I'll not love again

[Casey Butler]

Today Silver got new shoes (I noticed a thread with "shoes" in the title, interesting coincidence... but, then, if I'd called them "tires" no coincidence would exist to begin with). So I was restricted to taking the sunset on the way home between Hurricane and St George. There were no clouds where the sun was but there were still wispy ones over the Pine Mountains:









Casey

[Casey Butler]

[Violet]

.. hi Casey.. I've actually been out of town these last few days, helping out a friend of mine.. I will return soon..
v i o l e t

[Violet]

.. wow, Casey.. cotton candy clouds.. which led to my spending an inordinate amount of time on youtube wafting through the cotton candy theme.. it seems to bring out the lowest common denominator in human proclivities, I'm afraid.. so.. can’t say I found anything I wanted to post, nor do I feel terribly edified by the whole cotton candy experience.. though I do like keeping up with sticky-pink junk culture from time to time..
.. [LATER NOTE].. OH, ALRIGHT.. after giving it some light and cotton-candy-ish thought, and thinking of you watching this (which makes me smirk a bit).. well.. here's a pink-and-blue sampling of cotton-candy (high brow) culture.. (high brow, given it's a tutorial, silly).. (oh, and you will be tested on this, Casey, so you need to watch the entire thing)..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtuVm5-XVrw
FULL SCREEN...


Anyway, I just got back to the city yesterday.. it seems bad things happen in two’s rather than three’s.. My close friend who has had back problems since a teenager when he was in a very bad accident.. anyway, this led to his just having hip replacement surgery at a fairly young age for that sort of surgery.. In so speaking, on Sunday, his elderly mother was getting into a car she hired to pick him up from the hospital (he was having surgery in the city, though they live in Wayne, New Jersey).. only it had suddenly gotten rather cold and rainy, and she slipped on the stairs outside their apartment.. and after lying on her back in the cold rain (with neighbors bringing her blankets ‘n things, thankfully), the ambulance finally showed up, all of which ended in her also getting an operation on her now fractured hip (oddly enough).. so.. well, I decided to forego what I’d been planning, and go out there and help my friend out for a few days, since his mother was no longer going to be doing that.. I had to take a dreaded bus from the dreaded Port Authority, since, as you well know, I’m without a vehicle at the moment..
.. Anyway, I’m back.. my friend is on the mend.. his mother will be rehabilitating for a few weeks before returning home.. but hopefully all will be well with them.. not the best of Christmases though..

.. meanwhile.. back in the city.. I just happen to have tickets from someone who couldn’t make a Steve Earle concert this evening.. I don’t know his music all that well.. here he is with Emmylou Harris doing this rather blue good-bye song that I've known Emmylou to do (and as seems befitting of a rather blue-hued violet flower)..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr2IY8q687I&feature
FULL SCREEN…
.. okay.. bye for now.. v i o l e t (flower)… hmm.. do I have anything purply-blue-ish to wear tonight?.. (maybe with some cotton candy lipstick?).. (I already did my nails)..

edit.. keep forgetting, Emmy Lou spells it Emmylou..

[Violet]

Hi Casey.. I hope I didn't scare you off with the cotton-candy nail tutorial.. I'm not sure cotton candy makes for such a good sign, exactly.. though it might symptomize something of the stress some of us are under.. and so we may need to retreat to a floating cotton-candy heaven, of sorts (where a girl might while away the hours applying difficult to achieve cotton-candy nail effects).. I remember as a girl liking to stick a lot of the stuff in my mouth at once (cotton candy, that is), as it would melt very quickly.. so, I guess we'd all be doing that up there, as well.. Actually, I like how these Heaven's mountains are rather pink in this photo.. though no cotton candy clouds are in sight.. this time..

