tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11007732214054225392024-03-14T09:01:21.667-07:00tell me about your motherlimeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-44825042124168218112012-06-07T21:21:00.002-07:002012-06-07T21:24:53.221-07:00did you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind?<iframe width="424" height="328" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OFzXaFbxDcM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-46730775228613827372012-03-11T11:41:00.009-07:002012-03-11T13:28:10.381-07:00i'm completely operational and all my circuits are functioning normally<ul><li><b><i>Humans are unpredictable,</i></b> so they say. I'll miss you, mon petit robot. The existential concerns raised upon <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/11/when-robots-die?page=all" target="_blank">termination of human-robot relationships</a>.</li><br /><li><b>Perhaps</b> those scenarios in which one makes out with oneself will not be entirely limited to REM content. And lest we forget Billy Idol's oh-so-human anthem, this robotic torso ostensibly <a href="http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/japanese-robotic-torso-allows-you-to-hug-yourself/8853?tag=content;siu-container" target="_blank">allows one to hug oneself</a>.</li><br /><li><b>Alone in a nursing home</b> with no one but a robotic dog to snuggle. Sucks for you in regard to oxytocin, but at least you'll probably experience a <a href="http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/051212/12pet.b.htm" target="_blank">decrease in cortisol</a>.</li><br /><li><b>If cremation isn't creepy</b>, why is a <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/07/military-researchers-develop-corpse-eating-robots/" target="_blank">corpse-eating robot</a>? It should be noted that said robots were designed to refuel on any biomass, but perhaps there's a gruesome spin afoot.</li><br /><li><b>Of course</b> I'm going to include here the Radiolab episode <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/2011/may/31/" target="blank">Talking to Machines</a>. Unwittingly falling for a chatbot, robot shrinks, and more!</li><br /><li><b>Tintypes</b> for every taste. Edward Bateman's <a href="http://user.xmission.com/~capteddy/index.html" target="_blank">Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny</a>.</li></ul>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-70612040586423282932010-10-31T09:06:00.000-07:002010-10-31T09:16:10.533-07:00you dig up my liver, addendum<a href="http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/2/">20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World</a>. I am particularly fond of <i>l'appel du vide</i>, which describes the instinctive urge to jump from high places. Maybe I'm up in the night, but who hasn't experienced that? Sometimes English is starkly inadequate.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-15965923714572992952010-03-12T12:21:00.001-08:002012-03-11T13:22:40.655-07:00you dig up my liver<ul><br /><li><i><b>People everywhere tend</b> to describe powerful emotions metaphorically in terms of a part of the body. But in which part of the body and with what sensations people's emotions manifest themselves rather depends upon which <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2005/1526031.htm" target="_blank">language</a> they speak.</i></li><br /><li><b>Botox causes impairment</b> in the grokking of negative emotions? The source article is yet to be published in <i>Psychological Science</i>, but here's a masses-friendly scoop in (urp) <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/charting-the-depths/201001/botox-treatment-slows-perception-negative-emotions" target="_blank">Psychology Today</a>.</li><br /><li><b>Having experienced</b> the usefulness of temporary Stoicism, while acknowledging that it has been a tool rather than a preferred state of affairs, I am nonetheless surprised at some of my own internal railing at Nussbaum's arguments. <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/18/books/the-philosophy-of-love.html?pagewanted=1" target="_blank">Nussbaum here</a> counters an age-old view espoused by Stoics, Christians and Kantians alike: emotions are disruptive and subversive to reason, they arise from parochial needs and interests and therefore the life well lived is the life in which the things of this world are left behind for a higher sphere beyond accident, pain and desire. On the contrary, Nussbaum writes, human beings enter the world dependent on objects beyond their control, most notably their mothers, and emotional development is a response to this fact....In her ''neo-Stoicism,'' the pain and partiality of emotion are a value-laden mode of thinking that must be accepted if we are to create a just and compassionate world.</i></li><br /><li><b>Babies</b>: Cute little blobs of potential, or active participants in relationship?