TERMS STARTING WITH
Calendar A formal table of time measures based on the motions of the heavenly bodies. Where esoteric knowledge is intact, these cyclic motions and the periods they mark are inseparably connected with all other parts of the esoteric system. Nowadays, the original calendars having been lost and reconstructed for purely civil or ecclesiastical purposes, they have no other significance. But formerly they likewise indicated the courses of cosmic evolution and the succession of human races. The Surya-Siddhanta gives the number of revolutions of the planets in 4,320,000 years, among other such data; and the work itself claims to be the result of observation over an immensely long period, based on a knowledge of the mathematics underlying the cosmic and terrestrial cycles. This calendar or astronomical-astrological work claims to be the original production of the Atlantean astronomer and magician Asuramaya.
Calendar API {Calendar Application Programming Interface}
Calendar Application Programming Interface (CAPI, Calendar API) An {API} for calendar {software}. {Microsoft} has defined a CAPI for their {Schedule+} application. (1995-01-11)
Calendar Application Programming Interface ::: (CAPI, Calendar API) An API for calendar software.Microsoft has defined a CAPI for their Schedule+ application. (1995-01-11)
Calendar ::: In general, Christianity operates on a "solar" calendar based on the relationship between the sun and the earth (365.25 days per year). The main Christian observances are Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. The Islamic calendar is "lunar," based on the relationship of earth and moon (354 days in a year). Thus, every 100 solar years are equal to about 103 lunar years. Muslim calendric observances include fasting during the month of Ramadan, followed by the feast of fast breaking (id al-fitr), and the time for pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) and associated practices such as the Feast of Sacrifice. Judaism follows a lunar calendar adjusted every three years or so to the solar cycle (by adding a second 12th month)—thus “lunisolar.” The oldest Jewish annual observances are Passover/Pesach, Shavuot, Yom Kippur and Sukkot; other ancient celebrations include Rosh Ha-Shana, Simhat Torah, Hanukkah and Purim. See also B.C.E., CE.
calendar, along with two other demons called
calendared ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Calendar
calendarial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the calendar or a calendar.
calendaring ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Calendar
calendar ::: n. --> An orderly arrangement of the division of time, adapted to the purposes of civil life, as years, months, weeks, and days; also, a register of the year with its divisions; an almanac.
A tabular statement of the dates of feasts, offices, saints&
calendary ::: a. --> Calendarial.
TERMS ANYWHERE
Adar :::Adar is the twelfth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Adar ::: Twelfth month in the Jewish calendar. Contains the holiday Purim.
all-elbows ::: (jargon) Said of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) mess-dos program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on BBS particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt.[Jargon File] (1995-02-21)
all-elbows "jargon" Said of a {TSR} (terminate-and-stay-resident) {mess-dos} program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a program that {rude}ly steals the resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-21)
almanac ::: n. --> A book or table, containing a calendar of days, and months, to which astronomical data and various statistics are often added, such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated festivals of churches, terms of courts, etc.
Also virtual assistant or personal digital assistant. ::: A software agent that can perform tasks or services for an individual based on verbal commands. Sometimes the term "chatbot" is used to refer to virtual assistants generally or specifically accessed by online chat (or in some cases online chat programs that are exclusively for entertainment purposes). Some virtual assistants are able to interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices. Users can ask their assistants questions, control home automation devices and media playback via voice, and manage other basic tasks such as email, to-do lists, and calendars with verbal commands.[196]
Annual report - Evaluation prepared by companies at the end of the reporting year which might be either on a calendar or fiscal basis. Contained in the annual report are the company financial statements including footnotes., supplementary schedules, managements discussion of analysis and earnings, president's letter, audit report, and other explanatory data (e.g., research and marketing efforts) helpful in evaluating the entity's financial position and operating performance. The annual report is read by stockholders, potential investors, creditors, employees, regulatory bodies, and other interested financial statement users.
Anshei K'nesset HaGedolah ::: Hebrew for “Men of the Great Assembly”. During the Second Temple era, this insitution of 120 men led the Jewish people. They composed many prayers, enacted ordinances to protect Torah observance, and established the Hebrew calendar.
Atash, Atash-Azar (Persian) Ātash, Ātash-Āzar, Atur (Pahlavi) Ātur, Atar (Avestan) Ātar. Fire; the name of the ninth day of the month of the ancient Iranian calendar as well as the ninth month of the year (Sagittarius). Zoroaster uses the term in the Gathas in the sense of the life-giving force or the spiritual nature of the eternal truth. It is this fire which guides the universe as well as the individual towards its destiny — perfection.
Av :::Av is the fifth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Av ::: (Heb.) The eleventh month of the Hebrew calendar (which begins with the month of Tishrei); and fifth according to the Jewish calendar (which starts in the month of Nissan). (See also "Tisha B'av").
baguan zhai. (S. astAngasamanvAgataM upavAsaM; P. atthangasamanAgataM uposathaM; T. yan lag brgyad dang ldan pa'i bsnyen gnas; J. hakkansai; K. p'algwan chae 八關齋). In Chinese, "eight-restrictions fast"; also known as bajie ("eight precepts"), bajie zhai ("eight-precepts fast"), bafenzhaijie ("eight-fold fasting precepts"), etc. This fast was held on specific days when the laity was expected to observe a temporary set of more restrictive moral precepts. For one day and night, the laity would leave their homes and keep eight precepts (AstAnGASAMANVAGATAn UPAVASAM; see sĪLA), as if they had entered the SAMGHA, effectively becoming monks or nuns for a day. According to the Chinese Buddhist calendar, the UPOsADHA days reserved for the eight-precepts fast were the eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, twenty-third, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth of each month. The eight precepts prohibit (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) engaging in sexual misconduct, (4) lying, (5) consuming intoxicants, (6) resting on a high or luxurious bed, (7) using makeup and perfumes and enjoying music and dance, and (8) eating at improper times. Monasteries sometimes handed out certificates to those laypeople who participated in the precepts ceremony. In Korea, the p'algwan chae (which in Korean is usually called the P'ALGWANHOE, or "eight-restrictions festival") became an important winter festival of thanksgiving held over two full-moon days of the eleventh lunar month; the festival combined indigenous religious practices propitiating the spirits of mountains and rivers with tributes to the memory of fallen warriors. In Tibet, important religious dignitaries customarily give the precepts to both ordained and lay followers before sunrise on days marking important festivals. See also UPAVASA; JINGDU SANMEI JING.
