#to expose my heart to that significant other sounds so poetic.

[violet-amet]

I want to be in love myself. But it sounds so scary. Yet lovely.

[brien-odylan]

Late-night | Lee Donghae

A/N: eh... this is not what I expected for the night, but when I’m hit with a 15-minute video of Donghae saying goodnight because he can’t sleep, you cannot expect my mind to miss this opportunity. First of all... This is my first fanfic ever with this absolute adorable man and I’m nervous af! Second, no, this is not our ordinary Dylan stuff. get over it. Third... This is not what I said I was writing. This is, however, a start. A new start for me. You will be seeing more of Donghae’s handsome face around and for that, I’m not sorry. Enjoy it. 

Pairing: Lee Donghae x reader

Word counting: 1.5k

Warnings: fluff, fluff, and some more fluff.

At first, it seemed like a dream. The ruffling sound of the sheets, the dim light coming from her side, the soft, whispered voice speaking beside her in the quietest tone. It was like she was imagining it all, a faraway dream that lulled her in and out of her slumber, dancing around her cloudy mind, keeping her from truly waking up, the sleep overpowering all other senses she could think of mustering. 

There was a peaceful atmosphere in the room, the dark sky and blinking lights showing on the horizon of the curtainless window in front of her giving her the clear sign that she wasn’t asleep anymore, the shifting weight over the mattress causing her to shuffle against her own accord. Slowly, but very surely so, Y/N turned on her spot, her back falling softly against the silky touch of the sheets, a soft sigh coming from her lips as she adjusted to the new position, her arms falling beside her in a somewhat lifeless way, their weight being too much for her to sustain.

In rare occasions, Y/N slept through the whole night. It could be seen as a burden to most of the people she knew, but she enjoyed it. She enjoyed the serenity of the night, the stars making their appearance over the deep blue velvety night sky, the moon, when present, illuminating the room with its yellowy glow. And while it seemed poetic and meaningful, it hid a completely different significance to the girl, whose eyes would be glued to the flat screen of the phone she held in her small hands, waiting for the message she was about to send to be answered in a heartbeat. 

That night, however, there was no need for a phone. She had fallen asleep secluded by the arms of the person she spent most of her time talking with over the night. She had fallen asleep beside the man that occupied her mind the entire day. She had fallen asleep feeling his heart beating against her, the warm touch of his bare skin against hers. But when Y/N’s brain fully comprehended she was indeed awake, she felt the loss of those securing arms wrapped around her middle, the absence of his sunny breath hitting against the back of her neck in a soothing way and the sounds around her became more clear, the low mumbles from the other side of the bed making her squint her eyes trying to see past the poorly lit conditions.

And there he was, the phone almost pressed to his face, the low glow from the screen giving her the chances to analyze his features better, the pale skin prominent with dark circles under his eyes, hair sticking up to every direction. Y/N could see he was having a hard time to adapt to the time zone. It was the middle of the night and there he was, sitting up against the headboard of the bed, sheets scrunched up and resting around his waist, one hand holding the phone in front of him, the other running through his hair countless times.

She could hear his voice coming out in the dark of the night, the sexy, raspy and yet very tired tone causing a certain discomfort to spread within her. Y/N had always had a rough time with only hearing his voice. It was that deep, rich sound that could make her travel far and beyond her imagination, the sound that could make her fall even more in love with him, the sound she wished to wake up and fall asleep to. And there was the fact that, if she was not mistaken, he was speaking English. 

The tingling sensation started on the tip of her toes, spreading rapidly through her body, running through her veins until it reached her heart, the organ protesting and beating wildly fast against her ribcage, hammering on her chest in a way that she was sure that could be heard by anyone capable of hearing. His accent ringing in her ears, Y/N could only take a deep breath, her hands closing tightly around the fabric covering her body, eyes shut close in a failed attempt of controlling herself.

She should be used to it at this point in her life, but in the dead of the night, when all she could hear was the deep breaths coming from him and the sweet sound of his tongue rolling on his mouth speaking foreign words into the air, she could not contain the feeling spreading through her veins, warming her entire being and intoxicating her mind as if she had drunk the country’s soju supply. A numbness ran over her mouth, throat running dry as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the sound coming from him, scooting closer to his body as slowly as she could without startling him, without making a sound.

Donghae’s eyes never left the screen, though, his somewhat incoherent mumbles echoing through the room for minutes, his illuminated dark brown eyes dancing over the landscape of the window, unaware of anything surrounding him. 

Y/N wouldn’t know how long she stood there on her side, eyes closed shut without falling asleep just listening to Donghae’s words, the warmth emanating from him washing over her skin as a sunny day. But before she knew it, the room went back in its complete darkness, the sound of something being put on the bedside table hitting her ears.

Tentatively, Y/N opened one eye, watching as the dark-haired man stretched his arms over his head and yawned, the simple action making her realize things she usually neglected; the stretch of his muscles; the popped veins running from his hands to his forearm; his Adam’s apple prominently going up and down his neck. And maybe she was so entranced by it all, so lost in thought, that she didn’t notice when Donghae turned his eyes to her side, expecting to see her sleeping form curled around the sheets on the far end of the bed, where he had left her. 

The light chuckle that escaped his throat was enough to wake her up from the daydream, eyes meeting for the first time that night despite the lack of light in the room. Even so, she could tell he was smiling down at her, amusement written all over his face, studying her features, taking in every little detail as she had seen him do many times before. And like every other time, she felt her cheeks heating up with the sudden rush of blood the area, eyes casting downwards instantly, a shy smile gracing her lips.

“Did I wake you?” His voice was nothing but a whisper, almost unheard, but the moment his hands made contact with her hair, running through it in a gentle caress, all her senses heightened.

“‘Course not,” she whispered back, the sound muffled by the pillow. “You’re not the only one living in a different timezone for the past couple of days.”

Donghae sighed and shook his head. He would never agree to her protests of staying awake until late just to talk to him whenever he was out of the country. It was illogical and reckless, but if was were to be completely honest with himself, he would do the same. So, with a huff, he shifted around the bed again, his head falling on the soft pillow on her side, face to face with the woman that owned his heart.

“You should go back to sleep,” he said, his right arm falling atop of her, hand resting on her back and pulling her closer to him. 

“And you should go to sleep, Hae…” she mumbled, getting a tired smile out of him, eyes closing basking in on the sensation of having her so close to him. Two days had been too much. “I thought you said you weren’t going to speak English anymore.”

His laugh wasn’t loud, the trembles of his chest reverberating through her bringing a smile to her face as she looked up at him, eyes squinted, tongue running over his lips.

“I’m not going to speak English with you,” he clarified. “You’re becoming too lazy with your Korean.”

Y/N huffed, eyes rolling slightly as she ran her hand over his shoulder, fingers caressing the nape of his neck, nails scratching the skin slightly careful enough to not leave any marks on him. 

“That’s fair,” she mumbled. “But you were supposed to relax, not start a live video.”

“Y/N, I can’t be more relaxed than I am right now,” he said, head resting against her chest. With his eyes closed and listening to the calming beats of her heart, the idol mumbled something under his breath, earning a slight protest from the girl.

“Sleep now,” she said, lips turning into a smile as she adjusted herself on the bed, back pressed against the mattress, chest sustaining a growing tired by the minute Donghae, hands running up and down his exposed skin in a tender embrace, legs tangled up under the sheets.

With a content sigh, the man relaxed, his eyelids drooping closed, hands clutching to the girl underneath him, the soft pumps of her heart against his ear lulling him into a deep slumber before he even realized.

Everything was fine. He was home now.

Taglist: @mf-despair-queen

[aion-rsa]

Shameless Series Finale Review: Father Frank, Full of Grace

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This Shameless review contains spoilers.

Shameless Season 11 Episode 12

“We’re still here. We’re surviving, right?” 

Most people would likely not argue that Shameless’s best years are behind it. Showtime, its cable network, even briefly had a reputation for bleeding series dry long after they should have ended. However, even the most egregious examples of this like Weeds, Californication, and Dexter still pale in comparison to Shameless‘s episode count and none of them ever lost their series’ lead. It’s fair to say that Shameless is not as good as when it started or even how it was a few seasons back, but it’s always remained true to itself. It hasn’t resorted to radical time jumps or a revolving door of new premises and locations as a way to inject steroids into a withering corpse. 

Shameless set out to depict the flawed lives of a lower-class family and it’s done that for 11 seasons and allowed a full generation of characters to grow up before the audience’s eyes. Shameless might not have always been a top tier television program, but it’s emblematic of Showtime’s early ideology and the growth that they’ve experienced over the past decade. Shameless is their longest running program and with it gone there’s a substantial piece of Showtime’s past that leaves with it. The final lingering brick from the old guard is finally dislodged. 

In a way, “Father Frank, Full of Grace” becomes an even more poetic finale because the Gallaghers’ loss of Frank also functions as a metaphor for Showtime’s loss of Shameless. “Father Frank, Full of Grace” is a celebratory finale that’s emotional, beautiful, crude, and chaotic more than it’s a metatextual conversation about Showtime’s legacy. However, it all contributes to an overwhelming sense of closure and fresh beginnings, which is exactly what Shameless’ series finale needed to deliver.

Frank’s nagging mortality is a major catalyst for this series finale, but it’s also remarkable to see how most of the Gallaghers have already moved on. Frank may not technically be dead at the start of the episode, but he’s metaphorically been a ghost for decades. Any love is lost at this point and Frank’s belabored transition to the other side is treated like a temporary nuisance, as if it’s a toilet that needs to be unclogged. 

