Ornaments make the Tree!

double clicking may enlarge the pictures, enjoy the detail.

Is that me? said the doll to the picture?

Macy's toy of the season is Seuss's Horton. It fits nicely beneath Pauls Seuss: Elephant presenting a flower to a bird." Clearly there is a family resemblance.

Clicking should, might, may make the picture large, then back arrow back space.....

Burnt Norton by T S Eliot

read by some Eliot like guy . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeNH9KGDPuI&fmt=18

T.S.Eliot Burnt Norton I and II

The Four Quartets are Eliot's masterpiece. The depth of his thought and the range of his intellect are everywhere obvious. These verses have been recited many times and can never be heard enough. Here is my rendition.

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know. Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.



II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure. Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Luis MIguel - AYER

++

I 'made' a fractal

I watched a video, downloaded some software, and made a fractal






and made a fractal, not art .... but:

BOOKS, the Ultimate Gifts

"Books make great gifts because they're an amazing way to kill time while your Web site is buffering," John Stewart in a two-minute video ( http://www.BooksAreGreatGifts.com) promoted by the Association of American Publishers.






reading, inexpensive (library); quiet; calming . . . and libraries are a proven place for good napping (I've seen it).

=====

Traveler (ABC) Traveler Episode 3 Part 3

a chase scene in a library...:
lead in at the end of this one:
++

Left Turns ---burn up more GASOLINE!

and check the link at the bottom, you who speed from light to light and weave wildly!

I have been laughed at for not liking left turns (ok, I don't like wondering if the oncoming nut has a licence, is sober, is insured, is on a cell phone); but now I can say no left turns is a responsibly green! I saw this on TV, but this is a standard print source (USA TODAY!)

from USATODAY,

combined deliveries and deployed technology to improve routes — to the point of
avoiding left turns because waiting for lights or for traffic to pass can
consume more fuel than driving alternate routes.

( http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-04-30-fuel-costs-companies_N.htm ; 5/16/2008, No left turn: Companies try to save fuel as prices rise

5/16/2008 9:30 PM

ha, so not as NUTS as many had thought. Now were is my disintegration gun?

---

http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/savegas/

Squirels Winter home, Patio near sundown, NEWEST ORNAMENTS, Kitchen Table . . .

today, off to find a Christmas Tree (and I will look forward to putting it up, then look forward to taking it down on the 26th).

Send RUM!

-

the Aerogarden from last winter has returned, and is gracing the den wtih GREENERY as the temps drop and the view from the window is bleak . . .

Paul Auster

an hour.......

--->>>>>

The Authors@Google Program was pleased to welcome Paul Auster to Google's New York office to read from and discuss his new book, "Man in the Dark".

About the Author:

Paul Auster has been called "one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers" (The Times Literary Supplement), and his work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the bestselling author of "Travels in the Scriptorium", "The Brooklyn Follies", "Oracle Night", and "The Book of Illusions", among many other works including the three novels known as The New York Trilogy: "City of Glass", "Ghosts", and "The Locked Room". His nonfiction works include "The Invention of Solitude", "Hand to Mouth", "The Red Notebook", and "The Art of Hunger". In 2006, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honors are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of the film "Smoke and the Prix Médicis Etranger" for the novel "Leviathan". He has also been short-listed for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

This event took place on August 20, 2008.

((
he is a most interesting author . . . .

))

George Orwell - A Life in Pictures a (BBC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4s9pdL7tpA

+++++++++++

PROLIX

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 02, 2008 is:

prolix • \proh-LIKS\ •
adjective1 : unduly prolonged or drawn out: too long *2 : marked by or using an excess of words

Example sentence: Legal writing is not always prolix; after all, the
word “brief” refers to a legal document, and most judges demand that briefs be
brief.

Did you know? There's no way to talk about "prolix" without being
redundant, verbose, and wordy. That's because the word is a synonym of all of those long-winded terms. Of those words, "prolix” is the one most likely to suggest unreasonable and tedious dwelling on details. It derives from
“prolixus,” a Latin term meaning "extended" or "copious." “Prolixus" originated from a combination of the prefix “pro-” (which means "forward") and the past participle of “liquēre,” a verb meaning "to be fluid." True to that history, something that is prolix flows on and on. *Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

who's picture is next to prolix in the dictionary?

power of paper, power of PAPER in intellectual life

an example of the powers of observation by a great mind:

Only by the fourteenth century did the manufacture reach Germany, and not until he end of that century was it abundant and cheap enough for the printing of books to be a practicable business proposition. Thereupon printing followed naturally and necessarily, for printing is the most obvious of inventions, and the intellectual life of the world entered upon a new and far more vigorous phase. It ceased to be a little trickle from mind to mind; it became a broad flood, in which thousands and presently scores and hundreds of thousands of minds participated.

from:

http://www.bartleby.com/86/49.html

H.G. Wells (1866–1946). A Short History of the World. 1922.

XLIX. The Intellectual Revival of the Europeans

But the Saracenic world not only gave Christendom the stimulus of its philosophers and alchemists; it also gave it paper. It is scarcely too much to say that paper made the intellectual revival of Europe possible. Paper originated in China, where its use probably goes back to the second century B.C. In 751 the Chinese made an attack upon the Arab Moslems in Samarkand; they were repulsed, and among the prisoners taken from them were some skilled papermakers, from whom the art was learnt. Arabic paper manuscripts from the ninth century onward still exist. The manufacture entered Christendom either through Greece or by the capture of Moorish paper-mills during the Christian reconquest of Spain. But under the Christian Spanish the product deteriorated sadly. Good paper was not made in Christian Europe until the end of the thirteenth century, and then it was Italy which led the world. Only by the fourteenth century did the manufacture reach Germany, and not until the end of that century was it abundant and cheap enough for the printing of books to be a practicable business proposition. Thereupon printing followed naturally and necessarily, for printing is the most obvious of inventions, and the intellectual life of the world entered upon a new and far more vigorous phase. It ceased to be a little trickle from mind to mind; it became a broad flood, in which thousands and presently scores and hundreds of thousands of minds participated. 10

One immediate result of this achievement of printing was the appearance of an abundance of Bibles in the world. Another was a cheapening of school-books. The knowledge of reading spread swiftly. There was not only a great increase of books in the world, but the books that were now made were plainer to read and so easier to understand. Instead of toiling at a crabbed text and then thinking over its significance, readers now could think unimpeded as they read. With this increase in the facility of reading, the reading public grew. The book ceased to be a highly decorated toy or a scholar’s mystery. People began to write books to be read as well as looked at by ordinary people. They wrote in the ordinary language and not in Latin. With the fourteenth century the real history of the European literature begins.