For the past 2 years Paul Octavious visited a beautiful mound of earth that he came to call “the hill.” Here are some pictures he took of that hill.
Knock Twice Scrapbook
Mar 11
Feb 17
Letter from the editor
You said Emmet loved pigs, gave thanks for pigs at Thanksgiving Day dinner, longed to have a pig. The zoning laws made that impossible in St. Louis. So his parents arranged to have him own a pig which lived in Tennessee. He has pictures of his pig. He receives letters from the farmer about his pig. He puts aside part of his allowance to provide mash for the pig. And he is saving money and making plans to go to Tennessee on his vacation and see his pig. This could make, perfectly done, a delightful story and you could end it with the arrival in Tennessee and the lovely meeting of Emmet and his pig. Or with his trip back to St. Louis, dreadfully sorry to leave his pig but deeply happy and relatively secure in the knowledge that at some future time we will be able to come to visit his pig again. Of course it sounds like nothing written down flatly like that. But a good writer could write it up real good, I always think….. Have just reread my letter. Who deal this mess? On second thought, I think the ending should be after the visit to Tennessee, for children would want to know what Emmet and the pig did, how the vacation was, what happened on the farm, etc., and it would give you a chance to do the city-type-life (St. Louis) and country life (Tennessee farm). I think it could be about four or five thousand words. Now you shouldn’t spend too much time on it, so if any of this seems like too much trouble just tell me and I’ll not mention it any more to you. But it would be darling, if you were interested.
— An excerpt from a letter written by Ursula Nordstrom to Mary Stolz. February 13, 1957.
Published in the book, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, 1998.
The book mentioned is called Emmet’s Pig, 1959.
Feb 16
Human Beauty
If you write a poem about love …
the love is a bird,
the poem is an origami bird.
If you write a poem about death …
the death is a terrible fire,
the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames
you feed to the fire.
We can see, in these, the space between
our gestures and the power they address
—an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty,
a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm
from out of nowhere hit New York one night
in 1892, the crew at a theater was caught
unloading props: a box
of paper snow for the Christmas scene got dropped
and broken open, and that flash of white
confetti was lost
inside what it was a praise of.
—Albert Goldbarth, from Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 2007.
Feb 09
Prologue
I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.
And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone. When the police released Kevin, he came to the hospital and stayed with me so that I would know I hadn’t lost him too.
But before he could come to me, I had to convince the police that he did not belong in jail. That too time. The police were shadows who appeared intermittently at my bedside to ask me questions I had to struggle to understand.
“How did you hurt your arm?” They asked. “Who hurt you?” My attention was captured by the word they used: Hurt. As though I’d scratched my arm. Didn’t they think I knew it was gone?
“Accident,” I head myself whisper. “It was an accident.”
They began asking me about Kevin. Their words seemed to blur together at first, and I paid little attention. After a while, though, I replayed them and suddenly realized that these men were trying to blame Kevin for “hurting” my arm.
“No.” I shook my head weakly against the pillow. “Not Kevin. Is he here? Can I see him?”
“Who then?” they persisted.
I tried to think through the drugs, through the distant pain, but there was no honest explanation I could give them—none they would believe.
“An accident,” I repeated. “My fault, not Kevin’s. Please let me see him.”
I said this over and over until the vague police shapes let me alone, until I awoke to find Kevin sitting, dozing beside my bed. I wondered briefly how long he had been there, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that he was there. I slept again, relieved.
Finally, I awoke feeling able to talk to him coherently and understand what he said. I was almost comfortable except for the strange throbbing of my arm. Of where my arm had been. I moved my head, tried t olook at the empty place… the stump.
Then Kevin was standing over me, his hands on my face turning my head toward him.
He didn’t say anything. After a moment, he sat down again, took my hand, and held it.
I felt as though I could have lifted my other hand and touched him. I felt as though I had another hand. I tried to look, and this time he let me. Somehow, I had to see to be able to accept what I knew was so.
After a moment, I lay back against the pillow and closed my eyes. “Above the elbow,” I said.
“They had to.”