Bahman is the name of the 11th month of the Iranian calendar (Aquarius) and the ancient feast of Sadeh (fire celebration) is held on the 10th of this month.
Calendar A formal table of time measures based on the motions of the heavenly bodies. Where esoteric knowledge is intact, these cyclic motions and the periods they mark are inseparably connected with all other parts of the esoteric system. Nowadays, the original calendars having been lost and reconstructed for purely civil or ecclesiastical purposes, they have no other significance. But formerly they likewise indicated the courses of cosmic evolution and the succession of human races. The Surya-Siddhanta gives the number of revolutions of the planets in 4,320,000 years, among other such data; and the work itself claims to be the result of observation over an immensely long period, based on a knowledge of the mathematics underlying the cosmic and terrestrial cycles. This calendar or astronomical-astrological work claims to be the original production of the Atlantean astronomer and magician Asuramaya.
Calendar API {Calendar Application Programming Interface}
Calendar Application Programming Interface (CAPI, Calendar API) An {API} for calendar {software}. {Microsoft} has defined a CAPI for their {Schedule+} application. (1995-01-11)
Calendar Application Programming Interface ::: (CAPI, Calendar API) An API for calendar software.Microsoft has defined a CAPI for their Schedule+ application. (1995-01-11)
Calendar ::: In general, Christianity operates on a "solar" calendar based on the relationship between the sun and the earth (365.25 days per year). The main Christian observances are Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. The Islamic calendar is "lunar," based on the relationship of earth and moon (354 days in a year). Thus, every 100 solar years are equal to about 103 lunar years. Muslim calendric observances include fasting during the month of Ramadan, followed by the feast of fast breaking (id al-fitr), and the time for pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) and associated practices such as the Feast of Sacrifice. Judaism follows a lunar calendar adjusted every three years or so to the solar cycle (by adding a second 12th month)—thus “lunisolar.” The oldest Jewish annual observances are Passover/Pesach, Shavuot, Yom Kippur and Sukkot; other ancient celebrations include Rosh Ha-Shana, Simhat Torah, Hanukkah and Purim. See also B.C.E., CE.
black-letter ::: a. --> Written or printed in black letter; as, a black-letter manuscript or book.
Given to the study of books in black letter; that is, of old books; out of date.
Of or pertaining to the days in the calendar not marked with red letters as saints&
Blessing of the New Moon: In the Jewish rituals, an outdoor benediction service on the appearance of the new moon, which marks the beginning of a new month of the Hebrew calendar.
Bodawpaya. (r. 1782-1819). Burmese king and sixth monarch of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). Originally known as Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya (r. 1752-1760), founder of the dynasty, and ascended to the throne through usurpation. His official regnal title was Hsinpyumyashin, "Lord of Many White Elephants"; the name by which he is most commonly known, Bodawpaya, "Lord Grandfather," is a posthumous sobriquet. Immediately upon becoming king in 1782, he began construction of a new capital, AMARAPURA, and convened a conclave of abbots, known as the THUDHAMMA (P. Sudhamm) council, to oversee a reform of the Burmese SAMGHA. In 1784, he conquered the kingdom of Arakan and transported its colossal palladium, the MAHAMUNI image of the Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA), to Amarapura and enshrined it in a temple to the north of the city. Later, in 1787 he dispatched a Buddhist mission to Arakan to bring the Arakanese THERAVADA saMgha into conformity with Thudhamma standards. In 1791 Buddhist missions were sent from the capital to forty-two cities around the realm, each equipped with Thudhamma handbooks and newly edited copies of the Buddhist canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA). The missions were charged with the threefold task of defrocking unworthy monks, disestablishing local monastic fraternities, and reordaining worthy monks from these local groups into a single empire-wide monastic order under Thudhamma control. In conjunction with this policy of saMgha unification, a standardized syllabus for monastic education was promulgated and monks and novices throughout the realm were thenceforth required to pass state-administered PAli examinations or to leave the order. That same year (1791), Bodawpaya retired from the palace, placing the daily affairs of the kingdom in the hands of his son, the crown prince. While retaining ultimate royal authority, he donned the robes of a mendicant and took up residence at Mingun, some fifteen miles north of Amarapura on the opposite bank of the Irrawaddy River. There, he oversaw for several years the construction of the great Mingun pagoda, which, if it had been completed, would have been the largest pagoda in the world. The labor force for this project, numbering some twenty thousand people, was conscripted from the vanquished kingdom of Arakan. Strict and austere in temperament, Bodawpaya was quick to suppress heresy and banned the use of intoxicants and the slaughter of cattle, on penalty of death. He was enamored of Hindu science and sent several missions to India to acquire Brahmanical treatises on medicine, alchemy, astrology, calendrics, and what he hoped would be original Indian recensions of Buddhist scriptures. His missions reached BODHGAYA and returned with models of the main shrine and maps of its environs, which were used to create a miniature replica of the site at Mingun. He appointed Indian brAhmanas to refine court punctilio and attempted to reform the Burmese calendar along Indian lines. The calendar reforms were rejected by monastic leaders and this rebuff appears to have caused the king to become increasingly critical of the monkhood. Toward the end of his reign, Bodawpaya defrocked the Thudhamma patriarch, declaring the dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA) of Gotama (GAUTAMA) Buddha to be extinct and its saMgha therefore defunct. This attempt to disestablish the Burmese saMgha met with little success outside the capital and was later abandoned. Bodawpaya's military campaigns against Arakan and Assam extended the borders of the Burmese empire to the frontiers of the British East India Company. The cruelty of Bodawpaya's rule in Arakan created an influx of refugees into British territory, who were regularly pursued by Burmese troops. Although British diplomacy kept tensions with the Burmese kingdom under control throughout Bodawpaya's reign, the stage was set for eventual military conflict between the two powers and the subsequent British conquest of Burma in three wars during the nineteenth century.
