Princesses, bears and oh my . . .

It's the Moon's day . . . After overnight thunderstorms the heat-hammer returns with the sun late this afternoon to TulseyTown.

Poetry reminds us of what we didn't know we knew. Echoes from ancient canyons.

On today's date, the classics scholar Edith Hamilton (Mythology) was born in 1867 Dresden, Germany. While the wiki article is a decent thumbnail sketch, the article in the Antigone Journal is more revealing of Hamilton's world view and impact.

While on the trail of myths . . .

The author of "The Story of the Three Bears,” Robert Southey was born on this date in 1774 Bristol England. Years after the original publication (1837) other unknowns substituted “Goldilocks” in place of Southey's original old woman.

One of my high school homies, Elvin Bishop (“Fooled Around and Fell In Love”), recently demonstrated he's still got blues chops (and my kind of attitude) in a posted session with Los Lobos.

The film producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. was born today in 1881, Ashfield, Massachusetts.

And,its the birth date of Erwin Schrödinger. The theoretical physicist was born in 1887, Vienna, Austria. Lest we forget (good luck with this one): Schrodinger's Cat.

Historic calendars note inventors and inventions on today's date. Among them: In1851, the Singer sewing machine was patented; and in 1877, Edison made perhaps his most original discovery, the phonograph. Check out his notes preserved by the National Park Service. Both of these events have made contributions across time to the creation of myths in design and musical story/myth making.

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. ― Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Storytelling

What I've learned from Ken Burns: Everyone is an opportunist if they have the opportunity –Katherine Hepburn

Poems are the stories we tell

for all those who have no way to tell them.

While it remains true none can step

into the same river twice nonetheless

the circle will always be unbroken.

– jab 8.13.23

Sunday Brunch

It's Sol's day . . . and here in TulseyTown she is hiding behind welcome rain clouds.

Traveling the Watercourse Way with Pico Iyer.

When we look into ourselves, we find that there is something beyond our insecurities. There is something else, something more. We are willing: willing to wait, willing to smile, willing to be decent. We shouldn’t discount that potential, that powerful seed of gentleness. – Chögyam Trungpa, “The Bodhisattva Vow” in The Heart of the Buddha: Entering the Tibetan Buddhist Path, Shambhala, 2010.

The left is not “Godless” any more than is Buddhism. Lefties, like Buddhists, believe – they just don't blame a deity for the evil, stupid mistakes we humans make.

Enlightenment is spontaneous. It happens when you encounter it, whether it takes years of meditation on a vegetarian diet or stepping on a bee in the grass. It is the part of your journey over which you have no control. (pause, pause) Try this take by Deb Ponemon from yesterday.

Sunday Brunch

One’s opinion doesn’t change the rain one whit.

Like the chips from that anonymous knife

They fall where they may, serve where they lay.

I put myself into the world

and if I say of then “nothing happens”

my voice betrays expectations:

slim hips, caring eyes, small delicate hands

not afraid of taking a firm grip on the world

or of wiping from across the table

the omelet cheese residue

at the corner of my ignorant mouth.

Pretending I can teach strength

by employing the world’s knowledge

has become a bore and a disaster.

How many times can I write “I” at a lead-line

before realizing Narcissus has failed me?

Cut from willow,

I am become jealous of rain.

JAB – sometime in the Spring, 1997

Daryingly daring . . .

It's a Satyr's day … a much cooler next two days with welcome rain forecasted for Okieland … Long pants and sleeves to start the day.

The cloud cover may obscure the annual Perseids meteor shower which is peaking this weekend. Forecasts indicate breaks in the cloudy cover tonight and Sunday night between rains, so there might be a chance for a quick peek.

Vietnam is helping the Watercourse build new islands in the South China seas for political and military alternatives to Chinese efforts.

Fifty years ago yesterday, Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency amid the Watergate scandal. If you weren't there, or have forgotten the history, Heather Cox Richardson updated us.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. – Gore Vidal

Some often get this advice backwards to their chagrin and disadvantage. Many start with just not giving a damn without thinking about what they're saying, let alone while pretending at being somebody other than who they really are.

The town of Gore, Oklahoma – 72 miles Southeast from where I sit in TulseyTown – was named after Vidal's grandfather, U.S. Senator Thomas Gore. No doubt Vidal spent some of his youth visiting there, so I claim him as a homey. A prolific writer/social critic (among many talents), Gore Vidal one said “... why would anyone want to become a U.S. Senator when you could go into business and buy one.” A decent documentary of the life/times of Gore Vidal, produced for PBS' American Masters, is on Youtube.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear without my contriving. – Rilke