Wednesday, August 2, 2017

They Are Preparing to Being Again



Yesterday was supposed to be Easy Day. After four days of hard
  1. Friday - Schoodic Head
  2. Saturday - Champlain Mountain
  3. Sunday - Acadia and St Sauveur Mountains
  4. Monday - Penobscot Mountain

we decided we're old, lets take an easy day, let's take the passenger ferry to Ilse du Haut, a remote section of Acadia National Park, sixty miles from Mount Desert Island, for leisurely coast walking. Nope. There is no easy in Acadia.




  • It doesn't help that we look at the menu of hikes and decide we must finish with the one designated Difficult. It's a small island, it's only a 400 foot ascent, how hard can it be? 
  • Hardest 400 feet up yet. They don't use iron rungs and wooden ladders on Isle du Haut.
  • It's not the up that hurts, it's the down.
  • The Susan Collins Effect is over, yo. Hello beloveds, friends analog and digital, and welcome to few new of you still here.
  • Here's the bridge over Penobscot Bay straits between mainland USA and Deer Island on the way to Stonington where we caught the ferry. All photos today by Earthgirl.




  • James Baldwin's Beginning or the End of America for his 93rd birthday.
  • Forgive me, last night on twaater I gave into anger: one knows when the Hillarium senses Trump is in danger, there's an election to be won: it attacks anyone who criticizes Clintonian neoliberalism (or any of their human trial balloons being floated) from the Left as racist, sexist asshole white men. I barked.
  • Also too.
  • I think the twaater peak via the Collins tweet was 715 followers yesterday evening before the events of the next bullet.
  • Twaater Tip: to reduce followers, type I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats.* Since that tweet last night, I'm down to 653. Be interesting to see how many unfollow during today's hike.
  • *True.




  • Late, sorry: Maggie's weekly links.
  • Late, sorry: { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • Reminder: xymphora does daily links.
  • There is a new Deux Filles album and I just bought it.
  • Rachel Cusk gut-renovates the novel? I liked - really liked - Outline, but didn't think it did anything particularly new.
  • Dan's recent literary criticism.
  • Last Ashbery for his birthday poem until next year.
  • Up to song 499 on the iPod in alphabetical order by song title, we're still in A. I don't think we'll make it to D on this trip, maybe even C.






THE TASK

John Ashbery

They are preparing to begin again:
Problems, new pennant up the flagpole
In a predicated romance.

About the time the sun begins to cut laterally across
The western hemisphere with its shadows, its carnival echoes,
The fugitive lands crowd under separate names.
It is the blankness that follows gaiety, and Everyman must depart
Out there into stranded night, for his destiny
Is to return unfruitful out of the lightness
That passing time evokes. It was only
Cloud-castles, adept to seize the past
And possess it, through hurting. And the way is clear
Now for linear acting into that time
In whose corrosive mass he first discovered how to breathe.

Just look at the filth you’ve made,
See what you’ve done.
Yet if these are regrets they stir only lightly
The children playing after supper,
Promise of the pillow and so much in the night to come.
I plan to stay here a little while
For these are moments only, moments of insight,
And there are reaches to be attained,
A last level of anxiety that melts
In becoming, like miles under the pilgrim’s feet.



3 comments:

  1. And here I thought you'd just reverted to batshittery because I refollowed you for the Maine/hiking tweets. Pretty silly of me, I know.

    Nice one, pimping Jerry and then smacking me in the face with Herman, BTW. It's like you have this batsense for exactly when I might peek in and make it all about me. xox

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    Replies
    1. Nah, I type *I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats* onto twuuter all the time, because it's true.

      Jerry beat Herman yet again, ping-wise. Jerry's undefeated.

      Delete
  2. OH! That bridge, which is a cool freaking bridge. I have driven over that bridge only twicet. I have boated under (or up to) that bridge more times than I can count. That's a nice little area, there, that passage by Stonington.

    ReplyDelete