Hughlings Himwich

Time 2020-11-02 07:03:10

Web Name: Hughlings Himwich

WebSite: http://www.hhimwich.com

ID:102213

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Hughlings,Himwich,

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The knowledge of reality is always in some measure a secret knowledge. It is a kind of death. -- Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 482 Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth. Photo by Ber HimwichThe ScarecrowSome say I am wise.O what a joke!Nothing like So-crates,Not even a pose.Silence is goldenOr so the rhyme goes,Yet I will do nothingBut sing with the crows. I see you now, child, wrapped in vines and visions,happy to find a place to hide, laughing hoping someone will find you.Don t call out. No one will come.Let the wind be your voice, just as you hear mine now.It s autumn and the leaves rustle alive for one last song before winter. Someone will hear the wind laughing in the trees.They will see you in all your glory. © Leonora; all rights reservedLa forêt dénudée « Forêts, montagnes, ne sont pas seulement des concepts, sont notre expérience et notre histoire, une part de nous-mêmes. »F. Nietzsche, philosophe allemand (1844-1900) in Humain trop humain; frag. posthumes. © Leonora; all rights reservedPerles de pluie (Ruellia Smplex) © Leonora; all rights reservedPrismes © Leonora; all rights reservedEquinoxe © Leonora; all rights reservedElargir son horizon*** (..)La mer se mêle avec la merMélange ses lacs et ses flaquesSes idées de mouettes et d écumesSes rêves d algues et de cormoransAux lourds chrysanthèmes bleus du largeAux myosotis en touffes sur les murs blancs des îlesAux ecchymoses de l horizon, aux phares éteintsAux songes du ciel impénétrable (..)(Jean-Michel Maulpoix, poète français né en 1952, in Dans l Interstice ) Leonora on Flickr. Be brave! No more sneaking around, no more affectation!What great soul said that? Yours, of course! One soulseeks another, that s how it knows where to go.You and I the same, same with wings and wind. if you keep hiding, you may proveyou don t exist at all, no hands no feet, not those beautiful eyes that catch the sky(yes, your eyes are beautiful. It s never a lie.)no joy or grief, just an echo that dims. Listen! the ringing in your ear is the tolling of your soul:it s time, it s time, it s time, it s damn well time already!Enough of all this hiding only to lose, a soulonly knows itself as the moon --the one becomes two. The less we fear and sooner than nowthe more we can dance and dance our own tune. Let the kite go and be where it goes.That s poetry! It s like falling in love, Hey there, beautiful, where ya goin?I m going with you. (Can you tell I wrote this on a wish of a prayer? It comes as it goes and foregoes all despair.) Both poetry and mathematics are forms of madness, the latter well disguised by what appears to be its rational method and application, e.g. facing west we plot a course to the third star to the left of that cottonwood where we pledge that someday we will travel. We are eagerly triangulating when a poet comes by and we dazzle him with our mathematical machinations. He seems for a moment unsteady on his feet and asks us to sit with him. We do, feeling sorry for our hyperbolics, but then, as if our diverging equations had actually driven him crazy, he begins to spout utter nonsense. He tells us we have already arrived where we seek to go and that the leaves are laughing at us. “Can you not see how the descending darkness of the evening is becoming one with the shadow of the tree?” We politely acknowledge the plain truth of what he says and, using that same darkness as an excuse, say we have to go. As we are walking off, we look back and then stare at each other: there’s no one there. We return to where we thought he had been and now, a little unsteady ourselves, sit again beneath the cottonwood, laughing ourselves into each other’s arms. O he’s still there alright, standing stillAs though it were the dead of nightNo moon or stars or morning firecould burn away. O, he’s there.He sings, we listen, and in our sleepWe wake to find him so close to handWe could touch him if we dared.There is no fear like fear of life. From where I sitI can hear the rainAnd see the desert bloomIt’s but a roomLike yours,On a street like yoursWhat we’ve doneTo each otherCannot last forever Outside a girl playsIn the rainAnd gathers flowersShe sees me watchingAnd laughs,She could be cryingShe’s rooted thereAs I am here,Each alone together How comes the rain?There is no skyAnd yet the moon is in my eye.What I see is a girl in braidsWho’s lost cold wet afraid.She calls out to all who are alone.I know her voice. It is my own.This is not a happy poemYet it may blossom in a storm,A flower marking every stone. How to explain how in summer I feel winter in my bones. Perhaps it’s just my age and the care I take in walking down the stairs. Or perhaps I sense another kind of fall this autumn, one that comes as young and old alike struggle to put one foot in front of the other, not knowing where or how we will stand upright in the winter storm that’s coming, for a storm it may be even though the sky now is clear and summer days invite repose. I am not sleeping well. Are you? I am not speaking of sleep that counts the hours we lie unconscious in our beds, but the deep sleep that makes us glad when we wake to see snow fall in the tropics or a child free of care. What worries me is that winter may be already here and we don’t know it. Mark Strand’s “Lines for Winter” is a poem that speaks to us whatever the season. -hjh (7.31.2020) Lines for WinterBY MARK STRANDfor Ros KraussTell yourselfas it gets cold and gray falls from the airthat you will go onwalking, hearingthe same tune no matter whereyou find yourself—inside the dome of darkor under the cracking whiteof the moon s gaze in a valley of snow.Tonight as it gets coldtell yourselfwhat you know which is nothingbut the tune your bones playas you keep going. And you will be ablefor once to lie down under the small fireof winter stars.And if it happens that you cannotgo on or turn backand you find yourselfwhere you will be at the end,tell yourselfin that final flowing of cold through your limbsthat you love what you are. no name. Alone again, I walked away. Her touch upon me like summer rain. Charles does not always send me such poetic ramblings as the one below, but over the past seven years of our