Despøtic majesty

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http://mnmlist.com/

2011-01-23T21:37:00.001-08:00

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind,
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them.
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom--
A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbles in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

-War is kind, by Stephen Crane

2011-01-23T21:33:00.001-08:00

“It is not a true civilization, and has nothing in it to satisfy a mature and fully developed human mind. It is attuned to the mentality of the galley-slave and the moron, and crushes relentlessly with disapproval, ridicule, and economic annihilation any sign of actually independent thought and civilised feeling which chances to rise above its sodden level. It is a treadmill, squirrel-trap culture – drugged and frenzied with the hashish of industrial servitude and material luxury. It is wholly a material body-culture, and its symbol is the tiled bathroom and steam radiator rather than the Doric portico and the temple of philosophy. Its denizens do not live or know how to live.”

- H.P. Lovecraft on modern civilization.

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2011-01-22T18:26:00.001-08:00

Halo Manash from Adam Torruella on Vimeo.

Halo Manash. Ritualistic, atmospheric music.

2011-01-22T18:25:00.001-08:00

I have loved colours, and not flowers;
Their motion, not the swallows wings;
And wasted more than half my hours
Without the comradeship of things.

How is it, now, that I can see,
With love and wonder and delight,
The children of the hedge and tree,
The little lords of day and night?

How is it that I see the roads,
No longer with usurping eyes,
A twilight meeting-place for toads,
A mid-day mart for butterflies?

I feel, in every midge that hums,
Life, fugitive and infinite,
And suddenly the world becomes
A part of me and I of it.

-Amends To Nature, by Arthur Symons

Find this documentary at:

http://www.dickproenneke.com/

2011-01-22T18:24:00.001-08:00

‘What kind of a dream is it,’ said Óðinn,in which just before daybreak,I thought I cleared Valhǫll,for coming of slain men?I waked the Einherjar,bade valkyries rise up,to strew the bench,and scour the beakers,wine to carry,as for a king’s coming,here to me I expectheroes’ coming from the world,certain great ones,so glad is my heart.

2011-01-22T18:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.etwasprojects.com/

http://www.etwasbags.com/

2011-01-21T14:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.beksinski.pl/

2011-01-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

I never go to church to pray
Among the crowded pews
Nor kneel before a crucifix
To hail the king of Jews

I never say a prayer
To Saint or Holy Ghost
Nor listen to the preacher’s word
That talks of sin the most

But in a pair of eyes
Or drinking silver gin
Or in the colors of a dress
My soul begins to sing

And sunbeams on the wall
Reveal sometimes for me
The beauty that I weave for God
And for Eternity.

-Harry Crosby

2011-01-21T14:15:00.001-08:00

2011-01-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

"Climbing has its share of lost souls. This should not be surprising. It takes some degree of alienation to drive people to exposed, barren places. I guess it’s easy to write the whole lot off as misguided and maladjusted. But in our civilization, suicide is justifiable too. Our purpose is to produce more so we can consume more, so we can produce more. Wait, that’s not fair. We can also serve others so that they may prosper to consume more, so they can produce more so they can consume more. Or most nobly, we can work to advance the society so future generations may produce ever grander things to consume. Suicide is justifiable. So there should be no room to question a climber’s motivation, but I can’t count the times or ways I have heard that question. I’ve heard it after every accident and every rescue. I’ve heard it every time a solid citizen has said, “Those guys are crazy!” And I’ve heard it every time a fellow outdoor recreationalist has accused climbers of being elitists, glory hounds or insecure adolescents. Sometimes they are right, but most times they are just rationalizing something they can’t understand and which makes them uncomfortable. They aren’t to blame. Most of them don’t have the context to understand that motivation, and our culture doesn’t value the passive acceptance of unknowns."

http://www.summitpost.org/article/649924/All-My-Folks-Left-Me-Was-a-Bunch-of-Stupid-Stories.html

2011-01-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

“…and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone.”

-Huckleberry Finn

2011-01-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

When I was a boy
A god often rescued me
From the shouts and the rods of men
And I played among trees and flowers
Secure in their kindness
And the breezes of heaven
Were playing there too.

And as you delight
The hearts of plants
When they stretch towards you
With little strength

So you delighted the heart in me
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your favourite,
Moon. 0 all

You friendly
And faithful gods
I wish you could know
How my soul has loved you.

Even though when I called to you then
It was not yet with names, and you
Never named me as people do
As though they knew one another

I knew you better
Than I have ever known them.
I understood the stillness above the sky
But never the words of men.

Trees were my teachers
Melodious trees
And I learned to love
Among flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.

-Friedrich Hölderlin

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2011-01-20T22:53:00.001-08:00

2011-01-20T22:50:00.000-08:00

#

Acceptance

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.’

- Robert Frost
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2011-01-20T22:48:00.000-08:00

2011-01-20T22:43:00.002-08:00

2011-01-20T22:43:00.001-08:00

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Acquainted With The Night, by Robert Frost.

2011-01-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

"We are the ones that sing with our sore throats, but do know that it has been us that have done the most singing."

2011-01-20T22:38:00.000-08:00

I rememberThe dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;The grey clouds’ leaden everlasting arch;The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.Vista upon vista marching, hills on hills,Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed upA rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eyeSaw but the endless vista—hill on hill,Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was gloomy land that seemed to holdAll winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,And the dark woodlands brooding over all,Not even lightened by the rare dim sunWhich made squat shadows out of men; they called itCimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far awayI have forgotten the very name men called me.The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,And hunts and wars are like shadows. I recallOnly the stillness of that sombre land;The clouds that piled forever on the hills,The dimness of the everlasting woods.Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

Oh, soul of mine, born out of shadowed hills,
To clouds and winds and ghosts that shun the sun,
How many deaths shall serve to break at last
This heritage which wraps me in the grey
Apparel of ghosts? I search my heart and find
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

2011-01-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

2011-01-20T22:36:00.000-08:00

Across The fields

Across the sky, the clouds move,
Across the fields, the wind,
Across the fields the lost child
Of my mother wanders.

Across the street, leaves blow,
Across the trees, birds cry --
Across the mountains, far away,
My home must be.

- Hermann Hesse

2011-01-20T22:07:00.000-08:00

My Lost Youth

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.
And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the ships,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.
And the music of that old song
Throbs in my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.
And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering's Woods;
And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods.
And the verse of that sweet old song,
It flutters and murmurs still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
Across the school-boy's brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song
Sings on, and is never still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

There are things of which I may not speak;
There are dreams that cannot die;
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,
And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Strange to me now are the forms I meet
When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet,
And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,
As they balance up and down,
Are singing the beautiful song,
Are sighing and whispering still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were,
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2011-01-20T22:04:00.002-08:00

"...the new world, the communo-bourgeois, sermonizing, Tartuffian, automobilistic, alcoholic, gluttonous and cancerous world has only two anxieties: ass and bank account..."

- Journey to the End of the Night

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