Frank lets out a surprised, “Well, fuck,” upon the realization that he’s not dead and that was also pretty much my reaction to this news. Frank’s death feels like a foregone conclusion and the cyclical nature of his story in this finale steps on the toes of the past few episodes. It’s an emotional moment when Frank does pass on, but it also turns this finale into a prolonged waiting game whereas last week’s conclusion came as a legitimate shock.

Frank’s detached actions as his ailing body moves on autopilot are a frustrating component from this finale. The material feels sloppy and like it’s just another opportunity to get more of a morose, haunting performance from out of Macy. I’m still not convinced that it’s the best decision for this last episode, but Frank’s out of body experience and his flashbacks contain some of the finale’s most touching moments. 

Frank’s thoughts on his family and these glimpses of the cast back in season one aren’t overused and their impact is felt. Even the brief return to a shut down Patsy’s Pies connects as Frank takes in the South Side with fresh eyes for one last time. It’s a messy storyline, but thematically it’s sound. It’s no coincidence that Frank is there, but he isn’t, through most of this episode. It’s the perfect distillation of his involvement as a father for his kids. Frank’s spirit is ever present, but he spends this final episode in a cathartic form of isolation. 

Frank spends this installment lost in the past while everyone else braces for the future. There’s still residual Gallagher drama, but “Father Frank, Full of Grace” largely waves a magic wand to either fix all of these problems or at least provide a solid roadplan for what lies ahead. This finale makes a very conscious decision to be about celebration and unity rather than stress and conflict. All of the Gallaghers’ dilemmas aren’t solved, but they never will be, and the acceptance of this allows this finale to confidently conclude and not get lost in the weeds. A lot of ground gets covered, some of which doesn’t necessarily feel like the best use of time in a series finale, but”Father Frank, Full of Grace” never feels rushed and it allows each Gallagher–even an unconscious Frank–several opportunities to shine.

Lip enters this finale with the most stress and arguably exits with the most support and prospects for the future. It’s genuinely nice to see Tami and Lip reach a place where they’re able to healthily communicate, listen to each other, and work as a team. Tami is almost a little too understanding considering how much recent instability has entered their lives. It’s a little convenient that several of Lip’s delivery runs are also situations where technologically impaired people benefit from Lip’s knowledge in the area. It’s left unresolved if this is enough to kickstart Lip into some tech-based job where he heads down a different direction in his life, but it offers a sliver of hope in the area.

This finale offers teases, not answers, for what’s to come for Lip and this open-ended attitude carries over to the rest of the Gallaghers. Debbie’s accelerating relationship with Heidi sticks out the most here and it feels strange to spend so much time on a completely new character in the series finale. The red flags from Debbie’s relationship get balanced out with how enjoyable everything is with Mickey and Ian. They engage in several real, vulnerable conversations here that reflect how functional they’ve become. The baby talk is really pleasant, but the surprise wedding anniversary is even better and not made super obvious.

This season of Shameless, more than any other, has pulled from reality for a lot of its material regarding Chicago’s social climate. This is typically strong material for the series’ satirical perspective and it’s naturally integrated into the story.  However, the injection of current politics and conspiracy theories that Mickey and Ian are briefly exposed to feels less subtle and like the show just wants to fit in some “Sleepy Joe” commentary before it’s over. Similarly, it seems kind of unnecessarily loaded that after a lifetime of recklessness it’s ultimately COVID-19 complications that takes out Frank and not his rampant alcoholism or drug use. These moments are brushed past quickly and don’t derail the narrative, but they feel awkward in the moment.

“Father Frank, Full of Grace” is a rather safe finale that doesn’t have any major surprises. Those that were expecting a Fiona cameo may be irritated over the finale’s direction, but it should have been pretty obvious that Shameless wasn’t interested in this type of finish. Fiona wouldn’t have radically changed this finale, but I’m genuinely curious if John Wells reached out and did attempt a brief return or if they’ve both fully moved on by now.

I’m also a huge Spoon fan, but even I thought it was jarring that the Gallaghers and the Alibi patrons just happen to know all of the words to “The Way We Get By.” I understand that it’s meant to offer some connection with the pilot episode’s ending, but diegetically the Gallaghers have never had a connection to the song. It seems like there would be plenty of more appropriate songs, with Chicago origins, that would actually have significance to these people. It’s still a very sweet moment for Shameless to end on, even if the logistics are slightly flawed.

All of this is to say that “Father Frank, Full of Grace” is a convoluted episode, but its final ten minutes where the Gallaghers are deep in the throes of celebration is exactly how this series needed to go out. All of these characters bask in each other’s company, demonstrate their appreciation for each other, and reflect on how much they’ve matured. Lip and Ian’s brief heart-to-hearts have been a highlight from this season and their final chat here where the gratitude for Lip’s role as a surrogate father figure for the family is conveyed becomes even more powerful considering the nature of the episode.

This series finale features Frank’s death and significant life changes for characters, but “Father Frank, Full of Grace” still has a very lowkey energy that makes it feel like many of its other finales. This is the end, but it’s not difficult to picture another season of the show that picks up these loose threads and everything reverts back to “normal” after a few episodes. Sometimes finales that check every box and go out of their way for endless closure can feel manufactured and contrived. It’s appreciated that Shameless doesn’t take this route. 

Hopefully these new decisions will stick, but the problem with Shameless is that it’s conditioned its audience to frequent changes and a return to the status quo. “Father Frank, Full of Grace” works hard to buck that trend, and it’s largely successful, but it’s also easy to picture these characters consumed with stress and doubt on the day after the events of this finale. This final season builds new futures for all of the Gallaghers and they all still have a lot to learn, but “Father Frank, Full of Grace” leaves most of the characters in empowered positions where lasting change feels achievable and not just a pipe dream.

Shameless’s final season has functioned as a showcase for Frank and it’s always been “his” show, even though he hasn’t always been the series’ focal point. “Father Frank, Full of Grace” underscores this and becomes a lowkey tribute to Frank with how it paints a bright and happy future for his family. The opening minutes of Shameless begin with Frank Gallagher’s voice over as he dotes over his family, all of which have become wonderful despite Frank. Shameless’ series finale concludes in the same manner of reflection and the Gallaghers are even united around another communal fire this time around.

The major lesson that Frank pushes in his parting words are to appreciate the time that you have, even if it’s stupid, and to not waste your life. Shameless’ final season didn’t always use its time in the most effective manner, but they clearly had fun every step of the way. Shameless’ final season is a shell of the poignant and challenging family drama that emerged in season one, but they’ve always appreciated their time and the stories that they’ve gotten to tell. Shameless, much like the Gallaghers themselves, was messy, but never lacking in love. That sentiment has never been more true than with “Father Frank, Full of Grace,” which goes out on its own imperfect terms.

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See you later, Shameless. Love you too, asshole.

The post Shameless Series Finale Review: Father Frank, Full of Grace appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[alterlifes-a]

💍   /   what can you say about your significant other, if you have one.  answering from a meme andy sent me because i knew immediately that i would make this post obscenely long because i’m just a puddle of goo. so, here’s an open letter to atlas  (  @hisverglas​  /  @hisdeceit​  )  !

dearest atlas, ��( is that cliché ? )

        there’s a lot of things that i can say to you, really. a lot of memories we’ve made together, even though i can’t remember anything to save my life. but while i know my mind is bad at retaining information of any kind, i am assured that all of the time we’ve spent together ( even if time isn’t real ) is engraved in my heart. i hate to put any sort of pressure on this relationship, so please take it in brief levity --- but also with a slight tinge of seriousness and complete adoration, whether it be romantic or platonic --- when i say that i cannot imagine a future without you in it. i know i tend to be a bit pessimistic, and so i always told myself in my past relationships that a breakup may be inevitable. that the average person supposedly dates six people in their life before settling down with someone permanent. but i guess we’ve always been oddballs, because i have no doubt in my mind that we’re going to be together forever. that’s never happened to me before, and it’s both invigorating and exciting and terrifying, all at the same time. i want to make a home with you. i want to have a nice little apartment or cute house in california or canada or anywhere you want to go. we can have as many dogs as we’d like and a bunch of fish and milkman can lead the school and finny can cuddle up to us when we’re watching movies together and maddie can chew our couches like the entitled, retired, old dog she is.

        i feel so comfortable with you. i’m always so so so glad when you say you feel the same around me. i know we both suffer from like super bad anxiety so to be able to find someone who is willing to listen and who i can binch to when i’m feeling just a little bitter is so nice, because i know you’re never going to judge me, and even if i do do something which makes you feel a bit iffy, you feel safe enough to be able to tell me to knock it off. and i really do apologize for being the absolute Worst at properly communicating, i either talk too much or i say weird things on impulse, but you provide such a comforting warmth that i also know you’re never going to really get mad at me --- something my anxiety / paranoia tells me will happen with everyone. but not with you. so really, thank you for that.         you’re also so ... gentle and kind. and i love that so much. i understand you try to be this huge bad binch ( lol i’m exposing you, sorry ...  ) but your heart is still soft and caring despite all that’s been thrown at you by life, and i want to say that you don’t deserve such hardships. i only want to see you smiling and happy and satisfied with who you are as a person. you deserve nothing but the most beautiful days and the most loyal of friends and lifelong relationships ... you deserve someone who loves you wholly and who makes you feel safe and at home and i really hope i can provide such a place for you. and i hope you know that you can come to me for anything. please please please --- i know you’re selfless and you hate “ burdening ” others with your problems, but know that i am always willing to talk. you can always open up your text messages or d.iscord at 3am and rant to me about irl or online stuff. you’re never ever ever bothering me, truly. every single message from you makes me smile and lights up my life and it means so much to me that you even take the time to do so, because i know how busy you are.

