A friend of mine gave me homeopathic green tea to relieve stress … and it worked!
But then my preconceptions were challenged, and the contradictory evidence to my skeptical thinking caused cognitive dissonance.
So I’m stressed again.
You Wiccans and you’re Wiccy ways!!!!
Well, probably not … as Auden’s manmade “Tower” does sound different than King’s nexus of all realities. Nor does “The Quest,” the set of poems from which this is selected, parallel Roland’s journey.
Still, it’s a terrific poem.
“The Tower,” by W. H. Auden
This is an architecture for the old;
Thus heaven was attacked by the afraid,
So once, unconsciously, a virgin made
Her maidenhead conspicuous to a god.
Here on dark nights while worlds of triumph sleep
Lost Love in abstract speculation burns,
And exiled Will to politics returns
In epic verse that makes its traitors weep.
Yet many come to wish their tower a well;
For those who dread to drown, of thirst may die,
Those who see all become invisible:
Here great magicians, caught in their own spell,
Long for a natural climate as they sigh
“Beware of Magic” to the passer-by.
A friend of mine is helping with what sounds like a heck of a fun event here on Long Island for a great cause — providing disabled children with adaptive tricycles.
Check out the September 25th “Mics for Trikes” event at McGuire’s Comedy in Bohemia:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1455936594670792/?ref=22
Talk about synchronicity. I was just chatting with my best friend last night — I read to her W. H. Auden’s “The Tower,” (part of “The Quest”), and then we were talking about books on tape. I told her I wanted to hear Tom Hiddleston read something, because his voice is my favorite.
Then I find this linked from the Dagda Publishing website by its (apparently telepathic) editors:
“As I Walked Out One Evening” was the first Auden poem I ever read.
Ringin’ it in with the best of the Brits:
“O Where Are You Going,” by W.H. Auden
“O where are you going?” said reader to rider,
“That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder’s the midden whose odors will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.”
“O do you imagine,” said fearer to farer,
“That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?”
“O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer,
“Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?”
“Out of this house” ‚ said rider to reader,
“Yours never will” ‚ said farer to fearer,
“They’re looking for you” ‚ said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
dammit.
You’d figure that a learning curve as shallow as this one would have been eliminated by natural selection.
Then again … I’m still alive.
Or maybe Darwin was wrong, and the Creationists are right — and God deliberately made stupid animals to test us.
Sigh …
Robocop (2014) was a hell of a lot more cerebral than anyone expected, putting more thought into its script than did the gimmicky (but still quite classic) ultra-violent 1987 original. The new film is high-concept science fiction instead of over-the-top satire, touching on everything from drone deployment overseas to free will to domestic surveillance. The movie even gives a nod to the question of the existence of the soul.
It’s good, but it will never achieve the cult classic status of the original. As much as I liked it, I could have used a few more action scenes. This was a well made movie, but the kid in me wanted just a little more screen time for the ED-209’s, more bot-on-bot slugfests, or even a reappearance from one of the original franchise’s garish, comic book villains.
Still … this was well done. It was sure better than anyone in the fan community thought it would be. I’d recommend it. And, really … can any movie come CLOSE to matching one that casts Red Foreman, the Dad from “That 70’s Show,” as the Big Bad?
“The Disappearance of Little Tommy Drummond”
After a local boy is apparently abducted, hardware store owner Kira Manning reflects that a single incident of violence and loss can change a small town forever.
First published on November 5, 2013, Dead Beats Literary Blog
http://www.deadbeats.eu/post/66085895442/the-disappearance-of-little-tommy-drummond-by-eric
“The Fall of Rome,” by W. H. Auden
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebretonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
Hence his moniker. Here he is, again, in the flesh … or fur. Unable to escape the green vault and its tempting breakfast.
I had to arrange his escape again, this time with a 2X4.
How many times am I going to have to do this?
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 