</li></ul><object width="424" height="328"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/apzXGEbZht0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/apzXGEbZht0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="424" height="328"></embed></object>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-72409638157644786902010-01-06T07:01:00.000-08:002010-01-06T07:03:23.529-08:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10px;"><object width="424" height="328"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pSzTPGlNa5U&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pSzTPGlNa5U&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="424" height="328"></embed></object></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre;font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">thanks, b.u.</span><br /></span></span><br /></div>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-83495280070048592422009-12-29T13:29:00.000-08:002009-12-29T13:48:31.976-08:00To live at all is miracle enough<blockquote><i><a href="http://richarddawkins.net/articles/91" target="_blank">We are going to die</a>, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. <a href="http://richarddawkins.net/articles/91" target="_blank">Richard Dawkins</a></i></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">thanks, a.p.</span></blockquote>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-40462634160547535732009-12-27T10:01:00.000-08:002009-12-27T15:01:35.585-08:00attachment theory, happiness, and larry david?"Happiness" seems to be the topic du jour, and soon one will be able to watch Alanis Morissette, Larry David, and others discussing the finer points. PBS will premiere <a href="http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/series">This Emotional Life</a>, a three-part series, on the 4th of January. I am pleased to note that the first episode looks to be heavy on attachment theory. Also pleased that the so-called "negative" emotions will not be ignored. Pleased, simply, that an entire series (albeit a brief one) will be devoted to emotion. I concede that including celeb banter will, no doubt, make this complex topic friendlier to the masses. Finally, both pleased and apprehensive about the series' treatment of pop psych & self-help. I won't deny having high hopes & suppose I'll be weighing in as the episodes are aired.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-40888472743415023372009-12-17T00:00:00.000-08:002009-12-16T23:05:36.817-08:00j'aime le parfum d'odeur, j'aime l'odeur de parfum<ul><li><b>Air</b>, effluvium, efflux, essence, flavor, graveolent, musk, noctuolent, osmagogue, perfume, redolence, scenting, scenty, snuff, stink, tincture...</li><br /><li><b>Space smells funny.</b> Astronauts have struggled to describe the <a href="http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090326-sts119-space-smell.html" target="_blank">smell of space</a>: "burnt gunpowder or the ozone smell of electrical equipment." This I find far from satisfying. So I'm trying to imagine what it might smell like based on, well, <a href="http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=282203" target="_blank">what it's made of</a>. Which brings happy strings of thought and consequent anticipation of proper, lovely fluffy blanketed & pajama'd sleep.</li><br /><li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081105-odor-prints.html" target="_blank">No one else</a> smells like you.</li><br /><li><b>I love a good underarm</b> as much as the next gal, but perhaps not piped through a monstrous dental apparatus. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26elas.html?_r=1" target="_blank">An exhibit</a> I'd travel to see, nonetheless.</li><br /><li><b>Schizophrenic sense of smell</b>. There <i>did</i> seem to be a smells-are-weird theme among the late night schizophrenic hotline callers. Unrelated or not, people with certain flavors of schizophrenia may have <a href="http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/002875.html" target="_blank">deficits in smell identification</a>.</li><br /><li><b>My cat's breath</b> smells like cat food. <i>We demonstrate for the first time that most women, and some men, deliberately smell their partners' clothing when they are apart. </i>[<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">McBurney, M.L., Shoup, S.A. & Streeter, D.H. (2006). Olfactory Comfort and Attachment Within Relationships. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, 2954-2963. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00420.x]</span></li><br /><li><b>More interesting</b> (and not so patent that one wonders why bother collect data at all), though no one could successfully feign surprise here: The ladies possess <a href="http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/body_odor" target="_blank">superior sniffers.</a> Furthermore (despite suspicion about methodology & interpretation), who could deny the chin-stroking "hmmmm" factor of a positive correlation between <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2009/10/13/correlation-found-between-sense-of-smell-and-emotional-sensitivity/" target="_blank">emotional sensitivity and sense of smell</a>? </li><br /><li><i>If you have <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19144" target="_blank">one appetite</a>, he thought, you have them all.