Anyway, Steve Earle was.. well.. let's just say I found myself longing for Leonard.. and was imagining L. make a surprise visit on this little round-ish stage at The Concert Hall, up on 64th Street near Central Park.. It seems like every time I go to a music concert these days it’s bitter bitter cold.. For Leonard this was a sacrifice I was perfectly willing to make.. but.. well, it may be asking too much for anyone else.. maybe..

I do know some of Earle’s songs already, however, which I have liked.. The one he sang with Emmylou Harris (that I posted) was his own song, in fact.. the first song, he told us, that he ever wrote sober.. The whole evening however seemed more like a tribute to one Townes Van Zandt, some of whose songs I’ve also heard other artists play, though I don’t really know him well either.. He is legendary among a certain ilk of folk-blues singer-songwriter types and their steadfast fans.. Anyway, I’ve been looking into Townes, who died quite young.. just fifty-three years old, back in 1997... very striking looking too when he was young..

Here’s a wonderful youtube clip I found.. his first song, Waitin’ Round to Die, is followed by a tribute of sorts that goes with a song of his called Flyin’ Shoes.. (so there’s that “shoes” theme again, Casey, like your Silver's new riding shoes.. or Dorothy’s Silver Flyin’ Shoes).. As you will learn, the black man sitting beside Townes is Seymour Washington.. a blacksmith who at the time fit horses with their flyin' shoes (as was the case with me and Georges, and those Pegasus-like voyages we’ve made.. I mean, a horse needs special shoes for that).. It’s so touching to watch poor, sad Seymour break down as Townes does this first song.. and touching how he’s being comforted by the pretty young lass who’s there..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYkFKNroBVA
FULL SCREEN..

Anyway.. that’s my musicology stint for now.. Back in my own sad life, my poor New Jersey friend had a relapse of sorts.. (and so maybe bad things do happen in threes, after all).. anyway, just after I left him his new hip came out of its socket (!).. and it was terribly terribly painful.. he wound up having more surgery here in the city, and is supposed to return home tomorrow.. and I’m wondering if I need to go out there this week, without a car, and so close to Christmas.. but.. well, I'll see.. I know I need to keep a close eye on him, in any event..

.. yes.. these are hard times, it seems, as we sail across these Christmas blues..
v i o l e t..
Oh, it finally snowed here last night.. a dusting of four or five inches.. but light seeming snow.. it’s so quiet outside today, a white sort of ghost town..Townes’ ghost town, maybe..


edits.. Emmylou again (the spelling that is).. and just a tweak or two..

[imaginary friend]

Hi Vi,

Your poor friend – what a horrible thing to happen; I've never heard of an artificial hip dislocating so soon after the operation, what bad luck. Yet how lucky that he knows a Sister of Mercy who came to bind him with love.

Casey, the landscape you live in and the photographs you take of it are breathtaking (I'm sure I've used that description before, but nothing less will do.)

...But V., I believe I lost several dozen brain cells viewing the candy-nails-fluffette video...

[Violet]

.. oh, but I like how she actually pronounces "cotton candy," don't you, I.F.??.. I mean, she goes from Valley Girl to British sounding with just those two words.. (don't you agree, Lord M.??.. very "proper" sounding methinks)..
v.

[Violet]

Casey, I hope that you and E. and Mr. Darcy and Silver are all okay..

.. either you're busy with Christmasie things.. or this thread is no longer of interest to you.. I was thinking how you've said that we aren't really conversing.. and yet, to me, free associating is a form of conversing, even if it takes its strolls down blind alleys sometimes.. and winds up with cotton candy colored nail polishing sessions.. but I mean, at least that's alliterative..

.. Anyway, life has been taking its toll on me, money is scarce, friends are in need, and I have my own blues I've been tending to as well (along with a brand new chest cold).. I was thinking of posting this following comment after Boss's recent poem, which seems to have disappeared.. I guess I took too long to post it, but I was mulling it over I guess.. Anyway, I think it works for here as well.. oh, and Casey, please, even if you are tired of posting your photographs (though, I hope not), maybe you could let us know you are alright.. I mean, if this thread is an indication of anything, it's that.. well.. stuff happens..

