The Art of Drowning

Masks

Christmastime

"All the Christmases roll down the hill towards the Welsh-speaking sea, like a snowball growing whiter and bigger and rounder, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find; holly or robins or pudding, squabbles and carols and oranges and tin whistles, and the fire in the front room, and bang go the crackers, and holy, holy, holy, ring the bells, and the glass bells shaking on the tree, and Mother Goose, and Struwelpeter - oh! the baby burning flames and the clacking scissorman! - Billy Bunter and Black Beauty, Little Women and boys who have three helpings, Alice and Mrs Potter's badgers, penknives and teddy-bears - named after a Mr Theodore Bear, their inventor, or father, who died recently in the United States - mouth-organs, tin-soldiers, and blancmange, and Aunty Bessie playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" and "Nuts in May" and "Oranges and Lemons" on the untuned piano in the parlour all through the thimble-hiding musical-chairing blind-man's-buffing party at the end of the never-to-be-forgotten day at the end of the unremembered year."

This is one of my all-time favorite visions of Christmas.  It's so beautiful, warm, and comforting-- don't you think?  There's something mysterious and Dickensian about it.  The Christmas magic and all that.

Growing up, my mom always put on this Christmas CD.  And, there's this wonderful narrator all the way through it who reads excerpts from various Christmas literature in a bouncing Welsh accent.  This is my very favorite part.  It's from a piece called Memories of Christmas by Dylan Thomas. 

photo via emily 

L-House Update: 32

An L-House Update...

1. Aren't these gorgeous??

2. These balloons are AMAZING!

3. I read a short story today that included an extremely obscure movie reference.  I got the reference, and immediately called my mother.  Bam.  (For those with a curious mind, it was a quote from The Quiet Man, "When I drink whiskey I drink whiskey, and when I drink water I drink water.")

4. A bit of spring for you on this December day-- in the form of a vintage Laura Ashley wedding gown.  Sigh.  Reminds of Anne of Green Gables.  And Princess Diana's wedding.  And the turn of the century. And tea parties.  Etc.

5. A beautiful homage to the most important meal of the day...

6. My Parents Were Awesome.  Hilarious. I love old pictures.  My only complaint is, where's the blog for pictures of parents who are still awesome?

7. I finished reading my book of short stories last night-- I Knew You'd Be Lovely.  Lovely is, funny enough, the perfect word to describe it.  I tried to stretch out reading it as long as I possible could.  Perfect for Winter.

8.  The other day, I was talking to my friend Maddie, and she asked me "If you were a Christmas Carol, which would you be?"  I said O Holy Night.  It's my favorite.  I just wish it weren't sung so often, so that it wouldn't be as trite as it is.  But, then again, I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on hearing it...

What carol would you be?

9.  This picture just makes my heart ache for some reason.  But, can you guess who it is?

via sweet thing

10. There is this poem by Donald Justice, and it's called, "A Poem to be Read at 3 AM".  I've only ever let myself read it at 3:00 in the morning, so I've only actually read it twice.  But, in the still quiet late at night-- it's worth it.

On Naming a House

By Christopher Morley 

When I a householder became
I had to give my house a name.
I thought I'd call it "Poplar Trees,"
Or "Widdershins" or "Velvet Bees,"
Or "Just Beneath a Star."
Or "As You Like It," "If You Please,"
Or "Nicotine" or "Bread and Cheese,"
"Full Moon" or "Doors Ajar."

But still I sought some subtle charm,
Some rune to guard my roof from harm
And keep the devil far;
A thought of this, and I was saved!
I had my letter-heads engraved
The House Where Brown Eyes Are.

My dad and Haiku

I was bored today, so my dad suggested that I write three haiku.  Haikus?  (Who knows.)  Each one based upon a member of our family.  I sent them to him, and now he has to guess who the family members are.  For those interested in playing:

Three Haiku(s) in Ten Minutes

A cup of coffee
Peanut butter mayonnaise
A glass of sherry

Warm metal humming
Throat folds vibrating, strings buzz
Do a silly dance

Water color blue
Garden green a cup of tea
Butter on both sides

Shel Silverstein

Billy Collins Contest

This is so cool!  A poetry contest by the fantastic Billy Collins.

Write well my friends.

