mccarthyism

“...So I was once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

from Robert Frost “Birches”

posted by ethan # 7/11/2012 09:04:00 PM

We just got back from a long weekend in the Upper Peninsula, in a cabin near Iron River, the first vacation we’d taken by ourselves since our honeymoon really. We’ve always just gone to see our families. The last evening before we left I went down an old road into the woods through deep grass to where the road ran itself out. To the left about thirty yards through the woods there was a clearing, very large with tall grass around scattered trees, on a little hill. I got over to it through the undergrowth (I’m always scared of snakes), and stood for a while at the edge of the meadow. Lots of bugs, and evening sunlight on the trees. All that tall grass. No real reason for it, and so far from anywhere. Forests are beautiful of course, in a closer and more guarded way, but there is something about clearings and open spaces that’s more immediate. You have to know a lot to properly appreciate a forest, about ecology, botany, trees and flowers. A lot of things I don’t know. A clearing is a quicker payoff, sunlight and grass and the sense of discovering a secret. Any why? Why no trees here? There’s no real reason for it.

Tried hard to write over the weekend, and in the past couple of weeks, with almost no progress. It’s all right, though. The thing is to keep after it. “You have always written before, and you will write now.” Probably I’m trying too hard.

Meanwhile van Persie says he won't renew his contract with Arsenal. I'm a little ashamed of how really devastating that has been for me. I'm getting closer and closer to complete cynicism about sports. Oh well. There's still Arsene Wenger. Arsene Wenger who said, “If you are living like an animal, what is the point of living? What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art. And football is like that.” Apparently sticking to principles gets you a consistent third place. So be it. In Arsene I still trust.

Listening:

Modest Mouse “Building Nothing out of Something” and “This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About”

Amor de Dias “Street of the Love of Days” 
“A Winged Victory for the Sullen”

Reading:

Frost, Auden, Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, John Ciardi, R. S. Thomas, Chad Walsh

posted by ethan # 7/11/2012 02:01:00 PM

mccarthyism

7.11.2012

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