Frau, You're So Groovy

I want you to know.

RIP Lou Reed

"That [strange] land of tolerable flowers"

A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra

BY RICHARD WILBUR

for Dore and Adja

Under the bronze crown

Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet   

      A serpent has begun to eat,

Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down

            Past spattered mosses, breaks

On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills   

      The massive third below. It spills

In threads then from the scalloped rim, and makes

            A scrim or summery tent

For a faun-ménage and their familiar goose.   

      Happy in all that ragged, loose

Collapse of water, its effortless descent

            And flatteries of spray,

The stocky god upholds the shell with ease,

      Watching, about his shaggy knees,

The goatish innocence of his babes at play;

            His fauness all the while

Leans forward, slightly, into a clambering mesh   

      Of water-lights, her sparkling flesh

In a saecular ecstasy, her blinded smile

            Bent on the sand floor

Of the trefoil pool, where ripple-shadows come

      And go in swift reticulum,

More addling to the eye than wine, and more

            Interminable to thought

Than pleasure’s calculus. Yet since this all   

      Is pleasure, flash, and waterfall,   

Must it not be too simple? Are we not

            More intricately expressed

In the plain fountains that Maderna set

      Before St. Peter’s—the main jet   

Struggling aloft until it seems at rest

            In the act of rising, until   

The very wish of water is reversed,

      That heaviness borne up to burst   

In a clear, high, cavorting head, to fill

            With blaze, and then in gauze   

Delays, in a gnatlike shimmering, in a fine

      Illumined version of itself, decline,

And patter on the stones its own applause?

            If that is what men are

Or should be, if those water-saints display   

      The pattern of our aretê,

What of these showered fauns in their bizarre,

            Spangled, and plunging house?

They are at rest in fulness of desire

      For what is given, they do not tire

Of the smart of the sun, the pleasant water-douse

            And riddled pool below,

Reproving our disgust and our ennui   

      With humble insatiety.

Francis, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

            Before the wealthy gate

Freezing and praising, might have seen in this   

      No trifle, but a shade of bliss—

That land of tolerable flowers, that state

            As near and far as grass

Where eyes become the sunlight, and the hand   

      Is worthy of water: the dreamt land

Toward which all hungers leap, all pleasures pass.

h/t Simcha Fisher

Shakey Graves - Word of Mouth / Bully's Lament

Down There By the Plane

Left: Heather King
Right:  Me, in sheer delight

King Krule - Out Getting Ribs

Friday Link Roundup - 9/6/13

Starting a new feature around here called the Friday Link Roundup, to be a sampler of my daily bread for the week.

Let's begin.

1. Excorcist Amorth: "Those who want war in Syria are instruments of the devil." (Spanish)

Rough translation excerpt:

'The Lord is a God of peace, wants peace, wants love between men, desires solidarity and support, so the rich help the poor. And Satan is the one who wants death and war,' he said.

In relation to the day of fasting, prayer and vigil called by Pope Francis for peace in Syria and the world on Saturday, September 7, the exorcist said without a doubt, 'annoy the devil, and not only him.' 'I prefer not to name names,' he added.

My family will be participating in the day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria, called by the Pope for the whole Church, that he refers to. If you're interested in participating too, Artur Rosman at Cosmos The In Lost has the quick & dirty on the Pope's call and prayer for peace in Syria, and Catholic rules of fasting.

Sidenote: ACI Prensa is run by the spiritual family belonging to the Sodalits, an order of consecrated laymen that several of my friends from college joined.


2. Those who have ears: one of my brother's bands, Low Times, just released an album of demos. Check 'em out, they're a rip-roaring good time.

This is actually the second album featuring the same demos, remixed and with some interludes and a few new songs, so I'm not sure if they're technically still kosher demos. Doesn't matter - they're worth as many hears as your ears can take.

3. Miley Cyrus, eh. But this is worth reading:

What everyone saw Miley doing on Sunday night was what I did almost every night from the age of 18 to 33. I added the Grey Goose when I was 28 and that was like a match to gasoline. ...

You wanna help Miley Cyrus? Go down to the closest Jr. High to you and start mentoring the students there. Chances are that they don’t have role models that aren’t on TV and their parents would appreciate the help.

 
4. On a related note:

There is no one who simply reacts, without also making choices.  There is no one who simply makes choices, without reacting to other people.  It’s almost as if we’re all in this together.

5. MS3TK meets Dark Dungeons

Heh! Who doesn't love a good Jack Chick joke?

Mike: Crimony! Doesn’t this girl have a home?
Crow: [In a girl's voice] I can’t mom, I’m trying to role-play all by myself.
Tract: … I’m fighting the Zombie …
Mike: Because it’s the only one.
Tom: Dibs on the zombie

6. Heather King: PEACE IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES

Peace in our relationships within ourselves, with our family, friends and neighbors, is the start of peace in the world.

It's in large part because I got sober that I have such great hope--more than hope, personal knowledge--that people can change. Because my own heart changed. And make no mistake about it, when your heart starts to change you have to do a whole unbelievable ton of ongoing work to help the change along. You have to make your life's work helping the change along. You have to ask a whole lot of people for help when you don't want to ask at all. You have to be willing to be humbled again and again, to feel awkward, to risk, to fail, to stretch, to suffer, to walk in darkness. To pray ceaselessly. To come face-to-face with your terrible wounds, your terrible selfishness, your terrible fear, your endless, absurd limitations. It is precisely because I am so damaged, so weak, so unbelievably easily triggered and prone to violence myself that I need the Sacraments.

I could never get along with some abstract ideal of peace. I need Christ, nailed to the Cross, to know that goodness, truth, beauty and peace have a price. I need his Body and Blood to even think of being willing to pay it.

7. GK Chesterton, "A Word"

The breaking of the girths of gold, the needs that creep and swell.
The strengthening hope, the dazing light, the deafening evangel,
Through kingdoms dead and empires damned, through changes without cease,
With earthquake, chaos, born and fed, rose,--and the word was "Peace."

_________

That's all folks!