        you’re also so brilliant and smart, and i know i curse your auditory memory every single time we call because now you’ve memorized every embarrassing and stupid thing i’ve ever said, but the fact that you can remember something so instantaneously literally boggles my mind ... you were literally born a smart child ?? but know that when i say you’re smart, i don’t just mean you’re academically smart. i admire your smartness in how you write and read. your headcanons are all so well-researched and your writing is poetic and beautiful. you have one of the most unique writing styles i’ve ever seen, even if i do have to ... google every three words you put in there like hOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU KNOW SO MANY WORDS ??? anyway ... !!         how can i talk about smartness without dragging you in some way, though ? you’re so bad at social situations ... you’re kind of socially ... not ... that smart ... that sounds mean oh gosh i’m so sorry HAHA but know that i’m always here to help you out with things. that’s the beauty of being of a relationship of any kind, really. we can balance each other out ! and whenever i stumble, i know you’ll always be there to pick me up. so next time you fall, make sure to fall forward and reach your hand out, cause i wanna do the same for you. don’t think you’re destined to walk through life alone, you know ? i want to hold your hand every step of the way and support you when you need it.

       you don’t need to be perfect to be the best you that you can be. the fact that you’re you already means you’re perfect because it’s ... it’s you. you’re you. you haven’t let anyone else change you to someone you’re not. after all of this, it’s still you, and i’m so glad that i fell in love with someone so stunning and amazing and beautiful and you. someone so endearing and lovely and talented ... someone who loves literature and shakespeare and poetry and who i can plot with for literally 3 hours straight and still have more to talk about. someone who gives me so much muse to draw. so much muse to live and actually look forward to spending another day with you for once in my life. someone who’s so beautiful and drop-dead gorgeous. the prettiest boy alive !

        i know this letter is a huge, huge mess because i ramble on and on and i can’t articulate my thoughts at all, so sorry for that lol ... but like ... tldr ?

        i love you.         i’m so glad you love me, too.

                ( happy more-than-1-year-anniversary / time-isn’t-real !!! )

                                                ----- your meme ( shou )

EDIT: hey, by the way, tooru is my self-insert and hikaru is your self-insert ... wanna forceship ? ^_^

[dfroza]

to be, reborn.

the pure seed is God Himself, laid down to die as a friend. to come back to life. and the Scriptures have been written down to conserve this True story. to offer eternal life for all who “believe...” in the True illumination of the Son.

which is what we read about in Today’s chapter of the New Testament as a New Covenant of grace that has been made perfectly clear...

chapter 3 from the book of John:

Nicodemus was one of the Pharisees, a man with some clout among his people. He came to Jesus under the cloak of darkness to question Him.

Nicodemus: Teacher, some of us have been talking. You are obviously a teacher who has come from God. The signs You are doing are proof that God is with You.

Jesus: I tell you the truth: only someone who experiences birth for a second time can hope to see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus: I am a grown man. How can someone be born again when he is old like me? Am I to crawl back into my mother’s womb for a second birth? That’s impossible!

Jesus: I tell you the truth, if someone does not experience water and Spirit birth, there’s no chance he will make it into God’s kingdom. Like from like. Whatever is born from flesh is flesh; whatever is born from Spirit is spirit. Don’t be shocked by My words, but I tell you the truth. Even you, an educated and respected man among your people, must be reborn by the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. The wind blows all around us as if it has a will of its own; we feel and hear it, but we do not understand where it has come from or where it will end up. Life in the Spirit is as if it were the wind of God.

Nicodemus: I still do not understand how this can be.

Jesus: Your responsibility is to instruct Israel in matters of faith, but you do not comprehend the necessity of life in the Spirit? I tell you the truth: we speak about the things we know, and we give evidence about the things we have seen, and you choose to reject the truth of our witness. If you do not believe when I talk to you about ordinary, earthly realities, then heavenly realities will certainly elude you. No one has ever journeyed to heaven above except the One who has come down from heaven—the Son of Man, who is of heaven. Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. In the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up; then all those who believe in Him will experience everlasting life.

For God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life. Here’s the point. God didn’t send His Son into the world to judge it; instead, He is here to rescue a world headed toward certain destruction.

No one who believes in Him has to fear condemnation, yet condemnation is already the reality for everyone who refuses to believe because they reject the name of the only Son of God. Why does God allow for judgment and condemnation? Because the Light, sent from God, pierced through the world’s darkness to expose ill motives, hatred, gossip, greed, violence, and the like. Still some people preferred the darkness over the light because their actions were dark. Some of humankind hated the light. They scampered hurriedly back into the darkness where vices thrive and wickedness flourishes. Those who abandon deceit and embrace what is true, they will enter into the light where it will be clear that all their deeds come from God.

Not long after, Jesus and His disciples traveled to the Judean countryside where they could enjoy one another’s company and ritually cleanse new followers through baptism. About the same time, Jesus’ cousin John—the wandering prophet who had not yet been imprisoned—was upriver at Aenon near Salim baptizing scores of people in the abundant waters there. John’s activities raised questions about the nature of purification among his followers and a religious leader, so they approached him with their questions.

John’s Followers: Teacher, the One who was with you earlier on the other side of the Jordan, the One whom you have been pointing to, is baptizing the multitudes who are coming to Him.

John the Baptist: Apart from the gifts that come from heaven, no one can receive anything at all. I have said it many times, and you have heard me—I am not the Anointed One; I am the one who comes before Him. If you are confused, consider this: the groom is the one with the bride. The best man takes his place close by and listens for him. When he hears the voice of the groom, he is swept up in the joy of the moment. So hear me. My joy could not be more complete. He, the groom, must take center stage; and I, the best man, must step to His side.

If someone comes from heaven above, he ranks above it all and speaks of heavenly things. If someone comes from earth, he speaks of earthly things. The One from the heavens is superior; He is over all. He reveals the mysteries seen and realities heard of the heavens above, but no one below is listening. Those who are listening and accept His witness to these truths have gone on record. They acknowledge the fact that God is true! The One sent from God speaks with the very words of God and abounds with the very Spirit and essence of God. The Father loves the Son and withholds nothing from Him. Those who believe in the Son will bask in eternal life, but those who disobey the Son will never experience life. They will know only God’s lingering wrath.

The Book of John, Chapter 3 (The Voice)

with inspiration for writing seen in Today’s reading of the Psalms beginning with Psalm 9:1 for the 9th of december:

A David Psalm

I’m thanking you, God, from a full heart,

I’m writing the book on your wonders.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 9:1 (The Message)

and continued with these lines from Psalm 78 that illuminates the significance of conserving spiritual truth:

[Lessons from History]

Asaph’s poetic song of instruction

Beloved ones, listen to this instruction.

Open your heart to the revelation

of this mystery that I share with you.

A parable and a proverb are hidden in what I say—

an intriguing riddle from the past.

We’ve heard true stories from our fathers about our rich heritage.

We will continue to tell our children

and not hide from the rising generation

the great marvels of our God—

his miracles and power that have brought us all this far.

The story of Israel is a lesson in God’s ways.

He established decrees for Jacob and established the law in Israel,

and he commanded our forefathers to teach them to their children.

For perpetuity God’s ways will be passed down

from one generation to the next, even to those not yet born.

In this way, every generation will have a living faith in the laws of life

and will never forget the faithful ways of God.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 78:1-7 (The Passion Translation)

and then the lines of Psalm 43 for day 343 of the year as a mirroring of the alphabetic number 43 of the word “book” as a Psalm that inspires placing trust in God in the midst of a world that is sometimes cruel:

Plead for me; clear my name, O God. Prove me innocent

before immoral people;

Save me from their lies,

their unjust thoughts and deeds.

You are the True God—my shelter, my protector, the one whom I lean on.

Why have You turned away from me? Rejected me?

Why must I go around, overwrought, mourning,

suffering under the weight of my enemies?

O my God, shine Your light and truth

to help me see clearly,

To lead me to Your holy mountain,

to Your home.

Then I will go to God’s altar with nothing to hide.

I will go to God, my rapture;

I will sing praises to You and play my strings,

unloading my cares, unleashing my joys, to You, God, my God.

O my soul, why are you so overwrought?

Why are you so disturbed?

Why can’t I just hope in God? Despite all my emotions, I will hope in God again.

I will believe and praise the One

who saves me and is my life,

My Savior and my God.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 43 (The Voice)

to be concluded by an invitation read in Today’s chapter of the book of Proverbs that reflects upon the invitation of the Spirit to welcome the entrance of Light and Love in the heart

(inside, Anew)

[Lady Wisdom Gives a Dinner Party]

Lady Wisdom has built and furnished her home;

it’s supported by seven hewn timbers.

The banquet meal is ready to be served: lamb roasted,

wine poured out, table set with silver and flowers.

Having dismissed her serving maids,

Lady Wisdom goes to town, stands in a prominent place,

and invites everyone within sound of her voice:

“Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on?

Come with me, oh come, have dinner with me!

I’ve prepared a wonderful spread—fresh-baked bread,

roast lamb, carefully selected wines.

Leave your impoverished confusion and live!

Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”

If you reason with an arrogant cynic, you’ll get slapped in the face;

confront bad behavior and get a kick in the shins.

So don’t waste your time on a scoffer;

all you’ll get for your pains is abuse.

But if you correct those who care about life,

that’s different—they’ll love you for it!

Save your breath for the wise—they’ll be wiser for it;

tell good people what you know—they’ll profit from it.

