This blog is not defunct

I languish without a typewriter, summer advances closer to its end.
In a home far from my own I have bent metal and sanded wood, and painted a wall.
I have chatted with teenagers about pop music and conversed with a Bulgarian in Spanish over medieval manuscripts.
Trying to maintain my faith in the rightness of the difficult and fragile,
my conviction of the wrongness of arbitrary power.
Some days it's easier than others.
The Snake River is treacherous but its valley is wide and welcoming,
gorgeous in its bounty after a wet spring.
The raspberries are on, and people sell Utah cherries and apricots by the roadside.
But living here permanently seems impossible for the forseeable future.
My soul cannot survive long, I fear, without a garden of my own.

Typecast: the "fish" metaphor smells funny

Slacker post: John Dowland

I'm in one of those states where I feel like it'll take more time than I have to think of anything worth typing, so I'm putting up a copy I made of John Dowland's introduction to his First Booke of Songs, which I copied from CD liner notes, but since it's a facsimile of the original I figure it's in the public domain, so there.

I first discovered John Dowland in 2001 when I bought In Darkness Let Me Dwell, an album released on ECM with tenor John Potter (an alumn of the Hilliard Ensemble) and associates interpreting Dowland's songs accompanied by lute, baroque violin, bass clarinet, bouble-bass and saxophone. Good stuff.

Laggard typecast: 25 things

So, after the "25 things about me" sensation has swept the nation, I finally wrote one up.

Typecast: jazz

Typecast: Wilfred Owen

SONNET

On Seeing a Piece of Our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse.
Spend our resentment, cannon, -- yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

You can read more Wilfred Owen poetry here.

Typecast: Sunday memory (typed Saturday)