What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
quote by Henry James
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Nuclear Is Safe? No They Lied To You
A list of non classified nuclear disasters
chalk one up for Chalk River Canada
rating 5 a “reactor shutoff rod failure,
combined with several operator errors,
led to a major power excursion of more
than double the reactor's rated output
at AECL's NRX reactor” then a big deal.1952
Entrant two Windscale Pile United Kingdom
rating 5 a “Release of radioactive material to
the environment following a fire in a reactor
core.” Toast a good year for nuclear disasters.1957
graphite core of a British nuclear “[weapons
programme] reactor at Windscale, Cumberland
(now Sellafield, Cumbria) caught fire, releasing
substantial amounts of radioactive contamination
into the surrounding area.” Radioactive fire.
A warm welcome to entrant three. Kyshtym
Russia rating 6 a “Significant release of
radioactive material to the environment
from explosion of a high activity waste tank.” 1957
Please all welcome contestant one back
Chalk River Canada (rating?) “Due to
inadequate cooling a damaged uranium
fuel rod caught fire and was torn in two.” 1958
Champagne pops cheer another good year
Vinč a Yugoslavia (rating?) “During
a subcritical counting experiment a power
buildup went undetected - six scientists
received high doses.” What detailed detail? 1958
Applause please for our first American entry
Santa Susana Field Laboratory US (rating?)
“Partial core meltdown.” Sounds serious.
Tick one deep operations public cover up.1959
Time to take a nice country waltz in a US county
Westinghouse Waltz Mill Westmoreland County
(rating?) a core melt accident in a test reactor? 1960
Looks like American is going for a hat trick
Charlestown US (rating?) “Error by a worker
at a United Nuclear Corporation fuel facility
led to an accidental criticality”. Human error? 1964
[...] Read more
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Nature
Weather constantly changes.
No character, only dynamic.
Dull and dreary,
Or bitter and cold,
Or bright and shiny.
This is mother nature.
She is of this world.
She dictates the mood.
She affects mine.
Emotions, constantly changing.
Personality has dynamic,
But lacks character.
It is constantly changing.
Bitter and resentful,
Frustrated and annoyed
Happy & joyous.
This is human nature.
It is of this world.
It dictates our mood.
It affects another.
Mother nature cannot be controlled.
For she is not ours.
Yet mother nature controls me,
Though I am not hers.
Together, we must exist.
We must accept each as we both are.
Though one affects the other.
Based on emotion, not character.
During the storm,
The sky is still the sky,
The ground, is still the ground
The sun is still the sun.
This is the character of mother nature.
The snow may cover the ground,
But the ground remains.
The clouds may cover the sun,
But the sun remains.
Character is always constant.
Nature affects character.
Character is patience, kindness,
Compassion, empathy, forgiving.
Plain and simple,
Our character is love.
Human nature covers human character,
Although it might not be seen,
It still remains.
[...] Read more
poem by Ryan Lee Morris
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VIII. Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator
Ah, my Giacinto, he's no ruddy rogue,
Is not Cinone? What, to-day we're eight?
Seven and one's eight, I hope, old curly-pate!
—Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,
Amo-as-avi-atum-are-ans,
Up to -aturus, person, tense, and mood,
Quies me cum subjunctivo (I could cry)
And chews Corderius with his morning crust!
Look eight years onward, and he's perched, he's perched
Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair,
Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he?
—Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case
Like this, papa shall triturate full soon
To smooth Papinianian pulp!
It trots
Already through my head, though noon be now,
Does supper-time and what belongs to eve.
Dispose, O Don, o' the day, first work then play!
—The proverb bids. And "then" means, won't we hold
Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast,
Cinuolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own,
That makes gruff January grin perforce!
For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth
Escaping from so many hearts at once—
When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet,
Jokes the hale grandsire,—such are just the sort
To go off suddenly,—he who hides the key
O' the box beneath his pillow every night,—
Which box may hold a parchment (someone thinks)
Will show a scribbled something like a name
"Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end,
"To whom I give and I bequeath my lands,
"Estates, tenements, hereditaments,
"When I decease as honest grandsire ought."
Wherefore—yet this one time again perhaps—
Shan't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose!
Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the world,
May—drop in, merely?—trudge through rain and wind,
Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint
There's cookery in a certain dwelling-place!
Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke,
Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light,
And so find door, put galligaskin off
At entry of a decent domicile
Cornered in snug Condotti,—all for love,
All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo!
Well,
Let others climb the heights o' the court, the camp!
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi
Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,
"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
"Well, he can say no other than what he says.
"We have been young, too,—come, there's greater guilt!
"Let him but decently disembroil himself,
"Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—
"We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!
And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast
As if I were a phantom: now 't is—"Friend,
"Collect yourself!"—no laughing matter more—
"Counsel the Court in this extremity,
"Tell us again!"—tell that, for telling which,
I got the jocular piece of punishment,
Was sent to lounge a little in the place
Whence now of a sudden here you summon me
To take the intelligence from just—your lips!
You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—
That she I helped eight months since to escape
Her husband, was retaken by the same,
Three days ago, if I have seized your sense,—
(I being disallowed to interfere,
Meddle or make in a matter none of mine,
For you and law were guardians quite enough
O' the innocent, without a pert priest's help)—
And that he has butchered her accordingly,
As she foretold and as myself believed,—
And, so foretelling and believing so,
We were punished, both of us, the merry way:
Therefore, tell once again the tale! For what?
Pompilia is only dying while I speak!
Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the smile?
My masters, there's an old book, you should con
For strange adventures, applicable yet,
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye
Here beginneth the Prologe of the processe of the Libelle of Englyshe polycye, exhortynge alle Englande to kepe the see enviroun and namelye the narowe see, shewynge whate profete commeth thereof and also whate worshype and salvacione to Englande and to alle Englyshe menne.
The trewe processe of Englysh polycye
Of utterwarde to kepe thys regne in rest
Of oure England, that no man may denye
Ner say of soth but it is one the best,
Is thys, as who seith, south, north, est and west
Cheryshe marchandyse, kepe thamyralte,
That we bee maysteres of the narowe see.
For Sigesmonde the grete Emperoure,
Whyche yet regneth, whan he was in this londe
Wyth kynge Herry the vte, prince of honoure,
Here moche glorye, as hym thought, he founde,
A myghty londe, whyche hadde take on honde
To werre in Fraunce and make mortalite,
And ever well kept rounde aboute the see.
And to the kynge thus he seyde, 'My brothere',
Whan he perceyved too townes, Calys and Dovere,
'Of alle youre townes to chese of one and other
To kepe the see and sone for to come overe,
To werre oughtwardes and youre regne to recovere,
Kepe these too townes sure to youre mageste
As youre tweyne eyne to kepe the narowe see'.
For if this see be kepte in tyme of werre,
Who cane here passe withought daunger and woo?
Who may eschape, who may myschef dyfferre?
What marchaundy may forby be agoo?
For nedes hem muste take truse every foo,
Flaundres and Spayne and othere, trust to me,
Or ellis hyndered alle for thys narowe see.
Therfore I caste me by a lytell wrytinge
To shewe att eye thys conclusione,
For concyens and for myne acquytynge
Ayenst God, and ageyne abusyon
And cowardyse and to oure enmyes confusione;
For iiij. thynges oure noble sheueth to me,
Kyng, shype and swerde and pouer of the see.
Where bene oure shippes, where bene oure swerdes become?
Owre enmyes bid for the shippe sette a shepe.
Allas, oure reule halteth, hit is benome.
[...] Read more
poem by Anonymous Olde English
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Great Conductors
Hans Richter Parsifal did not conduct,
and to the National Gallery he never paid
a visit, but he showed Franz Strauss who never sucked
just how the horn in Meistersinger should be played.
Franz Strauss refused to play a second time
for Hans von Bülow Meistersinger’s second act;
Hans begged his pardon when Franz told him: “I’m
retiring, since you for the hornist show no tact.”
There is an incident reported about the premiere of Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg. The first version: during a rehearsal Strauss complained about the terrible demanding horn part, but Hans Richter, Wagner's secretary & former first horn at the Viennese Kaerntnerthor Theatre (Beethoven's Sonata op.17 had been premiered there; forerunner theatre of the Imperial Opera House) , was present & asked Strauss to lend him his horn & played the passage from the endings of the second act flawless, but giving the horn back with the comment With your B-flat-horn you will have difficulties always; the F-horn sounds much better.
