitors #bolsachica #heronsofinstagram #littleblueheron #babyblue #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 🙏🎈

Even in his work, he preferred drawing to photography, because it was only through drawing that he came to understand the landscape in all its forms; he was invariably surprised to see how many forms revealed themselves in what seemed at first sight to be a dull and monotonous vista. A place took on meaning for him only when he drew it line for line—as faithfully as possible, without the schematizations and omissions that had become customary in his science—and it was only then that he could claim with a clear conscience, if only to himself, to have been there.

The Locally World Famous Wood Thrush @ Irvine Regional Park. Hard to work any magic with my little Brownie in the Leaf & Shadow Kingdom of this beautiful bird, but I can say I saw it (and may go back for more).♥️🎈 #rlswihart13 #bravenewbirds #voyagers #woodthrusheincalifornia #woodthrushesofinstagram #irvineregionalpark #kingdombetweenLandM #staythewinter #GOBLUE #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 🇺🇦♥️🎈

“But to go back to our first talk (for I suppose this is our last one)—when you entered that cave, who did follow you, or did no one follow you? Can you now say? I don’t like it left in air.” “Let us call it the guide,” she said indifferently. “It will never be known. It’s as if I ran my finger along that polished wall in the dark, and cannot get further. I am up against something, and so are you. Mrs. Moore—she did know.” “How could she have known what we don’t?” “Telepathy, possibly.” The pert, meagre word fell to the ground. Telepathy? What an explanation! Better withdraw it, and Adela did so. She was at the end of her spiritual tether, and so was he. Were there worlds beyond which they could never touch, or did all that is possible enter their consciousness? They could not tell. They only realized that their outlook was more or less similar, and found in this a satisfaction. Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle; they could not tell. Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squa...

Miss Quested had renounced her own people. Turning from them, she was drawn into a mass of Indians of the shopkeeping class, and carried by them towards the public exit of the court. The faint, indescribable smell of the bazaars invaded her, sweeter than a London slum, yet more disquieting: a tuft of scented cotton wool, wedged in an old man’s ear, fragments of pan between his black teeth, odorous powders, oils—the Scented East of tradition, but blended with human sweat as if a great king had been entangled in ignominy and could not free himself, or as if the heat of the sun had boiled and fried all the glories of the earth into a single mess.

Here Mr. McBryde paused. He wanted to keep the proceedings as clean as possible, but Oriental Pathology, his favourite theme, lay around him, and he could not resist it. Taking off his spectacles, as was his habit before enunciating a general truth, he looked into them sadly, and remarked that the darker races are physically attracted by the fairer, but not vice versa—not a matter for bitterness this, not a matter for abuse, but just a fact which any scientific observer will confirm. “Even when the lady is so uglier than the gentleman?”

 

 

The remark that did him most harm at the club was a silly aside to the effect that the so-called white races are really pinko-grey. He only said this to be cheery, he did not realize that “white” has no more to do with a colour than “God save the King” with a god, and that it is the height of impropriety to consider what it does connote. The pinko-grey male whom he addressed was subtly scandalized; his sense of insecurity was awoken, and he communicated it to the rest of the herd.

Used to read a lot of E M Forster, partly inspired by all the films. Never read A Passage to India (but saw the film), so I thought I'd give it a try. Excerpt: “Yes, as Mrs. McBryde was saying, but it’s much more the Anglo-Indians themselves who are likely to get on Adela’s nerves. She doesn’t think they behave pleasantly to Indians, you see.” “What did I tell you?” he exclaimed, losing his gentle manner. “I knew it last week. Oh, how like a woman to worry over a side-issue!” She forgot about Adela in her surprise. “A side-issue, a side-issue?” she repeated. “How can it be that?” “We’re not out here for the purpose of behaving pleasantly!” “What do you mean?” “What I say. We’re out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them’s my sentiments. India isn’t a drawing-room.” “Your sentiments are those of a god,” she said quietly, but it was his manner rather than his sentiments that annoyed her. Trying to recover his temper, he said, “India likes gods.” “And Englishmen like posing as go...

 

 

My new poem -- "I'm Full" -- is up at The Bookends Review. Give it a whirl and many thanks to the editor, Jordan Blum.

Very rarely does a poetry publication ask me to write about how I came to write a certain poem. Even rarer: I respond. Anyway, stumbled on this tonight, from an early edition of Glassworks . It's not the poem, it's a brief explanation of how I came to write the poem.