brumaire ::: n. --> The second month of the calendar adopted by the first French republic. It began thirty days after the autumnal equinox. See Vendemiaire.
buddhavarsa. (P. buddhavassa; T. sangs rgyas kyi lo; C. foji; J. butsuki; K. pulgi 佛紀). In Sanskrit, "Buddhist Era." The term used for the Buddhist calendar calculated from the date of the final demise (S. PARINIRVAnA; P. parinibbAna) of the Buddha. There is general agreement among Buddhist traditions that the Buddha died in his eightieth year, but no consensus as to the date of his death and hence no agreement regarding the commencement of the Buddhist era. Dates for the parinirvAna given in texts and inscriptions from across Buddhist Asia range from 2420 BCE to 290 BCE. One of the more commonly used dates is 544/543 BCE, which is the year asserted for the Buddha's death by the THERAVADA tradition of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Use of the TheravAda calendar most likely originated in Sri Lanka, where it is attested in inscriptions dating from as early as the first century BCE. The same calendar appears in Burmese inscriptions beginning in the eleventh century, which coincides with that country's adoption of TheravAda Buddhism as its dominant faith. The earliest known record of its use in India is likewise relatively late, and dates from the thirteenth century in an inscription erected at BODHGAYA. Since at least the fifth century, the TheravAda traditions have asserted that the religion of the Buddha (P. buddhasAsana; see sASANA) would endure for five thousand years. Accordingly, in 1956 the halfway point in the life span of the religion was presumed to have been reached, an event that was celebrated with considerable millenarian overtones throughout the TheravAda world in the Buddha Jayantī ("Celebration of Buddhism"). A historically significant feature of the TheravAda calendar is that it places the coronation of the Mauryan emperor AsOKA 218 years after the parinirvAna of the Buddha. This contrasts with another ancient Buddhist calendar tradition, preserved primarily in Sanskrit sources, which instead places Asoka's coronation one hundred years after the parinirvAna. The two calendars have come to be designated in modern scholarship as the "long chronology" and "short chronology," respectively. According to the long chronology, the Buddha's dates would be 566-486 BCE. According to the short chronology, they would be 448-368 BCE. The precise dating of the Buddha's parinirvAna has been a contested issue among scholars for well over a century, and both the long and the short chronologies, as well as permutations thereof, have had their supporters. At present, there is widespread consensus, based primarily on Greek accounts and Asoka's own inscriptions, that Asoka ascended to the Mauryan throne in c. 265 BCE, or approximately sixty years later than what is reported in the long chronology. Scholars who accept this dating, but who still adhere to the TheravAda claim that the Buddha died 218 years before this event, therefore place the parinirvAna at c. 480 BCE. This is known as the "corrected long chronology" and is the theory upheld by many contemporary scholars of Indian Buddhism. Recently however, a number of historians have argued, based primarily on a reevaluation of evidence found in the DĪPAVAMSA, that the short chronology is the earlier and more accurate calendar, and that the parinirvAna should be moved forward accordingly to between c. 400 and 350 BCE. Many contemporary traditions of East Asian Buddhism now also follow the modern TheravAda system in which the Buddha's parinirvAna is calculated as 544/543 BCE.
calendar, along with two other demons called
calendared ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Calendar
calendarial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the calendar or a calendar.
calendaring ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Calendar
calendar ::: n. --> An orderly arrangement of the division of time, adapted to the purposes of civil life, as years, months, weeks, and days; also, a register of the year with its divisions; an almanac.
A tabular statement of the dates of feasts, offices, saints&
calendary ::: a. --> Calendarial.
calendographer ::: n. --> One who makes calendars.
calendrical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a calendar.
calends ::: n. pl. --> The first day of each month in the ancient Roman calendar.
Campus Wide Information System (CWIS) Information and services made publicly available at university sites via {kiosks} running interactive computing systems, possibly via campus networks. Services routinely include directory information, calendars, {bulletin boards} and {databases}. (1994-11-09)
Campus Wide Information System ::: (CWIS) Information and services made publicly available at university sites via kiosks running interactive computing systems, possibly via campus networks. Services routinely include directory information, calendars, bulletin boards and databases. (1994-11-09)
CAPI ::: 1. Calendar Application Programming Interface.2. (cryptography) Cryptographic Application Programming Interface.3. (networking) Common ISDN Application Programming Interface.
CAPI 1. {Calendar Application Programming Interface}. 2. "cryptography" {Cryptographic Application Programming Interface}. 3. "networking" {Common ISDN Application Programming Interface}.