I do not believe this anecdote to be true. Even an already warmed up horn player of excellent qualities might have difficulties with the Pruegelszene How can a conducter to be (Richter became the first world famous conductor; he led the first Ring in Bayreuth 1876) , who had not played his horn for a while, play this passage flawless without any warm-up. A myth only! Richter used this complain about B-flat horn also, when he conducted in Bayreuth. He recommended the use of the single F horn always. No wonder. He came from Vienna.
The second incident happened after the end of the dress rehearsal of Mastersingers. Hans von Bülow wanted to repeat the ending of the 2nd Act again, but Strauss refused to do so, telling von Bülow that he could not do it again, as being exhausted already. If you cant do it again, so you must better ask for retirement! , replied von Buelow to Strauss. But Strauss left the pit and asked the opera's administration for immediate retirement. So Hans von Bülow had to come to Strauss house at the Pschorr Estate, ask for pardon, which was granted, - so the premiere of Mastersingers was saved.
There is an incident reported about the premiere of Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg. The first version: during a rehearsal Strauss complained about the terrible demanding horn part, but Hans Richter, Wagner's secretary & former first horn at the Viennese Kaerntnerthor Theatre (Beethoven's Sonata op.17 had been premiered there; forerunner theatre of the Imperial Opera House) , was present & asked Strauss to lend him his horn & played the passage from the endings of the second act flawless, but giving the horn back with the comment With your B-flat-horn you will have difficulties always; the F-horn sounds much better.
I do not believe this anecdote to be true. Even an already warmed up horn player of excellent qualities might have difficulties with the Pruegelszene. How can a conductor to be (Richter became the first world famous conductor; he led the first Ring in Bayreuth 1876) , who had not played his horn for a while, play this passage flawless without any warm-up. A myth only! Richter used this complain about B-flat horn also, when he conducted in Bayreuth. He recommended the use of the single F horn always. No wonder. He came from Vienna.
The second incident happened after the end of the dress rehearsal of Mastersinger. Hans von Bülow wanted to repeat the ending of the 2nd Act again, but Strauss refused to do so, telling von Bülow that he could not do it again, as being exhausted already. If you can’t do it again you had better ask for retiremen! replied von Bülow to Strauss. But Strauss left the pit and asked the opera's administration for immediate retirement. So Hans von Bülow had to come to Strauss house at the Pschorr Estate, ask for pardon, which was granted, - so the premiere of Mastersingers was saved.
8/25/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Determination
Girl the last time I saw you, you were crying my name
When I put you on the spot,
Will you still feel the same
Show me some determination
Show me the measure of your dedication
I need to see just a reflection of your inspiration
Dont you break down on me
Im looking for someone,
Someone strong enough to believe in
Everybodys looking for someone
Strong enough to stand on his feet
And never break down
Ill put my life on the line and believe what you say
Ill go out on a limb if you meet me halfway
Im looking for someone
To show me what they mean by devotion
Everybodys looking for someone
Prepared to put aside his emotion
And never break down
Youre a new wave raver and you like to talk tough
But can you still cut the mustard
When the going gets rough
I need a demonstration of your determination
Give me an indication of your determination
Three days in the rain and I aint had no sleep
But I wont break down now, I got a promise to keep
Showing my determination
cause thats the way I am
song performed by Todd Rundgren
Added by Lucian Velea
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Berenice by edgar allan poe
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, -as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? -from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars -in the character of the family mansion -in the frescos of the chief saloon -in the tapestries of the dormitories -in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory -but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings -in the fashion of the library chamber -and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes -of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before -that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? -let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms -of spiritual and meaning eyes -of sounds, musical yet sad -a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy-land -into a palace of imagination -into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition -it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye -that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers -it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life -wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, -not the material of my every-day existence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew -I ill of health, and buried in gloom -she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side -mine the studies of the cloister -I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation -she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name -Berenice! -and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! -Oh! Naiad among its fountains! -and then -then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease -a fatal disease -fell like the simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim -where was she, I knew her not -or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself -trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease -for I have been told that I should call it by no other appelation -my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form -hourly and momently gaining vigor -and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in; -such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. -The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio 'de Amplitudine Beati Regni dei'; St. Austin's great work, the 'City of God'; and Tertullian 'de Carne Christi, ' in which the paradoxical sentence 'Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est' occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice -in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning -among the trellised shadows of the forest at noonday -and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her -not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream -not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze -not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now -now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, -one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon*, -I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me.