Skilled living gets its start in the Fear-of-God,

insight into life from knowing a Holy God.

It’s through me, Lady Wisdom, that your life deepens,

and the years of your life ripen.

Live wisely and wisdom will permeate your life;

mock life and life will mock you.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 9:1-12 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for december 9, the 78th day of Autumn and day 343 of the year:

[strechanadi]

Paris Opéra ballet Swan lake - when it’s not about Odette

So I assume you were all too shy to ask, but you actually desperately want to read my review on POB Swan lake, right?

So ... Here it is!

(And as always - I’m sorry for that English grammar I murdered once again. I truly am.)

(Yes, they pay me for this.)

Paris Opéra ballet Swan lake - when it’s not about Odette

It’s December. And for almost every ballet company in the world it means annual Nutcracker madness. Not for Paris Opera. French most prestigious scene chooses for every christmas season another big classic and this year it was time of the most iconic piece - Swan lake, returning on stage of Opéra Bastille after just year and a half, and being broadcast live on December 8th in various cinemas in France, Germany, Austria or Belgium. Czech spectators could watch the record in local cinemas on 17/12 and 18/12.

Big classics in ballet world mean ballets by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. And for Paris Opera pieces by these two masters mean choreographies by Rudolf Nureyev, who was also director of the company between 1983 - 1989. He made his first version of Swan lake in 1964 for Viena Staatsballet, where he danced the premiere himself with Margot Fonteyn and after the performace they recieved record 89 curtain calls. Paris version was born 20 years later in 1984 and its psychological aspect follows Swan lakes by John Cranko (1967) or John Neumeier (1976).

Distinctive storytelling

Nureyev was not just extraordinary and non conventional dancer, he was equally exceptional as choreographer and storyteller. He brought the prince into focus and made him true main character of the ballet. He added two solo variations for him in Act 1 (first on music of pas d’action, the second, slow one on andante sostenuto, which is in the original Tchaikovsky score situated right before Pas de trois, and which has been commonly cut out) and also returned his variation into Act 2 (right after Big swans pas de quatre). But more importantly he intensified prince’s character.

Siegfried in Nureyev’s concept is not an ordinary dreamer, his absent-mindeness and daydreaming are significant, almost symptomatic for him. The real world with its obligations, responsibilities and conventions, he could learn but never truly understand, is unfriendly place for a young man like him - in short Nureyev made his prince suffer with one of the autistic spectrum disorder.

Such prince needs tutor or mentor more than ever to help him better understand the complexity of court’s life. The tutor is Wolfgang, mysterious, enigmatic man, whose relationship with Siegfried is strange, a bit unclear, but unquestionably strong with as many interpretations of it as casts. Second act gives another perspective on said character, changing Wolfgang into Rothbart, magical creature who has unlimited power over Odette. Considering prince’s personality, the idea of all swans’ acts taking place solely in Siegfried’s fantasies and dreams basically suggest itself (as even Nureyev indicates). The white swan then represents not only the idea of pure love, but she is also reflecting prince alone, for her existence depends on Rothbart just as Siegfried’s depends on Wolfgang.

Act 3 is the most ambiguous. Reality with Siegfried on his own engagement party blends in with prince’s own inner world, where he is trying to hide, and where’s Odile - embodiment of sensuality and attraction (so she’s more like an addition to romantic Odette than her opposite). However even in his own dreams Siegfried is not left alone with object of his desires. The famous so called black pas de deux becomes a masterly pas de trois thanks to constantly present Rothbart.

There are two decisive moments in last Act. The first one is Odette and Siegfried’s duet (music for pas de six formerly from Act 3) with lots of synchronal dance passages and repeated steps, that are danced by both dancers who are constantly changing their place in pair (sorry, this sounds really stupid, but this is what I was talking about and couldn’t translate to English…), so Odette and Siegfried are blending in with each other even more. And then there is final Siegfried’s confrontation with Rothbart, that is referring to Siegfried’s duet with Wolfgang from the end of Act 1. At the very end they even literally repeat some parts of it, which could be an explanation and answer to some of spectators’ questions or on the contrary it could provoke new speculations on the true nature of Wolfgang/Rothbart and his relationship with Siegfried.

The dreamy, kind of blurred atmosphere is supported by faded pastel or light earthy colour costumes (Franca Squarciapino) and very minimalistic, yet expressive decors and stage design (Ezio Frigerio), that mainly in Act 1 complete the picture of stern, hostile world in which Siegfried feels like a prisoner.

Artistic approaches

From what was written is clear, that this Swan lake depends even more than any other on its interprets.

One of the most emblematic princes of Paris Opera is Mathieu Ganio, étoile of the company. And watching him on stage you fully understand why. If there should be just two words describing his performance, it would be honesty and genuineness, because the way he more lives than acts his part is simply disarming. He portrays his prince with remarkable nuances. He is able to act as an aristocrat, to play his part in social interactions, if it’s needed. But then there are moments he could be his true self (and it is not just by coincidence there is always Wolfgang with him) and his immense fragility, mental confusion and insecurity are evident. His ineffable tenderness and open fascination with white swan is almost touching and makes sharp contrast to his confidence and dominance in Act 3 where he would like and tries to catch up with Odile, who arouses his desires, but by her constant escaping and refusing him, also provokes his resentment and anger, very unique emotions in Siegfried’s character. The end of Act 3, while he’s trying to deal with the discovered truth about Odile, almost matches Giselle’s mad scene from the first act of said ballet in its unaffected harshness. Speaking of his dancing - Ganio could demonstrate his unquestionable talent for dreamy adagio variations full of emotions, his refined arabesques as well as soft and at the same time French precise pas de chats  and especially his extraordinary sense of music and Nureyev’s choreography. His Siegfried’s variation from the end of Act 1 is one one of the most poetic moments not just of this particular Swan lake.

The dual role of Odette and Odile was danced by étoile Amandnine Albisson. There are some truly remarkable musical moments in her dancing, she intuitively follows all rythmical accents and reacts on any change of music. However, she’s no exceptional interpret otherwise, besides her artistic and acting choices aren’t always compatibile with Ganio. As an untouchable, unattainable Odette she maybe seems too reserved, too distant, but her lack of swan like arms and pliant, flexible back required are the biggest issues. Her Odile then is more winsome, enchanting than demonic and disdainful, however although the role of femme fatale suits Albisson better, there’s still some kind of spark and individuality lacking.

The real main couple

While Albisson/Ganio couple is not completely flawless, missing its magic and better chemistry between the two of them, the couple Ganio’s Siegfried makes with François Alu’s Wolfgang strongly stands out. Their relationship makes you shivers sometimes, but it’s their remarkable duets, full of meaningful gestures and looks, that can break your heart (wait a minute - this is something I wanted to delete before sending to editors! Well… shit.), that are the most intense. They are full of contrasts. Where Ganio is elegant and melancholic, Alu is energetic and forceful. While Ganio’s Siegfried is embodiment of artlessly innocent devotion and pure, almost childlike, naive gullibility, Alu’s Wolfgang is uncompromisingly dominant, darkly authoritative and very well aware of his power over young prince. And he doesn’t hesitate and just brazenly taking advantage of it. Francois Alu makes his Wolfgang not very layered character, even as prince’s tutor, he’s more like Rothbart, flamboyant villain, who hides his intentions behind fake joviality, that Siegfried is almost unable to expose. His mockery and self-satisfaction visible in his eyes every time prince looks at him with explicitly sincere devoutness, is completed by powerful dancing, that literally explodes in Rothbart’s variation in Act 3. But maybe he could slightly slow down and concentrate more on the duality of his character. Or characters?

The famous Act 1 Pas de trois was danced by three talented first soloist Leonore Baulac, Hannah O’Neill and Germain Louvet (AN Louvet and Baulac were named étoiles on 28th and 31st of December after their performance as Siegfried and Odette/Odile). Valentine Colasante and Arthus Raveau caught viewers’ attention in Act 3 as one of the two pairs in Spanish dance.

Endless inventiveness

Nureyev choreographies use the traditional classical steps, but are famous for its distinctive style and difficulty not for the soloists only, but for the whole ensemble. The corps de ballet is the fourth main role in this Swan lake. Act 1 is prove of Nureyev’s genius in corps de ballet dances and is crowned by masterly, all men polonaise (Dance with cups traditionally). In Act 2 he sticks with iconic Ivanov’s choreography (or with what we use to think is Ivanov’s choreography), but even here he is able to find his own way how to play with it. Dances of swans are full of nuances, full of different details, any two succesive steps are not completely the same, there’s always at least slight change in port de bras, in tilt of head, in the direction of look, and that makes the whole picture even more textured and vivid. In Act 4 he left typical swan port de bras behind and the dancers, moving across the stage in canon, are giving impression not so much of birds but more of slowly growing waves of heavy seas.  

People are use to watch Swan lakes because of the swan dual role and mainly the ballerinas dancing them. In case of Nureyev’s version, you should be interested in interprets of main male roles. Because they are the ones who truly matters. Don’t let yourself be confused by Odette/Odile on top of casting list.

[wintersonbartheswoolf]

“It has teeth, art, and a way of cutting through to the soft parts untried.” -JEANETTE WINTERSON

WRITER, READER, WORDS       1997

The writer is an instrument of transformation.