</i></li></ul>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-25628157894020270102009-12-11T08:42:00.001-08:002009-12-13T11:44:31.858-08:00baryshnikov / cage<object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://youtube.com/v/XIZ0KLLzs5U&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://youtube.com/v/XIZ0KLLzs5U&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="357" width="424"></embed></object>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-36669095014565543022009-10-15T15:41:00.000-07:002009-10-15T16:02:54.621-07:00much less creepy than slim goodbody...<object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hBPafUYYJe4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hBPafUYYJe4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="357" width="424"></embed></object><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.pilobolus.com/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 424px; height: 289px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7hAe0rHQ25RGbwAO3yxU52ATC76-jscEE_LcCFHMiqvZjHuAmKHDEx4eGmWPEVCL3fhzRYYsLEgLbBgvD7lvk8hxeyExQgwm9xwkZAde7ICWp2UbEGsjqoamF_kBlJC2HJ5b_oK_3mLw/s320/n21895588638_763572_9167.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392961595848201554" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.pilobolus.com/"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 424px; height: 588px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHGyQFHvqCY2ztfG4_frK9Hg4iUMP-pKtRnU6AhLMdBw7fGxP-Eidy1YcnVnKdFkNrbGimClAo-PGYWafnhxu3TU5tk3nl6fLBGrVXqJgH4H2HwsTwq_GSEUY8K5pu_NxlJMp3GvMIlo/s400/redtights.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392965259989456930" /></a> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;">...and i get to see them perform next month. </span><br /></div>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-37842446155073358892009-10-12T12:04:00.000-07:002009-10-12T12:06:34.011-07:00Waitby Galway Kinnell<br /><br /><br />Wait, for now.<br />Distrust everything, if you have to.<br />But trust the hours. Haven't they<br />carried you everywhere, up to now?<br />Personal events will become interesting again.<br />Hair will become interesting.<br />Pain will become interesting.<br />Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.<br />Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,<br />their memories are what give them<br />the need for other hands. And the desolation<br />of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness<br />carved out of such tiny beings as we are<br />asks to be filled; the need<br />for the new love is faithfulness to the old.<br /><br />Wait.<br />Don't go too early.<br />You're tired. But everyone's tired.<br />But no one is tired enough.<br />Only wait a while and listen.<br />Music of hair,<br />Music of pain,<br />music of looms weaving all our loves again.<br />Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,<br />most of all to hear,<br />the flute of your whole existence,<br />rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-53548160453392555682009-10-06T07:44:00.000-07:002009-10-07T14:03:59.471-07:00dope!Sweet, sweet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine" target="_blank">dopamine</a>. It's what makes new love feel so intense, so important, sometimes even plunging new lovers into pseudo-psychosis. It's why cocaine feels good. It's the big cheese in addiction [<i>some would say one could develop an addiction to cheese via the dopamine/reward system</i>]. It's also involved with motor control pathologies such as Parkinson's disease, but that's a topic for some other blog. For your reading pleasure, a selection of dopaminergic gems:<br /><ul><li>Dude! It's a freaking <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol324/issue5933/images/large/324_1441_F1.jpeg" target="_blank"> visible synaptic vesicle!</a> The <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5933/1441" target="_blank">report</a> (with images and a cool, techie video), and a lay friendly-ish <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2009/05/basking_in_the_dopamine_glow.php" target="_blank">play-by-play</a>. </li><br /><li>Smartass protazoans and horny, <a href="http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/november5/sapolsky-110509.html" target="_blank">suicidal rats</a>.</li><br /><li>Finally giving attention to a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=DH8iEOvHoTgC&source=gbs_navlinks_s" target="_blank">book</a> I purchased five years ago. Patience, please with the long turns: Dopamine is involved in the impact of early social interaction on the brain structures associated with emotion regulation (of course there are other factors, but this post is dopamine-centric). <p><br />The author (Schore) suggests that early maternal deprivation shapes the development of actual brain structures. You know, the brains we'll have for the rest of our lives. [Maternal deprivation = Infant stress that goes unregulated by the mother/primary caregiver - which doesn't have to look like an emaciated orphan rocking back and forth in his lonely crib, but any significant lack of attunement and responsiveness to an infant's emotional cues. The implications of some common parenting practices should thus be of concern.]