A favorite...

Sitting on my front porch, at dawn on an October Sunday morning, bare feet crossed on an old pillow up on the front rail, watching the trees all around at peak color, with a fresh, hot cup of coffee, bowl of fruit, some cereal, listening to maybe Bach's Goldberg Variations performed by Glenn Gould, a couple of favorite books on my stand next to me, and reading or immersed in philosophical musings. The weather? No absolute preferences -- I love and appreciate all the variations in different ways.

Yours?

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 26, 2001

Answers

The smell of napalm in the morning.

-- George S Patton (JustKickin@ss.org), August 26, 2001.

Hi Eve, since you asked; a recent post from the FRL:

-----------

The storm clouds build in a clear hot August sky, lifting themselves to tower over the bayou in the northeast, their grumbling growing bolder with the approaching sunset. Cormorants and water turkeys fly low in groups of two and threes, or ragged V’s of a dozen, hurrying for the welcome of roosts in wetland grasses, the sparrows fleeing for the fencerows of rice fields which wave saffron heads in the late summer wind.

A dragonfly lites briefly on the weathered railing of the dock like a misplaced emerald brooch, it’s faceted eyes capturing myriad reflections of the old man awaiting the storm in the ending day. A small kingfisher, looking like a sassy kid with a 50’s haircut, comes to gawk from the lowest limb of a nearby cypress, tilting it’s head in wonder at the man unmoving among the rasping gusts of storm scented air.

The minnows living in the shade of the old dock suddenly scurry and leap at the water’s surface as an alligator gar slowly ripples it’s armored sides, sliding along the grassy line at water’s edge, it’s blunt snout open to show off rows of needle teeth, it’s eye squinting up at the man in the slanting light.

The storm comes closer with determination, and pushes a canopy of strange yellow-green which glows with it’s own light, and turns the dark waters into a sheet of undulating copper. Two purple martins, catching mosquitoes early rising from the long grass, dash down the water’s clearing, their pointed wings leaving swirling vortexes in the amber sky like a painting that Van Gogh never painted.

In the west, the sun pulls velvet-green covers over it’s face, and whistles the wind to bed. A flash startlingly intimate in it’s closeness takes all color away and leaves only lingering black-and-white images in the clap of it’s thunder. A late fishing boat hurries out on the bigger water, the red eye of the running light searching the deserted docks frantically for the particular shelter where it would spend the night, tied to faithful old pilings. And as tiny circles begin to give testimony of falling droplets, the old man still sits, bound to pilings of his own, set deep in the black gumbo of the bayou, his eyes too, darkening with the storm at the end of the day.

----------------------------------------------------------

-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), August 26, 2001.

Eve: What Lon said. Heh. I just went to the store and the cloud formations intrigued me to the point where someone honked. "Um...yeah...okay...this is real life here." We don't oftentimes get these strange cloud formations here in Texas, and it isn't every day that one sees a predator hawk soaring in the sky, but MOST times I pull over and watch.

In the solace of my home, I lay on the floor and look upon an oil painting that I purchased probably 20 years ago. It's a close-up of a Siberian Tiger, and I allow my mind to drift, and before I know it, I'm off on an expedition into unknown lands. The power of imagination is a great one. Have you ever "gotten into" visualization? It's a powerful force. My son and I used it when he had a mole removed from his leg. We held hands and "went off" on a journey to the rain forest.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 26, 2001.

Anita:

We don't oftentimes get these strange cloud formations here in Texas,

Chemtrails! That is why there are no raptors.

In the solace of my home, I lay on the floor and look upon an oil painting that I purchased probably 20 years ago. It's a close-up of a Siberian Tiger,

I have one just like it. Done on black velvet. It matches the one of Elvis. Got them at a 2 for 1 sale in the Walmart parking lot.

Sorry; couldn't help myself. *<)))

Best Wishes,,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 26, 2001.

Gee, Z. Please don't "cheapen" my "cat" picture by including it in those done on velvet. [It was done by an artist who specialized in such things, and caught my eye when I saw it in a gallery.] The card describing the author, etc. are LONG gone, but the impact of the oil lives on [for me.]

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 26, 2001.

The Tiger

William Blake

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

In the forest of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

When thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand forged thy dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dared its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did He smile his work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

In the forest of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 26, 2001.

Mountaineering in the morning. There is nothing like the moment when the sun finally comes up. -- most start up around midnight to 3 a.m. Dawn is the most welcome thing there is in that environment.

Morning is when your feet get warm and you can see the rest of the world. And, there is the psychological value of light. No matter how well things are going, trudging upwards in the cold and dark is unnverving. Nothing like watching the sun come up on Orizaba from 17,000 feet (or even from Rainier at 13,500).

-- E.H.Porter (just.wondering@about.it), August 26, 2001.

EH:

It is not only warm and light. The other is dry. You are never dry. Most people don't know how wet the tundra is. I have had more boots rot than I have worn out. Dry can be nice.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 26, 2001.

Eve, you understand.

Blake's Tiger a favorite but Wordsworth's http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1814wordsworth.html is better.

Wonder if those guys would own a PC?

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), August 26, 2001.

Thanks for some fascinating responses, guys. Several months ago I wrote an extended post on what happened to me on the roof of my house last winter while I was removing ice and snow -- a wonderful, peaceful, almost dreamlike moment I had there. I actually laid back and started singing "Up on the Roof" (a favorite) -- even got pretty emotional writing about it. But, alas -- I can't find the post.

Lon, what can I say? You made me feel like I was there. What imagery! It reminds me a little of James Taylor's "Copperline" where he just grabs you with lines thick with rich imagery -- pulls you back in time, down south to "Copperline".