To begin with the reader. The ordinary reader is not primarily concerned with questions of structure and style. He or she decides on a book, enjoys it or doesn’t, finishes it or doesn’t, and is, perhaps affected by it. When the fiction or the poem has a powerful effect likely to be lasting, the reader feels personally attached to both the work and the writer. Everyone has their favourite books to be read and re-read. Such things become talismans and love-tokens, even personality indicators, the truly bookish will mate on the strength of a spine. The moderately bookish may be more cautious about splicing together their literary and lubricious endeavours but the passion they feel for certain printed sheets will be as lively as any got between plain. The world of the book is a total world and in a total world we fall in love.

Falling for a book is not the nymph Echo falling for the sound of her own voice nor is it the boy Narcissus falling for his own reflection. Those Greek myths warn us of the dangers of recognising no reality but our own. Art is a way into other realities, other personalities. When I let myself be affected by a book, I let into myself new customs and new desires. The book does not reproduce me, it re-defines me, pushes at my boundaries, shatters the palings that guard my heart. Strong texts work along the borders of our minds and alter what already exists. They could not do this if they merely reflected what already exists. Of course, strong texts tend to become so familiar, even to people who have never read them, that they become part of what exists, at least a distort of them does. It is very strange to read something supposedly familiar, The Gospels, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and to find that it is quite unlike our mental version of it. Without exception, the original will be as unsettling, as edgy as it ever was, we have learned a little and sentimental used the rest. The critic Christopher Ricks, in his essay on the Victorian thinkers, Arnold and Pater, points out how often people misquote their favourite texts; the misquote subtly shifting the meaning to one which better reflects the reality of the speaker. On a national level we do this all the time, co-opting works that win favour with our way of life, rejecting those that don’t. Books that will neither co operate nor disappear sooner or later get the Modem Classic treatment, in a bid to familiarise them at the level of challenge.

I do not mean to say that any of this is conscious; mostly it is not, and therein lies a difficulty. Art is conscious and its effect on its audience is to stimulate consciousness. This is sexy, this is exciting, it is also tiring, and even those who welcome art-excitement have an ordinary human longing for sleep. Nothing wrong with that but we cannot use the book as a pillow. The comfort and the rest to be got out of art is not of the passive forgetting kind, it is inner quiet of a high order, and it follows the intensity, the excitement we feel when exposed to something new. Or does it? Only it seems if we are prepared to stay the course, not give up and doze off, not leap from rock to rock after new thrills. Books need to be deeply read as well as widely read which is one reason why it is wise never to trust a paid hack.

Our unconscious attitude to art is complex. We want it and we don’t want it, often simultaneously, and at the same time as a book is working intravenously we are working to immunise ourselves against it. Our best antidote to art as a powerful force independently affecting us is to say that it is only the image of ourselves that is affecting us. The doctrine of Realism saves us from a bad attack of Otherness and it is a doctrine that has been bolstered by the late-twentieth century vogue for literary biography; tying in the writer’s life with the writer’s work so that the work becomes a diary; small, private, explainable and explained away, much as Freud tried to explain art away.

It seems to me that the intersection between a writer’s life and a writer’s work is irrelevant to the reader. The reader is not being offered a chunk of the writer or a direct insight into the writer’s mind, the reader is being offered a separate reality. A reality separate from the actual world of the reader, and just as importantly, separate from the actual world of the writer. The question put to the writer ‘How much of this is based on your own experience?’ is meaningless. All or nothing may be the answer. The fiction, the poem, is not a version of the facts, it is an entirely different way of seeing. When we talk about the artist’s vision we pay lip service to this other way of seeing but we are not very comfortable with it. If it exists, which we doubt, it is some kind of trick and nobody likes to be tricked. If it doesn’t exist then we need not worry about responding to it. We can respond to the lifelikeness of the piece.

It was the Victorians who introduced an entirely new criterion into their study of the arts; to what extent does the work correspond· to actual life? This revolution in taste should not be underestimated and although it began to stir itself before Victoria acceded the throne in 1837, Realism (not the Greek theory of Mimesis) is an idea that belongs with her as surely as the fantasy of Empire.To fix the date is difficult but I do not think it far fetched to say that the gap between the death of the last Romantic (Byron) in 1824 and the heyday of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s, is the gap where Realism, as we understand it, was birthed and matured.

It is instructive to look at how dress codes alter between, say, 1825 and 1845. The eighteenth-century dandy is out, the sober Victorian so beloved of costume drama, is in. No more embroidered waistcoats, lurid colours, topiary wigs, dashing cravats, pan-stick faces and ridiculous buckles and heels. For men, the change is immense and as men are stripped of all their finery, women are loaded down with theirs. There is a marked polarisation of the sexes, and whereas Byron could cheerfully wear jewels and make-up without compromising his masculinity any man who tried to do so throughout the sixty glorious years might pay for his display with his liberty. The new foppishness of Oscar Wilde and the Decadents in the 1890s was as much a strike back into what had been allowed to men, as a move forward into what might be. As the eighteenth century disappeared (and centuries take a while to disappear) it took with it, play, pose and experiment. And I am not only thinking about dress. Can anyone imagine Tristram Shandy as a nineteenth-century novel?

The reaction against Romanticism was a very serious one, and if the Romantics were emotional, introspective, visionary and “very conscious of themselves as artists, then the move against them and their work was bound to be in opposition; to be rational, extrovert, didactic, the writer as social worker or sage. The novels of the 1860s, the novel form we still assume to be the perfect, perhaps even the only model, were at that time a strange hybrid of the loose epic poem and the pamphlet. It was not the inheritor of the play, pose and experiment of Smollett and Sterne. The dreary list of Braddon, Oliphant, Trollope, Wood, need not bother us here, although I think that the eagerness with which the sentimental and the sensational was mopped up by novel readers, was in itself a backlash against the intensity demanded by the Romantic vision. Even Byron at his most rollicking and least controlled is an intense poet. Intensity was not a Victorian virtue. Or was it?

It was women poets who benefited from the collapse of the Romantic sensibility. Whilst the male poet suddenly found himself at odds with his poetic tradition; he should not be dreamy, contemplative, a little mystical, a little delicate, a woman had no such struggle. If the sensibility of the Romantics looked ‘unmasculine’ to a fast developing action culture, it could certainly be feminine. We think about women novelists as being a nineteenth-century product but the rise and the popularity of the woman poet is just as extraordinary. The woman poet, unlike the majority of the women novelists, accepted her mantle of Otherness gracefully. She would lead the mind to higher things. She would redirect material energies towards emotional and spiritual contemplation. LEL (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), Felicia Hemans, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, each accepted the distinction of the poet as poet. The particular struggle of Tennyson, how to be sensitive in an age that disliked sensitivity in men, was clearly not a problem for a woman. I do not want to suggest that women writers, and in particular women poets, found themselves in a blessed century, but I do think that the perceived alliance between the qualities peculiar to poetry and the qualities peculiar to women gave women a freedom to work their own form within the authority of tradition. It was this freedom, I think, which cleared the ground for the significant contribution of women to Modernism. Like Romanticism, Modernism was a poet’s revolution, the virtues of a poetic sensibility are uppermost (imagination, invention, density of language, wit, intensity, great delicacy) and what returns is play, pose and experiment. What departs is Realism.

That should be unsurprising. Realism is not a Movement or a Revolution, in its original incarnation it was a response to a movement, and as a response it was essentially anti-art. The mainspring of tension in the best Victorian writers is not religious or sexual, it is between the dead weight of an exaggeratedly masculine culture valuing experience over imagination and action above contemplation and the strange authority of the English poetic tradition. Who should the poet serve? Society or the Muse? This was brand new question and not a happy one. 

If the woman poet could avoid it, the male poet and the prose writers of either sex could not. Of the great writers, Emily Bronte chose well. Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot continually equivocate and the equivocation helps to. explain the uneven power of their work. Dickens is to me the most interesting example of a great Victorian writer, who by sleight of hand convinces his audience that he is what he is not; a realist. I admit that there are tracts of Dickens that walk where they should fly but no writer can escape the spirit of the age and his was an age suspicious of the more elevated forms of transport. What is remarkable is how much of his work is winged; winged as poems are through the ariel power of words.

The Victorian denial of art as art (separate, Other, self- contained) was unsustainable, and like many a Victorian neurosis began to collapse under its own image. That art should not be art but a version of everyday life was absurd and men like Wilde, Swinburne and Yeats were proving it. The Muse was fighting back, cross-dressed as a pretty young· man or dressed in robes of Celtic Twilight. It began to look as though dowdy Realism was dead.

How dead? Phases in literature do not suddenly begin and just as quickly end, there is a scuffle, an adjustment, and usually a longish period where what is gone and what is coming make their way together. Only by looking backwards do we see the obvious signs of change. The effort to renew in language its poetry, the effort we call Modernism, was not an effort that could cancel out the longueurs of the New Georgians and their fakey pastorals or the high detail of the ageing Victorian novel. The novel was popular and during its determined reign literacy in England had increased measurably. The measure was a vast and newly created reading public who wanted to use a book as we now use television. Sentimental poetry and easy prose were perfect. Realism might be plain but the plain man would pay for it. Against this, it was inevitable that Modernism would be seen as a highbrow, intellectual snob movement cut off from the tastes of the people. The fact is that the tastes of the people were cut off from literature. How could they not be? Mass literacy was not a campaign to improve the culture and sensibility of the nation, it was designed to make the masses more useful. The writer faced another new problem: his public were no longer his educated equals.