You, Reader

I wonder how you are going to feel

when you find out

that I wrote this instead of you.

that it was I who got up early

to sit in the kitchen

and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,

the ivy wallpaper,

and the goldfish circling in its bowl

Go ahead and turn aside,

bite your lip and tear out the page,

but, listen -- it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened

to notice the unlit candles

and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning--

a song on the radio,

a car whistling along the road outside--

and I was only thinking

about the shakers of salt and pepper

that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends

after all these years

or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I

who manage to be known and unknown

to each other at the same time --

me at this table with a bowl of pears,

you leaning in a doorway somewhere

near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

The Fantastic Names in Jazz

By Hayden Carruth

Zoot Sims, Joshua Redman, 

Billie Holiday, Pete Fountain,

Fate Marable, Ivie Anderson,

Meade Lux Lewis, Mezz Mezzrow,

Manzie Johnson, Marcus Roberts,

Omer Simeon, Miff Mole, Sister

Rosetta Tharpe, Freddie Slack,

Thelonious Monk, Charlie Teagarden,

Max Roach, Paul Celestin, Muggsy

Spanier, Boomie Richman, Panama

Francis, Abdullah Ibrahim, Piano

Red, Champion Jack Dupree,

Cow Cow Davenport, Shirley Horn,

Cedar Walton, Sweets Edison,

Jaki Byard, John Heard, Joy Harjo,

Pinetop Smith, Tricky Sam

Nanton, Major Holley, Stuff Smith,

Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan,

Mr. Cleanhead Vinson, Ruby Braff,

Cootie Williams, Cab Calloway,

Lockjaw Davis, Chippie Hill, 

And of course Jelly Roll Morton.

Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane

The Day Lady Died

A fantastic tribute to Billie Holiday.  Also, throwback to sophomore year of high school anyone?

The Day Lady Died

By Frank O'Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days

                                          

I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

The feel of summer on my skin

Picnic, Lightning 

By Billy Collins

It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart, no
valentine, decides to quit after
lunch, the power shut off like a
switch, or a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow of the body's
rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore. This is
what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes, then
press into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels, bits of
leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white, and all I
hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small
plants singing with lifted faces, and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.

Francis Thompson

I first heard this on a recording of a talk that Don Miller gave.  He spoke about life and all the big concepts that come with it.  He closed by reciting this poem, but first he told the story of its auther, Francis Thompson.  He was an opium addict, living under a bridge.  He sent his poems into a London newspaper.  The editor always published them, because of their beauty and sincerity.  Don Miller told how the editor wrote a letter to the anonymous poet, pleading for him to reveal himself: "we have a greater than Milton among us!"  They finally did discover him, with this, his last poem clutched in his hand, frozen to death, underneath a bridge by the Thames.

I don't even know if that story is completely true.  But, what an incredible idea.  Just read and see for yourself.  I wish I could stick a recording of Don Miller saying these words right here, so that you could hear it as well.  He pronounced them with such intent, and with such warming meaning.  A beautiful poem.  A beautiful idea.

  

The Kingdom of God 

By: Francis Thompson

O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;--
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames! 

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

I love this poem.

(I'm a sucker for advertising.

Hell yes I want a pair of Levi's.)

And to run along the sea with a torch in my hand.

To Empower.  To Discover.

For we are the restless race.  The resolute children.  The pulses of the World.

I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral today

Funeral Blues 

By WH Auden 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Hither and Thither

I'm twenty now.  Or, as of three days ago.  The terrible two's re-vamped.  

I woke up this morning attempting to recall the song from the bar in the first Star Wars movie.  I still can't do it.  I'm giving myself until the end of the day before I look it up...

On the morning of my birthday, I woke up early.  It was a beautiful day.  Cold as hell.  But, the sky was crisp and blue.  It was my first ever birthday experience to include snow.  Which was interesting.  My dearest darlingest roommate let me borrow her car, and I drove it downtown, bought myself breakfast at CTB, and wrote in my journal as the day became yellow-er and the people came and went.  

  © 2011 M. Hunter Korroch

The view from my seven thousand three hundred and fifth morning.

And I wrote some...

