Saturday, December 29, 2007


Charles Lamb - New Year's Eve


"-- In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth ? -- I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity: and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. -- Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me.

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself -- these things go out with life?


Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading?

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here, -- the recognisable face -- the "sweet assurance of a look" -- ?"


via James Wolcott--Huckabee tickles my inner Lenin

"For it is self evident that any popular movement that would ever hope to change the status of the poor in United States would have to begin by uniting the resentment of both poor whites and poor blacks and that could probably only be possible around the figure of Jesus Christ, as he is painted by southern Christianity both black and white... and, as any South American will tell you, once the poor begin to march, Jesus is more easily a figure of the left than of the right..."

Friday, December 28, 2007




lively Terry Castle on Claude & Marcel & Janet & Alice & Gertrude & the Babe...

Thursday, December 27, 2007


new book of Leveller texts--

‘We are now engaged for our freedom. That’s the end of parliaments: not to constitute what is already established, but to act according to the just rules of government. Every person in England has as clear a right to elect his representative as the greatest person in England. I conceive that’s the undeniable maxim of government: that all government is in the free consent of the people.’

The Agreement Of The People. The Levellers' Manifesto from May 1649

:That it shall not be in their power to continue or make any Law, to deprive any person, in case of Tryals for Life, Limb, Liberty, or Estate, from the benefit of witnesses, on his, or their behalf; nor deprive any person of those priviledges, and liberties, contained in the Petition of Right, made in the third yeer of the late King Charls..."

Wednesday, December 26, 2007


my favorite seasonal song--Good King Wenceslas, that "deep and crisp and even" line was the first line of poetry I ever remember really responding too, the way the syllables fall like feet in the snow--

Good King Wenceslas looked out
on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about
deep and crisp and even;

Brightly shone the moon that night,
tho' the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
gath'ring winter fuel.

"Hither, page, and stand by me,
if thou knows it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"

"Sire, he lives a good league hence,
underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence
by Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh
and bring me wine,
bring me pine logs hither:
Thou and I will see him dine,
when we bear them thither."

Page and monarch,
forth they went,
forth they went together;
Through the rude wind's wild lament
and the winter weather....

Tuesday, December 25, 2007


via me-fi Dylan Thomas reads A Child's Christmas in Wales

(photo from the great Denholm Elliott version, which I haven't found on the schedule this year...)

Monday, December 24, 2007




via me-fi some old time radio --The Jack Benny Show: a Santa Sack Full of Christmas Episodes & from me some non-thematic Bob and Ray...

Check The Cool Wax has lots more swank holiday stuff, including Pee-Wee clips!

Have lots of fun over the holidays dear readers!