Why should that matter? Comparative to the population, art always has been practised by a few and seriously appreciated by a few, usually the ones paying for it, commissioning it, supporting it. During the nineteenth century the most significant social change in Britain was the change from a controlling aristocracy to a controlling plutocracy. We all know the stereotype of New Money puffing on a cigar and ordering in books and pictures by the yard. The trouble is that books and pictures cannot be made by the yard and nothing is so contradictory to a money culture as art. I am not suggesting that the old system of patronage by Church or Peer was a perfect system or that we should try and return to it. But faced with big business and the average buyer all the arts find that they are being asked to explain themselves in a way that is anathema to their own processes. To support the arts honestly you must either b serious or disinterested. If you are serious you will tolerate and even encourage the necessary experiments and innovations (and failures) that keep art alive. If you are disinterested, recognising that the arts are important even if they move you very little, you will pay the money and leave others to be the judge of your munificence. Roughly speaking, that is how patronage worked until the Industrial Revolution.

What should the poet do? The richest man he knows is Mr Belch who owns the Blacking Factory. Belch’s Blacking is a quality product and as everybody knows, quality sells. Belch thinks he would like to support the arts and he fancies having a book of poetry dedicated to him because he thinks that poetry is the ultimate useless commodity and it is a measure of his wealth that he can afford it. He has a look at. the poems and judges them pretty awful stuff but he gives the poet money and attaches no conditions to the offer, except an advert in the back and 50 percent of sales.

The poems do not sell and they are unfavourably reviewed. Belch is furious. Quality Sells. It says so over the gates of his own factory and he has made millions out of it. The poet can’t even cover his printing costs. Belch declines to support the poet’s next volume and instead finds a pretty painter whose flowers sell by the roll of canvas.

If business is not interested in the arts, and it isn’t, except for tax purposes, advertising lines and conspicuous decoration, then how will the artist support herself if she has no private funds? Sell her work is the obvious answer, but that is not an easy answer when there is often no common ground between purchaser and producer. I do not mean that the writer and the reader should be computer-dating compatible. Some of my favourite books are written by people with whom I doubt that I could spend one hour. In print I can live with them forever because the strong line connecting us is love of language. The connection need not be so esoteric; I am a writer so I will be looking for connections that are not likely to interest the general reader so much. The general reader need not sit down and ponder the runes behind the words, but if he or she wants the pleasure out of a book that cannot be got out of anything else, that reader has forged a link with the writer. A link of commitment to pursue language, the one writing it, the one reading it,a shared belief in a serious endeavour.

It is difficult when the writer is serious and the reader is not. Again, that is a newish problem, reading having become a leisure toy and not a cultural occupation. Of course we read for pleasure, but the enjoyment got out of literature is not the enjoyment to be had from a ball game or a video. I do not want to make a hierarchy among ball games and books; I know that they are pleasures of a different order, I wish that the huge body of readers and sports fans did. Art has been bundled away along with sport and entertainment and sometimes even charity, but it belongs by itself, a separate reality, a world apart. Readers who don’t like books that are not printed television, fast on thrills and feeling, soft on the brain, are not criticising literature, they are missing it altogether. A work of fiction, a poem, that is literature, that is art, can only be itself, it can never substitute for anything else. Nor can anything else substitute for it. The serious writer cannot be in competition for sales and attention with the bewildering range of products from the ever expanding leisure industry. She can only offer what she has ever offered; an exceptional sensibility combined with an exceptional control over words.

How many people want that? Proportionally as few as ever but art is not for the few, it is for many, and I include those who would never pick up a serious fiction or poem and who are uninterested in writing. I believe that art puts down its roots into the deepest hiding places of bur nature and that its action is akin to the action of certain delving plants, comfrey for instance, whose roots can penetrate far into the subsoil and unlock nutrients that would otherwise lie out of the reach of shallower bedded plants. In the haste of life and the press of action it is difficult for us to examine our feelings, to express them coherently, to express them poetically, and yet the impulse to poetry which is an impulse parallel to civilisation, is a force towards that range and depth of expression. We do not want language as a list of basic . commands and exchanges, we want it to handle matter far more subtle. When we say ‘I haven’t got the words’, the lack is not in the language nor in our emotional state, it is in the breakdown between the two. The poet heals that break down and not only for those who read poetry. If we want a living language, a language capable of expressing all that it is called upon to express in a vastly changing world, then we need men and women whose whole self is bound up in that work with words.

For the writer, serving the much maligned Muse seems to be the best way of serving society. When we think about those writers who have most contributed to the language, we find that this is so.

That kind of work will never be popular, that is, it will not please most of the people most of the time. This need not matter, provided that there are a sufficient number of people concerned enough for serious work to keep the writer read and fed. The relationship between the reader and the writer’s work has to be one of trust, for even the most convinced of readers will not be always convinced. We come back to those favourite books, inevitably parts of a writer’s work will find more favour than others. To trust is to submit to the experiment, to stay the course, to sit up late and wait. Mistakes will be made. No writer is free from failure and we cannot judge a writer’s work until the whole body of it has appeared, and perhaps we have to wait longer still. Our own age is very quick to judge and even to pre judge, perhaps as part of a determined effort to make sure that art never opens its own mouth.

It has teeth, art, and a way of cutting through to the soft parts untried. 

Did the Modernists too far strain the relationship between reader and writer? I think not. The Romantics had been subjected to invective no less fierce than that aimed at Eliot, Pound,Joyce, Woolf, Stein, HD and company. Revolution upsets order and most of us prefer a quiet life. The revolt against Realism was really a revolt of tradition. The Modernists were trying to ,return to an idea of art as a conscious place (their critics would say a self-conscious place), a place outside of both rhetoric and cliche. This was a normal enough revolt, and one that had been carried out something over a hundred years earlier by Wordsworth and the Lake poets, and a hundred years before that by Dryden. Periodic refinements in the language poets use have to come at a time when what should be said simply is being said elaborately and when what should be subtle and complex is being too crudely treated. Spoken language alters and poetry, if it is to be living, must move with those changes in language but also stretch them, refine them, so that the thoughts and sensibilities of a people, as reflected in their speech, are kept taut. Poetry, poetic fiction, is not artificial language (or at least when it is, it ceases to be poetry), but it is a heightened language. It is recognisably the language we all use but at a pitch beyond the everyday capacities of speech.

It is easy to see why, compared with Kipling, Housman, Bridges, and most of the First World War poets (not Owen), T. S. Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’ (1917) and The Waste Land (1922) looked prosy, and were attacked for failing to be poetry. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) had been attacked for the same reason. What Eliot was doing was consciously re linking verse language with street language but refusing to talk down. The language he creates is one flexible enough to stretch around new and difficult ideas and fixed enough within a poetic tradition not to degenerate into a merely private response (always a problem with lesser Modems, such as Richard Aldington). Whatever it was, it had not been seen before, although it had been anticipated by Robert Browning. Whatever has not been seen before causes trouble. For the ordinary reader, the Modernist writer looked desperately difficult (Eliot) desperately dirty (Joyce) desperately dull (Woolf). Novels were meant to be novels (stories), and poems were meant to be poetic (pastorals, ballads, and during the war, protests). Amongst its other crimes, Modernism was questioning the boundaries between the two. Some very good writers, including Robert Graves, thought this blurring particularly wicked. 

If it strikes us as strange that a group of people working towards returning literature to its roots in speech (which is not the same thing as forcing literature down to speech), should be regarded as remote and disconnected, it is worth remembering two things: 1) That we judge new work by a template of the past from which it has already escaped. 2) That the popular novelists and popular poets seemed to be the rightful inheritors of literary tradition because they were perpetuating what had been done well enough and often enough to be familiar. The fact that familiarity usually means something we no longer question, something we no longer see, is a point in its favour. As creatures of habit, the more we can remove from our immediate consciousness the better. To read something that gives us a certain satisfaction and a certain pleasure, even if its manner and its method is exhausted, is more acceptable than grappling with the new.

Good writers, of any period, write a living language. As their innovations and experiments become commonplace, lesser writers copy them, and in their hands the language is no longer living, it becomes inert. Men like Galsworthy, Bennett and Wells, borrowed from the great Victorian novelists a prose style they and their contemporaries had had no part in forging, and although they borrowed it well, there was nothing of any note that they could add. Even as they were working, speech patterns, and therefore thought patterns and patterns of feeling were rapidly changing. Ours has been a century of rapid change, and if literature is to have any meaning beyond the museum, it must keep developing. To compare the prose style of Woolf ’s Jacob’s Room (1922) with Bennett’s Riceyman Steps (1923) is an exercise in astonishment. Looking now, with hindsight, we can see at once which book is modem, that is to say which style proved the right equipment to put into words that which was only just bubbling into collective consciousness.

That is what I mean when I talk about exceptional sensibility. The true artist does have a kind of early warning system, an immanence that allows him or her to recognise and make articulate the emotional perplexities of his age. Writers who seem to sum up their time are writers who have this prescience. It is not that they make better documentaries than the rest, this is where the realists miss the point, it is that they make better poems. The emotional and psychic resonance of a particular people at a particular time is not a series of snapshots that can be stuck together to make a montage, it is a living, breathing, winding movement that flows out of the past and into the future while making its unique present. This fixity and flux is never clear until we are beyond it, into a further fixity and flux, and yet when we read our great literature, it seems that it was clear, at least to one group of people, a few out of millions, who come to be absolutely identified with their day; the artists.

Art does not imitate life. Art anticipates life.

Although the major Modernists soon made unblockable inroads into the literary tradition it was inevitable that their purity of purpose would be questioned. The Bloomsbury Group attracted a vengeful type of pseudo-criticism that confused the writer with the work and caricatured both. Art for Art’s sake, which was really the chant of Marinetti and the Futurists, stuck to those writers and other artists who seemed stubbornly determined to put the Muse first. The young men (and I do mean men) who were the younger generation in the 1930s, Auden, Isherwood, Spender, Day Lewis, MacNeice, were either Communists or Socialists who passionately believed in a truly popular art. The ivory tower was under siege.