chemist "jargon" (Cambridge) Someone who wastes computer time on {number crunching} when you'd far rather the computer were working out anagrams of your name or printing Snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns. May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-07)
chemist ::: (jargon) (Cambridge) Someone who wastes computer time on number crunching when you'd far rather the computer were working out anagrams of your name or printing Snoopy calendars or running life patterns. May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry.[Jargon File] (1995-02-07)
Cheshvan :::Chesvan is the eighth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
ColdFusion "web, database, tool" {Allaire Corporation}'s commercial {database} application development tool that allows {databases} to have a {web interface}, so a database can be queried and updated using a {web browser}. The ColdFusion Server application runs on the {web server} and has access to a {database}. ColdFusion files on the web server are {HTML} pages with additional ColdFusion commands to {query} or {update} the database, written in {CFML}. When the page is requested by the user, the {web server} passes the page to the Cold Fusion application, which executes the {CFML} commands, places the results of the {CFML} commands in the {HTML} file, and returns the page to the {web server}. The page returned to the {web server} is now an ordinary {HTML} file, and it is sent to the user. Examples of ColdFusion applications include order entry, event registration, catalogue search, directories, calendars, and interactive training. ColdFusion applications are robust because all database interactions are encapsulated in a single industrial-strength {CGI} script. The formatting and presentation can be modified and revised at any time (as opposed to having to edit and recompile {source code}). ColdFusion Server can connect with any database that supports {ODBC} or {OLE DB} or one that has a native database driver. Native database drivers are available for {Oracle} and {Sybase} databases. ColdFusion is available for {Windows}, {Solaris}, and {HP-UX}. A {development environment} for creating ColdFusion files, called ColdFusion Studio, is also available for {Windows}. The {filename extension} for ColdFusion files is .cfm {(http://coldfusion.com/)}. (2003-07-27)
ColdFusion ::: (World-Wide Web, database, tool) Allaire Corporation's commercial database application development tool that allows databases to have a World-Wide Web interface, so a database can be queried and updated using a web browser.The ColdFusion Server application runs on the web server and has access to a database. ColdFusion files on the web server are HTML pages with additional returned to the web server is now an ordinary HTML file, and it is sent to the user.Examples of ColdFusion applications include order entry, event registration, catalogue search, directories, calendars, and interactive training. ColdFusion modified and revised at any time (as opposed to having to edit and recompile source code).ColdFusion Server can connect with any database that supports ODBC or OLE DB or one that has a native database driver. Native database drivers are available for Oracle and Sybase databases.ColdFusion is available for Windows, Solaris, and HP-UX. A development environment for creating ColdFusion files, called ColdFusion Studio, is also available for Windows.Current version: MX(6), as of 2003-07-11.The filename extension for ColdFusion files is .cfm .(2003-07-27)
Coordinated Universal Time "time, standard" (UTC, World Time) The standard time common to every place in the world. UTC is derived from {International Atomic Time} (TAI) by the addition of a whole number of "leap seconds" to synchronise it with {Universal Time} 1 (UT1), thus allowing for the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, the rotational axis tilt (23.5 degrees), but still showing the Earth's irregular rotation, on which UT1 is based. Coordinated Universal Time is expressed using a 24-hour clock and uses the {Gregorian calendar}. It is used in aeroplane and ship navigation, where it also sometimes known by the military name, "Zulu time". "Zulu" in the phonetic alphabet stands for "Z" which stands for longitude zero. UTC was defined by the International Radio Consultative Committee ({CCIR}), a predecessor of the {ITU-T}. CCIR Recommendation 460-4, or ITU-T Recommendation X.680 (7/94), contains the full definition. The language-independent international abbreviation, UTC, is neither English nor French. It means both "Coordinated Universal Time" and "Temps Universel Coordonné". {BIPM (http://www.bipm.org/enus/5_Scientific/c_time/time_1.html)}. {The Royal Observatory Greenwich (http://rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/time/time.html)}. {History of UTC and GMT (http://ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/chronos/GMT-explained.html)}. {U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology (http://its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-009/_1277.htm)}. {UK National Physical Laboratory (http://npl.co.uk/npl/ctm/time_scales.html)}. {US Naval Observatory (http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/systime.html)}. {International Telecommunications Union (http://itu.int/radioclub/rr/arts02.htm)}. {Earth's irregular rotation (/pub/misc/earth_rotation)}. (2001-08-30)
Coordinated Universal Time ::: (time, standard) (UTC, World Time) The standard time common to every place in the world. UTC is derived from International Atomic Time (TAI) by the rotational axis tilt (23.5 degrees), but still showing the Earth's irregular rotation, on which UT1 is based.Coordinated Universal Time is expressed using a 24-hour clock and uses the Gregorian calendar. It is used in aeroplane and ship navigation, where it also sometimes known by the military name, Zulu time. Zulu in the phonetic alphabet stands for Z which stands for longitude zero.UTC was defined by the International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR), a predecessor of the ITU-T. CCIR Recommendation 460-4, or ITU-T Recommendation X.680 (7/94), contains the full definition.The language-independent international abbreviation, UTC, is neither English nor French. It means both Coordinated Universal Time and Temps Universel Coordonn�. . . . . . . . .(2001-08-30)
date "convention, data" A string unique to a time duration of 24 hours between 2 successive midnights defined by the local time zone. The specific representation of a date will depend on which calendar convention is in force; e.g., Gregorian, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew etc. as well as local ordering conventions such as UK: day/month/year, US: month/day/year. Inputting and outputting dates on computers is greatly complicated by these {localisation} issues which is why they tend to operate on dates internally in some unified form such as seconds past midnight at the start of the first of January 1970. Many software and hardware representations of dates allow only two digits for the year, leading to the {year 2000} problem. {Unix manual page}: date(1), ctime(3). (1997-07-11)
deepam &
Dhammakāya. (Thai, Thammakai). A Buddhist reform movement in Thailand that originated in 1916, when a monk named Luang Phor Sodh is said to have rediscovered a technique of meditation that had been lost since the time of the Buddha. The movement began to gain impetus in 1970, when one of the abbot's disciples, a nun known as Khun Yay Upāsika, founded Wat Phra Dhammakāya. Dhammakāya meditation practice consists of visualizing a small crystal sphere entering one's body through the nasal passage; the sphere settles in the solar plexus and eventually becomes transformed into a crystal image of the Buddha. While engaging in this visualization, the meditator is supposed to focus on the MANTRA "samma arahang." The practice is supposed to culminate in the ability to see a buddha image (the dhammakāya, or "truth body" of the Buddha; see DHARMAKĀYA) inside oneself, an experience compared to tasting NIRVĀnA in the present life. Meditation is the principal Dhammakāya practice, and the organization encourages its followers to meditate twice a day as a way of improving self-confidence and as a tool for success, well being, and fostering family life. Dhammakāya also offers group training courses for adults in the private and public sectors. Devotees dress in white, and temple buildings are simple in design. Dhammakāya is also known for organizing massive ceremonies involving several thousand monks and tens of thousands of laypeople on Buddhist holy days. Rather than following the traditional lunar calendar and practicing on the days of the waning and waxing moon, Dhammakāya practice is held every Sunday, with meditation in the morning, followed by a sermon on topics relevant to the problems and concerns of everyday life. Its adherents are also encouraged to take part in such activities as retreats, youth camps, and massive ordinations for college students during the summer break. The Dhammakāya movement also differs from mainstream Thai Buddhism in that it requires monks to be ordained for life rather than the temporary ordination that is common among Thai laymen. In addition to its massive WAT outside of Bangkok, it has established branches throughout Thailand and overseas. Many Thais, especially intellectuals who support the forest meditation tradition, criticize Dhammakāya for its "direct marketing" type of organization and its quick-fix solutions to complex problems.
