The slow reads digest. A free, once-in-a-while ezine affording slow passages from here to there.

everydayandeverynight.com

There's that story in Talmud about planting a carob tree that will only bear fruit in 70 years, long after the planter is gone. What is the motivation for the planter? Someone now deceased had planted trees for him. He's returning the favor.

Planting this linden required less patience, though certainly some. And just like parenting, there are gratifications at every step in the development. My ten-year old son already hangs off its branches. Our Dog Boaz urinates on it. I lean on it and take photos of it.

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Shadows and Symbols

We see here a personal connection between God and each of his stars. We see him not just having created them (past tense) but leading and ordering them still (present tense). There is a connection of call and response from him to these great balls of fire in the heavens. And he’s keeping score: he knows where each one is at all times.

This is not the God who can easily be boxed into the many categories and thoughts of humankind. And this is definitely not a boring or mass-marketed Supreme Being. This is the one who demonstrates a fireworks of creativity and artistry.

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my gorgeous somewhere

From behind cold tables, men back      out
without words. Beat clean and   purple-black,
they relinquish certain prizes:
panties, condom wrappers
and other residual proofs of   conquest.

[Here's the whole poem.]

mole

A student reported that he once said to C.S. Lewis, "the amount of really great poetry is very small." At which Lewis snapped, in some irritation, "The amount that can be read with pleasure and profit is enormous."

I agree. I don't have much patience with the idea of "greatness" in the arts, which I think does more harm than good.

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Florescence

She wears silk dresses in emerald   and
lapis lazuli spun from the peacock’s   tail.
Sometimes I imagine the threads   tugging,
pulling her back and hold on tight.

[Here's the whole poem.]

the cassandra pages

The drive west last week, across Vermont and into New York, was one of the most ethereal and beautiful trips I've ever made over that route. I traveled in silence, in the early morning, alone. The clouds still hung low over the Green Mountains, and a hazy fog persisted in the flatter pastures on the border between the two states south of Lake George - it would burn off later in the morning and expose the extreme heat we've had since. But in those early morning hours, the mountains and farmland were dreamy and quiet and empty as the space in which I was traveling.

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On the Slow Train

What I had learned was folk etymology--what Wikipedia calls "A commonly held misunderstanding of the origin of a particular word, a false etymology." Folk etymologies are usually more interesting than the actual word origin. Sometimes folk etymologies can unfairly cast a bad light on some perfectly innocent words, such as picnic, or phrases such as rule of thumb. But for the most part, folk etymologies can be a lot of fun.

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Creature of the Shade

But as soon as I asked it I knew she wouldn't be able to answer. I was looking for something like "north" or "west," but she, despite being a transport management professional, just didn't use such words to organize her sense of a city. She used words like "green building" and "flagpole." She could speak of left and right, but these narrative markers don't help you unless you're already on the right course.

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not native fruit

I've just begun a new book by Susan Griffin, "Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy." So far, it lives up to Griffin's standards for exquisite reasoning and prose. She leads us through the labyrinth of her own inner experience where it meets the outer world of both history and current events. At certain points of connection with current events I remember feeling exactly what she expresses. I take it that the inference of the book's title is that, just as in the Bible story when Jacob wrestles with the angel of the Lord and will not let him go until the angel blesses him, we must now wrestle with the angel of democracy, and not let him go.

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Everydayandeverynight.com

I'm launching my journal again for 5768/2008.

In this omer journal, I take a Jewish-mythic point-of-view which presumes that I, personally, together with all Jews past, present and future, left Egypt and stood at Mt. Sinai together. This perspective challenges each Jew to join the Jewish experience and not be limited by the actual historical time period in which one lives. This perspective places human imagination at the center of religious engagement.

Our leaving Egypt is only the beginning of our path to liberation. Free from the bonds of Pharaoh, we seek a better, more human life. We begin this journey by the shores of the Nile. We look back in awe at a sea now appearing normal after having miraculously parted. But what now?

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via negativa

It was my birthday, and I had been given a live shrew in a box — not for a pet, but simply to admire and to photograph. I was a little disappointed at first that I didn’t get any real presents, but the shrew was an admirably fierce little creature who attacked anything thrust in its direction, and I soon appreciated the wisdom of the gesture: loaning me a fully wild creature, something that can never be owned or controlled. The idea that anyone can own anything — it’s such a delusion, isn’t it? But that’s what drives this mania of consumption imperiling the earth.

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Mole

Darling,
The rain you sent was mixed with snow.
I could not tell which between
The snowflakes and the apple blossom
On the black sidewalk; I woke and you were

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The Middlewesterner

You see what you see. Don't beat yourself up too badly about it. Tomorrow the sky will be something different, a blue sheerness of petticoat, a shiny muslin, a white gauze.

Metaphor takes you away; it doesn't bring you back. You come back on your own if you get here at all.

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Lekshe's Mistake

Place
is not substance, not
a point in space,
more a point in time
when the conjunction of mind
and matter create
an experience
that
makes us believe there is a spot
to which we can return.

[Here's the whole poem.]

Marcia Bonta

Dragoo, affectionately referred to as “Skunk Man,” has little or no sense of smell, so as a mephitologist he can easily study and live with skunks. When he wants one for his research, he chases it down, picks it up by its tail, and is liberally sprayed, because, as skunk expert Richard G. Van Gelder discovered back in the 1960s, you can only grab a skunk by the tail and escape being sprayed if you surprise the animal. Otherwise, it is able to evert its anus and expose the nipples from its huge and squishy scent sacs, which are then ready to fire even if you do pick it up by its tail.

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Dick Jones' Patteran Pages

Your soft clock
scatters seconds like
peas on a drum.

A feather pulse
stutters in your
neck.

[Here's the whole poem.]

Slow Reader

Aubrey is the guru of the Shelf Monkeys, a secret ‘book club’ to which Thomas gets invited. “Some books are simply a waste of paper, a waste of effort both to write and to read.” The flaming cover of this novel is sufficient clue to the book burnings that ensue, inspired by Fahrenheit 451. Books burnings, by the literate?! Only for books deemed not worthy by the members’ code. “We meet, we debate, we burn. It’s therapy, really.” Things escalate quickly and darkly, Lord of the Flies style, and Thomas is compelled to choose between his loyalties to his friends, literature, ethics, and his sanity.

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blogroll

Blaugustine
Box Elder
The Cassandra Pages
Crack Skull Bob
Creature of the Shade
Daintee
Dialogues with Silence
Dick Jones's Patteran Pages
Durable Pigments
Empreintes
Everydayandeverynight.com
Feathers of Hope
Florescence
Fragments from Floyd
Frizzy Logic
Heraclitean Fire
Hoarded Ordinaries
In a Dark Time
Irishmutt
Iron Monkey
Ivy Is Here
Lekshe's Mistake
Listening After Dark
Marcia Bonta
Mariachristina
The Middlewesterner
Mole
My Gorgeous Somewhere
9 to 5 Poet
Not Native Fruit
On the Slow Train
Outside the Lines
Paula's House of Toast
Qarrtsiluni
The Rain in My Purse
Sage Said So
Scenes from a Slow-Moving Train
Shadow Cabinet
Shadows and symbols
Simply Wait
Slow Reading
Spoil
Stony Moss
Tasting Rhubarb
3rd House Party
Tumblewords
Two Dishes but to One Table
Under the Fire Star
Velveteen Rabbi
Verbal Privilege
Via Negativa