Thursday, August 3, 2017

To Be Quiet in Another Throat



OK, yesterday was Easy Day, seven miles around Holbrook Island Sanctuary. I'd seen signs for it on the way to Isle au Haut, so we checked it out, guessed right it wouldn't be Acadia rigorous. All photos, this time, by me.

Red blazed trails are rare. Appalachian Trail is of course white-blazed, but the vast majority of trails (including Acadia's) are blazed baby blue. Perhaps baby blue hits the eyes' rods and cones brighter, and it seems to need less maintenance than other colors for reasons I can't explain, I think it's love, when I say to you that I feel blue.




  • When was the last time someone threw a Who allusion at you?
  • Saw NOBODY! for the three hours we hiked. NOBODY!
  • Was exactly what our bodies needed - no day off, no hard hike. Work, not WORK.
  • Today, Gorge Trail to saddle between Cadillac and Dorr, up Cadillac first, then down and then up Dorr, then down. Hardest of the trip.
  • The owner came down to house to say hi last night as I was cooking dinner - they live in the carriage barn on the property, and promised us these weeks next year, so yay.
  • I like The Who. Enough to have owned records. Youngsters, they were big once.
  • In honor of an easy day for my old knees, a blog day off for my old barks.
  • True fact: I cook, Earthgirl does dishes.





SANCTUARY

Jean Valentine

People pray to each other. The way I say "you" to someone else,
respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says
"you" to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely ...
—Huub Oosterhuis 


You       who I don’t know       I don’t know how to talk to you   
 
—What is it like for you there?
 
Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship—
The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear.
Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes.
But they will not be mine;
to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices—
 
What are you afraid of?
 
What will happen. All this leaving. And meetings, yes. But death.   
What happens when you die?
 
“... not scatter the voices,”

Drown out. Not make a house, out of my own words. To be quiet in   
another throat; other eyes; listen for what it is like there. What   
word. What silence. Allowing. Uncertain: to drift, in the
restlessness ... Repose. To run like water—
 
What is it like there, right now?
 
Listen: the crowding of the street; the room. Everyone hunches in   
against the crowding; holding their breath: against dread.
 
What do you dread?
 
What happens when you die?
 
What do you dread, in this room, now?
 
Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin.
To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered   
life.
 
Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to   
follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.



4 comments:

  1. PT's Empty Glass is in my permanent whateveryecallit. Underrated songwriter by those don't deeply dig him. Or overrated by me.

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    Replies
    1. I agree completely - *Let My Love Open the Door* is a GREAT pop song, and the rest of the album is great too. His live cover of The Beat's *Save It for Later* (which is one of my favorite pop songs ever) is fabulous.

      I wish he and Daltrey didn't go around without their dead best rhythm section ever calling themselves The Who, but it's his music, he can do with it what he wants.

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    2. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Re. the third affirmation, though I don't dig it as much as the one that led to one of your most air-guitar'ds, it does seem to be tailor made for him.

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  2. i love "eminence front" - here's tampa 2007

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07hoKUrMT5A

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