Author: L.E. Hansen

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Nooks of Love

Sometimes when feeling a little bit down, a picture can cheer us up. I think it’s something akin to hope. My reasoning is thus: I want something and cannot have it. Yet there it is, all fresh and creative and someone has it. That that someone has it means it can be had. Yes?

ShuffleSketchm

Shuffle Sketch

And here it is, the object of a day’s passion. How lovely. I can see myself there, all snuggled up and dreaming. Interesting how it needs all of the things within in order to be what it is. Take away anything as in the candles and it feels empty. Take away the lights and ‘oh no! how will I read?’ The completion comes from the parts, the parts make the whole. This particular whole is not cause for envy, but joy.

How rich we are in the things we behold.

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The Hammock

 

Pabackbooks&more

Paperback Books and More

I don’t normally care for cartoon type drawings and prints, unless of course they are in graphic novel form, which I love. But and then, I thought this would do for our purposes here. It quite serendipitously appeared.

I got a hammock. I’ve wanted one for some while and was very excited to get it. So I had to make a place for it in the living room. Sort of done, if I can just figure out where to put a chair. There’s not much room in other places as things have been moved there already. Still thinking.

It could go on the patio, so I’ve started moving plants and chairs around there. I can store the chairs, just need to get to it. There is the issue of the table though. It’s round and takes up a bit of room. It is not really portable and to take it down means take it apart. Lots of tools involved. The plants (many) will need to be relocated. Still thinking.

The patio is smaller than I realized when I got the hammock. I’m not sure it would work there. Maybe I should just move things back the way they were before the hammock descended upon us. Perhaps I should just move my thinking back to the living room.

The hammock is still in the trunk of the car. It fits there.

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When The Dead And The Irish Speak

William Butler Yeats

YatesIT

Yeats—Irish Times

In the “Irish Times” on Saturday, Fintan O’Toole declared there is a Yeats Test that can be applied to determine the state of the world. It’s simple: the more quotable Yeats seems to commentators and politicians, the worse things are.

After the election of Donald Trump, there was a massive surge in online searches for Yeats’s magnificently doom-laden The Second Coming. From data collected by Frank McNally, the poem was more quoted in newspapers the first seven months of 2016 than in any other year of the past three decades.

That’s saying a lot.

But more to the point, it hasn’t stopped. On a Twitter account called Widening Gyre, lines from the poem are sent out into cyberspace without further comment.

“The centre cannot hold” was tweeted or retweeted 499 times on June 24th, 2016, the morning after the Brexit vote. It has continued to appear 38 times a day. It also appeared 249 times in newspapers in the first seven months of 2016. Best of all, Yeats’s lines can be claimed by right, left and centre. And they are.

“Things Fall Apart” And more from The Second Coming

“mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”; “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”; and “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”

Black, White, Left or Right, Yeats has become a man for all seasons. And poetry “is loosed upon the land.”

Yates2IT

Yeats—Irish Times

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What Are Things About?

Or, What Things Are About, Or, The Identity Of Things, Or…or…or….

themet-musicalinstruments

The Met: Musical Instruments

Sea Dragon

The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/501492

This image by the Met Museum Art Collection quite attracted me. I’ve seen many marvelous and antic instruments, but this one really struck me as something more unique in its definition of form. Clearly a dragon. In fact, if you look closely at the inside of the dragon’s mouth, isn’t that a fish hook? Is that meant for us, should we dare poke a finger inside?

Is it also that clearly a musical instrument? I don’t think so. It’s there, the tube and the mouth piece, and the thumb place (the gold pad under his neck) so we know it belongs to the horn and flute family. Or does it? There are no holes from which the notes can flow, the air pulsing out from the Dragon’s spine. But maybe they are on the other side, just not visible from this angle of the photo.

In the interest of scientific research, I asked the neighbor’s visiting child—who is eight years old—what the thing was. (Age might matter in this experiment, as does music knowledge, which he has, playing in a school orchestra.)  He studied it quite seriously in a zoomed large photo of a photo. “Well,” he said, “It is a dragon for sure.” “Anything else,” I asked. “Well,” he said again, “You can see he’s still alive, even though he’s been stabbed.” “Stabbed?” I asked astounded. “Yes. See this?” He pointed to the tube extending curved, from the Dragon’s neck. “They tried to kill him with this but his hide was so thick and tough they couldn’t make it all the way through. That’s how they bent it.” He nodded, more to himself than to me. He seemed satisfied with his assessment. He didn’t even ask me if that was correct. (Kids rarely do.)

“And how do you know he is still alive?” “Well, he doesn’t have his head on the ground and he looks like he’s growling. He’s going to start shooting flames any minute.”

“How do you know he’s going to shoot flames?” “Well, see this?” He points to my fish hook. “That’s what his flames come from. When that goes all down, boy watch out! There’ll be flames for sure!”

Well, there you have it.

 

 

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What I Meant To Say

Sometimes I think I am a Don DeLillo novel, not just inside of one.

For the past two days I have redone two closets in order to make better use of space and better accommodation for clothes and storage. This is also an attempt at the stripping of fat in my apartment. For some reason this triggers something in me—something nameless and untraceable. I ask myself what this means and myself does not answer.

The Writer does
“It’s about dress, silly. Clothing talks about the masks we wear, the persona we put on for the day. If you want to change who you are you’ll have to dress differently. And sometimes you get ahead of yourself, as in buying the future of you before you’re ready to put it on. Hence the new clothes that sit in there, waiting to be worn. Waiting for you.”

Last night I was up until four o’clock in the morning working on the new (as yet untitled) novel. It may be that those things I wrote in some fit of passion won’t be usable at all. Well, the words might be usable in some smoothed out form, but not in the novel. This particular novel anyway. I also started a sketch of the face on the cover of The Beautiful and damned. (I posted the cover of the book with some words a few days back.) How I envy those who can sit down and just sketch whatever they see. And I love notebooks filled with lovely words and comments and observations with sketches interspersed along with a variety of colors. Vintage Books & Anchor Books
In moving things between closets to sort or move or toss, of course I made some discoveries. For one, I found the Yoga mat and underquilt (for padding). It’s sitting here right now, just in front of me. Waiting. But first I have to look up Will Power. I’m not done with that quite yet.