In fact, the stake-out between Ivory Tower and Red Square was no more real than the apparently conflicting claims of Society and the Muse. While avidly reading and· not disputing the innovations of their elders, the new young men wanted to write for the working classes. What they forgot was that the working classes didn’t want to read them. As a member of the proletariat myself, I can confirm that there is nothing drearier than the embrace of a bunch of Oxbridge intellectuals who want to tell you that art (theirs) is for you. The express view of the highbrow Modems was cleaner: take it or leave it. What they knew, and what the eager young men of the Thirties reluctantly came to know was that it is not possible to produce a living literature that includes everyone unless everyone wants to be included. Art leaves nobody out, but it cannot condescend, we have to climb up if we want the extraordinary view.

Ours has not been an easy century for art. At times, to talk about it at all has seemed crass. Two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the General Strike of 1926 and the Depression of the 1930s cut short those experiments in language and in thought that human beings perpetually make and perpetually need.

For myself, in the literature of my own language, I can find little to cheer me between the publication of Four Quartets (1944) and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (1967). Of course I am cheered by Beckett and by Pinter and Orton and Stoppard, but they are dramatists and, with the exception of Beckett, the solid body of their work comes out of the 1960s, as does that of Adrienne Rich.

Robert Graves has·soldiered on, pledging deep allegiance to his lover-Muse and now that he has been dead ten years, we see how right he was to go his silly stubborn way and retire to get on with his work. The social conscience lobbies of the Forties and Fifties, including those Angry Young Men, have not won nearly so well, and it seems that they had not nearly so much to say.

The 1940s and the 1950s seem to me to be a dead time, in my terms because the anti-art response, Realism, bounced back again in a new outfit but wearing the same smug expression. I would hazard that a really good writer, like Muriel Spark, was handicapped by her period. Miss Spark does not want to be a Realist, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie should confirm that, and yet a Realist she has been, and what a pity. Iris Murdoch might have been something else (see The Black Prince), and might yet (The Green Knight) but I do not worry too much about her. I do not worry about Kingsley Amis at all.

I would have thought that the rise and rise of TV and film would have entirely satisfied our ‘mirror of life’ longings. The screen large and small can do perfectly what the ordinary Victorian novel could do, which is why adaptations of same work so well. Adaptations of Dickens do not work well because what gets lost is everything that really matters; language.

As the relationship between reader and writer continues to change, it might be worthwhile to ask what it is that we want from one another. If the reader wants the writer to be an extension of the leisure industry or a product of the media, then the serious writer will be beaten back into an elitism beyond that necessary to maintain certain standards; it will be an elitism of survival and it is happening already. Writers are fighters, they have to be, because to begin with, they are the people who must stand up for their own work, but must they continually be called to defend not only their. own work but the very concept of art? Even to use the word ‘art’ is to provoke a response either quizzical or violent. If there is no such thing, do we mean that there never has been any such thing, that there is no such thing now, or the writer who is fool enough to use the word simply does not understand it?

We seem to have returned to a place where play, pose and experiment are unwelcome and where the idea of art is debased. At the same time, there are a growing number of people (possibly even a representative number of people), who want to find something genuine in the literature of their own time and who are unconvinced by the glories of reproduction furniture.

To those people I ask this: that their relationship with their writers should be a direct one, the agency of the book is their common ground, and the only way into a piece of literature is through the front door - Open it. Once there, if the arrangement of the rooms is unfamiliar and the fabric strange, reflect that at least it is new, and that is what you say you want. It will be too, a world apart, a place where the normal weights and measures of the day have been subtly altered to give a different emphasis and perhaps to slide back the secret panel by the heart. Check that the book is made of language, living and not inert, for a true writer will create a separate reality and her atoms and her gases are words.

[souhayla-bellil-universe-blog]

Why “All Too Well - Taylor Swift” Is since I heard it for the 1st time my favourite song

Music is a universal expression of beauty made up of a diverse number of genres and it is prevalent in all cultures. Songs are simply poetry put to music and while all genres of music have different styles and sounds, they all share a similar purpose to evoke emotion and passion. The song “All Too Well” by Taylor Swift tells the story of the innocent beginning of a relationship that eventually falls apart, but is hard to forget. Swift co-wrote this song with Liz Rose in 2012 for Taylor Swift’s fourth album Red and it is one of my favorite songs on the album. For me, this song’s meaning lies in the individual stories it tells about a relationship that began with simple memories that look like photographs in retrospect. It conveys the importance and potency of love as well as how difficult love is to forget once it goes away. It is no secret that people are drawn to music for many different reasons. It is one of those art forms that almost everyone can relate to in some shape or form. Whether it is listened to as background music at a gathering of friends or family, or performed live in front of thousands of people, music is everywhere. Songs can consist of happy sounding melodies that make you want to drop everything and dance, or they can have sad, depressing lyrics about loss and heartache. For me personally, I like songs that tell stories and that have lyrics that are relatable to my life. Listening to an album like Red, in my opinion, is like reading a book about someone’s life. Each song speaks to a different emotion and has its own meaning, but they are all interconnected in a way because they each convey something personal about the artist. The song “All Too Well” is one of my favorites because it has such raw emotion. In an interview about her album when it first came out in 2012, Taylor Swift explained that “All Too Well” was the first song she wrote for Red and that for her, it was the “hardest song to write emotionally” for the album. After listening to the song for the first time, I could see why this could be true. She explained it as being “a really emotional song because it [shows] you why loss is so painful because it was once good and you can remember it.” The simple guitar chords in the beginning of the song have a sad sound that set the tone for the rest of the song. The first verse narrates a scene at the beginning of a relationship between two people. The girl is at her boyfriend’s sister’s house and Swift sings that although the “air was cold,” “it felt like home somehow.” The word “home” suggests comfort and warmth in contrast to the coldness of the air. Home is not just a physical place, but it can also be a state of mind. This lyric suggests that being with someone you love can bring about feelings of comfort associated with “home.” The first verse also foreshadows a later part of the song when Swift sings that the girl leaves her scarf at her boyfriend’s sister’s house and how he still has it “even now,” suggesting that a considerable amount of time has elapsed since the beginning of their relationship to when the song was written. The second verse describes the guy’s “sweet disposition” and the girl’s “wide-eyed gaze.” The word choice used makes me think of the excitement a little kid has in a candy store full of sweets and suggests a certain level of innocence. It also describes how they are “singing in the car getting lost Upstate” while “autumn leaves [fall down] like pieces into place.” The idea of “getting lost” and driving without direction can be interpreted as a metaphor for falling in love because there is no set of rules or maps when it comes to being in a relationship. It just happens. Also, the fact that this scene occurs during autumn is significant because it is the season of new beginnings and is symbolic of the development of this new relationship. The idea that leaves fall on the ground like pieces of a puzzle can be alluded to the way the initial “pieces” of a relationship are put together as memories are created. The next line, “I can picture it after all these days” indicates that this memory is still vivid even after a long period of time. Furthermore, the first line of each chorus begins, “’Cause there we are again…” and ends “I remember it all too well,” but each chorus recounts a different memory. The first chorus is about when the two people in this relationship were driving in a car together and how the guy almost ran a red light because he was distracted as he was admiring his girlfriend. The second chorus describes a situation when they were dancing around the kitchen in the middle of the night, lit by the glow of a refrigerator. Although these memories are simple and unassuming, they effectively define their relationship. The final chorus is different than the previous two in that it does not narrate a specific scenario, but it recalls the time when the girl, who is the narrator of the song, loved her boyfriend. It was the time before the guy in the relationship “lost the one real thing [he’s] ever known.” This implies that their love was the only genuine he has ever had and now that their relationship is over, it is gone. This is pretty powerful stuff! Additionally, the third verse describes a time when the girl was with her boyfriend and his mom and they were looking back on old pictures of him was he used to wear glasses and play tee ball. His cheeks turned red in embarrassment as his mom told stories about him as a boy. The line, “You tell me ‘bout your past, thinking your future was me” implies that they both thought they would always be together and that someday they would look back on memories of their own. This line exposes their relationship as something that was meaningful and as something that could have been long lasting. In the next part of the song, the music builds and becomes more intense between the second chorus and the next verse. When Taylor performs this song live, she dramatically flips her head back and forth as she plays the piano and the emotion of the song really heightens when she sings, “And maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much, but maybe this thing was a masterpiece ‘til you tore it all up.” The use of the word “maybe” is significant in this particular verse because Swift suggests two different causes for the downfall of their relationship. One, being that they got “lost in translation,” implying that the meaning was lost from a relationship that used to be based on love, and the second being that she “asked for too much” out of the other person. It is as if their love used to have its own language that only they could understand, but once they started to grow apart, this language was lost. When someone asks too much of someone else, it usually means that their expectations were too high of the other person and that they failed to live up to unrealistic standards. When Swift compares their love to a “masterpiece” that was torn up and left to shreds, she implies that their love was once beautiful, but has gone to waste. The next verse is the most emotional, climactic point of the song when Swift sings “You call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest.” This part of the songs gives me chills every time I hear it because of the language used and because of the sheer genuineness of lyrics. To “break someone like a promise” suggests that relationships built on trust and devotion are fragile. They can be destroyed over something as simple as a telephone conversation. When something is broken, it goes from being whole to being fragmented into pieces, much like the way someone’s heart can be metaphorically broken once love is lost. The line describing the guy as being “casually cruel in the name of being honest” is the most poetic lyric in the song, in my opinion, because the idea that someone can be honest while being unintentionally cruel at the same time is so true. Brutal honesty can be hurtful at times, especially in situations when it involves terminating a relationship. The phrase “casual cruelty” reminds me of Nina Auerbach’s essay, “Alice in Wonderland: A Curious Child,” when she states, “Alice’s attitude towards the animals she encounters is often one of casual cruelty.” Similar to the vicious manner in which Alice treats the creatures in Wonderland as inferior beings, the guy in this relationship breaks the bond with the one who loves him in a disingenuous way, while ironically attempting to be honest. This leaves the narrator of the song feeling like a “crumpled up piece of paper” feeling worthless, which refers back to the comparison made about how their love was like beautiful masterpiece that got torn up. This suggests that their love was once everything and once it ended, the narrator is left feeling empty and broken. Moreover, the next verse begins by referring to time and how it can by “paralyzing.” This concept insinuates that the narrator of the song cannot move on from the loss of their loved one and that their love cannot be forgotten. It contradicts the cliché phrase “time heals all wounds” because in this instance, time is frozen and serves as a handicap. The line “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it,” means that when the guy left, he took with him a big piece of the person he left and that even after all this time, she still cannot remember how to be the person she once was. When Swift sings about “plaid shirt days and nights when [he] made [her his] own,” she recalls the comfort that their love used to bring her and how easy it all was. It is similar to the emotion described in the first verse about how he made her feel at home when they were together. The next line, “Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone” explains how the guy ended their relationship in an impersonal way, almost like a business deal. He mailed back all of his girlfriend’s belongings as if they never had anything between them and now she suffers with loneliness and sadness from no longer being in a relationship that was once good. Furthermore, unlike the recorded version of the song, when Taylor performs “All Too Well” live in concert, she stops and takes a dramatic pause, looking out into the audience with an expression as if she is about to cry before she sings the next verse. This pause adds an important element to the song because it emphasizes the strong emotion and vulnerability she feels when she sings these lyrics. In the following verse she sings, “But you keep my old scarf from that very first week” (which refers back to the first verse of the song when she left her scarf at her boyfriend’s sister’s house) “’Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me, You can’t get rid of it because you remember it all too well.” These lyrics reveal that the guy who broke their relationship apart remembers their love just as intensely as she does and that the scarf serves as an important symbol of their love that is too difficult to forget. The scarf represents the innocence they had during the start of their relationship and the fact that the guy cannot get rid of it is significant because it verifies that he remembers everything just as clearly as she does. It is the only thing he keeps, but it is important because the purpose of a scarf is to bring warmth. Therefore, just as he brought feelings of comfort and safety to his girlfriend, the guy experienced similar feelings of security and comfort when he was with her. The final verse of the song contains flashbacks to previous lines of the choruses of the song and describes how both people in the relationship remember their love “all too well.” The line “wind in my hair” refers to when the guy almost ran the red light when they were driving. “Down the stairs” refers to when they danced around the kitchen in the middle of the night. These moments are like photographs that are burned in their memories. Lastly, “it was rare” refers to their love and how real, true love is hard to come by. The last line of the song, “I remember it all too well,” once again emphasizes the overall premise of the song that trying to forget someone you once loved is no easy task. In my life, music is my go-to form of therapy. It helps me to get through the good days and the bad ones and reassures me that I’m not alone. My favorite songs are ones that tell real stories about life because they are the most relatable and convey genuine emotion. I have heard that humans are especially attracted to sad songs. I think this is true because they cause people to feel deeply since sadness is such a complex emotion. Taylor Swift’s song, “All Too Well” is no exception. It is a beautifully sad and tragic song that pays special attention to the specific details of a relationship that used to be meaningful. The lyrics make you stop and think about how drastically things can change was love goes away.