</p><p>Implications for later functioning may include impairments in attention and focus, hyperaggression, and other emotional dysregulation (possibly including depressive and/or manic states, anxiety, substance abuse - which is, after all, exogenous emotional regulation -- "self-medication" if you like). </p><p>Even interpretations of later social interaction can be impaired: 1) failing to perceive the salience of social interactions, or 2) misinterpreting them. I'll explain: 1) Your friend's face bears markers of sadness, but you are unable to perceive them and thus cannot respond to his/her sadness, and are baffled as to why s/he is upset with you. 2) You tell your spouse/girlfriend/lover that you are angry with her. She asks for clarification. She may well want to understand you with the loveliest of intentions (or may simply be clueless and need some assistance), but the warped "lenses" through which you view certain interpersonal interactions leads you to believe she is attacking you, and, if you are dating a shrink, that she must be using her voodoo shrink powers to psychoanalyze you, inaccurately, and without your consent. [<i>Don't get any ideas; this is a hypothetical situation used here for elaborative purposes.</i>]</p></li><br /><li>A peculiar feeling: Mussels and their <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071018-mussels-stick.html" target="_blank">dopamine glue</a>? </li></ul>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-55196760529840504552009-10-06T07:11:00.001-07:002009-10-06T07:27:19.158-07:00take the stairs<object width="424" height="250"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ivg56TX9kWI&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ivg56TX9kWI&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="424" height="250"></embed></object><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">thanks, r.t.</span></div>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-48362499857456135172009-10-06T06:53:00.000-07:002009-10-06T07:06:39.140-07:00disorientation tastes like spinach...and it could make you <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090915174455.htm">smarter</a>.<br /><p><br /><BLOCKQUOTE><i>...the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," Proulx explained. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns.</i></BLOCKQUOTE>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-75238583548172207722009-09-26T15:44:00.000-07:002009-10-06T07:31:48.014-07:00sagan & hawking, a lump in my throat<object height="328" width="424"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zSgiXGELjbc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zSgiXGELjbc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="328" width="424"></embed></object><br /><p></p><p><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">thanks l.</span></p>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-65870352734078839622009-08-31T13:35:00.000-07:002009-09-08T08:14:12.533-07:00calming visual representation of relationships among scientific paradigms; irritating failure of the tiny laptop monitor<script src="http://seadragon.com/embed/4rn.js?width=auto&height=400px"></script>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-1041419355696269402009-08-28T07:54:00.000-07:002009-09-08T08:18:50.926-07:00found<ul><li>Rendered in shades most gentle to the eye, including octopi. Volume III: <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/animalkingdomarr03cuvi#page/n3/mode/2up" target="_blank">Mollusca-Annelides-Crustacea-Arachnides and Insecta.</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5922" target="_blank">A Ubiquity of Sparrows</a></li><br /><li>Unremarkable site design (rather lack thereof), but I shan't shoot the messenger. <a href="http://accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com/2009/08/american-russian-cold-war-propaganda.html" target="_blank">Cold war</a> propaganda (my favorite is the cautionary to Russian musicians), <a href="http://accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com/2009/08/czech-poster-art-rocks.html" target="_blank">Czech</a> poster art, and newsy <a href="http://accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com/2009/08/twins-triplets-death-and-kidnappings.html" target="_blank">unsettling ephemera</a>.</li></ul>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-63452200747921532352009-08-11T11:08:00.000-07:002009-09-08T08:16:39.888-07:00heavy paper, moments reconstructed in memory, bergamot, the pause at the end of an exhale<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/fashion/09blogfree.html?_r=1">a life less posted</a>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-6998023005225495242009-08-10T12:41:00.001-07:002009-09-26T15:52:15.849-07:00I Am Sitting in a Room<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p><object height="350" width="425"><param value="http://youtube.com/v/Jfssj80oNuM" name="movie"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://youtube.com/v/Jfssj80oNuM" height="350" width="425"></embed></object></p><p>by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Lucier">Alvin Lucier</a></p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Lucier"><br /></a></p><span style="font-size:78%;">thanks B.</span></div>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-14068074868576957952009-04-30T18:17:00.000-07:002009-04-30T18:18:18.193-07:00Happiness<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><p>by Jane Kenyon</p><p>There's just no accounting for happiness, <br />or the way it turns up like a prodigal<br />who comes back to the dust at your feet<br />having squandered a fortune far away.