Finished Coetzee's The Pole in two days. An easy read. Titillating but hardly "real" and, like all good reads I suppose, leaving you wanting.:) Back to Wordsworth's Guide to the Lake District. I hope I can find a spot to build. Perhaps in the area of the old Roman fort? Or on that cloud-with-a-view WW suggested earlier in the book? WW: Our fancies could not resist the temptation; and we fixed upon a spot for a cottage, which we began to build:* and finished as easily as castles are raised in the air.—

You probably already know: I'm a fan. Got it today and started (but don't think I've given up on Wordsworth: to some extent: he'll guide me through the Lake District). Anyway, a snip from The Pole: ‘Listen to me, Witold,’ she says. ‘You barely know me, so let me tell you who I am. First and last, I am a married woman. Not a free spirit but a woman with a husband and children and a home and friends and commitments of all kinds, emotional commitments, social commitments, practical commitments. There is no room in my life for—what shall I call it?—an affair of the heart. You tell me you carry around with you an image of me. Good. But I don’t carry around an image of you. I don’t carry around an image of anyone. I am not that kind of person. You visited Barcelona, you gave a piano recital, which we all enjoyed; we had dinner together; and that was that. You passed into my life, you passed out of my life. Terminado. We have no future together, you and I. I am sorry to say so...

  Posted yesterday on my Instagram feed (rlswihart13): Ring-necked Pheasant @ WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. Beautiful birds. Didn't know till now that they were originally introduced from Asia. Happy Monday!!!♥️🎈 #rlswihart13 #wkkelloggbirdsanctuary #kalamazoo #pheasant #ringneckedpheasant #nature #beauty #poetry  #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦🎈

Redtailed Hawks @ WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary near Kalamazoo MI. Probably about six individuals, from young to old, several with obvious wing problems. These two shared a "cage" and were perhaps the most lively. Hard to be a redtail if you can't fly. TGIF. #rlswihart13 #michigan #tgif #kalamazoo #kelloggbirdsanctuary #redtailsofinstagram #redtailedhawk hawks #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦 🎈

Going to the Lake District soon (God willing). Haven't been since 1987. Thought it would be fun to read Wordsworth's Guide.:) Excerpt on climate: It may now be proper to say a few words respecting climate, and ‘skiey influences,’* in which this region, as far as the character of its landscapes is affected by them, may, upon the whole, be considered fortunate. The country is, indeed, subject to much bad weather, and it has been ascertained that twice as much rain falls here as in many parts of the island; but the number of black drizzling days, that blot out the face of things, is by no means proportionally great. Nor is a continuance of thick, flagging, damp air, so common as in the West of England and Ireland. The rain here comes down heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear, bright weather,* when every brook is vocal, and every torrent sonorous; brooks and torrents, which are never muddy, even in the heaviest floods, except, after a drought, they happen to be defiled fo...

It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses--it was still the Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and indestructible. The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after it had been cleared of ...

Eastern Kingbirds in Jackson MI. Perching on fallen oak branches in the morning sun. Have a safe & fun Labor Day. Don't go back to school.:)🎈♥️ #rlswihart13 #jacksonmi #brownslakerd #fallenoak #pasture #morninglight #laborday #2023 #kingbirdsofinstagram #easternkingbird #lifer #nature #poetry #beauty #walking #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine🇺🇦🎈♥️

Another Session with the Cedar Waxwings @ Jackson College. Like having my own pets. Jackson MI. #rlswihart13 #jacksonmi #jacksoncollege #aroundthepond #waxwings #cedarwaxwings #birdsofsummer #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦🎈

Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the...

"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess Mary; "but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand! They can't understand that all those feelings they prize so--all our feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are unnecessary. We cannot understand one another," and he remained silent.

Michigan Summer Birds: The Green Heron. First time I've ever seen one of these reclusive beauties in Michigan (and the first time I've seen one in green giraffe mode:)). When Mother's pond was low (so he could stand in the water or on the steep bank) he came to fish (equals: to frog) for three days in a row, camouflaged by all the greens and browns, skittish as heck. When the rains filled the pond to the brim he disappeared. Is he eating at his private water hole in the woods? Or has he flown south? Come back, my little Greenie.♥️ TGIF. #rlswihart13 #michigan #michigansummerbirds #jacksonmichigan #summerrain #summervisitors #heronsofinstagram #greenherons #nature #beauty #poetry #tgif #ukraine🇺🇦🎈