[dfroza]

A reprise of lines from August [8]

with ancient Psalm 8 as a song written by David that reflects upon the creative power of Love:

God’s Splendor

For the Pure and Shining One

Set to the melody of “For the Feast of Harvest,” by King David

Lord, your name is so great and powerful!

People everywhere see your splendor.

Your glorious majesty streams from the heavens,

filling the earth with the fame of your name!

You have built a stronghold by the songs of babies.

Strength rises up with the chorus of singing children.

This kind of praise has the power to shut Satan’s mouth.

Childlike worship will silence

the madness of those who oppose you.

Look at the splendor of your skies,

your creative genius glowing in the heavens.

When I gaze at your moon and your stars,

mounted like jewels in their settings,

I know you are the fascinating artist who fashioned it all!

But when I look up and see

such wonder and workmanship above,

I have to ask you this question:

Compared to all this cosmic glory,

why would you bother with puny, mortal man

or be infatuated with Adam’s sons?

Yet what honor you have given to men,

created only a little lower than Elohim,

crowned like kings and queens with glory and magnificence.

You have delegated to them

mastery over all you have made,

making everything subservient to their authority,

placing earth itself under the feet of your image-bearers.

All the created order and every living thing

of the earth, sky, and sea—

the wildest beasts and all the sea creatures—

everything is in submission to Adam’s sons.

Lord, your name is so great and powerful.

People everywhere see your majesty!

What glory streams from the heavens,

filling the earth with the fame of your name!

The Book of Psalms, Poem 8 (The Passion Translation)

and from Today’s paired chapters of the Testaments (Hebrews 5 and Jeremiah 13) we read of the significance of the cleansing of grace and its pure rebirth by offering the heart to Love (to God our beautiful mysterious Creator)

[Hebrews 5]

Every high priest selected to represent men and women before God and offer sacrifices for their sins should be able to deal gently with their failings, since he knows what it’s like from his own experience. But that also means that he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as the peoples’.

No one elects himself to this honored position. He’s called to it by God, as Aaron was. Neither did Christ presume to set himself up as high priest, but was set apart by the One who said to him, “You’re my Son; today I celebrate you!” In another place God declares, “You’re a priest forever in the royal order of Melchizedek.”

While he lived on earth, anticipating death, Jesus cried out in pain and wept in sorrow as he offered up priestly prayers to God. Because he honored God, God answered him. Though he was God’s Son, he learned trusting-obedience by what he suffered, just as we do. Then, having arrived at the full stature of his maturity and having been announced by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who believingly obey him.

I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening. By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago! Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God’s ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong.

The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 5 (The Message)

and from chapter 13 of Jeremiah we read of the warning of Love not to turn away from its truth by serving (or worshiping) other things:

[The Light You Always Took for Granted]

Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don’t stay stuck in your ways!

It’s God’s Message we’re dealing with here.

Let your lives glow bright before God

before he turns out the lights,

Before you trip and fall

on the dark mountain paths.

The light you always took for granted will go out

and the world will turn black.

If you people won’t listen,

I’ll go off by myself and weep over you,

Weep because of your stubborn arrogance,

bitter, bitter tears,

Rivers of tears from my eyes,

because God’s sheep will end up in exile.

“I’ll blow these people away—

like wind-blown leaves.

You have it coming to you.

I’ve measured it out precisely.”

God’s Decree.

“It’s because you forgot me

and embraced the Big Lie,

that so-called god Baal.

I’m the one who will rip off your clothes,

expose and shame you before the watching world.

Your obsessions with gods, gods, and more gods,

your goddess affairs, your god-adulteries.

Gods on the hills, gods in the fields—

every time I look you’re off with another god.

O Jerusalem, what a sordid life!

Is there any hope for you!”

The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 13:15-17, 24-27 (The Message)

to be accompanied by inspiration from Today’s Psalms beginning with the first verse from Psalm 50:

God Has Spoken

A poetic song of Asaph, the gatherer

The God of gods, the mighty Lord himself, has spoken!

He shouts out over all the people of the earth

in every brilliant sunrise and every beautiful sunset,

saying, “Listen to me!”

The Book of Psalms, Poem 50:1 (The Passion Translation)

A song of Asaph.

The Mighty God, the Eternal—God of past, present, and future—

has spoken over the world,

calling together all things from sunrise to sunset.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 50:1 (The Voice)

Every animal of field and forest belongs to me, the Creator.

I know every movement of the birds in the sky,

and every animal of the field is in my thoughts.

The entire world and everything it contains is mine.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 50:10-11 (The Passion Translation)

and from Psalm 9 and Psalm 73 about the nature of writing:

A David Psalm

I’m thanking you, God, from a full heart,

I’m writing the book on your wonders.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 9:1 (The Message)

I couldn’t begin to count the times you’ve been there for me.

With the skill of a poet I’ll never run out of things to say

of how you faithfully kept me from danger.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 71:15 (The Passion Translation)

and again from Psalm 71 about the protection of the heart and its discovery of “Home”

You’re the only place of protection for me.

I keep coming back to hide myself in you,

for you are like a mountain-cliff fortress where I’m kept safe.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 71:3 (The Passion Translation)

to be concluded by lines from Today’s Proverb for August 9:

Lady Wisdom has built and furnished her home;

it’s supported by seven hewn timbers.

The banquet meal is ready to be served: lamb roasted,

wine poured out, table set with silver and flowers.

Having dismissed her serving maids,

Lady Wisdom goes to town, stands in a prominent place,

and invites everyone within sound of her voice:

“Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on?

Come with me, oh come, have dinner with me!

I’ve prepared a wonderful spread—fresh-baked bread,

roast lamb, carefully selected wines.

Leave your impoverished confusion and live!

Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 9:1-6 (The Message)

my reading in the Scriptures for August 9, day 50 of Summer and day 221 of the year:

A bottle of Spanish wine picked up at Bridge Street Market this morning

“three peaks”