R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 38

Peter Handke

Besides, it was plain that some of the children, even the smallest, were not right for one another. There may have been no “wicked” ones, but certainly all were not “innocent” (at the most, there were some who had started at an early age to wash their hands in innocence). All knew what was wrong and did wrong, not only in passion but also with premeditation, yet even then without consciousness of wrongdoing—with the result that their actions were often more sinister than those of the most sordid scoundrels, and just as revolting. It couldn’t be denied that among the children—regardless of sex—there were some who from the start were quite at their ease playing the executioner in word and deed, with the adults looking on; they performed their act of destruction with cool expertness and when it was done walked calmly away as from an official function. And it was equally unquestionable that none of the children liked being scolded, made fun of, or beaten—in other words, victimized.

Peter Handke

He was later to come into contact with far worse prophets of childlessness, singly and in pairs. For the most part they were sharp-sighted, and thanks to their own terrifying freedom from guilt, they were able to say in technical language what was wrong with the child-parent relationship; some of them actually made a profession of their insight. In love with their own childhood and its continuance, they proved on closer acquaintance to be grownup monsters. After every encounter with them, it took the man a long time to purge his mind and soul of their analytical certainties, which cut into him like cankers. He cursed those mean, self-righteous prophets as the scum of modern times, and swore to hate them and combat them forever. The ancient dramatist supplied him with the appropriate curse for them: “Children are the soul of all men. He who has not learned this suffers less, but his well-being is of the wrong kind.” (Something else again, it goes without saying, is the good-hearted, lovable sorrow and sympathy of other childless people.)

Peter Handke

Yes, I wanted to tell a story (and I enjoyed studying dissertations). For often, in reading and writing, I had seen the truth of storytelling as a clarity in which one sentence calmly engenders another and in which the truth—the insight that came before the story—is perceptible only as a gentle something in the transitions between sentences. Moreover, I knew that reason forgets, the imagination never. For a time I thought of treating particular aspects—the mountain and me, the pictures and me—and setting them down side by side as unconnected fragments. But then I rejected such fragmentary treatment because it would have resulted not from a possibly unsuccessful striving for unity but from a deliberate method, known in advance to be safe. Then, in Grillparzer’s The Poor Minstrel, I read: “I trembled with a longing for unity.” A desire for the One in All was rekindled in me. For I knew that unity is possible. Every single moment of my life hangs together with every other—without intermediate links. I need only reconstitute them with the help of my imagination.

Mitred Parakeets @ VONS

Night's Falling and I'm Eating at VONS (Sign & All)

#rlswihart13 #vons #vonssign #atthebeach #😎 #longbeach #mitredparakeet #parakeetsofinstagram #nature #poetry #beauty #flashparakeets2023 #readmorepoetry2023♥️ 🎈🦜

Osprey with Fish @ Bolsa Chica

Ospreys @ Bolsa Chica. What's the only thing better than an osprey eating a fish -- you guessed 'er, Lester: an osprey catching a fish.:) Here's to "next best" things, and TGIFs. Have a great weekend! (And, GO BLUE!, even if my team cheats.😥)

#rlswihart13 #bolsa #bolsachica #nextbestthing #goblue #osprey #ospreywithfish #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 ✌️

Peter Handke

The mountain comes into sight before you even get to Le Tholonet. It is bare and monochrome, more radiance than color. The outlines of clouds can sometimes be mistaken for high mountains: here it is the other way around.

Peter Handke

There is a painting by Cézanne which has been referred to as The Great Pine. (He himself never gave his paintings titles, and seldom signed one.) It shows a tall, solitary pine by the Arc River southeast of Aix. This was the river of his childhood. After bathing, he and his childhood friends would sit in its shade; later, at the age of twenty, he asked Emile Zola, who had been one of these friends, in a letter: “Do you remember the pine on the bank of the Arc?” He even wrote a poem to the tree. In it the mistral blows through the bare branches; and the picture, too, suggests the wind, particularly in the way the lone tree slants. That tree, more than just about anything else, might be titled: “Out in the Open.” It transforms the ground from which it rises into a plateau, while the branches, twisted in all directions, and the infinitely varied green of its coat make the empty space around it vibrate. The Great Pine is depicted in other paintings, but never is it so solitary. In one of them (which is signed) the bottommost branch seems to wave in the direction of the landscape. Along with the branches of a neighboring pine, it forms a vaulted gateway leading into the distance, where the slopes of Mont Sainte-Victoire lie stretched beneath the bright colors of the sky.

Peter Handke

Like primeval man, he moved on to partake elsewhere of the daylight that was beginning anew on every object. The eyeball of a man coming toward him, a shimmering metal box, and the pale moon seemed joined into a triangle. Too much light.

Reddish Egret @ Bolsa Chica

 

Peter Handke

Sorger had gone outside with the cat, which was following him and seemed that day “to know a thing or two.” On the beach, sticks of driftwood had been set down, or perhaps been accidentally washed ashore, in a circle. It occurred to him that the Indians might have made these circles to demarcate themselves from this holiday and what it commemorated, and at that point the whole settlement struck him as a secret magic circle in which he, now initiated, was making his last rounds.