Golly, people, go on, be lovelier, I dare you.
Kay,
annala, the rest of you, you are all sweet as lolly-pops.
Mahalia--Thank you for that warm invitation. I have indeed been out to your neck of the woods a few times, and will go many more I'm sure because I love it so.
Here's a picture for those of our moongardeners who haven't been as lucky:
and the source of the pic, because it is full of beautiful images of our national parks: www.terragalleria.com/exhibitions/treasured-lands-large.htmlI love what you wrote about the power you draw from landscapes like this one. And I definitely see what you mean. I suppose I'm someone very tightly bound up in myself, and I find the idea of somehow escaping or dissolving that binding so unnatural to my personality that it also feels undesirable. Maybe it is the control-freak in me, and maybe it is not an entirely winning characteristic. I love going to these places, and they have a powerful effect on me, but I always find myself thinking about myself thinking about these places, if you know what I mean :
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One of my very favorite poets, Edward Thomas, who died in WWI, also a nature-lover, scolded himself for the same flaws, which were very painful to him as they separated him from the natural world which was his subject and his home (he was a noted naturalist). “You see," he wrote, "the central evil is self-consciousness carried as far beyond selfishness as selfishness is beyond self-denial (not a very scientific comparison) and now amounting to a disease and all I have got to fight it with is the knowledge that in truth I am not the isolated self-considering brain which I have come to seem…"
I empathize--I'm not somebody who naturally dissolves those kinds of borders... I have tremendous admiration for those, like you, Mahalia, and definitely like Adam, who do--who revel in it and grow from it. That's what's happening, in part, when Adam performs on a stage--he's dissolving those borders, he is no longer an isolated self-considering brain, but part of a communal experience whose energy he absorbs and returns hundred-fold (an exchange represented of course in the infiniti tattoo). It is a miracle that couldn't be more foreign to me, personally, lol.
In this way, he makes me think of another perennial favorite of mine, Whitman, who was able to melt and be absorbed so beautifully into the world around him, his constant subject. (It's funny, I don't know if I'm the kind of person who has muses, as a writer, I mean, but if I did these would be my two: Thomas and Whitman... oh, and maybe E.B. White, too, thrown into the mix.) Here's Walt on the trick of dissolving, describing the morning commute on the Brooklyn ferry:
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
I love how human that is--I mean, how much it is about humans. Whitman doesn't need some glorious landscape to inspire him--he feels the vast greatness in the urban crowds as well, in the sense of the people who came before him, who will come after. This is, in the greatest sense, what it means to be "a people person." To be vast and contain multitudes. To connect with great numbers the way Adam tries to, and does (and part of his artistic vision--a part that always fascinates me, is the importance to him of accessibility--of making as many people as possible happy with what he does--that is not a value that often accompanies rarefied excellence).
Wow--I digress, surprise surprise. Anyway,
Mahalia, I loved your thoughts, and thanks, too, for that sweet vote of confidence. The people in my life are hugely supportive, but they don't tend towards the simple "I believe in you." They're too absorbed in the details of what needs to happen next, and anyway it's not really their style, and maybe not mine, either, to ask for it...but the other day a friend of mine unexpectedly said just that to me, "I believe in you," and I was surprised at how much it touched me and how helpful I found it that he looked like he meant it. And now you, too. You're a sweetheart. It was good to hear.
Mika, shucks, thanks, and back atcha with bells on. I don't know how evolved I am. Reading your post, and looking at some of the tattoos that were posted on the main thread yesterday, I thought about the limits of my acceptance. I'm happy to have Adam tattoo himself because I trust to a certain extent that he won't do something to upset me--stick a prominent tattoo on his face, or choose an image that is really violent or macabre, for example. And at that stage, of course, it's just a matter of degrees. One man's slasher is another man's sleeve. I'm sure there are many things he could theoretically do that would lead me to discomfort, worries, and regrets. So much for being evolved, ha ha. How do parents ever let their kids out of the house?
Oh,
Sugaree, I hope you get the puppy. Do let us know and post a pic if you do. I'm still grateful for your kindness to me on a couple of occasions when I had questions about my own doggie (who, bless her, decided yesterday that it would be fun to greet the arrival of the postman by smashing through the slightly cracked front door window
--a small gash to her chest and five staples later :-/ and she seems to be doing fine). Living with her these past two years has awakened me to a sad new appreciation of the loss you just experienced. Hugs.
Junie, thanks so much for that vid. I watched the whole thing (as I procrastinated from crossing my own bridges, lol). Duly filed under "people do fucking amazing things." How did they even build those bridges? I can't manage to untangle the slats on my IKEA-bed :
. I love Austin's grackle population! They really sit on the city like a Hitchcock nightmare but you're right, they have personality. They're not afraid to voice an opinion! Maybe I should get a grackle tattoo
;D. They're actually inspiration to me, too, in this new professional venture. I'm going out on my own limb a bit, and the other day I was in a little Austin shop and I saw this hat:
It's small, I know, but it reads "grackle got no boss" ;D
And it's in Trespassing colors and everything! I think I'll get one!
Speaking of which--very best of luck in the new job! Stickit to'em!
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;D. They're actually inspiration to me, too, in this new professional venture. I'm going out on my own limb a bit, and the other day I was in a little Austin shop and I saw this hat:
