Monday, January 9, 2023

Lake Forest: in case of emergency; a new record; from recent reading

In response to my recently writing "I will miss glancing up and seeing water."  Douglas in Scotland sent me this video with instructions:  Open in emergencies, or when sipping you know what.  Lock Ness today.


Not long ago he sent me this photo of a goose taking flight.


Scotland has sublime beauty.

I thank Douglas for sharing it with me and giving me permission to share it with you.



Carol and I landed at O'Hare yesterday just after sunset.  26F/-3C.  Normal Chicago January.

Today I had an appointment with the beautiful skin cancer doctor.  It is a pleasure to see her.  In some ways more than others.  She froze enough of me so that full body immersion in liquid nitrogen might be more efficient, and chopped off five bits to be sent for biopsy, a new and undesired record.  I expect to have to return for further chopping when the results are known.  



From RIVER OF THE GODS about the 'discovery' of the source of the White Nile by Richard Burton, the 19th Century explorer not the 20th Century husband of Elizabeth Taylor, and James Speke:

Of Burton who spoke more than twenty languages and had impartially studied the world's religions while believing in none of them:  The only aspect of religion that he scorned was the idea that there existed any true believers. 'The more I study religion,' he wrote, 'the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anyone but himself.'

Burton also wrote:  Of the gladdest moment in the human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands.

Burton quoted an old proverb:  The world is a great book, of which those who never leave home read but a page.

After shaking hands with Burton, the Dahomey king said, "You are a good man, but too angry."  Burton agreed, "Travelers like poets are mostly an angry race."


From:  THE CLASSIC TRADITION OF HAIKU.

How I envy maple leafage

which turns beautiful and then falls!

        --Kagami Shilo  1665-1731


I sleep...I wake...

    How wide

The bed with none beside.

        --Kaga No Chiyo   1703-1775


Men are disgusting.

They argue over

The price of orchards.

        --Masaoka Shiki   1867-1902


There are many haiku references to butterflies.  Permit me one of my own.

Our lives are as brief

as a butterfly's cough.


I like to believe that some of those Japanese poets would have approved, but as always I have never known.



From  HORACE: THE COMPLETE ODES AND EPODES

9

...

Avoid speculation

about the future; count the credit the days

chance deals; youth should not spurn

the dance of sweet desire;


this is your green time, not your white

and morose.  In field or piazza

now is the proper season for

trading soft whispers in the dark;


the tell-tale complaisant laugh

of a girl in some secret nook;

the pledge removed from an arm

or a helpfully helpless finger.


31

...

Son of Latona, grant me I pray

to enjoy the things I have and my health

and to pass my old age with a sound 

mind, with my cithara, and with style.



33

...

This is Venus's way:  her cruel humor

is pleased to subject to her yoke of bronze

incompatible bodies and minds.


Even I, when a better love sought me,

was detained in pleasant chains by Myrtale,

a one-time slave girl more stormy than

Adriatic waves rolling round to Calabria.








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