friendship, I have collected dozens of such epistles. It gives me great pleasure to share these with other friends. Hugh,This photograph is one of my screen savers. It is of Wild Goose Island on Saint Mary Lake in Glacier National Park. The lake is ten miles long. You can cruise the lake in a multi-passenger boat, but there are no kayaks, no canoes, no bobbing little fishing boats, no apparent way to get to uninhabited Wild Goose Island. You can see it but not touch it. For me, it is more wondrous and mystical and desirable than Shangri-La.The Lake Isle of Innesfree - W.B. YeatsI will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;There midnight s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,And evening full of the linnet s wings.I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,I hear it in the deep heart s core.I first read this poem straight through without preconception. Then I read it several more times. , Eventually I did a Google search and discovered the context in which Yeats wrote it; his thoughts on the first phrase and the inversion of the last three words, etc. The poem exerts a kind of invitation to find one s lake isle and build one’s own small cabin made of clay and wattles––or to capture such feelings by exercise of imagination and memory in our grey quotidian lives.I am going to take a 180 away from the poem at this point but stay with the clay and wattle cabin. You know that I am interested in ancient methods of enhancing living conditions: arrows to improve upon javelins, javelins to improve on spears, spears to improve on clubs or throwing rocks, etc. John Plant is a young man who grew up in a rural area of Australia s Far North Queensland. From a young age, he was curious about making implements from scratch and living in the wilderness without contemporary resources. He created a series on YouTube that follow him as he demonstrates techniques for many projects. One of these videos combines a number of techniques: the creating of a stone axe, the skinning of bark from a tree, the building of a kiln to create clay pots for water, the mixing of water and clay at the building site to build a wattle and daub hut, etc. Well, if I were twenty years younger (O.K., fifty), I would build a wattle and daub hut with a water-shedding roof, bed, fireplace chimney, etc. In lieu of that, I would simply like to invite you to experience something that intrigues and delights me. It will only take you eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. Just put this phrase in your query line: Primitive Technology wattle and daub hut and watch the video. Invite Ber to enjoy it, too.So, what does this have to do with poetry? Quite a lot, really, because it allows me to discuss the role of the reader of poetry. The very first phrase (I will arise and go now) invites the reader to leave everything for a moment and arise with the poet and go to––an uninhabited island where peace comes dropping slow and one is required to live by personal effort in planting bean-rows, constructing a hive for honey-bees, and building a sturdy, solid, wattle and clay cabin. And the reader muses: “Could I do that? Am I capable of living outside of the structures of communal human life? Would I want that? Can I break free of my nine-to-five life? I have recounted to you how an old man in his nineties taught me and our children how to raise honey bees. I have not told you, I believe, of my training in the art of dry-fly fishing for trout by my grandfather. I will simply say that when I climb down the river s bank and enter the cool water with my rod in hand––I feel as if I have come home . . . home, at last. Not only that, but for decades I have realized that I don t have to get back physically to the stream. It is a fact that even–– While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart s core. So, what does this add up to? Well, the composer of a 19th or 20th century violin concerto is the first actor in the phenomenon of music. Then come different artists at various distances from the composer stretching through time: Niccolo Paganini, Pablo de Sarasate, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, Janine Jensen, etc., who are the second actors of the phenomenon of music. Finally, the third component consists of those who see and hear the realization of the composer’s imagination. In a similar way, the writing, the recitation, and the hearing make up the phenomenon of poetry. Is it possible to find a definitive performance of a piece of music or poetry? It is always a temptation, but if the third component is taken seriously, the answer would probably be that it was a practical impossibility. An unusual example of one person who took part in each of the three components is that of Sergei Rachmaninov. Justly famous for his third piano concerto, he performed his Rac 3 for about 20 years until he heard his concerto performed by Vladimir Horowitz. Rachmaninov was so impressed by the mastery of this highly technical piece that he said that he would now retire from performing it himself. So he became creator, performer, and hearer. I can imagine a poet who, hearing a brilliant interpreter read his work, would be the third element in the phenomenon of poetry. Though some read Emily Dickinson’s “I saw no Way” as a description of a crisis of faith or declaration of profound loneliness, the way to Heaven barred, it for me an ecstatic statement. It may be that these perspectives can be reconciled. I saw no Way—The Heavens were stitched— I felt the Columns close— The Earth reversed her Hemispheres— I touched the Universe— And back it slid—and I alone— A Speck upon a Ball— Went out upon Circumference— Beyond the Dip of Bell—When I sing this poem to the tune of Amazing Grace, it seems to me to be in praise of what cannot be rationally circumscribed. There she is a speck upon a Ball, her poem, like the rhythmic swinging of the tongue of a Bell. reaches out beyond itself (beyond its lip). I often ring a bell for my students and ask them where the sound goes. Wherever it goes, it goes beyond the bell itself and takes us with it, escaping into silence. I sing in praise. Of what cannot be known -- We breathe – no paper Stained with ink. If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain I am sorry to say I discovered the Irish poet Eavan Boland only because she died recently on April 27. The death of poets of her rank is happily and sadly newsworthy. It is likely many of you already know of Eavan’s work. I am thinking especially of those who attended Stanford where she was the Director of the Creative Writing Program for the past twenty years. Eavan died of a stroke in Dublin where she had gone to care for her family during the current Covid-19 health crisis. She was 75. One way of describing her work is that she writes of those history has forgotten but yet still haunt our lives, a past alive in the shadows cast by a schoolyard tree or in the whispering of family secrets. What she has to tell us is profoundly relevant to our present experience.Quarantine Eavan Boland ReadingIn the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole peoplea man set out from the workhouse with his wife.He was walking – they were both walking – north.She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back.He walked like that west and west and north.Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.But her feet were held against his breastbone.The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexactpraise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.There is only time for this merciless inventory:Their death together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered. How they lived.And what there is between a man and woman.And in which darkness it can best be proved. The Lost Art of Letter Writing ReadingThe ratio of daylight to handwritingWas the same as lacemaking to eyesight.The paper was so thin it skinned air.The hand was fire and the page tinder.Everything burned away except the onePlace they singled out between fingersHeld over a letter pad they set asideFor the long evenings of their leave-takings,Always asking after what they kept losing,Always performing—even when a shadowFell across the page and they knew the answerWas not forthcoming—the same action:First the leaning down, the pen becomingA staff to walk fields with as they vanishedUnderfoot into memory. Then the letting up,The lighter stroke, which brought backCranesbill and thistle, a bicycle wheelRusting: an iron circle hurting the grassAgain and the hedges veiled in hawthornAgain just in time for the May NovenasRecited in sweet air on a road leadingTo another road, then another one, wideningTo a motorway with four lanes, ending inA new town on the edge of a cityThey will never see. And if we sayAn art is lost when it no longer knowsHow to teach a sorrow to speak, come, seeThe way we lost it: stacking letters in the attic,Going downstairs so as not to listen toThe fields stirring at night as they becameMemory and in the morning as they becameInk; what we did so as not to hear themWhispering the only question they knewBy heart, the only one they learned from allThose epistles of air and unreachable distance,How to ask: is it still there? Though “First Fig” by Edna St. Vincent Millay is better suited for other purposes than “Now I lay me down to sleep. / If I die before I wake, / I pray the Lord / my soul to keep,” it has become for me a bedtime prayer: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light.I know there are other versions of “Now I lay me down to sleep” but the one I know I have always known, despite the best efforts of my parents to laugh it off. I still love the poem but believe not a word. Poetry is like that. Edna’s “Fig” too. True, the candle will not last the night, but in the morning I will ‘doubly’ light another and then another, though that depends on the supply of candles and “if I wake”— meantime, such candle-burning does give that lovely light, as she says.So, last night as “I lay me down to sleep,” thinking of the absurdity of life, of drawing meaning from nonsense, of burning precipitously through candles in short supply, these lines came to me like a serenade from a bog (pace Emily Dickinson, I m a Nobody! Who are you? ): A Bullfrog I laugh and cry, then laugh again, And cry— it doesn’t seem quite right, But do you or you or you, my friends, Know another life?It’s really just “Another Fig” via inspirationis magistrae millay, but it served the purpose of another good night’s rest.What prayer or poem ushers you into that sleep from which, of course, you will wake? What bedtime words spring to mind? If there are none, there’s still time to make them up.That’s an invitation, folks, to compose yourself and send the lines to me.Here is one I have already received from Margie Keck, burning brightly: Burden me equally With the sublime and the common. The necessary honoring of both Is an issue of utmost importance. Leading to my spiritual awakening, The true work of my life. Spartoi: the ‘sown men’ of Greek mythology, born from dragon’s teeth. Cadmus in founding Thebes had for good reason slaying a dragon, sacred to Ares, and was advised by Athena to sow its teeth. The genealogical line of the Spartoi ends in a great many tragic stories, those of Oedipus and his spawn among them. In death, Cadmus and Harmonia, his wife, became snakes. It does not seem to have been a punishment. It is worth noting that Cadmus is said to have brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. The result we all know well. One might ask why are snakes sacred to the gods. To understand that would be a treasure. It may be necessary like Cadmus to become one.You never know if when you go outside, it will be blue or black. Cody’s eyes are never blue, but they change colors; green, purple, red, and they get black too. But Cody’s eyes are never black when the sky is black so I never look too closely. I had Mommy paint my room blue because my eyes are blue, but the furniture is white and it needs to be blue too. Cody’s hair was black until he dyed it blond and it turned green and orange. Mommy told me my eyes were blue and white, but they aren’t. They are the color of my room, blue when the sky filters through the window and black when there is nothing to look at except Cody and his rainbow eyes. Maybe my eyes should have been white.Noise changes the color of a room, which is why there is nothing that can make a sound in my four-walled world. People die when noise is made, sometimes in terrible ways, gruesome ways. I covered the floor in clothing; jeans, dresses the color of the sky and cobalt tees. Mommy used to try to look at me and make noise and I knew she wanted to kill me. She wouldn’t, at least I don’t think. Her eight-roomed house is as important to her as my four walls and all the terrible things outside