.. so, here's what I wrote.. (hi Boss, should you be reading this).. [oh, I added a note or two.. and picture or two, as well]..

Hi Boss,

There is of course a sadness running through this well-written poem [Boss's poem, which as I said, has disappeared], and running through this section of the forum too, I think. I suppose it's always been here, but somehow the difficulty of the times we are all experiencing may be making it even more apparent. I just posted on the "I'll not love again" thread, a youtube clip of Townes Van Zandt, a folk-blues, singer songwriter who, from what little I know of him, must have died of a broken heart.. not necessarily that of a romance.. but a broken heart that started maybe at his birth, I don't know.. that's just an impression I have..

But I'm wondering.. I get these glimmers sometimes, as I do suffer the blues myself [though mine is more of jazz blues, than a folk blues] [that was sort of a joke].. but I get these glimmers sometimes of happiness.. I've even heard it said once that happiness is a choice, and while I think that that's a bit harsh sounding to those of us who have struggled with depression, I do like thinking about that anyway..

.. It seems that it's what's known to us that is what's comfortable and reliable seeming.. and if that "known" has often included loss and sadness, how difficult must it be to venture out into the world of Happiness.. Perhaps it's something like an infant's first steps.. for how uneasy it would be to feel this happiness, really and truly, maybe for the first time.. I mean, in a true and solid and enduring sense.. Not that one is happy every moment, that would never be true.. but, looking at Leonard for example, he seems to have come out of his long standing depression, and not too long ago, as I recall.. I also recall him saying that the part of the brain responsible for depression can ease up as one ages, or at least in his case it did.. Anyway, in seeing him on stage, he now seems to embody the kind of happiness I’m talking about.. He's come into his own, in a way.. He's performing not just to make up for his previous financial woes, which I'm sure he's well made up for (and then some, by now), but he's also performing from a place of pure lightness of being, as it were.. At least, that's how it has seemed to me.. as he cheerfully skips off stage like a happy little elf..

.. Is there a dare we can make within ourselves to truly be happy?.. Is there a way for us to seize our very beingness, and in so doing, find some lightness.. some weight lifted?... for.. if there truly is a God, wouldn't this God be waiting for us to discover this within ourselves?.. Who can say?.. maybe it's something available to us that's been waiting for us all along.. Maybe the lucky ones finally discover this.. or finally arrive at a place where they can accept this state of grace.. I mean.. maybe the answer lies in a kind of acceptance, even as letting go of the old form of being might well feel to be a kind of betrayal of all that we know, and all that we’ve grown up with, no matter how painful or depression-filled..

.. if only we could make our aching selves understand that it is not a betrayal to live life fully, and to be happy.. instead, it would seem to be our God given inheritance, I think.. if only..

.. Anyway.. it's the holidays, and something in your poem, and in its sadness, and in the sadness that seems to be lingering all around me, made me want to try to bring words to this glimmer of happiness I sometimes experience.. the one that keeps pulling me forward.. out of the doldrums, the vast sea of blueness I find myself swimming in..

.. so.. I guess I'd like to dry myself off... and bask in some True Happiness for a moment..

Happiness to All this Holiday Season.. v i o l e t.. (awaiting her bloom)..

[Violet]

.. oh, Boss.. I hope you don't mind.. since the above was inspired by your poem, and since you just re-posted it I see, I thought I'd post your poem here..

Struggle
by Boss » Tue Dec 22, 2009 9:13 pm

Avanza courses through my circulatory system
In a bold attempt to hoodwink depression
Experts infer it is ‘biochemical’
Van Morrison sings out ‘melancholia’
I know it’s just truth looking in
Each of us granted one moment
In a place where religion’s unmasked

We labour in over zealous logic
Mother and father’s prohibitions
Attention gathering games
And this loving, this sweet loving
To undress our mortal constraints
To find a portion of release
To accommodate God

I sip my tea from The Future cup
It cost me $20 at the printer’s shop
Hummingbird, blue heart, the handcuffs
Leonard’s pitch for this half sunk world
Of wretched materialism
Hungry brown belly
A checkmated saviour

I stare into my prognosis
The light is bad
And she is gone
It’s the simple things now
A cockroach in the hall
Eating, television, the sun
And it is hope

[Violet]

Hi everybody..

