Hugging the coast

Tomorrow, I will embark on a 4-day hiking challenge starting in the Exmoor National Park, at the northeastern tip of the Southwest Coastal Path. The challenge is an open-ended one, made to breakdown the physical body into its elements, wrest the spiritual body out of its lovelorn orbit, nourish the mind with space and time, and paint the bitter end with a sea of sweet brine and jellyfish.

"Dignity and Impudence" by Sir Edwin Landseer

"Why Explore Space?"

From 'Letters of Note':

'In 1970, a Zambia-based nun named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, then-associate director of science at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in response to his ongoing research into a piloted mission to Mars. Specifically, she asked how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth.Stuhlinger soon sent the following letter of explanation to Sister Jucunda, along with a copy of "Earthrise," the iconic photograph of Earth taken in 1968 by astronaut William Anders, from the Moon (also embedded in the transcript). His thoughtful reply was later published by NASA, and titled, "Why Explore Space?"'

Read the letter here...

"Praise be"

And He decreed Man to be holy and saw his work be done. He, who may be named or unnamed, praised or defiled, walked this land with bootstraps trailing, shedding blessings like soaked leaves after a shower and notes of blue cheese staining his nostrils and His mouth dried of wizened lips. His mind, like a bee's comb, rattled with winged pits that bled honey, was spread upon the land a tough woollen thread, embroidered with confusion grown bald and too few ladyfingers, spread and tugged into the four corners, tucked into the quiet limits of the mattress, and accepted by the people. For it is He, they say, Who colours the chalk white and He who begs the rivers to flow for His people, and He Who caresses your cried out reddened throat with golden honey lozenges; and He Who listens.

To his lost lover
     by Simon Armitage

Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other

he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost

unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,

how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –

two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –

walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.

How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips

from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit

or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart

was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.

Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.

And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

then another,
or knew her

favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.

And never almost cried,
and never once described

an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt

nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh

wept by the heart,
where it hurts,

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

a pilot light,
or stayed the night,

or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is

I like you.
I just might do.”

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

were a solid ball
of silver foil

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.

"The Pillow"

The pillow said:
at the end of the long day
only I know
the confident man’s confusion,
the nun’s desire,
the slight quiver in the tyrant’s eyelash,
the preacher’s obscenity,
the soul’s longing
for a warm body where flying sparks
become a glowing coal.
Only I know
the grandeur of unnoticed little things;
only I know the loser’s dignity,
the winner’s loneliness
and the stupid coldness one feels
when a wish has been granted.


by Mourid Barghouti

translation Radwa Ashour
from Midnight and Other Poems
Publisher: Arc Publications, Todmorden, Lancashire, 2009


When I read this for the first time, I thought "I don't want to be dignified, for dignity only shows itself in defeat. It is a remedy for failure."

"Dactylitis"

Periosteal reaction

to adjacent tendonitis

is occasionally evident

radiographically.

Pollini on music

"In a way art is a little like the dreams of a society. They seem to contribute little, but sleeping and dreaming are vitally important in that a human couldn't live without them, in the same way a society cannot live without art."

From his interview with the Guardian, "Maurizio Pollini: a life in music"

Hacker on Philosophy

James Garvey discusses Peter Hacker (wiki) and Wittgenstein in "Hacker's Challenge" in The Philosopher's Magazine. Here is a quote from that article by Hacker:

“Philosophy does not contribute to our knowledge of the world we live in after the manner of any of the natural sciences. You can ask any scientist to show you the achievements of science over the past millennium, and they have much to show: libraries full of well-established facts and well-confirmed theories. If you ask a philosopher to produce a handbook of well-established and unchallengeable philosophical truths, there’s nothing to show. I think that is because philosophy is not a quest for knowledge about the world, but rather a quest for understanding the conceptual scheme in terms of which we conceive of the knowledge we achieve about the world. One of the rewards of doing philosophy is a clearer understanding of the way we think about ourselves and about the world we live in, not fresh facts about reality.”

Emerson

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.