*For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon -Simonides.
Was it my own excited imagination -or the misty influence of the atmosphere -or the uncertain twilight of the chamber -or the gray draperies which fell around her figure -that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, I -not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being, lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and Jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface -not a shade on their enamel -not an indenture in their edges -but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! -the teeth! -they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They -they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Salle it has been well said, 'que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments, ' and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! -ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees! -ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
And the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went -and the day again dawned -and the mists of a second night were now gathering around -and still I sat motionless in that solitary room; and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was -no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.
I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive -at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror -horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed -what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, 'what was it? '
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, 'Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.' Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?
There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? -some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night -of the gathering together of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound; -and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave -of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
He pointed to garments; -they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; -it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall; -I looked at it for some minutes; -it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
poem by Erie Morganmaples
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Injection Site
We who oppose the drug addict injection sites are helpless indeed,
A graphic illustration of where democracy can lead,
And we the people have no control of where we really are,
Have injection-site activists taken over and gone bizarre?
Is this a graphic illustration of our need for drastic change?
And where can we go or turn to, so referendums are arranged?
Appointees who make decisions that are often definitely wrong
Helpless no-referendum people have to sing the same song.
Does the Vancouver injection site show that we have all gone mad?
As with abortion clinics, this decisions are extremely sad,
If we are going to have injection sites, they should be on certain streets
Where judges, lawyers and Supreme Court appointees live and meet.
poem by James Bredin
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Triptych
Prelude, climax, aftermath,
that is the story of our lives, triptych
that takes away from he who hath,
without bell, book or even candlestick,
what he regarded as his own,
his life, which will be confiscated and
leave him with nothing, all alone,
trite triptych trash within a no-man’s land.
His narrative is adumbrated,
returning earth to earth, to adamah,
where he as prelude was created,
to be mere aftermath, from climax far.
Adamah is Hebrew for “earth, ” and the root of the name of “Adam, ” which in the Creative narrative denotes “First Man, created from the earth” (Gen.2: 7) .
Inspired by an article by Alan Jenkins in the TLS, December 5,2008 (“Human Meat”) . He writes:
That so many of Bacon’s motifs derived, in complex, vigilant ways from photography and film is entirely consistent with his acute awareness that these new art forms had rendered representation in painting obsolete, and with his horror of mere “illustration”. This was not to say that painting should not deal in “fact”: just that fact comprehended more than what is “seen naturally”. “One wants a thing to be as factual as possible and at the same time as deeply suggestive or deeply unlocking of areas of sensation other than simple illustration of the object”, as Bacon put it to David Sylvester. He was also one of the most literary of painters, an admirer of Ulysses, an avid reader of poetry and drama who saw that the Oresteia and T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes were blood relations, who liked to quote lines from both yet who repeatedly and sometimes fiercely repudiated attempts to read “a story” into his own work.
But he insisted too much. At one level, his habit of working in triptychs, and at a deeper one the suggestiveness he often in fact achieved, not just in triptychs but in single paintings, militates against that very insistence. It is hard to look at such works as the “Crucifixions” of 1962 and 65, “Lying Figure” (1969) , “Triptych, Studies from the Human Body” (1970) or “Triptych March 1974” without a sense of prelude, climax and aftermath – though not necessarily in that order. Some such adumbrated narrative, an intimate human drama about to be embarked on, concluded or aborted also haunts the restrained and very beautiful portrait studies of a suited “Man in Blue”, his face and hands bright-lit on a deep blue ground, that are at once the most “readable” of all Bacon’s male figures, and the most ambiguous.
12/8/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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IV. Tertium Quid
True, Excellency—as his Highness says,
Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched
Symmetrical beside the other two;
Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,
So do the facts abound and superabound:
And nothing hinders that we lift the case
Out of the shade into the shine, allow
Qualified persons to pronounce at last,
Nay, edge in an authoritative word
Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools
Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike
"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"
Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,
Truth the divinity must needs descend
And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!
Hammer into their noddles who was who
And what was what. I tell the simpletons
"Could law be competent to such a feat
"'T were done already: what begins next week
"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain
"Whereof the first was forged three years ago
"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,
"And proved so slow in taking the first step
"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,
"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,
"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death
"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat
"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?