I just came across this, and although it's not quite the right theme for Christmas, I thought it a kind of Holiday Card for the forum.. it's quite nice to meditate on.. so.. when you have a spare moment or so, just rest your eyes on it and let it subtly unfold.. the colors are just exquisite..

http://www.slidingtime.be/

[Violet]

Merry Christmas, Casey.. to you, and E. and Mr. Darcy.. oh, and Silver too..

I checked my poetry file for a poem for this season.. I was taken by this one, which I wrote some time this past year.. I thought it might go nicely with this photo of yours.. the chairs standing in for all of us, perhaps.. small beneath Love's vastness..

Love unseen

Love unseen, unknown,
unheard,

dances its mystery ‘round the
sleeping of this world.

dances in daylight,
in brightly speckled forest

dances its grievances,
its joy, in silent chorus.


But open hearts, like
hidden wounds, see
but neglect a friend

does sharing of such love
dissolve, when such as hurt
attends?

still, quiet minds
find simple rooms,

this pen so near
its ends

[Casey Butler]

Some pictures from today, the sunsets being of the last several days... the last one being today's sunset:







These two are different days, but similar sunsets taken from the same spot and over sharpened. :-)










Casey

[Casey Butler]

These are from "Grandpa's Fishing Hole" next to the Virgin River where it runs behind the new Wal-Mart. I took E over to visit an ill church member, then drove down to see what there was to see... Which out of a lot birds, though only these Lesser Scaup came close enough to get a decent photo of:







No clouds for a sunset today, but it was very windy all day long...


Casey

[Violet]

Hi Casey.. I hope you are well, and a Happy New Year to you, Elizabeth, and Mr. Darcy..

.. My head feels like a squishy squash today.. too much worrying, and I need to catch up on sleep.. so.. I won't attempt profundity..


I do think, however, that you've captured God's long fingers.. reaching down to soothe the darkened mountainscape of my mind..

.. so many other nice photos too that I'll catch up with soon..


All Good Things for This New Year..
v i o l e t

[Casey Butler]

Yesterday it was "Grandpa's Fishing Hole", and today it was just Grandpa driving and driving and driving. Today was grandaughter Hosanna's trip to Zion with Grandma and Grandpa. Hosanna is 5. Today I think I've said "Hosanna!" more times than most people will in their entire lives.

Hosanna! Don't get so close to the edge!


Hosanna! Look at the Mountain Sheep!








Hosanna! Look at the camera!


Hosanna! It's a blue-eyed horse!


Hosanna! Don't step on his toes!


When I bought her a souvinir lollypop with a little stuffed Buffalo climbing up the stick (it's possible) - and a tiny Navajo Dream Catcher with three feathers hanging from it, we were told this was the best day in her whole life. Five minutes into the lollypop, however, she claimed "If I don't stop eating this I'll get a heart attack". Then when we got home she gave the rest of her lollypop to brother David as the present she got for him.

Halfway through Zion on the way back... "It's not catching my dreams", she said.

We taught her to say "Smithsonian Butte" so she could impress her mom. "Molly's Nipple" she already knows... Everybody around here who knows more than 10 words knows how to say "Molly's Nipple".

"1 Smithsonian, 2 Smithsonian, 3 Th'sonian, 4 'Sonian... 'Sonian what?"

At some point she blurted out: "Did you know 20,000 people died in a earthquake?"

"Yes, isn't that terrible," I said, "Look in that tree, Hosanna, there's a Red-Tailed Hawk!"

"Hosanna!"

Casey