of it. No, she wouldn’t hurt me. Not because she loves me though, but because she loves herself.The number eight is perfectly symmetrical and is my favorite number. Actually, eight is the only number that is acceptable to me anymore; all other numbers are inferior because they are not perfect. Cody told me I am 5’4’’ but he only said that to make me mad. I am not any feet, I am 64 inches because eight likes the number 64. My room is okay because four is a multiple of eight and the window has exactly four edges; four walls and four glimpses into the outside world makes eight places in my room. Eight bites, eight light switches, eight showers, eight gulps, everything has to be eight. Mommy told me I waste a lot of time and money doing everything eight times, but Mommy doesn’t understand. Everything has to be perfect and she just doesn’t get it because she is not.I once thought Cody had blue hair but it has always been black until it wasn’t. But it was never blue. I didn’t always have blue hair; one day I had blond hair and the next I had blue and you do that with eight tubes of blue paint. Now me and my room are the same and I don’t have to walk out of it because Mommy thinks I am part of the room and it is part of me. I don’t understand why she needs to move so much. I only move when the room breathes and Cody leaves and even than I never want to move as quickly as her. She is always wrong. I can still hear her making noise outside of me sometimes and I know she wants to kill me. Mommy used to love Bertha and considered her part of the family. Mommy, Bertha and Me. I don’t think of Mommy as family though and Bertha wasn’t blue. Mommy used to have more family but I leave them out because they aren’t perfect and there is less than eight of them. But Bertha wasn’t blue and she would come into my room and pretend to be kitty blue but there is no such thing as kitty blue, so I threw her out. Mommy was really sad when she thought that Bertha had run away, but she still stayed in her world and I still stayed in mine. Mommy doesn’t know that Cody killed Bertha, but there is no such thing as kitty blue so I wasn’t too mad at him. I didn’t watch because the blood wasn’t blue and Bertha made too much noise.Cody was going to kill Mommy too and when I asked him about it Cody told me he believed in a god. He believed that it could possess a special human to speak to the people because it could not. The god told the people the future through the prophet and Cody said I was his her. I didn’t know what that meant but Mommy didn’t die and Mommy found a Cody but not my Cody. She says he is called dad, but daddy isn’t Dad who wouldn’t kill Mommy like Cody would. When I slept near daddy he would scratch my arms until I made lines of blood, but Dad made even more noise than Mommy so I knew he wanted to kill me more than she did. Dad asked Mommy to marry her just like daddy asked Mommy to marry her and when I asked Cody what that meant he said that we already were. Cody has the best voice because he doesn’t speak at all.At first, I didn’t like Cody too much because Cody wasn’t blue, but one day I realized that Cody looked up at the sky as if he was blue, and he wore all black like the night because he hated white, just like me. I realized I liked Cody, and opened the window to tell him, but the window made noise and nothing but the sky was blue. But he stopped me and pointed to the sun and told me to come outside at night and I agreed because everything is okay when it is all black or all blue, even if Cody’s eyes aren’t. When I came outside, I asked Cody if he would kill me like he did Bertha, but he told me I was too big. He pointed to the ground and said Bertha was buried but I couldn’t see her because he put the ground back. But I started digging and he did too, eight scoops of earth and then a bit of black, and then another eight. When the hole was big enough to fit me, Cody laid in it and I laid on top and played dark for a while. And when I looked at his face, his eyes were finally blue. Nor of any lover who draws me near. There’s neither hope nor cause for tears.She promises she’ll never leave. https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0SDidVSPYW9YRwruIiDnIcE-Q#Rainbow_-_You ll_Never_WalkEve is my daughter-in-law. She and Will recorded this beautiful duet while thousands of miles apart -- she in our dining room and Will in Brooklyn. It was part of a Benefit Concert for Artists. for eveSuddenlythis morningI knew the rainbowto be a birdof my soultaking flight and vanishinginto cloud and skyas I am bound to do, shimmeringnot with colorbut surpriseto be at lastnot here. The moment she touched the old man’s handHe lost his sight, yet standing lost upon the sandHe heard the light upon the waves like keys.She sang and let him go and like the wind he sighed.None knows what song she sang or how he blindlyPlayed with light or how a man became the sea. 1. SOLITUDE (First entry in Henry David Thoreau s Journal, Oct. 22, 1937)To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present, — I avoid myself. How could I be alone in the Roman emperor’s chamber of mirrors? I seek a garret. The spiders must not be disturbed, nor the floor swept, nor the lumber arranged. The Germans say, “Es ist ailes wahr wodurch du besser wirst.”(Translation of the German: All is true through which you become better.) Meum MihiWhat makes us better is, of course, problematic. It is not necessarily what makes us happier or wiser or less at odds with the world or more productive or whatever is yet more better (stet). As the Romans say, suum cuique, to which I would add tuum tibi, ergo meum mihi. For me, happiness is overrated. As for wisdom, I am with Socrates: he is wisest who knows he is a fool. If it were the case that I knew something worth knowing, it would still be of no use to you. Happily, for all of us, Henry lives now only as stale prase on the lips of his admirers. I would rather be elsewhere. Nor does work make me a better person. I put no stock in the Protestant work ethic. Doing nothing at all suits me quite well. What is better than dillydallying all day? When I am doing nothing I feel more a part of whatever all of this is, itself without purpose, ever in se sibi. Of course, what I have said puts me at odds with worldly ambitions and with those who would win applause. What a waste! I would rather not even be myself if I could not go dark. Henry David, my Henry David, wrote his first journal entry in the autumnal bloom of 1837. As for me, I am writing during the plague of 2020. It s spring. 