digital dashboard "software" A personalised desktop {portal} that focuses on {business intelligence} and {knowledge management}. {Microsoft}'s version has a launch screen including stock quotes, voice mail and e-mail messages, a calendar, a weather forecast, traffic information, access to news feeds, customer and sales data, and Internet conferences. A digital dashboard might previously have been thought of as an executive information system. In the future, digital dashboards could be available on {personal digital assistants} and mobile phones. ["Gates pitches 'digital dashboards' to bevy of top CEOs", Bob Trott, pub. InfoWorld Electric, 1999-05-19]. (1999-09-14)
digital dashboard ::: (software) A personalised desktop portal that focuses on business intelligence and knowledge management.Microsoft's version has a launch screen including stock quotes, voice mail and e-mail messages, a calendar, a weather forecast, traffic information, access to system. In the future, digital dashboards could be available on personal digital assistants and cellular phones.[Gates pitches 'digital dashboards' to bevy of top CEOs, Bob Trott, pub. InfoWorld Electric, 1999-05-19]. (1999-09-14)
Easter [from Eostre or Ostara goddess of spring] In the northern hemisphere, the time of the renewal of life in nature, and therefore the appropriate season for celebrating the mystery of rebirth and regeneration. Easter day was close to the time of one of the four sacred seasons connected with the equinoxes and solstices, which were individually celebrated in the ancient Mysteries as representatives of the four main phases of the drama of initiation. It was the second stage of initiation when the awakened person, in whom the Christ had already been born (as celebrated at a winter solstice), was preparing to become a conqueror of self and then a teacher. Easter today is the result of a confusion and compromise between this ancient spring festival (chiefly in its Northern European form) with ecclesiastical legends and the Jewish Feast of the Passover (pesah). Good Friday, following the Christian version of this ancient theme, commemorates the descent of the Christ into the tomb, and the Sunday following, which is the third day counting inclusively, celebrates the resurrection. Due to a confusion in early Christian thought, there are certain aspects of the Easter celebration which properly pertain to the winter solstice, which the Christians, however, have rightly held as commemorating the birth of Christ. The Jewish ecclesiastical calendar was lunar, and the attempt to reconcile the solar calendar with the date of the Passover as fixed by the lunar calendar resulted in protracted disputes, ending in the present compromise with its fluctuating date. The use of eggs at Easter is symbolic of rebirth and shows the influence of the ancient rites, especially of Northern Europe.
Elul :::The sixth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
encalendar ::: v. t. --> To register in a calendar; to calendar.
epact ::: n. --> The moon&
Eridu One of the oldest seats of religious culture in ancient Babylonia, located a few miles SSW of Ur in Chaldea, and mentioned in ancient records as the city of the deep. In it was a temple of Ea, god of the sea and of wisdom. Rediscovered in 1854, it is now about 120 miles from the Persian Gulf, though spoken of in old records as being on the shore; calculations based on the rate of alluvial deposition places its date in the seventh millennium BC. Sayce, by comparing the Akkadian calendar with the present position of the vernal equinox, gives a date going back to 4700 BC.
esbat ::: Esbat Wiccan and Neopagan Esbats are based on the lunar calendar, occurring thirteen times each year on the full moon, and usually mark meeting times for covens and ritual groups. Sabbats, of which there are eight, are based on the solar calendar.
fangsheng hui. (J. hojoe; K. pangsaeng hoe 放生會). In Chinese, "ceremony for releasing living creatures," a Buddhist ceremony held throughout East Asian Buddhism, usually on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar or the third day of the third month. The practice of releasing animals is claimed to have been initially established as a formal ceremony by TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), who followed the account presented in the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA (C. Jinguangming jing; "Sutra of Golden Light"), which describes the practice of releasing captured animals (FANGSHENG), especially fish. The Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra tells a story about Jalavāhana (sākyamuni Buddha in an earlier incarnation), who saved ten thousand fish by bringing water to a dried-up pond. He then recited for them the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, since he had been told that any creatures who heard that buddha's name at the time their deaths would be reborn in the heavens; he continued on to teach them the doctrine of conditioned origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). In 575, Zhiyi is said to have lamented the fact that local folk made their living by catching fish, so he built a "pond where creatures could be released" (fangsheng chi) and preached to the freed fish the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra. The fangsheng ceremony subsequently became one of the important rituals within the TIANTAI ZONG, even though there is no extant record of its performance until it was revived by Luoxi Yiji (919-987), the fifteenth head of the Tiantai school. Public ceremonies of releasing animals were also held at court, particularly on the Buddha's Birthday, and lay groups were organized at the local level to release animals. The Ming-dynasty monk YUNQI ZHUHONG's (1535-1615) Fangsheng yi ("Rite for Releasing Living Creatures") is considered one of the standard sources for the fangsheng ritual. This ritual entails bestowing the three refuges (TRIsARAnA) on the creatures to be released, reciting the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, teaching the creatures the twelvefold chain of dependent origination (a difficult doctrine even for bipeds), and concluding with a repentance rite for the animals' transgressions.
fasti ::: n.pl. --> The Roman calendar, which gave the days for festivals, courts, etc., corresponding to a modern almanac.
Records or registers of important events.
february ::: n. --> The second month in the year, said to have been introduced into the Roman calendar by Numa. In common years this month contains twenty-eight days; in the bissextile, or leap year, it has twenty-nine days.
Fifth of Iyar ::: Hebrew calendar date upon which the State of Israel was founded (English date: May 15, 1948).
Fiscal year - (Financial Year) The term used for a business's accounting year. The period is usually twelve months which can begin during any month of the calendar year (e.g.. 1st April 2001 to 31st March 2002).
fixed ::: 1. Securely placed or fastened or set. 2. Set or intent upon something; steadily directed (as of a person"s eyes, mind, etc.). 3. Definitely and permanently placed. 4. Not fluctuating or varying; definite. 5. Coming each year on the same calendar date. 6. Assigned to a definite place, time, etc.
floreal ::: n. --> The eight month of the French republican calendar. It began April 20, and ended May 19. See Vendemiare.
