The slow reads digest. A free, once-in-a-while ezine affording slow passages from here to there.

the cassandra pages.

The drive west last week, across Vermont and into New York, was one of the most ethereal and beautiful trips I've ever made over that route. I traveled in silence, in the early morning, alone. The clouds still hung low over the Green Mountains, and a hazy fog persisted in the flatter pastures on the border between the two states south of Lake George - it would burn off later in the morning and expose the extreme heat we've had since. But in those early morning hours, the mountains and farmland were dreamy and quiet and empty as the space in which I was traveling.

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On the Slow Train.

What I had learned was folk etymology--what Wikipedia calls "A commonly held misunderstanding of the origin of a particular word, a false etymology." Folk etymologies are usually more interesting than the actual word origin. Sometimes folk etymologies can unfairly cast a bad light on some perfectly innocent words, such as picnic, or phrases such as rule of thumb. But for the most part, folk etymologies can be a lot of fun.

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Creature of the Shade.

But as soon as I asked it I knew she wouldn't be able to answer. I was looking for something like "north" or "west," but she, despite being a transport management professional, just didn't use such words to organize her sense of a city. She used words like "green building" and "flagpole." She could speak of left and right, but these narrative markers don't help you unless you're already on the right course.

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not native fruit.

I've just begun a new book by Susan Griffin, "Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy." So far, it lives up to Griffin's standards for exquisite reasoning and prose. She leads us through the labyrinth of her own inner experience where it meets the outer world of both history and current events. At certain points of connection with current events I remember feeling exactly what she expresses. I take it that the inference of the book's title is that, just as in the Bible story when Jacob wrestles with the angel of the Lord and will not let him go until the angel blesses him, we must now wrestle with the angel of democracy, and not let him go.

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Everydayandeverynight.com.

I'm launching my journal again for 5768/2008.

In this omer journal, I take a Jewish-mythic point-of-view which presumes that I, personally, together with all Jews past, present and future, left Egypt and stood at Mt. Sinai together. This perspective challenges each Jew to join the Jewish experience and not be limited by the actual historical time period in which one lives. This perspective places human imagination at the center of religious engagement.

Our leaving Egypt is only the beginning of our path to liberation. Free from the bonds of Pharaoh, we seek a better, more human life. We begin this journey by the shores of the Nile. We look back in awe at a sea now appearing normal after having miraculously parted. But what now?

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via negativa.

It was my birthday, and I had been given a live shrew in a box — not for a pet, but simply to admire and to photograph. I was a little disappointed at first that I didn’t get any real presents, but the shrew was an admirably fierce little creature who attacked anything thrust in its direction, and I soon appreciated the wisdom of the gesture: loaning me a fully wild creature, something that can never be owned or controlled. The idea that anyone can own anything — it’s such a delusion, isn’t it? But that’s what drives this mania of consumption imperiling the earth.

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Mole.

Darling,
The rain you sent was mixed with snow.
I could not tell which between
The snowflakes and the apple blossom
On the black sidewalk; I woke and you were

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The Middlewesterner.

You see what you see. Don't beat yourself up too badly about it. Tomorrow the sky will be something different, a blue sheerness of petticoat, a shiny muslin, a white gauze.

Metaphor takes you away; it doesn't bring you back. You come back on your own if you get here at all.

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Lekshe's Mistake.

Place
is not substance, not
a point in space,
more a point in time
when the conjunction of mind
and matter create
an experience
that
makes us believe there is a spot
to which we can return.

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Marcia Bonta.

Dragoo, affectionately referred to as “Skunk Man,” has little or no sense of smell, so as a mephitologist he can easily study and live with skunks. When he wants one for his research, he chases it down, picks it up by its tail, and is liberally sprayed, because, as skunk expert Richard G. Van Gelder discovered back in the 1960s, you can only grab a skunk by the tail and escape being sprayed if you surprise the animal. Otherwise, it is able to evert its anus and expose the nipples from its huge and squishy scent sacs, which are then ready to fire even if you do pick it up by its tail.

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Dick Jones' Patteran Pages.

Your soft clock
scatters seconds like
peas on a drum.

A feather pulse
stutters in your
neck.

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Slow Reader.

Aubrey is the guru of the Shelf Monkeys, a secret ‘book club’ to which Thomas gets invited. “Some books are simply a waste of paper, a waste of effort both to write and to read.” The flaming cover of this novel is sufficient clue to the book burnings that ensue, inspired by Fahrenheit 451. Books burnings, by the literate?! Only for books deemed not worthy by the members’ code. “We meet, we debate, we burn. It’s therapy, really.” Things escalate quickly and darkly, Lord of the Flies style, and Thomas is compelled to choose between his loyalties to his friends, literature, ethics, and his sanity.

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blogroll

Blaugustine
Box Elder
The Cassandra Pages
Creature of the Shade
Crack Skull Bob
Daintee
Dialogues with Silence
Dick Jones's Patteran Pages
Empreintes
Everydayandeverynight.com
Feathers of Hope
Fragments from Floyd
Frizzy Logic
Heraclitean Fire
Hoarded Ordinaries
In a Dark Time
Irishmutt
Iron Monkey
Ivy Is Here
Lekshe's Mistake
Listening After Dark
Marcia Bonta
The Middlewesterner
Mole
My Gorgeous Somewhere
9 to 5 Poet
Not Native Fruit
On the Slow Train
Outside the Lines
Paula's House of Toast
Qarrtsiluni
The Rain in My Purse
Sage Said So
Scenes from a Slow-Moving Train
Shadow Cabinet
Simply Wait
Slow Reading
Spoil
Stony Moss
Tasting Rhubarb
3rd House Party
Tumblewords
Two Dishes but to One Table
Under the Fire Star
Velveteen Rabbi
Verbal Privilege
Via Negativa