2. SpringOct. 25 (1837) She appears, and we are once more children; we commence again our course with the new year. Let the maiden no more return, and men will become poets for very grief. No sooner has winter left us time to regret her smiles, than we yield to the advances of poetic frenzy. “The flowers look kindly at us from the beds with their child eyes, and in the horizon the snow of the far mountains dissolves into light vapor.” GOETHE, Torquato Tasso.Spring before springHenry David wrote this journal entry in late October. It must be that the autumnal bloom of leaves, the chill air, crisp and aromatic, the silvery breath escaping his lips, makes him think of a spring before spring, which to the poet’s eye is always arriving in all times and places. It is the poet’s gift to us who might otherwise forget that we are always beginning, recreating the world for ourselves and others. Feel the wind on your skin like a kiss. Spring is here.3. VirgilNov. 18 (1837) “Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles” is such a line as would save an epic; and how finely he concludes his “agrestem musam,” now that Silenus has done, and the stars have heard his story, — “Cogere donee oves stabulis, numerumque referre Jussit, et invito processit Vesper Olympo.”VesperThe line that would save an epic is from Virgil’s Sixth Ecologue, Pulsae referent ad sidera valles: the struck valleys echo to the stars. The trees, the rivers, the valleys, and stars are the musical instruments upon which the poet strikes his song. Yet, significantly, Virgil’s words are not from his Aeneid. He elevates the agrestem musam to the heavens. When all the epic clatter of arms and shouts of heroes have passed away, the pastoral poem reasserts the prior authority of nature’s rhythms: Evening rules even unwilling Olympus and the stars remain as they always are, night and day. From Eclogue 6 ille canit: pulsae referunt ad sidera ualles: cogere donec ovis stabulis numerumque referre 85 iussit et invito processit Vesper Olympo. he (Silenus) sings: the struck valleys echo to the stars: until to gather the sheep in the stables and to tally their number he bid and, Olympus unwilling, Vesper advanced. agrestem musam: rustic muse 4. NAWSHAWTUCTNov. 21, (1937) One must needs climb a hill to know what a world he inhabits. In the midst of this Indian summer I am perched on the topmost rock of Nawshawtuct, a velvet wind blowing from the southwest. I seem to feel the atoms as they strike my cheek. Hills, mountains, steeples stand out in bold relief in the horizon, while I am resting on the rounded boss of an enormous shield, the river like a vein of silver encircling its edge, and thence the shield gradually rises to its rim, the horizon. Not a cloud is to be seen, but villages, villas, forests, mountains, one above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens. The atmosphere is such that, as I look abroad upon the length and breadth of the land, it recedes from my eye, and I seem to be looking for the threads of the velvet. Thus I admire the grandeur of my emerald carriage, with its border of blue, in which I am rolling through space.We belong to natureIt may be that Henry David is thinking here of the divinely-crafted shield of Achilles. There is, however, great irony between what Achilles shield depicts and the hero s subsequent slaughter of Trojans. Certainly, strife and death are present in the scenes Hephaestus creates but these take place within a balanced cosmos: the shield’s rim is Oceanus, the sun and moon crown the heavens, there are two noble cities, one at war and another at peace, and there is a young boy plucking his lyre, his song “so clear it could break the heart with longing”: and what he sang was a dirge for the dying year, lovely ... his fine voice rising and falling low as the rest followed, all together, frisking, singing, shouting, their dancing footsteps beating out the time.There is nothing depicted on the shield Hephaestus has made that even remotely approximates Achilles’ murderous rampage, against which the Scamander River protests: “Stop. Achilles! Greater than any man on earth, greater in outrage too— for the gods themselves are always at your side! But if Zeus allows you to kill off all the Trojans, drive them out of my depths at least, I ask you, out on the plain and do your butchery there. All my lovely rapids are crammed with corpses now, no channel in sight to sweep my currents out to sacred sea— I’m choked with corpses and still you slaughter more, you blot out more! Leave me alone, have done— captain of armies, I am filled with horror!” (XVIII, Fagles)There is no irony of any sort in Henry David’s description of his rustic shield, though one may wonder what protective purpose his may serve. We know he abhorred the intrusion of the ‘machine in the garden’ and the ‘discordant drumming’ of urban life. If this imagined shield is to provide any meaningful protection, it must be that the pastoral landscape he surveys serves to recall Henry David to himself and fortifies him as he engages in the necessary business of everyday life. Just so we may carry within ourselves Henry David’s rustic shield! It will protect us against all harm, not because we cannot be bruised or broken or put to death as Socrates was, but because we have within an inner resource that cannot be touched. We belong to nature. It hit, which is another way of saying ‘it happened’, whatever the pull of gravity or the water rising over the banks into homes built on the flood plain or the constellations in their peculiar but inevitable configurations countenanced. It hit like a hot iron let stand too long and so became a sort of dark commentary de rerum natura, ironic, steaming with the smell and heat of compost, natura naturans. And so she left him and traveled near and far until she came to where all the trouble had begun, the yearning, pure and simple, without an object or home, without knowing, and there things stood as they had always been except now she was on her own for the first time and became somehow heedlessly clairvoyant, stirring up memories and desire and crosstalk among the young and the old, sounding more like the bleating of goats and howls of wolves, each on edge for what would happen next, though it be but more of the same. It hit, which is