For calendar years, the rule is to have an extra day is February (i.e. the 29th) every four years. So as to prevent the tiny difference between a calendar year and a sidereal year from allowing them to drift too far apart. Although since a sidereal year is not exactly 365.25 solar days, there are addtional rules that govern the placement of leap years on top of the "multiple of four" rule. For example, despite being a multiple of 4, years that are multiples of 100 would not be a leap year (this is why the year 1900 was not a leap year), and yet, if it is a multiple of 400, then it is a leap year again (and this is why the year 2000 was still a leap year.).
frimaire ::: n. --> The third month of the French republican calendar. It commenced November 21, and ended December 20., See Vendemiaire.
fructidor ::: n. --> The twelfth month of the French republican calendar; -- commencing August 18, and ending September 16. See Vendemiaire.
germinal ::: a. --> Pertaining or belonging to a germ; as, the germinal vesicle. ::: n. --> The seventh month of the French republican calendar [1792 -- 1806]. It began March 21 and ended April 19. See VendEmiaire.
Gregorian calendar "time" The system of dates used by most of the world. The Gregorian calendar was proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius and was decreed by, and named after, Pope Gregory XIII on 1582-02-24. It corrected the Julian calendar whose years were slightly longer than the solar year. It also replaced the lunar calendar which was also out of time with the seasons. The correction was achieved by skipping several days as a one-off resynchronisation and then dropping three leap days every 400 hundred years. In the revised system, leap years are all years divisible by 4 but excluding those divisible by 100 but including those divisible by 400. This gives a mean calendar year of 365.2425 days = 52.1775 weeks = 8,765.82 hours = 525,949.2 minutes = 31,556,952 seconds. {leap seconds} are occasionally added to this to correct for irregularities in the Earth's rotation. (2007-01-10)
Gyi jo lo tsā ba Zla ba'i 'od zer. (Gyijo lotsāwa Dawe Öser) (c. eleventh century). A Tibetan translator renowned as the first scholar to render the KĀLACAKRATANTRA into Tibetan. The year in which this project was completed, 1027, marks the beginning of the modern Tibetan calendar. Gyi jo lo tsā ba composed translations of many other tantric works still preserved in both the BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR sections of the Tibetan Buddhist canon.
intercalary ::: a. --> Inserted or introduced among others in the calendar; as, an intercalary month, day, etc.; -- now applied particularly to the odd day (Feb. 29) inserted in the calendar of leap year. See Bissextile, n. ::: n. --> Introduced or inserted among others; additional;
intercalate ::: v. t. --> To insert, as a day or other portion of time, in a calendar.
To insert among others, as a verse in a stanza; specif. (Geol.), to introduce as a bed or stratum, between the layers of a regular series of rocks.
intercalation ::: n. --> The insertion of a day, or other portion of time, in a calendar.
The insertion or introduction of anything among others, as the insertion of a phrase, line, or verse in a metrical composition; specif. (Geol.), the intrusion of a bed or layer between other layers.
itself at one time recognized a considerable number of angels not in the calendar, and even per¬
Iyar :::Iyar is the second of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Iyar ::: The second month of the Jewish calendar year.
Kailāsa. The Sanskrit name for one of the most important sacred mountains in Asia, generally referred to in English as Kailash or Mount Kailash. It is 21,778 ft. high and is located in southwestern Tibet, not far from the current borders of India and Nepal. Lake Manasarovar is located eighteen miles to the southeast; these two sites have long been places of pilgrimage for Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and followers of Tibetan BON, some of whom have regarded the striking dome-shaped peak as Mount SUMERU. The mountain is particularly important in Tibetan Buddhism, where it is called Gangs dkar Ti se ("White Snow Mountain Ti se") or simply Gangs rin po che ("Precious Snow Mountain"). Pilgrims from across the Tibetan Buddhist world visit Mount Kailāsa, especially in the Year of the Horse, which occurs once every twelve years in the Tibetan calendrical cycle. Within that year, it is considered auspicious to visit the mountain at the time that marks the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and passage into PARINIRVĀnA (generally falling in May or June, depending on the lunar calendar). The primary form of practice is the thirty-two mile clockwise circumambulation of the mountain, often completed in a single day, with specific rituals and practices performed along the route. It is said that one circumambulation purifies the negative KARMAN of one lifetime, ten circumambulations purify the negative KARMAN accumulated over the course of a KALPA, and one hundred circumambulations ensure enlightenment. The mountain came to take on numerous tantric associations beginning in the eleventh century. According to a popular story, the yogin MI LA RAS PA won control of the mountain for the Buddhists by defeating a rival Bon priest, Na ro bon chung, in a contest of miracles. The mountain later became an important meditation site for the followers of Mi la ras pa, principally members of the 'BRUG PA BKA' BRGYUD and 'BRI GUNG BKA' BRGYUD sects. Both sĀKYAMUNI Buddha and PADMASAMBHAVA are said to have visited Kailāsa. One of the most important associations of Mount Kailāsa is with the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA, which names twenty-four sacred lands (PĪtHA) as potent locations for tantric practice. The CakrasaMvara literature recounts how long ago these twenty-four lands came under the control of Mahesvara (siva) in the form of Rudra Bhairava. The buddha VAJRADHARA, in the wrathful form of a HERUKA deity, subdued BHAIRAVA, transforming each of the twenty-four sites into a MAndALA of the deity CakrasaMvara and his retinue. In Tibetan literature, Mount Kailāsa came to be identified with one of the twenty-four sites, the one called Himavat or Himālaya ("The Snowy," or "The Snow Mountain"); this was one of several important transpositions of sacred locations in India onto Tibetan sites. The BKA' BRGYUD sect grouped the peak together with two other important mountain pilgrimage sites in southern Tibet, LA PHYI and TSA RI, identified respectively as CakrasaMvara's body, speech, and mind. These claims drew criticism from some Tibetan quarters, such as the renowned scholar SA SKYA PAnDITA, who argued that the sites associated with CakrasaMvara were located not in Tibet but in India. Such criticism has not prevented Mount Kailāsa from remaining one of the most important pilgrimage places in the Tibetan cultural domain.