E.H. -- it's beautiful to imagine, but you see, I'm kinda acrophobic...

Anita, I do visualizations of different kinds -- and it IS powerful! For example, I put myself back into the body of the girl in the Ecstasy painting I posted above, and THAT was very powerful. I see an attitude and outlook in her that reflects the way I am -- well, much of the time, anyway. And she kind of reminds me of me, the way years ago I'd stand on a high sand dune up in northern Michigan off lake Michigan and gaze up at the sky for long periods -- and almost go into a trance -- imagine myself taking off and flying all over, up into the clouds, down to the shore, across the whitecaps....

Lars and Carlos, thanks for the poetry; I'll try to get back to you on it -- you see, I like to take my time with poems, savoring each word and line.

Hey, Z -- take your velvet paintings over to my art thread and I'll try to have a critique all ready for you -- and, given your taste in art, maybe include a brief psychological evaluation for free. But rest assured that no matter what I write, somewhere in my message you'll see something like, "...better than Pollock, anyway." :)

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 27, 2001.

Eve:

So you are into Ren-wire [in the south wire is pronounced waar;:)]

Could be a thing from a previous generation.

For me I am with EH. I will be here for a while:

North Cascades

and here:

San Juans

Normal stuff. Visit with family, climb, boat. Good to get back to your roots. :)

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 27, 2001.

Not the right kind of solitude.

Hurtling down the highway alone in the middle of the night. Forgetting where I am, where I was going, how to get there. Dimly aware the speed is too high. My foot is too heavy to move off the gas and onto the brake. I need to make a decision soon, but what? All I have to do is leave things exactly the way they are at this moment, and in a short time there will be no more decisions. No more exhaustion. No more running. No more trying. I wonder if it will hurt. The effort to try one more time resurfaces faintly. It's enough to get my foot off the gas. I coast past my turnoff. I coast to a standstill on the highway, trying to remember what one does when one needs to go the other way. No one is coming. I back up a long way. I remember how to get home. The house is dark. I am too tired to get out of the truck, so I just sit there and cry. (Thank you for all of my blessings, Lord, and I'm taking a break just now.)

Some time before dawn I make it into the house, and the solitude is over.

-- helen (shelve@this.with.the.nonfiction), August 27, 2001.

Z: I awakened from a fairly sound sleep to a voice that called to me, saying, "Log on. Tell Z." So here I am at a little after 1am [normal zombie time for Helen, it seems.]

I guess my mind had been playing with the thought of velvet while I slept. I've done my share of sewing [I was never great at it], and did my share of oil painting [That must be another talent that skips a generation], but velvet is one of those "unforgiveable" fabrics. If one dozes off and sews the darts in the wrong place, that velvet fabric is going to have those little holes, no matter how carefully you pull the thread out. If one coughs and the paintbrush jerks, that velvet WILL show how you attempted to remove that stroke. Why DO we consider these velvet artists cheap showmen?

Perhaps it's because Lucky invited me to share in the "luau" at her place that this came to mind, but it sure came in strong and clear. She said, "Elvis will be there." I chuckled when she said that, and she replied, "I don't know who he is, but he's supposed to be coming."

I guess I can go back to sleep now.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 28, 2001.

Anita,

Does your pharmacist deliver down there?

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), August 28, 2001.

A little thread drift---Helen, your paragraph reminded me of a repeating dream that I used to have. In it, I am driving fast. The snow begins to fall thick and heavy. Soon it is a white-out. I am barreling along and can't see diddly. Very scary.

Anyone else have this dream or a similar dream? I'm not big on dream analysis but I'm sure this was a dream-state realization that I was hurtling ahead in life and didn't know where I was going.

Fortunately I don't have this dream anymore. Maybe I crashed.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 28, 2001.

Maybe you got to where you were going.

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), August 28, 2001.

helen, OMG -- we have to talk...

Z, nice; my favorite times can all be had in northern Michigan, though. I dunno -- maybe I don't know what I'm missing. Although I had a long moment of solitude once, when I was left deep in Mexico on a school camping trip. I'd gone for a morning stroll, they decided to leave early and didn't take a head count. I was 14. Walked the beach and nearby areas all day looking for at least some shade in a swimsuit top and cutoffs; no sunblock; and I burned so badly I pretty much couldn't move for a week. Much more to this one; just a teaser for now. :)

Lars -- tornado dreams for me. I must have had hundreds of 'em throughout my life. There was even a snow-laden one in the middle of winter -- out of a blue sky, no less. I was afraid, yet transfixed by its magnificent, awesome beauty. I think I awoke just before I was swept up in it.

Another moment I love...a mid-day blackening sky, say over a wheatfield, and not knowing just how it will all play out...

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 28, 2001.

JBT: Is there medicine for "I'm Channeling my mother" disease?

Lars: I read somewhere [years ago] that you're mentally stable if you wake up before whatever it was had a chance to kill you.

Eve: Probably 10 years ago or so, SO was working on contract in Cincinnatti. [which looks like it has too many n's or t's to be correct.] There was a concert that weekend, and he asked if I'd like to drive over and attend with him. I said, "Sure". I probably left on Friday evening after work. I wasn't on the road long before a snowstorm hit and I could barely see the road for all the "cooked spaghetti noodles" that I saw before me. I don't think I'd ever seen a snow like that. It really did look like spaghetti noodles falling from the sky.

I finally pulled into a roadside cafe. I hadn't realized that truckers had a language all their own, but by the time I left the cafe, I was thinking, "Where are the shakers?" I think my voice was lower, too.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 28, 2001.