another way of saying, everything and nothing changed. Follow the pathof leaf fall,the short cut hometwixt sky and dream.When you re there,you ll be right here,safe with me. Before the light changed and I forgotthe rules for how to see things as they are,day was day and night was hidden in my heart. Though sleep be not death,it is a gentlenessupon which the headmay fall.Sleep makes death bearable, evenpossible. He saw the child in the woman, wild, innocent, mischievous, vulnerable and a nuisance to herself and others, not unlike how he had been when he was six, but try as he might, posing before his nemesis the mirror, he could barely conjure up the feeling of what it was like to be so young. Then one day, seeing his students for the first time after cataract surgery, he became unaccountably double or rather blind-sighted, seeing each of them as younger and older than they actually were, side-stepping reality, if you like, but yet somehow getting it all right. There was Sally, for instance, with flowing red hair, freckles, of course, and a smile that betrayed her awareness of how beautiful she was. Now, however, he saw her crying for papa when he would leave for work and crying again for papa when he departed this earth. She would in time become the sort of smartass, assertive woman, ever and anon unsparing of her smile, who would one day become his boss, if he were to live so long. And then there was Leo, a tortured face hopelessly entangled in his own arms and legs that would flop about like Udon noodles, his hands and feet dangling precariously at the extremities. Now, however, he saw Leo as an infant, well-composed in his mother’s arms, being rocked to sleep to Ariel s own sweet music in his mother s lilting voice, Where the bee sucks, there suck I and Come unto these yellow sands and Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies, complete with all the dings and dongs of the bells and the strangely soft crowing of roosters, and it seemed to him like riding on a bat s wing, and then, at almost the same moment, he saw Leo as a father, impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit, having finally realized the benefit of his mother s theatrical training, with one daughter clinging to his leg as if it were the trunk of a tree, complaining that it was her turn, and another, younger, smaller daughter whom he was dangerously throwing up in the air and having to lurch to catch in the nick of time, dragging along the first daughter who refused to let go of his leg, and miraculously not a trace of fear in the eyes of the at-risk child. After all, papa was strong and now he could dance. He could even feel Leo s future strength and grace in his own arms and legs, and, naturally enough, found himself, the teacher, 73 years of age, intending on his next visit to ask his doctor to approve a disabled parking permit, now waiting like the other students for class to begin. He heard himself announce an in-class writing assignment: they were to write about a childhood memory and then trace how that memory was like an oracle -- you know, like at the Oracle of Delphi that we all learned about in the sixth grade. So embarrassing, his student-self was thinking, surely the old man can do better than that. All that Greek mythology was just a boatload of malarkey. Still, he knew he could hit that assignment out of the park just as he had actually hit a home run when he was thirteen, his team losing by three runs in the championship game for interstellar glory. It had been the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, bases loaded, etc. He had even been disciplined enough not to allow his minuscule batting average of .023 or that he was leading the league in strikeouts to shake his resolve. The coach, not wishing to tempt fate, gave his butt a good smack, keeping his exhortation brief:: “It’s just another at-bat, son.” Of course, he was totally making all this up, but on the other hand, he had imagined this moment so often that the fantasy had come to substitute for any known facts. Indeed, everything he wrote for that assignment was a shameless fabrication, yet he knew that, like Odysseus, who was himself a skilled and inveterate liar, he could find within himself the resourcefulness to take on any Polyphemus he was likely to meet and prevail. He noted with satisfaction how he had worked words from their class vocabulary list into his essay -- stellar words like nemesis, precarious, anon, inveterate, and malarkey and, coming soon in lines yet to be written, peripherality, baptize, and charlatan -- and was confident that he had hit yet another home run, though he was also aware that his teacher-self, spying on him with annoyingly persistent peripherality, was laughing at his student-self who had just previously sneered at mythology. Nevertheless, despite this handicap, he believed he had in fact become like his students or, as matters stood, like his fellow students, fearing as they did that he would finally be discovered to be a charlatan, a nobody, and so consequently baptized himself a true student of the game, always striving to learn new tricks to beat the system that, despite all his best efforts and those of his classmates, would still win out in the end and beat the crap out of each and every one of them. He was watching the paradeThe clowns, the words, the trumpeteersAnd in his dream he was awakeOr he was awake and dreaming.He closed his eyes.No matter, he heard the drums.He opened his eyes a second timeAnd saw himself marchingNow to a different tuneA martial cha-cha-chaAnd wet his pants.There is little more to tell.The daily Tribune recordsThat during the St. Jude Day CelebrationSaturday passed and a forgotten manHad died, shouting blessingsUpon one and all. I don’t know how you know you have to make a change. You just do it and think about the whys and wherefores later. And in any case, I would only be making it up to sound like I wasn’t crazy or something, as though I actually had reasons for doing what I did. Maybe it was the rain. Who in his right mind would throw a few things in a backpack, leave his car and bank account behind, and just set off walking in the rain? That s what I did. At nightfall I found a place along the side of the road to sleep, but I couldn’t stop shaking. It didn t stop raining until early the next morning when the sun came up as though for the first time. I had started out in Rhode Island but hitched rides