Kālacakratantra. (T. Dus kyi 'khor lo rgyud). A late ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA that was highly influential in Tibet. Although the title of the tantra is often translated as "Wheel of Time," this translation is not attested in the text itself. Kālacakra is the name of the central buddha of the tantra, and the tantra deals extensively with time (kāla) as well as various macrocosmic and microcosmic cycles or wheels (CAKRA). According to legend, King SUCANDRA came to India from his kingdom of sAMBHALA and asked that the Buddha set forth a teaching that would allow him to practice the dharma without renouncing the world. In response, the Buddha, while remaining at Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) in RĀJAGṚHA in the guise of a monk, set forth the Kālacakratantra at Dhānyakataka in southern India (near present-day Amarāvatī) in the guise of the buddha Kālacakra. The king returned to sambhala, where he transcribed the tantra in twelve thousand verses. This text is referred to as the root tantra (mulatantra) and is no longer extant. He also wrote a commentary in sixty thousand verses, also lost. He built a three-dimensional Kālacakra MAndALA at the center of the country, which was transformed into an ideal realm for Buddhist practice, with 960 million villages. The eighth king of sambhala, MaNjusrīkīrti, condensed the original version of the tantra into the abridged version (the Laghukālacakra). A later king of sambhala, Pundarīka, composed the VIMALAPRABHĀ commentary, considered crucial for understanding the tantra. These two texts were eventually transported from sambhala to India. Internal evidence in the text makes it possible to date the composition of the tantra rather precisely to between the dates 1025 and 1040 CE. This was the period of Muslim invasions of northern India under Mahmud of Ghazni, during which great destruction of Buddhist institutions occurred. The tantra, drawing on Hindu mythology, describes a coming apocalyptic war in which Buddhist armies will sweep out of sambhala, defeat the barbarians (mleccha), described as being followers of Madhumati (i.e., Muhammad), and restore the dharma in India. After its composition in northern India, the tantra was promulgated by such figures as Pindo and his disciple ATIsA, as well as NĀROPA. From India, it spread to Nepal and Tibet. The millennial quality of the tantra has manifested itself at particular moments in Tibetan history. Prior to World War II, the PAn CHEN LAMA bestowed the Kālacakra initiation in China in an effort to repel the Japanese invaders. The fourteenth DALAI LAMA has given the initiation many times around the world to promote world peace. ¶ The tantra is an anuttarayogatantra dedicated to the buddha Kālacakra and his consort Visvamātā. However, it differs from other tantras of this class in several ways, including its emphasis on the attainment of a body of "empty form" (sunyatābimba) and on its six-branched yoga (sadangayoga). The tantra itself, that is, the Laghukālacakra or "Abridged Kālacakra," has five chapters, which in the Tibetan commentarial tradition is divided into three sections: outer, inner, and other or alternative. The outer, corresponding to the first chapter, deals with the cosmos and treats such topics as cosmology, astrology, chronology, and eschatology (the story of the apocalyptic war against the barbarians is told there). For example, this section describes the days of the year; each of the days is represented in the full Kālacakra mandala as 360 golden (day/male) and dark (night/female) deities in union, with a single central Kālacakra and consort (YAB YUM) in the center. The universe is described as a four-tiered mandala, whose various parts are homologous to the cosmic body of a buddha. This section was highly influential in Tibetan astrology and calendrics. The new calendar of the Tibetans, used to this day, starts in the year 1027 and is based on the Kālacakra system. The inner Kālacakra, corresponding to the second chapter, deals with human embryology, tantric physiology, medicine, yoga, and alchemy. The human body is described as a microcosm of the universe. The other or alternative Kālacakra, corresponding to the third, fourth, and fifth chapters, sets forth the practice of Kālacakra, including initiation (ABHIsEKA), SĀDHANA, and knowledge (JNĀNA). Here, in the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA), the initiate imagines oneself experiencing conception, gestation, and birth as the child of Kālacakra and Vismamātā. In the stage of completion (NIsPANNAKRAMA), one practices the six-branched yoga, which consists of retraction (pratyāhāra), concentration (DHYĀNA), breath control (PRĀnĀYĀMA), retention (dhāranā), recollection (ANUSMṚTI), and SAMĀDHI. In the last of these six branches, 21,600 moments of immutable bliss are created, which course through the system of channels and CAKRAS to eliminate the material aspects of the body, resulting in a body of "empty form" and the achievement of buddhahood as Kālacakra. The Sekoddesatīkā of Nadapāda (or Nāropa) sets forth this distinctive six-branched yoga, unique to the Kālacakra system. ¶ BU STON, the principal redactor of the canon in Tibetan translation, was a strong proponent of the tantra and wrote extensively about it. DOL PO PA SHES RAB RGYAL MTSHAN, a fourteenth-century JO NANG PA writer, championed the Kālacakra over all other Buddhist writings, assigning its composition to a golden age (kṛtayuga). Red mda' ba gzhon nu blo gros, an important scholar associated with SA SKYA sect, regarded the tantra as spurious. TSONG KHA PA, who was influenced by all of these writers, accepted the Kālacakratantra as an authentic ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA but put it in a category by itself.
kalendarial ::: a. --> See Calendarial.
kalendar ::: n. --> See Calendar.
Kislev :::Kislev is the ninth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Liberalia (Latin) Festivals in honor of the Roman deities Liber and Libera — connected with the Greek Bacchus and Persephone — celebrated on March 17th of their calendar.
Liturgy ::: (adj. liturgical). Rites of public worship, usually institutionalized in relation to temple, synagogue, church, kaba, or mosque locations and traditions, but also in other formalized observances (see, e.g., calendar). See also hymn, Passover, prayer, Shema, Sukkot, siddur.
mabon ::: Mabon This is the Autumn equinox, celebrating the gathering of the final harvest by Neopagans and Wiccans. It is one of the eight Sabbats or holidays in the Neopagan festival calendar, and takes place on 1st or 2nd September depending upon tradition.
margasirsa (Margashirsha) ::: the first month in the ancient Hindu lunar calendar, corresponding to November-December].
menology ::: n. --> A register of months.
A brief calendar of the lives of the saints for each day in the year, or a simple remembrance of those whose lives are not written.
