Now Westlin Winds

"Nice going, God!" [Cat's Cradle, pt. 1]

2007-07-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

"God got lonesome.

So God said to some mud, 'Sit up!'

'See all I've made!' said God, 'the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.'

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.

Lucky me, lucky mud.

I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.

Nice going, God!

Nobody could have done it but you, God! I certainly couldn't have.

I feel very unimportant compared to You.

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.

I got so much, and most mud got so little."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Under the Sun

2007-06-03T14:58:00.001-05:00

"So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun."

- Ecclesiastes 4:2, 3

Alarms and Discursions

2007-05-30T21:05:00.001-05:00

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

- G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

Buck up.

2007-05-30T20:54:00.000-05:00

"Buck up... It's only death, all said and done. We should have to die someday, you know."

- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

Highland Dancing

2007-05-28T15:29:00.001-05:00

Source I could spend hours here.

A pleasant, simple tune...

2007-05-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

"A fiddler on the roof... Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, you might say that every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy."

- Joseph Stein, The Fiddler on the Roof

A Day in the Life

2007-05-18T14:51:00.000-05:00

"...and though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph. He blew his mind out in a car. He didn't notice that the lights had changed. A crowd of people stood and stared. They'd seen his face before, nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords."

-The Beatles, 'A Day in the Life'

How many people does one know?

2007-05-09T17:42:00.000-05:00

"We know but a few men, and a great many coats and breeches."

-Henry David Thoreau

The more one thinks on this, the more it is understood.

Now: VERY Fantastic

2007-05-09T17:39:00.000-05:00

"We thought if we lasted for two or three years, that would be fantastic."

-Ringo Starr of The Beatles

...could not be truer.

2007-05-05T16:36:00.001-05:00

toothpastefordinner.com

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter

2007-04-30T14:50:00.000-05:00

"All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes the fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king."

- 'All That is Gold Does Not Glitter', J.R.R. Tolkien

"...to be in some way inferior."

2007-04-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

"The claim to equality, outside political fields, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior."

-C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters

Where is Everybody?

2007-04-27T14:49:00.000-05:00

"Up there, in the vastness of space, in the void that is the sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting... in the Twilight Zone."

-The Twilight Zone, Episode 1, 'Where is Everybody?'

The Secret Sits

2007-04-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

"We dance around a ring and suppose,

But the secret sits in the middle and knows."

-Robert Frost

"So it goes."

2007-04-20T15:20:00.000-05:00

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment it gone, it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people,

'So it goes.'"

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Take what you will from this.

"Poor, silly, half-brained things..."

2007-04-16T14:49:00.000-05:00

"What can we know? What are we all? Poor, silly, half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the asperations of angels and the instincts of beasts."

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in The Stark Munro Letters

All Things Considered

2007-04-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

"Books are too often reviewed as astonishing. War and Peace, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the fact that Keith Richards is still alive: those things are astonishing."

"There is a Badger Day... It comes out of its hole, and if it doesn't tear your face off, you have six more weeks of winter."

The above are from the Groundhogs' Day 2007 'All Things Considered' program on NPR. I was listening while working on a paper, heard these things, and jotted them down on the back of one of my papers. I just recently came across them and thought they were lovely.

2007-04-12T15:07:00.001-05:00

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Another from the Bardie...

2007-04-08T06:55:00.000-05:00

"It was an unlucky affair. As we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire and burned to ashes; and I was left, like a true poet, without a sixpence."

-Robert Burns

Romans 6:23

2007-04-07T17:05:00.000-05:00

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

-Romans 6:23

C. S. Lewis: A Man of Genius

2007-04-04T08:40:00.000-05:00

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

How true...

2007-04-03T17:20:00.000-05:00

"So this is America... They must be out of their minds."

- Ringo Starr, upon arriving in America for the first time

The Clod and the Pebble

2007-04-03T08:39:00.000-05:00

'The Clod and the Pebble' - William Blake

.
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
.
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet:
But a pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.
.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.
.

I was introduced to this poem by my dad, and have loved it since.

Now Westlin Winds

2007-04-01T16:28:00.000-05:00

To begin, I'll post what is presently my favorite poem, by Robert Burns, of whom my display name's the namesake.

'Now Westlin Winds' - Robert Burns

Now westlin winds and slaught'ring guns

Bring Autumn's pleasant weather;

The moorcock springs on whirring wings

Amang the blooming heather:

Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain,

Delights the weary farmer;

And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night,

To muse upon my charmer.

The partridge loves the fruitful fells,

The plover loves the mountains;

The woodcock haunts the lonely dells,

The soaring hern the fountains:

Thro' lofty groves the cushat roves,

The path of man to shun it;

The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush,

The spreading thorn the linnet.

Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find,

The savage and the tender;

Some social join, and leagues combine,

Some solitary wander:

Avaunt, away! the cruel sway,

Tyrannic man's dominion;

The sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry,

The flutt'ring, gory pinion!

But, Peggy dear, the ev'ning's clear,

Thick flies the skimming swallow,

The sky is blue, the fields in view,

All fading-green and yellow:

Come let us stray our gladsome way,

And view the charms of Nature;

The rustling corn, the fruited thorn,

And ev'ry happy creature.

We'll gently walk, and sweetly talk,

Till the silent moon shine clearly;

I'll grasp thy waist, and, fondly prest,

Swear how I love thee dearly:

Not vernal show'rs to budding flow'rs,

Not Autumn to the farmer,

So dear can be as thou to me,

My fair, my lovely charmer!

...and it begins.

2007-04-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

This blog is quite simple. Here I will post quotes, passages, poetry, and whatnot that I enjoy. Other things may pop in from time to time. I hope you enjoy it. Any of my own words will always appear in italics.

R. Burns