that left me the next night in Georgia and the next day I was in the panhandle of Florida, walking down some back country road that would take me wherever I was going. I really had no idea, but I was going and I was going to stay gone. I know that this all sounds crazy, but it didn’t feel that way then. It felt right and for the first time in a long time my head was clear. When I had started out I had only a couple packs of cigarettes and about twenty dollars which paid for coffee and more cigarettes for awhile. The kindness of strangers supplied the rest. Folks who picked me up were curious about what I was doing and where I was going. What interested them most was that I didn’t know. They saw my sorry shoes, shook their heads, and gave me money for a meal at the end of the ride. One man said he had never picked up anyone before but now he thought he would the next time he saw some young person thumbing a ride. It had somehow been interesting. I told him that was a bad idea. I went wherever a ride would take me and that’s how I found myself in a small West Virginia town, where an old preacher picked me up and took me home for a meal. He showed me with pride the wooden casket he had made with his own hands and how he was all set for eternity. He called it his boat. It was really no more than a crate, though its dimensions where about right for a coffin. I don t know about eternity. What I was really curious about were the huge old books that were lying on the casket as if to keep the lid on. He said the truth was in those books and I could see for myself if I wanted. The first one I opened had the picture of a young woman, tied to a stake, her breasts exposed, looking up at the heavens ablaze with lightning. I swear her whole body looked like it was electrically charged as though she were having an orgasm or something. Beneath the picture were the words, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” I turned over the page and saw the words I ad crucem! scrawled over the English text. I knew what those words meant alright: Go to the cross! On another page was the picture of some wild man who was having a crimson X branded into his chest. After that I was in a hurry to go, but the old guy kept me there talking about how half the town was dying of cancer because everyone was marrying their own kin and goin’ to hell. I got the crazy idea that he was about to ask me to nail him and his books up in that crate and set him adrift. I told him I had to go. He wanted to know why I was in such a hurry. I told him someone was waiting for me in Winchester, which was just across the state line. He said he would drive me there, but I just walked toward the door and thanked him. I closed the door behind me and didn’t look back. My next couple of rides landed me in New Orleans. I was beginning to realize that though everything was new to me, I was not quite a stranger to the folks I met. In New Orleans, I fell in with others about my age who looked just as lost as I did. They had liberated an abandoned house, worked at odd jobs and did drugs at night. When I didn’t partake, they became suspicious and shortly came to the conclusion that I was a narc. I had never heard that word before but its meaning soon became clear to me. They said my story about going wherever the road would take me just didn’t add up. That wasn’t the last time I was suspected of being a narc, but later it somehow didn’t matter. They could just think whatever they wanted. The first time, however, it was a shock. I had been glad to have a place to crash for a few days, but they told me I had better leave.I ended up spending a month or so in New Orleans, making some money by working out of a day load outfit that sent out sober men like me on jobs that paid ten dollars a day. If you didn’t quit the job – loading, unloading, throwing bricks out of boxcars and digging holes – you got paid at the end of each day. In the late afternoon after I was paid, I felt like some goddam saint. Cripples, men with no legs, drunks and drifters like me were lined up along the sidewalk with their hands out. One fella, mounted on a board with rollers, had no arms or legs, just a cup. I had a simple rule. I would give away half of what I made and keep the rest. It was more than enough for my needs. They would call me father, though I was younger than they were. Maybe I looked older because like them I had grown so thin. A fellow worker had his own room where he let me sleep on the floor and he knew all the churches and other places where a person could find a free meal, though sometimes you had to pay by praying after you ate. I didn’t like that and said so. I ended up basically stealing the food before the praying started. The problem with that was that they were on the lookout for you the next time. At night, I wandered the French Quarter looking in the jazz joints and at the girls who looked right through me as if I weren t there at all. I can t say I blame them. I forgot to tell you that before I left to nowhere in particular, I had been a desk clerk at an otherwise respectable hotel called the Pilgrim Inn that catered to a certain class of working girl. They were all somebody’s daughter and they sent the money they made back to their families. Some paid guys who protected them and would beat them up to keep them in line. I would take payment for rooms from the johns and take them up in the elevator first and then the girls. It became routine. I liked the girls, but they all thought I was queer because I hadn’t done anything with them even when they offered for free. They would laugh and ask me if I knew which hole to put it in. I didn t mind. Everything had been going along fine until one night I was arrested along with the girls in a police raid and spent the night in jail. The next day they just sent me home. The hotel s lawyers had worked something out. The girls had to pay a fine. After that, I felt like I almost belonged and everyone treated me as if I were one of them. Then one night a little later I got beat up really bad by a guy who demanded to know where a certain girl was and when I wouldn’t tell him, he came around the desk and let me have it. It all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to be afraid or even feel any pain. I was kind of numb or stunned I guess. After that, the girls treated me like a brother, which I guess I was.After I had saved a little money in New Orleans, I