It is the weekend, so we shall sing. These are the Novos Baianos on Samba da minha terra, a very old song by Dorival Caymmi. Recommended weekend reading includes two posts by Rebel Girl, on Rubén Salazar and on Labor Day. Axé.
I Do you get a huge rush when you realize, in the text you are composing, that the next paragraph will be your last? Is this moment thrilling to you because you are now about to see the work go through its penultimate metamorphosis, break free from the stone from which it has been carved, … More Tao Te Ching
I have posted this poem before, and I have said before – although I have not yet located the post – that when I was learning to speak, my father would read interesting poems aloud. I liked them a great deal. I liked the metamorphoses of words and lines. This poem made a strong impression. … More Un hombre se levanta…
Axé.
The following words and Hearn quotation are from Ashley Morris’ excellent blog. Read the whole post. Nineteenth century writer Lafcadio Hearn wrote a letter to a friend in Cincinnati about two years after he arrived in New Orleans in 1877, during a grim period in which thousands died from yellow fever. He summed up his … More Lafcadio Hearn
I am not considering changing my own name, but I am considering changing this blog title to Flor y Canto or to the Nahuatl original of that phrase, in xóchitl in cuicatl. That is because the Sixth Sun is growing, and we are moving on to a new phase. In xóchitl in cuicatl indicates that … More In Xóchitl In Cuicatl
Today the weather was lovely and I was up early and worked all day, getting a lot done. My job at its best involves drawing pictures and saying things, much like a blog, if more officially serious (although I would say that it is in fact less serious). One narrator in my unfinished novel Madrid … More More on MADRID
Back to Shahrazad IV One such event – one of the few I understand well enough to describe, if not explain – took place in the Bank of Antioquia, where I was waiting to buy dollars. On the first day of the symposium, a secretary had ushered me into her office to sign some papers. … More Shahrazad V
Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds … More Christopher Marlowe
See Siegfried Sassoon’s Survivors, written at Craiglockhart in October, 1917: No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’ — These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They’ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the … More Flag Day
coldhearted scientist وداد 