"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!
"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."
Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.
To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case
Fused and confused past human finding out.
One calls the square round, t' other the round square—
And pardonably in that first surprise
O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:
But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue
Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?
It makes a man despair of history,
Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!
Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away
With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—
One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli
And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope
Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,
Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!
Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here
Would settle the matter as sufficiently
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Lemons Never Do Forget
Incident'ly there should some changes made.
You've got to work if you should have to save.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
Wait a while and straighten out the tie you wear.
You've got to take it easy if you dare.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
Don't be blind you've got a thinking mind.
Stop the bells that ring so loud.
Don't nod your head you'll draw a crowd.
Just think of ev'rything you've worked so hard to bring.
The lemon sings my song; He's known it all along.
Incident'ly there should be some changes made.
You've got to work if you should have to save.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
Don't be blind you've got a thinking mind.
Stop the bells that ring so loud.
Don't nod your head you'll draw a crowd.
Just think of ev'rything you've worked so hard to bring.
The lemon sings my song; He's known it all along.
Incident'ly there should be some changes made.
You've got to work if you should have to save.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
song performed by Bee Gees from Horizontal
Added by Lucian Velea
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Lemons Never Forget
Incident'ly there should some changes made.
You've got to work if you should have to save.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
Wait a while and straighten out the tie you wear.
You've got to take it easy if you dare.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
Don't be blind you've got a thinking mind.
Stop the bells that ring so loud.
Don't nod your head you'll draw a crowd.
Just think of ev'rything you've worked so hard to bring.
The lemon sings my song; He's known it all along.
Incident'ly there should be some changes made.
You've got to work if you should have to save.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
Don't be blind you've got a thinking mind.
Stop the bells that ring so loud.
Don't nod your head you'll draw a crowd.
Just think of ev'rything you've worked so hard to bring.
The lemon sings my song; He's known it all along.
Incident'ly there should be some changes made.
You've got to work if you should have to save.
An apple is a fool but lemons never do forget.
You've got to play it cool before they come and throw the net.
song performed by Bee Gees
Added by Lucian Velea
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Police intimidation
Today while in Springs
walking on the sidewalk
on my way to home
there was a police roadblock
put up right over the main road
just at Werda School
where you leave the shopping area
where eight armed policemen were standing
and when I got a call
from a wrong number
the one in the middle of the road
rushes to me; saying that I have taken a photograph of him
and the whole lot of them close around me,
I am even grabbed
with a hand into the back of my pants
that holds onto my belt,
I am searched
with hands being put
into my pockets
and my two cellular phones are taken
whereupon I say to them
that I have broken no law
and I am taking record of police intimidation
and a black police captain
(if military ranks are the same)
grab onto my arms holding them
and say that he is going to lock me up
and he stands so near to my face
that I am able to smell his sour breathe.
Whereupon I say to him
that I have broken no law,
that he has no grounds for arrest
and that touching me
is as good as assault
and then a white policeman
with two stars (a military lieutenant’s rank) walks nearer
and the captain let go of my arms,
some of the group gathered around me stands back
but the one at my back
is still holding on to me
[...] Read more
poem by Gert Strydom
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Habit Of Success
Inspiration, aspiration and perspiration
Takes one to the dream destination
The dream destination is nothing
But is a result of appreciation and admiration
An outcome of application and determination
Determination motivates to generation of strong willpower
The willpower is set by the desires
Inspiration, aspiration, perspiration, appreciation, admiration, determination and application
Fuel the desire to formulate the success equation
Once achieved the success becomes a habit
Only then we reach the never reachable DESTINATION
Alok Katdare
Navi Mumbai, India
March 16,2009
poem by Alok Katdare
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An Intruder, cont, cont
The first thing I did next (actually rather fine)
Morning was to open the door and check on Pigeon.
I admire determination in man or bird
Even determination ventured for its own sake
There being no other course to choose;
That, notwithstanding, in all faith,
I expected to see Pigeon fled, the flower pot empty,
Her shambles of a nest gone, gone, gone,
Blown, stick over piddling stick under paltrey stick, to the four corners-
Swept away, like Giancarlo Giannini
In the so-named movie popular a few years back.