"Something really nice happened last night.  It reminded me how lucky I am in my friends.  I was sitting in a practice room, and I got a call from Missy.
She said, 'Molls, I want to talk to you tonight!'
          'Okay!  What's up?'
          'No.  I want to talk to you face to face!'
She was in her car driving northward so that she could spend my birthday with me.  Alas, I informed her that I had a five-hour rehearsal the next day.  But, she was willing to drive however many hours to come see me for my birthday.  How fantastic is that?  What a friend.  I really do wish she could be here, and that I didn't have rehearsal."

I walked into Jaime and Amanda's room sometime around nine.  The lights were off, and Jaime was holding a pint of Ben and Jerry's with three spoons stuck in it, and holding a lighter up behind as a makeshift candle.  She was belting "Happy-Birthday-to-You", and Amanda was warbling right alongside her.  Amanda was attempting to snap pictures of the occasion, whilst I, sinking to the floor and gasping for breath because I was laughing so hard, attempted to inform her that the whole picture-taking thing wouldn't be working out due to the fact that her lens cap was still on.  But, she couldn't here me over Jaime's singing, and continued to click away at nothing...

It was...hilarious.  But, maybe you had to be there.

I'll always remember the twentieth as the one where I blew out the lighter.  I can't even remember if I made a wish, but it doesn't really matter, because I'm one of those people who always wishes for the same thing.

A thought with which to leave you:

What I Want Is

C.G. Hanzlicek

What I want is

Enough money

To have what I want

What I want is

My own hill

And beneath that hill

A pond

In the pond a lazy

Bass or two

And duck feathers

Resting on the mud

Of the shore

Between the hill

And mud a patch

Of grass where I

Can lie and count

My seven trees

My seven clouds

And count the coyotes

Coming down the hill

To drink

Coyote 1 Coyote 2

Valentine's Day: Top Ten Most Romantic Literary Moments

Top Ten Most Romantic Literary Moments...

1. A Tale of Two Cities

By Charles Dickens

" . . . I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

2. Girl With the Pearl Earring

By Tracy Chevalier

A wonderfully spun story about beauty and cost.

"I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary--bones, white lead, madder, massicot--to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical." 

 

3. This Is Just to Say

By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums 

that were in 

the icebox

and which 

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

4. This Is Just to Say

By Erica-Lynn Gambino

(for William Carlos Williams)

I have just

asked you to 

get out of my

apartment

even though

you never

thought

I would

Forgive me

you were

driving 

me insane

5. Gone With the Wind
By Margaret Mitchell

(This one's for you, Lindsay, my most Southern Belle-ish of friends...)

There are far too many words in this particular story for me to select just a few few to  represent its entirety.  So, I'll give you two:

"Rhett Butler."

6. The Highway Man
By Alfred Noyes 

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the highwayman came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door..."

"... 'One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
    But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
    Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
    Then look for me by moonlight,
                      Watch for me by moonlight,
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.'" 

"... He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
    Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
    Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
    How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
    Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there..."
                                                 
    "...Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
    With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
    When they shot him down on the highway,
                      Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat." 

I urge you to read the whole thing, as this is only a short selection.  It's lovely.  So indulgently dramatic.  And, of course, given special preference due to its use in the Anne of Green Gables movies...
 

7. Atonement
By Ian McEwan

Even though it's beautiful and has an excellent soundtrack, the movie is nothing compared to the book...

 "The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation - it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him."

 "Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life - with gratitude, or profound and particular regret." 

(Oh what a sucker for intensely dramatic historical romances am I...)

8. Bright Star
By John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Erimite
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death. 

Particularly beautiful because of the story behind it. 

9. The Catcher in the Rye
By J.D. Salinger

This isn't a romantic book.  But, that being said-- this moment-- this nice moment with this girl he likes, it's just so sweet and fresh and clear, that it is romantic.

"She was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we won't quite till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were."

10. Bonnard’s Nudes

By Raymond Carver

 

His wife.  Forty years he painted her.

Again and again.  The nude in the last painting 

the same young nude as the first.  His wife.

As he remembered her young.  As she was young.

His wife in her bath.  At her dressing table

in front of the mirror.  Undressed.

His wife with her hands under her breasts

looking out on the garden.

The sun bestowing warmth and color.

Every living thing in bloom there.

She young and tremulous and most desirable.

When she died, he painted a while longer.

A few landscapes.  Then died.

And was put down next to her.

His young wife.