“I know. I’m just trying to get used to it.” I opened my eyes and looked at him. Then I remembered my earlier visitors. “Have I gotten you into trouble?”
“Me?”
“The police were here. They thought you had done this to me.”
“Oh, that. They were sheriff’s deputies. The neighbors called them when you started to scream. They questioned me, detained me for a while—that’s what they call it!—but you convinced them that they might as well let me go.”
“Good. I told them it was an accident. My fault.”
“There’s no way a thing like that could be your fault.”
“That’s debatable. But it certainly wasn’t your fault. Are you still in trouble?”
“I don’t think so. They’re sure I did it, but there were no witnesses, and you won’t co-operate. Also, I don’t think they can figure out how I could have hurt you… in the way you were hurt.”
I closed my eyes again remembering the way I had been hurt—remembering the pain.
“Are you alright?” Kevin asked.
“Yes. Tell me what you told the police.”
“The truth.” He toyed with my hand for a moment silently. I looked at him, found him watching me.
“If you told those deputies the truth,” I said softly, “you’d still be locked up—in a mental hospital.”
He smiled. “I told as much of the truth as I could. I said I was in the bedroom when I heard you scream. I ran into the living room to see what was wrong, and I found you strugling to free your arm from what seemed to be a hole in the wall. I went to help you. That was when I realized your arm wasn’t just stuck, but that, somehow, it had been crushed right into the wall.”
“Not exactly crushed.”
“I know. But that seemed to be a good word to use on them-to show my ignorance. it wasn’t all that inaccurate either. They they wanted me to tell them how such a thing could happen. I said I didn’t know… kept telling them I didn’t know. And heaven help me, Dana, I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” I whispered. “Neither do I.”
Photo by William Christenberry.
Excerpt: Octavia Butler. Kindred. 1979.
Dec 03
The cities were established where the patterns of stones had been set up according to the necessities of the plan, along the lines of force in the earth of that time. These patters, lines, circles, arrangements were no different from those familiar to us on other planets, and were the basis and foundation of the transmitting system of the Lock between Canopus and Rohanda…
What the Natives were being taught was the science of maintaining contact at all times with Canopus; of keeping contact with their Mother, their Maintainer, their Friend, and what they called God, the Divine. If they kept the stones aligned and moving as the forces moved and waxed and waned, and if the cities were kept up according to the laws of Necessity, then they might expect—these little inhabitants of Rohanda who had been no more than scurrying monkeys half in half out of the trees, animals with little in them of the Canopean nature—these animals could expect to become men, would take charge of themselves and their world when the Giants left them, the work of the symbiosis complete.
Photo: ‘The Timelessness of Angkor Wat’ by Stuck in Customs
Photo: ‘Ta Prohm’ by lecercle
Photo: ‘Approach from the West Gate’ by uwdigitalcollections
Photo: ‘Buddha Stroll’ by Stuck in Customs
Excerpt: Doris Lessing. Canopus in Argos: Archives, RE: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta, Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit By Johor (George Sherban), Emissary (Grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days. 1981.
Song: ‘What Need Have I For This-What Need Have I For That-I Am Dancing At The Feet Of My Lord-All Is Bliss-All Is Bliss’ by Shakti* from Shakti, 1975.
- For Alyssa — who will be traveling in Cambodia the next few weeks and visiting Angkor Wat — who thoughtfully invited my to be one of the guest bloggers at her place while she is away.
- Shikasta is one of the most devastating and beautiful books that I have ever read. Lessing’s rich narrative provides both an alternative creation myth and a possible solution that address the constant state of deterioration that underlies everything we do. The earlier parts of the book deal with pre-civilization — the people, their habitats. For me, Angkor Wat is probably the closest manifestation of these relics on the planet today.
- Indian music filtered through an English guitarist are the final disparate elements for this post. Lets just say that the foreignness of this hefty tune is other-worldy enough that it may be a direct communication with something else on another cosmic plane.
*John McLaughlin, guitar | L. Shankar, violin |R. Raghavan - mridangam | T. H. Vinayakaram, ghatam and mridangam | Zakir Hussain - tabla