</p><p>And how can you not forgive?<br />You make a feast in honor of what<br />was lost, and take from its place the finest<br />garment, which you saved for an occasion<br />you could not imagine, and you weep night and day<br />to know that you were not abandoned,<br />that happiness saved its most extreme form<br />for you alone.</p><p>No, <span style="color:008000;">happiness is the uncle you never <br />knew about</span>, who flies a single-engine plane<br />onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes<br />into town, and inquires at every door<br />until he finds you asleep midafternoon<br />as you so often are during <span style="color:000080;">the unmerciful<br />hours of your despair</span>.</p><p>It comes to the monk in his cell.<br />It comes to the woman sweeping the street<br />with a birch broom, to the child<br />whose mother has passed out from drink.<br />It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing<br />a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,<br />and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots<br />in the night.<br /><span style="color:800000;">It even comes</span> to the boulder<br />in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,<br />to rain falling on the open sea, <br /><span style="color:800000;">to the wineglass, weary of holding wine</span>.</p></span>limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-48449939671737314612009-04-28T21:37:00.000-07:002009-04-28T21:38:17.661-07:00Thanksby W.S. Merwin<br /><br />Listen <br />with the night falling we are saying thank you <br />we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings <br />we are running out of the glass rooms <br />with our mouths full of food to look at the sky <br />and say thank you <br />we are standing by the water thanking it <br />smiling by the windows looking out <br />in our directions <br /><br />back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging <br />after funerals we are saying thank you <br />after the news of the dead <br />whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you<br /><br />over telephones we are saying thank you <br />in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators <br />remembering wars and the police at the door <br />and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you <br />in the banks we are saying thank you <br />in the faces of the officials and the rich<br />and of all who will never change<br />we go on saying thank you thank you<br /><br />with the animals dying around us <br />our lost feelings we are saying thank you <br />with the forests falling faster than the minutes <br />of our lives we are saying thank you <br />with the words going out like cells of a brain <br />with the cities growing over us <br />we are saying thank you faster and faster <br />with nobody listening we are saying thank you <br />we are saying thank you and waving <br />dark though it islimeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-24755187393849848492009-04-25T14:40:00.000-07:002009-04-25T14:41:46.730-07:00By Reader RequestHomage to Roy Orbison<br /><br />by Irene McKinney<br /><br />If I can touch the voice of Roy Orbison<br />singing "only in dreams" and if I can<br /><br />swallow the sweet pudding of his song<br />then why shouldn't a piece of music<br /><br />fill in for human contact? Maybe it does<br />for a second or two, but life is long, or we are,<br /><br />in our minds, and the singing we do gives us<br />a taste and not a meal. And what would<br /><br />happen without it? Would we reconcile<br />since there would be no contrast, no lift of<br /><br />Roy's dulcet tones to guide us up to immense<br />heights of one-pointed ecstasy? So why not sing<br /><br />as hard and deep as we can? Why not feel out<br />the song-nerve and trace its trajectory?<br /><br />I think that in the voice's rise<br />and wail we finally wake and hear the voice<br /><br />of an angel. "Sweet dreams baby" Roy throbs.<br />If so, we go past abrasions and promontories<br /><br />of broken stony sounds, and emerge up here<br />where the guitar is a guru, and where Roy's<br /><br />sweetness is the rule and his sense of form <br />shapes up this shard-filled life. "Move on<br /><br />down the line." So there, do it, dance in<br />a strange way and who cares. When the<br /><br />listeners judge by their sweetness gauge<br />and their sucked-in breath at "crying over<br /><br />you," will anyone care that he dyed his<br />black hair and had false teeth? I thrash<br /><br />and shout like a teenage girl for the duration<br />of the song. "I got a woman mean as she<br /><br />can be." (I think that's me.) He told me<br />that anything I wanted he would<br />give it to me, and you know? He did.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-77806752374093827462009-04-23T18:15:00.000-07:002009-04-23T18:16:11.132-07:00Jamesianby Thom Gunn<br /><br />Their relationship consisted<br />In discussing if it existed.