"His lips are on the trumpet."

GLUTTONY
       - mwk

I've gotten more than I deserve
But less than I expected,
Which leaves me feeling deprived -
Cheated and neglected.

Greed's not pretty, it lacks grace
And turns the spirit sour.
But one look upon your perfect face
And I'm beneath its power.

   Sitting around a table with a bunch of talented, well-read people. Some of whose books have been published and plays produced. Sharing the things we've come up with over the past month, and chatting about our habits and techniques for creating. And before that, sitting in the parking lot with a friend, listening to Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas. The magical elixir......

   What a great evening! Now I feel compelled to write more.......

Don't know if I'll ever get tired of watching him act. 

I just showed this clip to a student of mine who is memorizing Shakespeare's Quality of Mercy. "Earthly power doth show likest God's when mercy seasons justice."

WHAT THE BULLET SANG
                 - Bret Harte

O joy of creation
                           To be!
O rapture to fly
                        And be free!
Be the battle lost or won,
  Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love - The one
                        Born for me!

I shall know him where he stands,
                            All alone,
With the power in his hands
                            Not o'erthrown;
I shall know him by his face,
  By his god-like front and grace;
I shall hold him for a space,
                           All my own!

It is he - O my love!
                            So bold!
It is I - All my love
                           Foretold!
It is I, O love what bliss!
Dost thou answer to my kiss?
Oh! Sweetheart, what is this!
                           Lieth there so cold!

cos·mos¹

Dictionary result for cosmos

/ˈkäzməs,ˈkäzˌmōs,ˈkäzˌmäs/

noun

1. the universe seen as a well-ordered whole.

   "he sat staring deep into the void, reminding himself of his place in the cosmos"

   • a system of thought.

     plural noun: cosmoses

     "the new gender-free intellectual cosmos"

Watching this now. Looking forward to reading it. Mr Burton's doing a marvelous job.

"Words play me deja vu, like a radio tune I swear I've heard before......" - Duran Duran

The day you realize........

The Empty Bowl Project. Elementary school kids paint and bake a zillion clay bowls, and people in the community buy them, for $20 each, with the proceeds benefitting the local Food Pantry. This gives them the opportunity to taste as much they like of the many soups and stews offered by local chefs. They then get to vote for their favorites.  My husband Raymond has participated in this community activity for any years, and many times has been named Fan Favorite. This year he offered a soup for each of our restaurants, and I think it split the vote.  😉 But it was a lot of fun, and we raised a LOT of money for the Food Pantry. Yay!

470
 - Emily Dickinson

How good - to be alive!

How infinite - to be

Alive - two-fold - The birth I had

And this - besides, in - Thee!

A BOOK
 - Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away.
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

A FEW WORDS FROM EMILY DICKINSON
                               thank you, Jimmy W.

421
A Charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld -
The Lady dare not life her Veil
For fear it be dispelled -

But peers beyond her mesh -
And wishes - and denies -
Lest interview - annul a want
That image - satisfies -

The devil has changed his tune, as we've sunk further into the quicksand. He told the first people, "You will see what the gods see".  To the current people he says, "There's nothing to see".  And we're buying it. Again.

Happy birthday to my mother, Ann Kilcrin Ward, whom we lost 47 years ago this fall. Nevertheless, she lives on in me, and in my children. I see her interests springing up in them, and that delights me. In her journals and her poetry, and through my father, she is still teaching me. And I thank God that I get to look like her. And so do a couple of my kids. I will never lose her as long as I have them.

'Nuff said.

FROM "THE FOREST" - Ben Jonson

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not whithered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee!
             

"Yet there remains with us the feeling that all poetry and all intellectual life were once the handmaids of the holy, and have passed through the temple." - Jacob Burckhardt

LONG-LEGGED FLY
             - William Butler Yeats

That civilization may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream,
His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless tower be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently, if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practice a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon the silence.

That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on the scaffolding reclines
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
HIs hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon the silence.

"Ah Chet"
You bet.
There's no love song finer
Than the one that's sung
Through a breathy horn.

UP-HILL
       - Christina Rossetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
  Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
  From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
  A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
  You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other way-farers at night?
  Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
  They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
  Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
  Yea, beds for all who come.

"It all depends on the recognition of the gift. Everything does."

“In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive . . . But I think it is sometimes done—or very, very nearly done—in stories.”    - C.S. Lewis

   The word music means it's of a muse. But so are all the other fine arts. Coming from the Greeks, and all.....
   In the reality far deeper and higher than the one expressed by language, what we call music means something that has nothing to do with Greek mythology. It has to do with the arrangement of sound, and that's just scratching the surface of the depth and height of its meaning.
   I wonder what (not word......understanding?) for it is in that reality.......