But (surprise) , weatherwise all was fine and morning-bright
Whereas the heavens were low and kvetchy, overnight,
Now they were high, preternaturally blue and cloud free;
Whereas, last night the rain made credible the flood-myth
Now the leaves were pliant, crisp and green,
Like the skin of youth, restored,
As though to show, despite the furor of the storm
They pulled through pretty good, anyhow.
Only some water stood placid in the bowls
To evidence the deluge of the night-
The bees already grazing in the buds
As though it never happened, the storm,
Nature being so resilient, usually,
Recovery, for her, just another part of the game-
Foregone, for granted taken, no big deal.
The stone was bathed in squares of yellow light
And barely any shade. But Pigeon? Prepared for the worst
And peeping between two parted fingers, hand
Otherwise shielding my eyes, I forced myself to look:
Ausgezeichnet! (or whatever the word is) there she was!
Quite unflapped and looking in fine feather
Sitting roundly on the flower-pot nest, half-sunk,
In that peculiar red-eyed trance
I called determination-if it wasn't just instinct working
Looking, if anything, cleaner than before,
Looking as if nothing happened,
As, indeed, nothing really had,
Storms unfraught with memories, correlations, remembered horrors
To those living in Nature. They simply are.
'Hi, Pigeon, ' I cried, quickly forgetting my fears, ....
poem by Morgan Michaels
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To See a World
To see a world,
Turn apart
By drought, and devastation.
By the forces of nature,
Will bring a tear
To one's eye.
To see a world
Brought together
By the determination
To rid the world
Of such evil
Will bring joy
To one's heart.
To see a world,
Turn apart
By war, and destruction,
By warmongering people,
Will bring a tear,
To one's eye.
To see a world
Brought together
By the determination
To rid the world
Of such evil
Will bring joy
To one's heart.
To see a world,
Turn apart,
By a dictator, and a tyrant,
Who cares only for himself,
Will bring a tear,
To one's eye.
To see a world
Brought together
By the determination
To rid the world
Of such evil
Will bring joy
To one's heart.
poem by Natasha Norville
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An Injustice
God knows how much I love her
Though she has loose character!
God knows how much I want her
Though she has loose character!
God knows how much I need her
Though she has loose character!
I can’t even walk with her
Though she has loose character!
I can’t even talk to her
Though she has loose character!
I can’t even look at her
Though she has loose character!
poem by Asif Andalib
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Character
One should exert character,
For character exhibits your soul
And the soul has a murky appearance,
It decided to be mysterious
But not when you gain character.
The character is an infinity, a logic
For the soul to create, so it does.
My soul worked like yours,
Once it even behaved like a saint
Opening the life around, then virtues surround.
My character is to be a mathematical puzzle,
My character is grand, my grand puzzle.
I have been this achievement from that achievement.
poem by Naveed Akram
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Na Tian Piet's Sha'er Of The Late Sultan Abu Bakar Of Johor
In the name of God, let his word begin:
Praise be to God, let praises clear ring;
May our Lord, Jesus Christ's[8] blessings
Guide my pen through these poetizings!
This sha'er is an entirely new composition
Composed by myself, no fear of imitation.
It's Allah's name, I will keep calling out
While creating this poem to avoid confusion.
This story I'm relating at the present moment
I copy not, nor is it by other hands wrought;
Nothing whatsoever is here laid out
That hereunder is not clearly put forth.
Not that I am able to create with much ease,
To all that's to come I'm yet not accustomed;
Why, this sha'er at this time is being composed
Only to console my heart which is heavily laden.
I'm a peranakan[9], of Chinese origin,
Hardly perfect in character and mind;
I find much that I can not comprehend,
I'm not a man given to much wisdom.
Na Tian Piet[10] is what I go by name
I have in the past composed stories and poems;
Even when explained to - most stupid I remain
The more I keep talking the less I understand.
I was born in times gone by
In the country known as Bencoolen[11];
Indeed, I am more than stupid:
Ashamed am I composing this lay.
Twenty-four years have gone by
Since I moved to the island of Singapore;
My wife and children accompanied me
To Singapore, a most lovely country.
I stayed in Riau[12] for some time
Together with my wife and children;
Two full years in Riau territory,
Back to Singapore my legs carried me.
At the time when Acheh[13] was waging war
I went there with goods to trade,
I managed to sell them at exhorbitant prices:
Great indeed were the profits I made.
[...] Read more
poem by T. Wignesan
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