set out again. I had heard from others about riding the rails. It was fast and straight but they also told tales of railroad bulls that discouraged me. I thought hitching was safer. My first ride, a long sleepy cruise through the night, took me to Texas, a little west of Austin. It had been a sweet ride; the stars out the open window seemed to pump their light right into my veins. My very next ride, however, changed everything, but I have written about that before. I don t really want to go into it again except to say I came out whole after a man tried to force me to have sex with him and maybe for the first time in my life I had been brave. That was then. What I really want to talk about is Richard whom I had met a year before all this craziness began, never saw again, and miss every day of my life. Before we parted he gave me a small carving, made from an odd piece of wood found on an east Texas beach. He had used only the sharp edge of a stone. It was like something out of the prehistory of man and had three faces on each side, one emerging out of another. It is the face of every man I meet. For forty-six years I have kept this carving with me. It really is Richard s story that needs telling, not mine, though maybe his is in some way mine as well. You see, he taught me the only true word I know and he taught me by example and it cost him dearly. He was the most honest person I have ever known and the bravest. https://www.hhimwich.com/hughlings_himwich/2016/03/song-for-richard.htmlhttps://www.hhimwich.com/hughlings_himwich/2010/04/this-i-believe.html Photograph by Her Himwich I have reached that time when I measure my life not by the years but by the months. Thus, I lengthen my life. I say to myself I may have only 6 years remaining, but 72 months is another lifetime. Soon, I will do the same with days and hours, then minutes and seconds. Each new measure will push life’s horizon back to a safe distance. The question is, of course, how long can I get away with this sort of time-chopping. Theoretically, forever. I met her first in high school. Her name then was Alice Cyan. We dated and did what teenagers usually do, being full of hormones. When we went off to college, we wished each other luck and that was it. I met her again in law school, though her name now was Francine Bedower. She didn’t remember me, but I knew her the first moment I heard her laugh. It was like wind rattling through dry leaves. She was beautiful. I mean, really beautiful, statuesque, as they say. I slept with her once then, but so did almost everyone else. We didn’t see each other all that much and, though we graduated from law school in the same class, there was really no reason to stay in touch. When I met her the third time, her name now Townsy Harper, she was working for a law firm in San Francisco and I happened to be close by. We would meet for drinks. She was divorced, had two kids, a daughter and a son, and a lot of cats, but no dogs. She had made a point of that, no dogs. She had grown so thin I almost didn’t recognize her, but she knew me. She reminded me that when she and I were dating back in high school, her father had died and that’s why she liked me. That puzzled me a little, but okay, that’s as good a reason as any I suppose. Then she stopped coming by. When we met for the fourth and last time, I was in the hospital for what I was assured would be a routine colonoscopy. Her name was now Sally Caulder, same last name as mine, though spelled differently as it turned out. It startled me at the time. She was stooped over, staring down at me as I lay there, waiting my turn. I had recognized her right off, that same laugh, but tart. When I asked her who she was now, she spat her name Caulder in my face and told me she didn’t know me and that she never wanted to see me again, biting down finally on asshole but seeming to look through me like glass. I can t say I blame her. After all, as I was soon to learn, she did not have long to live either. Photo by Ber Himwich It is with great pleasure that I share this poetic memoir from my friend Charles Eaton, who is now entering upon his eighty-seventh year. It is a precious gift to those who already know and love the man and his dear wife Pauline. Those who will here discover our Charles for the first time will recognize, as do his friends, that Charles story is also our own. Download MY NAME IS CHARLES It was the long, cool time between sleep and waking, nestling in the morning light like a fledgling, though by the counting of the clock the world outside was buzzing, he impervious to its insistent question, What now? What to do if not everything at once? He remembered the previous night when he had talked himself to sleep, giving himself to the Oblivion that soon enough would put an end to all the questions, the time when there would be nothing at all to do and the chance to forget, giving himself to the future with nothing on his mind but the GIVING AWAY, the questions no more than the flutter of leaves just outside his window that was more like the chatter of children than a farewell. And now in the eternal Before and After, he lay there in the half-light and was glad, surprised to be still alive. (112020) He was determined this time not to cut his fingers as he sliced the oranges. He would focus and keep his fingers well away from the blade. He remembered all too well how previously his blood had flowed onto the oranges and pooled on the plate. He knew it wasn’t just because he was getting old, fading into memory and the lure of the trees and his first kiss. She had been as nervous as he and had closed her eyes. Now all he could think of was feeding her oranges and the taste on her lips. And suddenly, she had bitten his lip, making it bleed. And then, more softly, she was feeding him. She was delicious and he . . . . he was lost in the trees. He put the knife down and wept. When they removed the tree they moved the placeOr rather the place became a barren fieldWhere light through the green, still moving shadeNo longer marks the ground like rain. And yet here I am with you,Your face bent over mine the airrippling with laughter the treecovering us in its bright shadow the earthyielding as we fall out of time. Out of time?What is left but song?Listen! the ringing in the air, this rainThese tears hammering out the tune, time and place.He, she, and all you love, draw near.

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