HARP SONG OF THE DANE WOMEN
                                  - Rudyard Kipling

What is a woman that you forsake her
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in -
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you -
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn form our side and sicken -

 Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth , and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables -
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-boards falling hollow
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

Yeah, I'm in love. 

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

And that's enough.

So of course

Chris Botti, channeling Miles Davis.

💖Stay, funny Valentine, stay.......

WOW, Our first holiday at 602! And Valentine's Day is the perfect beginning. We're booked solid with reservations. The four-course dinner looks fantastic, and as each couple is seated, Raymond will present the lady with a flower. Dinner here tonight will be a night to remember! This is totally not my show, but I may need to go sit at the beautiful old bar, sip something adult, and watch the spectacle....

Happy Valentine's Day!

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY
                - Percy Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
  And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix forever
  With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
  All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle
  Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
  And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
  If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
  If thou kiss not me?

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

"Life is too short to spend it trying to live forever."
                                     - me

Wow, I want to read this! The cheapest used copy I can find is $102.00.  So I went to an online library and I'm in line to read it.  Wow.

Happy Wednesday!  💥

Got in a Barbra mood....

That cool half smile goes through me like a dirk.....
Leave it to me to be pierced by a smirk.
                                      mwk

My 10-year-old student is memorizing this. May it stay in his heart forever.

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
              - William Shakespeare

THE SOUND OF THE SEA
                    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush upward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

Daphne du Maurier. Richard Burton. Yum.

The Secret of the Fibonacci Sequence in Trees

Thanks to my friend JimmyB. for this revelation. Fascinating!

.......Since reading this article, I've been looking at trees differently. I have always loved them, for so many reasons, and especially with no leaves. Now I see them reaching for the sky, stretching, grasping, hungry for the warmth from above. So much like people.

   Writing poetry's not an easy thing. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's very hard.
   This morning, upon reading Mr. Kipling's piece, I had the germ of a profound idea sprout up. I've written it down so I won't forget, and I know that as the words I've written come back to mind during the day, new thoughts will be added to them - and I'd better stop whatever I'm doing and write them down too. But at some point, I will have to SIT down, clear my mind of all distractions, look like I'm doing absolutely nothing, concentrate on the ideas, add more, and arrange all of it into something deep and beautiful.  It's work. Takes some self discipline to turn the idea into art.

SONNET 116
  - William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks upon tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

from THE JUNGLE BOOKS
          - Rudyard Kipling

The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow -
They beg for coffee and sugar, they go where the white men go.
The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight;
They sell their furs to the trading post; they sell their souls to the white.
The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's crew;
Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few.
But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken -
Their spears are made of narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the Men!

ONE ART
   - Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places and names and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last of three houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And vaster.
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (WRITE IT!) like disaster.

WINTRY
   - mwk

The day is cold but the wine is mulled
And there's a fire in the stove.
A perfect day to wile away
With my books and love.

A savory stew for me and you,
A loaf of homemade bread
A piping tea for you and me
And words to fill my head.....

Using music to teach the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb.

Haha - my little five-year-old student, to whom her parents read old legends as bedtime stories, came to me with a little book she found in Hubby's office, A book of prayers, in Arabic. "Look!", she told me excitedly. "I found a book of runes!" 

Sweet memories of childhood, of my mother singing this..........  💖

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE
                                 - Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivory buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swain shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

   First weekend in the new restaurant. 602 Brew Pub is in the heart of downtown - IS the heart of downtown! It's where everyone goes to see and be seen, to enjoy an elegant dinner, or the game, or the music - or all three! Three venues in one - never a dull moment. And with Raymond there now, the crowds will grow. Because Everybody Loves Raymond. If you don't live nearby, I'm sorry you'll be missing out.
   I'm so excited about the new place - old place, actually. Built in the 1890s, full of history, this is where Raymond has belonged since he opened his first restaurant in Bastrop. Kudos to my Love. 💖

THE WAKING

        - Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. 

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the tree, but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And always near.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

"I hear my being dance from ear to ear."  Yes.

Oh, the fun, on a cool, gray, drippy afternoon, of taping the walls of a room, to paint the trim, while listening to the haunting melodies of Messianic Hebrew music, and sipping hot, slightly Irish coffee!  Life is good.

My question is......... what happened to that generation that made it see the world and themselves so differently than their predecessors?

Cool, gray Saturday morning. Surrounded by the aroma of bacon, toast and coffee. Breakfast with the finest mind I know, and a heated discussion of Kerouac and his crowd. Life is good.

If I were dead and buried
And I heard your voice
Beneath the sod
My heart of dust
Would still rejoice.
        - Dalton Trumbo

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” - Albert Camus

This is what Saturday morning sounded like while I was growing up. I can still smell the bacon and eggs.