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-29011330907426249522009-04-20T11:59:00.001-07:002009-04-20T11:59:51.603-07:00Transit of Venusby Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon<br /><br />The actors mill about the party saying rhubarb<br />because other words do not sound like conversation.<br />In the kitchen, always, one who's just discovered<br />beauty, his mouth full of whiskey and strawberries.<br />He practices the texture of her hair with his tongue;<br />in her, five billion electrons pop their atoms. Rhubarb<br />in electromagnetic loops, rhubarb, rhubarb, the din increases.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1100773221405422539.post-16130640842247264422009-04-15T07:45:00.000-07:002009-04-15T08:00:46.648-07:00Sensationalismby Larry Levis<br /><br />In Josef Koudelka's photograph, untitled & with no date<br />Given to help us with history, a man wearing <br />Dark clothes is squatting, his right hand raised slightly,<br />As if in explanation, & because he is talking,<br />Seriously now, to a horse that would be white except<br />For its markings--the darkness around its eyes, muzzle,<br />Legs & tail, by which it is, technically, a gray, or a dapple gray,<br />With a streak of pure white like heavy cream on its rump.<br />There is a wall behind them both, which, like most walls, has<br />No ideas, & nothing to make us feel comfortable. . . .<br />After a while, because I know so little, &<br />Because the muted sunlight on the wall will not change,<br />I begin to believe that the man's wife and children<br />Were shot & thrown into a ditch a week before this picture<br />Was taken, that this is still Czechoslovakia, & that there is<br />The beginning of spring in the air. That is why<br />The man is talking, & as clearly as he can, to a horse.<br />He is trying to explain these things,<br />While the horse, gray as those days at the end<br />Of winter, when days seem lost in thought, is, after al,<br />Only a horse. No doubt the man knows people he could talk to:<br />The bars are open by now, but he has chosen<br />To confide in this gelding, as he once did to his own small <br />Children, who could not, finally, understand him any better.<br />This afternoon, in the middle of his life & in the middle <br />Of this war, a man is trying to stay sane.<br />To stay sane he must keep talking to a horse, its blinders <br />On & a rough snaffle bit still in its mouth, wearing<br /><br />Away the corners of its mouth, with one ear cocked forward<br /> to listen,<br />While the other ear tilts backward slightly, inattentive,<br />As if suddenly catching a music behind it. Of course, <br />I have to admit I have made all of this up, & that<br />It could be wrong to make up anything. Perhaps the man <br /> is perfectly<br />Happy. Perhaps Koudelka arranged all of this<br />And then took the picture as a way of saying<br />Good-bye to everyone who saw it, & perhaps Josef Koudelka was<br />Only two years old when the Nazis invaded Prague.<br />I do not wish to interfere, Reader, with your solitude--<br />So different from my own. In fact, I would take back everything<br />I've said here, if that would make you feel any better, <br />Unless even that retraction would amount to a milder way<br />Of interfering; & a way by which you might suspect me<br />Of some subtlety. Or mistake me for someone else, someone<br />Not disinterested enough in what you might think<br />Of this. Of the photograph. Of me.<br />Once, I was in love with a woman, & when I looked at her<br />My face altered & took on the shape of her face,<br />Made thin by alcohol, sorrowing, brave. And though<br />There was a kind of pain in her face, I felt no pain<br />When this happened to mine, when the bones<br />Of my own face seemed to change. But even this <br />Did not do us any good, &, one day,<br />She went mad, waking in tears she mistook for blood,<br />And feeling little else except for this concern about bleeding<br /><br />Without pain. I drove her to the hospital, & then,<br />After a few days, she told me she had another lover. . . . So,<br />Walking up the street where it had been raining earlier,<br />Past the darkening glass of each shop window to the hotel,<br />I felt a sensation of peace flood my body, as if to cleanse it,<br />And thought it was because I had been told the truth. . . .<br /> But, you see,<br />Even that happiness became a lie, & even that was taken<br />From me, finally, as all lies are. . . . Later,<br />I realized that maybe I felt strong that night only <br />Because she was sick, for other reasons, & in that place.<br />And so began my long convalescence, & simple adulthood. <br />I never felt that way again, when I looked at anyone else;<br />I never felt my face change into any other face.<br />It is a difficult thing to do, & so maybe<br />It is just as well. That man, for instance. He was a <i>saboteur</i>.<br />He ended up talking to a horse, & hearing, on the street<br />Outside that alley, the Nazis celebrating, singing, even.<br />If he went mad beside that wall, I think his last question<br />Was whether they shot his wife and children before they threw him<br />Into the ditch, or after. For some reason, it mattered once,<br />If only to him. And before he turned into paper.limeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09778969220804483208noreply@blogger.com1