So we went to the Kekele Concert up at the Oregon Zoo… Nice music, great crowd. Smaller crowd than Amadou et Mariam, but great music, good vibes… I will publish pics tomorrow, toooooo tired now.
Rowan, Mary, and yours truly met up with our friend John, my Brother-In-Law Peter down from Olympia on his way to the Oregon Country Fair, with his friend Corky from Portland. (4th generation!)
We all hung out, drank, ate food listened to the sound check as Peter and Corky wandered the Zoo, as did Rowan on his own…
<img width='170' height='170' border='0' hspace='5' align='left' src='http://www.earthrites.org/turfing2/uploads/kekele.jpg' alt='' /The Band started up, and it just built a very wonderful momentum. There is such sunshine in the music. Really lovely. If you get a chance…
The evening ended on such a high note with a lovely mist coming down over the town. Sheer Heaven. Back to the house, letting the Doglet in with her dancing in joy at having us back…
More tomorrow. (Next Weeks Show: The Refugee All Stars Of Sierra Leone!)
Tonights entry is a varied one, that you might enjoy. From varied Links, through English Fairy Tale, to the Austrian Poet Georg Takl, who we touched on lightly yesterday.
Pax,
Gwyllm
On The Menu
The Links…
Fairy Ointment
Poetry:Georg Takl
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The Links:
The Great Discourse on Steadfast Mindfulness
Pineal Traffic in the Homeland
Gas… with a Superstar Surprise…
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Fairy Ointment
DAME Goody was a nurse that looked after sick people, and minded babies. One night she was woke up at midnight, and when she went downstairs, she saw a strange squinny-eyed, little ugly old fellow, who asked her to come to his wife who was too ill to mind her baby. Dame Goody didn’t like the look of the old fellow, but business is business; so she popped on her things, and went down to him. And when she got down to him, he whisked her up on to a large coal-black horse with fiery eyes, that stood at the door; and soon they were going at a rare pace, Dame Goody holding on to the old fellow like grim death.
They rode, and they rode, till at last they stopped before a cottage door. So they got down and went in and found the good woman abed with the children playing about; and the babe, a fine bouncing boy, beside her.
Dame Goody took the babe, which was as fine a baby boy as you’d wish to see. The mother, when she handed the baby to Dame Goody to mind, gave her a box of ointment, and told her to stroke the baby’s eyes with it as soon as it opened them. After a while it began to open its eyes. Dame Goody saw that it had squinny eyes just like its father. So she took the box of ointment and stroked its two eyelids with it. But she couldn’t help wondering what it was for, as she had never seen such a thing done before. So she looked to see if the others were looking, and, when they were not noticing, she stroked her own right eyelid with the ointment.
No sooner had she done so, than everything seemed changed about her. The cottage became elegantly furnished. The mother in the bed was a beautiful lady, dressed up in white silk. The little baby was still more beautiful then before, and its clothes were made of a sort of silvery gauze. Its little brothers and sisters around the bed were flat-nosed imps with pointed ears, who made faces at one another, and scratched their polls. Sometimes they would pull the sick lady’s ears with their long and hairy paws. In fact, they were up to all kinds of mischief; and Dame Goody knew that she had got into a house of pixies. But she said nothing to nobody, and as soon as the lady was well enough to mind the baby, she asked the old fellow to take her back home. So he came round to the door with the coal-black horse with eyes of fire, and off they went as fast as before, or perhaps a little faster, till they came to Dame Goody’s cottage, where the squinny-eyed old fellow lifted her down and left her, thanking her civilly enough, and paying her more than she had ever been paid before for such service.
Now next day happened to be market-day, and as Dame Goody had been away from home, she wanted many things in the house, and trudged off to get them at the market. As she was buying the things she wanted, who should she see but the squinny-eyed old fellow who had taken her on the coal-black horse. And what do you think he was doing? Why he went about from stall to stall taking things from each, here some fruit, and there some eggs, and so on; and no one seemed to take any notice.
Now Dame Goody did not think it her business to interfere, but she thought she ought not to let so good a customer pass without speaking. So she ups to him and bobs a curtsey and said: ‘Gooden, sir, I hopes as how your good lady and the little one are as well as –’
But she couldn’t finish what she was a-saying, for the funny old fellow started back in surprise, and he says to her, says he:
‘What! do you see me today?’
