Live and Let Live: Cows and Pigs

.

A Swiss Braunvieh cow wearing a cowbell in a field below Fuorcia Sesvenna in the Engadin, Switzerland: photo by Daniel Schwen, 26 July 2007



A domestic sow and her piglet: photo by Scott Bauer, 2007 (U.S. Department of Agriculture)



A cow feeding on birdsfoot trefoil: photographer unknown, n.d. (U.S. Department of Agriculture)



Alte Schweinerasse im Hessenpark der Waldweide: photo by Karsten11, 1 May 2009

Vache d'Abondance: photo by Utilisateur:²°¹°°, 2006

The only free pig in Iowa: photo by Philip Capper, 24 March 2005

i.m. Max Heinegg (1911-1995)

James Joyce: there was a moo-cow coming down along the road

.

Gap of Dunloe, County Kerry, Ireland: photo by Phil Armitage, 2008

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moo-cow coming down along the road and this moo-cow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moo-cow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived. She sold lemon platt.

Rural back road (boreen), County Mayo, Ireland: photo by Trever Miller 21 October 2008

James Joyce at age six, 1888: image by Scewing, 13 May 2010

James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, first UK book edition, 1917: image by Alaiche, 4 April 2007

James Joyce: from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (opening lines), 1914

Aram Saroyan: T. C.

.

Olympia red (Olympia portable typewriter, no. 156712): photo by Georg Sommeregger, 8 December 2010

A string of bad luck
hit you you
had a stroke

lost your job
when the college
collapsed Angelica

broke her hip, my God
we’re old people now
not young poets

leaving New York
to head West
the planet

re-jiggering as we
head to our grand
not-so-grand

exits.
My first friend
when we

entered the fray
no one knows
what’s going to happen

to anybody
Kerouac told us
closing his own

book, the red
letters of his
concentration

A milder
more domesticated lot
we could still spot

the not-quite-all-there
leading to
calamitous

reprisals
in the papers.
Who cares?

With beautiful wives
we’d lead beautiful lives—
and so we did, for a while

taking our exemplars further
into domesticity,
our contribution

maybe. If you don’t get
your due, the ledger
fills up anyway; we knew that too

from Allen
and Jack.


10/7/10

Aram Saroyan: photo by Beyond Baroque Literary Center, 2 November 2007

Aram Saroyan: T. C., 7 October 2010

U R All That I Am Lost in the Fog Rolling Away the Stone and Other Rainy Day Tales

.

Golden Gate Fields, Albany, California: infield as seen from Turf Club on a rainy race day: photo by NapoliRoma, 1 May 2009

A wet grass track down the street by the dirty grey Bay on the Saturday before Easter did not discourage U R All That I Am from coming back to overtake the 7-to-10 favorite Antares World in the $50,300 Work the Crowd Stakes for California-bred fillies and mares at Golden Gate Fields, and I thought, maybe there are more ways to roll away the stone than you have been so glumly supposing, Horatio...

We proceeded to the racetrack. He made incredible twenty-dollar bets to win, and before the seventh race he was broke. With our last two food dollars he placed still another bet and lost. We had to hitchhike back to San Francisco. I was on the road again. A gentleman gave us a ride in his snazzy car. I sat up front with him. Remi was trying to put a story down that he'd lost his wallet in back of the grandstand at the track. "The truth is," I said, "we lost all our money on the races, and to forestall any more hitching from racetracks, from now on we go to a bookie, hey, Remi?" Remi blushed all over. The man finally admitted he was an official of the Golden Gate track. He let us off at the elegant Palace Hotel; we watched him disappear among the chandeliers, his pockets full of money, his head held high.

"Wagh! Whoo!" howled Remi in the evening streets of Frisco. "Paradise rides with the man who runs the racetrack and swears he's switching to bookies. Lee Ann, Lee Ann!" He punched and mauled her. "Positively the funniest man in the world! There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito. Aaah-how!" He wrapped himself around the the pole to laugh.

That night it started raining...

Carthage, with Dennis Carr up, outruns Lost in the Fog, Golden Gate Fields, Albany, California: photo by Ibison4, 22 April 2006

Main text in grey: Jack Kerouac: from On the Road, 1951

Le dimanche de Pâques

.

Der Häuserbogen oder Inselstadt (The House-Bend, or Island City): Egon Schiele, 1915 (Sammlung Leopold, Wien)

Someone has frozen the many-storeyed houses
Under this planetarium
A brilliant silence like a foghorn

A perfect frieze before the complications
Arrive with dialogue and
The olives of daily life

This brown Barcelona paper
Thrown onto the blue stone of the day
Makes everyone stop leaving

Through the light in a glass of wine you see them
Under the hot sky of the glacier
Placing their bets then boarding the funeral train

Fenster (Windows): Egon Schiele, 1914 (Österreichische Galerie, Wien)

TC: Le dimanche de Pâques (Easter Sunday), Paris, April 1966, from The Sand Burg, 1966

Crisis on the Savannah

.

Acacia trees in the Sahel sub-Saharan savanna ecoregion, Gourma, Burkina Faso: photo by Marco Schmidt, 9 August 2006

..................“I must complain the cards are ill-shuffled till I have a good hand.” — Swift

"Believing something will happen
.......Because I don’t want it to
And that some other thing won’t
.......Because I do --” I wailed to the dealer --
“This is desperation.” “Yeah?” he said. But then by
.......Your graceful lines, your lioness’ mane,
Your heat as you returned from
.......Your day in the jungle, you relieved me from
What in myself was desperate,
.......What even now insists on wishing
And believing. Still in the sheen of finely-breathing
.......Blond hair that covers you,
By the flashing way you move from tree
.......To tree, and from room to room,
Making it a bright full house,
.......I find at least the light to see the cards I am dealt.

La Gran Sabana (Venezuela): photo by Inti, 9 December 2008

TC: Crisis on the Savannah, Bolinas, 1972, from When Things Get Tough on Easy Street, 1978

In the Jungle Large

.

Kakamega Forest, Kenya: photo by Doron, August 1999

The journey in darkness has a trivial jargon
For the cans of black coffee and ears like sprigs
Of an intelligent listening flower

This agitation is a kind of heavy wood
That you could hold a candle to
And never alter its unendurableness

There is nothing to do about voyaging
Fears except to jerk their brilliance
Out ahead of you like a rushlight like this

But what is illumined in the jungle large
Is a girl in narrow white sashes
Seated in your room at your writing desk

Afternoon sun, Mamfe, Cameroon: photo by Hans Kylberg, 31 January 2003

TC: In the Jungle Large (Dark Continent), Paris, April 1966, from The Sand Burg, 1966