two

we never need a reason or an occasion for billie holiday

God bless the child that makes her own ...

not too sentimental about this and don't care much for fireworks, but...

... it still matters ... as a promise ... and a hope.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

• John Adams. Letter to Abigail Adams (1776-07-03); because of the official adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence on two days later, the fourth of July rather than the second, became known as the US Independence Day. (source: Wikiquote)

soon

It's true ... any day now I'll get back to this. A blog would have been good to document the gypsy life I've been leading over the past month ... but it wears on one ... all this saying.

Today, with the arrival of the movers and the removal of much stuff, let's celebrate the gift of blankness.

iris

The irises are just about done here in Petersburg. Things are always coming and going. Hello!! Goodbye!! And there's hardly enough time to notice ... or to tell what's worth noticing and what's not. So we go on ... stumbling with our eyes into all the furniture. What's that? Oh, a dog. No, a cloud. A door.

Happy Birthday, Pete!!

Dad always saved the best haircut for you.

back to illinois

my folk down here

A silly evening ... thus the b-k crowns ... this is just ... goofy us ... here in San Antonio. We were normally quite serious ... sober ... even sometimes ... silent and ... even sometimes ... prayerful.

At any rate ... these are my peeps ... and I love 'em

Later: But no ... I got it wrong ... there was always laughter ... lots of laughter ... more genuine joy over four months than I'd think possible ... good stuff

coincidentally

coincide
ORIGIN early 18th cent. (in the sense [occupy the same space] ): from medieval Latin coincidere, from co- ‘together with’ + incidere ‘fall upon or into.’

This afternoon was open and I'd planned vaguely with Fortunata and Antonia to seek out The (elusive) Blue Hole, since I'd been commanded some time ago to do just that ... "as long as yr in San Antonio." So I called first one and then the other of these good friends ... but no answer.

Oh well. It had been at least ten minutes since I'd last checked the email, so I looked again. Not much there ... the odd Google Alert, English teacher stuff, Shades of Noir. So what's happening over on Facebook? Not much. So ... one more quick look at Gmail.

Ah! New mail! But ... urgh ... related to the Grendel Index. That's become one of the dustier drawers of my online cabinet of wonders. I'm don't like going there because the under-updated info and undead links demand my own fresh blood-time. Now here's an email that will - no doubt - do just that. But ... well ...

Turns out it's an odd, interesting question about which I think I might have something to say. And, even more oddly, the questioner has the same name—the very same name—as the author of a book I'm presently reading, a little more than halfway through. But ... so ... maybe this was meant to be ... as in Ignore This Message At Your Peril.

Well, you know where this is going. Seems that this question is from the very same Well-Known Writer whose book I am currently reading. What are the odds?

Backtrack. Why am I reading this book by the WKW? I'm reading it because I stumbled upon it at Half-Price Books the other day. It's the book of the previous post ... down there below this one. I hadn't really expected to buy any books then, since I've been so enjoying my recent practice of identifying Great Finds and leaving them for the next guy. But then here was this one by the WKW ... and I remembered reading and completely enjoying one earlier WKW book ... so what the heck. But the clincher was that I had opened it randomly and seen at once ... my guy Wendell Berry ... quoted.

So ... how freaked out should I be that the author of the very same book I'm reading just happens to contact me out of the ether to ask a question about an old book that has no necessary connection to either of us?

And tomorrow we'll fall together upon or into The Blue Hole. But it won't be no coincidence.

at half-price

O ... somebody's finally buying this book ... It's my book.

It's your book?

I mean ... it's in my section. They sorta become yr kids after awhile.

I guess so.

a musical moment

Out the window ...

the world hereabouts

sunday sounds out my window

odds

two days of rainy gray followed by a brilliantly blue and humid afternoon ... what is it about the weather ... what hunger is fed by reporting it?

definitely great-tailed grackles ... dominant animal noise ... traffic on Oblate ... dominant human noise ... but now and then the doves give them both some tough competition

what is it about dogs in my dreams ... they're not scary ... they're just there ... well, sometimes a wolf ... and i wasn't born in the year of the dog ... i was born in the year of the ... tiger

thirty-three years in solemn vows today ... looks like i've gone & made some kind of life out of being some kind of carmelite ... dang

two of us for dinner tonight ... where are the other twenty-four? then louis wanders in from the pottery place ... very cool new suspenders, louis ... they do their job ... they hold my pants up

at half-price books this afternoon i found desirable work by john graves, john berryman, samuel beckett, barrett watten, and others ... but bought none of it ... happily ... made a present of each to the next person who'd find them and say Wow, what a find!

"The great fish is nothing other than God holding Jonah in being in the midst of the darkness and fear." J. Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, 91.

when you write two notes yr anxious to have answered ... they take their time

strange flora hereabouts ... green-trunk tree ... trunk of thorns thorns thorns

maybe it's not that i'm not smart enough ... maybe it's that i really don't care ... might apathy be some kind of perverted virtue?

some of us watched The Miracle of Morgan's Creek last night ... sat and laughed like crazy people ... at the silliest Sturges/Demarest slapstick ... which a day of serious silence will do

why do little kids in the distance always sound like they're speaking spanish ... even when yr not in San Antonio?

doves now ... then one grackle ... kind of quieting down ... less traffic ... a dog ...

Happy Easter Birthday, Mom!

When the sabbath was over,
Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome
bought spices so that they might go and anoint him.
Very early when the sun had risen,
on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb.
They were saying to one another, "Who will roll back the stone for us
from the entrance to the tomb?"
When they looked up,
they saw that the stone had been rolled back;
it was very large.
On entering the tomb they saw a young man
sitting on the right side, clothed in a white robe,
and they were utterly amazed.
He said to them, "Do not be amazed!
You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here.
Behold the place where they laid him.
But go and tell his disciples and Peter,
'He is going before you to Galilee;
there you will see him, as he told you.'"

good friday

Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 – January 8, 1337)

So what we get in St. John's Gospel is a clear understanding that the undoing of victimage is not simply a liturgical fulfillment, Jesus is substituting himself at the center of what the liturgical tradition was both remembering and covering up, namely human sacrifice, therefore making it possible for us to begin to live without sacrifice. And that includes not just liturgical sacrifice, but more importantly the human mechanism of sacrificing other people so that we can keep ourselves going. In other words, what Jesus was beginning to make possible was for us to begin to live as if death were not, and therefore for us not to have to protect ourselves over against it by making sure we tread on other people. (James Alison, Undergoing God, 59-60)

See "An Atonement Update"

island

This weekend I got to remember how much I like islands. Mustang Island is close to Corpus Christi and home to Port Aransas. We arrived Friday and left Sunday. But the Saturday in between was just ... the best ... full of doing nothing but walking the beach. Managed to avoid sunburn everywhere except on the tops of my feet. And that serves to remind me of the goodness of sunscreen applied everywhere else. Earth. Air. Fire. Water.

More pictures HERE and HERE.