‘See you,’ says she, ‘why, of course I do, as plain as the sun in the skies, and what’s more,’ says she, ‘I see you are busy, too, into the bargain.’
‘Ah, you see too much,’ said he; ‘now, pray, with which eye do you see all this?’
‘With the right eye to be sure,’ said she, as proud as can be to find him out.
‘The ointment! The ointment!’ cried the old pixy thief. ‘Take that for meddling with what don’t concern you: you shall see me no more.’ And with that he struck her on the right eye, and she couldn’t see him any more; and, what was worse, she was blind on the right side from that hour till the day of her death.
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Poetry: Georg Takl
De Profundis
There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts—
How sad this evening.
Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.
Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.
A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.
On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.
At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.
Translated by Jurek Kirakowski
—-
Kaspar Hauser’s Song
He truly loved the purple sun, descending from the hills,
The ways through the woods, the singing blackbird
And the joys of green.
Sombre was his dwelling in the shadows of the tree
And his face undefiled.
God, a tender flame, spoke to his heart:
Oh son of man!
Silently his step turned to the city in the evening;
A mysterious complaint fell from his lips:
I shall become a horseman.
But bush and beast did follow his ways
To the pale peoples house and garden at dusk,
And his murderer sought after him.
Spring and summer and oh so beautiful the fall
Of the righteous. His silent steps
Passed by the dark rooms of the dreamers.
At night he and his star dwelled alone.
He saw the snow fall on bare branches
And in the murky doorway the assassins shadow.
Silvern sank the unbornes head.
—–
Whispered Into Afternoon
Sun of autumn, thin and shy
And fruit drops off the trees,
Blue silence fills the peace
Of a tardy afternoons sky.
Death knells forged of metal,
And a white beast hits the mire.
Brown lasses uncouth choir
Dies in leaves drifting prattle.
Brow of God dreams of hues,
Senses madness gentle wings.
Round the hill wield in rings
Black decay and shaded views.
Rest and wine in sunsets gleam,
Sad guitars drizzle into night,
And to the mellow lamp inside
You turn in as in a dream.
—
Rondeau
Gone and passed is the gold of day,
And the evenings brown and blue:
Silenced the shepherds tender flute
And the evenings brown and blue
Gone and passed as is the gold of day.
——–
.
Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg. His father, Tobias, was a dealer in hardware, while his mother, Maria, was a housewife with strong interests in art and music.
Trakl attended a Catholic elementary school, although his parents were Protestants. He matriculated in 1897 at the Salzburg Staatsgymnasium, where he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Around 1904, Trakl began to write poetry.
After dropping out of high school in 1905, Trakl worked for a pharmacist for three years and decided to pursue pharmacy as a career. It was at this time that he experimented with playwriting, but his two short plays, All Souls’ Day and Fata Morgana, failed onstage.
In 1908, Trakl moved to Vienna to study pharmacy, and fell in with a group of local artists and bohemians who helped him to publish some of his poems. Trakl’s father died in 1910, shortly before Trakl received his pharmacy certificate; thereafter, Trakl enlisted in the army for a yearlong stint. His return to civilian life in Salzburg was a disaster, and he reenlisted, serving as a pharmacist at a hospital in Innsbruck. There he also met the local artistic community, which recognized his budding talent. Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of the journal Der Brenner, became his patron: he regularly printed Trakl’s work and endeavored to find him a publisher to produce a collection of poems. The result of these efforts was Gedichte (Poems), published by Kurt Wolff in Vienna in the summer of 1913. Ficker also brought Trakl to the attention of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who anonymously provided him with a sizable stipend so that he could concentrate on his writing.
On the outbreak of World War I, Trakl was sent as a medical official to attend to soldiers in Galicia (comprising portions modern-day Ukraine and Poland). His suffered frequent bouts of depression [citation needed], exacerbated by the horror of caring for severely wounded soldiers. During one such incident in Grodek, Trakl had to steward the recovery of some ninety soldiers wounded in the fierce campaign against the Russians. He tried to shoot himself from the strain, but his comrades prevented him. Hospitalized in Krakow and placed under close observation, Trakl lapsed into deeper depression and wrote to Ficker for advice. Ficker convinced him to contact Wittgenstein. On receiving Trakl’s note, Wittgenstein went to the hospital, but found that Trakl had committed suicide from an overdose of cocaine three days before…>