Messaging Application Programming Interface "messaging" (MAPI) A messaging architecture and a {client} interface component for applications such as {electronic mail}, scheduling, calendaring and document management. As a messaging architecture, MAPI provides a consistent interface for multiple {application programs} to interact with multiple messaging systems across a variety of {hardware} {platforms}. MAPI provides better performance and control than {Simple MAPI}, {Common Messaging Calls} (CMC) or the {Active Messaging Library}. It has a comprehensive, open, dual-purpose interface, integrated with {Microsoft Windows}. MAPI can be used by all levels and types of client application and "service providers" - driver-like components that provide a MAPI interface to a specific messaging system. For example, a {word processor} can send documents and a {workgroup} application can share and store different types of data using MAPI. MAPI separates the programming interfaces used by the client applications and the service providers. Every component works with a common, {Microsoft Windows}-based user interface. For example, a single messaging client application can be used to receive messages from {fax}, a {bulletin board} system, a host-based messaging system and a {LAN}-based system. Messages from all of these systems can be delivered to a single "universal Inbox". MAPI is aimed at the powerful, new market of workgroup applications that communicate with such different messaging systems as fax, {DEC} {All-In-1}, {voice mail} and public communications services such as {AT&T} Easylink Services, {CompuServe} and {MCI} MAIL. Because workgroup applications demand more of their messaging systems, MAPI offers much more than basic messaging in the programming interface and supports more than {local area network} (LAN)-based messaging systems. Applications can, for example, format text for a single message with a variety of fonts and present to their users a customised view of messages that have been filtered, sorted or preprocessed. MAPI is built into {Windows 95} and {Windows NT} and can be used by 16-bit and 32-bit Windows applications. The programming interface and subsystem contained in the MAPI {DLL} provide objects which conform to the {Component Object Model}. MAPI includes standard messaging client applications that demonstrate different levels of messaging support. MAPI provides cross platform support through such industry standards as {SMTP}, {X.400} and Common Messaging Calls. MAPI is the messaging component of {Windows Open Services Architecture} (WOSA). [Correct expansion? Relatonship with Microsoft?] (1997-12-03)
Messaging Application Programming Interface ::: (messaging) (MAPI) A messaging architecture and a client interface component for applications such as electronic mail, scheduling, calendaring and interface for multiple application programs to interact with multiple messaging systems across a variety of hardware platforms.MAPI provides better performance and control than Simple MAPI, Common Messaging Calls (CMC) or the Active Messaging Library. It has a comprehensive, open, example, a word processor can send documents and a workgroup application can share and store different types of data using MAPI.MAPI separates the programming interfaces used by the client applications and the service providers. Every component works with a common, Microsoft messaging system and a LAN-based system. Messages from all of these systems can be delivered to a single universal Inbox.MAPI is aimed at the powerful, new market of workgroup applications that communicate with such different messaging systems as fax, DEC All-In-1, voice variety of fonts and present to their users a customised view of messages that have been filtered, sorted or preprocessed.MAPI is built into Windows 95 and Windows NT and can be used by 16-bit and 32-bit Windows applications. The programming interface and subsystem contained MAPI includes standard messaging client applications that demonstrate different levels of messaging support.MAPI provides cross platform support through such industry standards as SMTP, X.400 and Common Messaging Calls. MAPI is the messaging component of Windows Open Services Architecture (WOSA).[Correct expansion? Relatonship with Microsoft?] (1997-12-03)
messidor ::: n. --> The tenth month of the French republican calendar dating from September 22, 1792. It began June 19, and ended July 18. See VendEmiaire.
metemptosis ::: n. --> The suppression of a day in the calendar to prevent the date of the new moon being set a day too late, or the suppression of the bissextile day once in 134 years. The opposite to this is the proemptosis, or the addition of a day every 330 years, and another every 2,400 years.
Microsoft Exchange "messaging" {Microsoft}'s messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an {electronic mail} {message store} but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data. [Better descripton? URL?] (1999-09-17)
Microsoft Exchange ::: (messaging) Microsoft's messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an electronic mail message store but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data.[Better descripton? URL?] (1999-09-17)
Natural business year - The fiscal year based on the business cycle of a given business rather than the calendar year.
neomenia ::: n. --> The time of the new moon; the beginning of the month in the lunar calendar.
nisan ::: n. --> The first month of the jewish ecclesiastical year, formerly answering nearly to the month of April, now to March, of the Christian calendar. See Abib.
Nissan :::The first of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
nivose ::: n. --> The fourth month of the French republican calendar [1792-1806]. It commenced December 21, and ended January 19. See VendEmiaire.
November One of the twelve months of the European year received from the Romans. All Saints Day (November 1) of the Christian calendar, which replaced, especially in Celtic lands, a previous festival dedicated not only to all the dead, and especially the worthy dead, but likewise to endings — an idea connected with death. “The Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore, when, while all the fires were extinguished on the 1st of November, their sacred and inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon . . .” (SD 2:759).
ofElul (September), in the Hebrew calendar. [Rf
OLE custom controls "programming" (OCX) An {Object Linking and Embedding} (OLE) custom control allowing infinite extension of the {Microsoft Access} control set. OCX is similar in purpose to {VBX} used in {Visual Basic}. Available OCX's include "Scroll Bar Control", "Calendar Control", and "Data Outline Control". [Details?] (1995-12-05)
OLE custom controls ::: (programming) (OCX) An Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) custom control allowing infinite extension of the Microsoft Access control set. OCX is similar in purpose to VBX used in Visual Basic. Available OCX's include Scroll Bar Control, Calendar Control, and Data Outline Control.[Details?] (1995-12-05)
Omer ::: (Heb. sheaf) In Judaism, the sheaf of grain offering brought to the temple during Passover, on Nisan 16; thus also the name of the seven-week period between Passover/Pesach and Shavuot also known as the Sephirah. See also calendar.
ostara ::: Ostara Ostara, the Spring equinox, is one of the eight Sabbats or holidays in the Neopagan festival calendar. It is held on or near 21st March to celebrate the return of life and growth to the earth.
Panchanga (Sanskrit) Pañcāṅga [from pañca five + aṅga division] Five parts, portions, or bodies; an almanac, calendar, the five divisions of such an almanac consisting of solar days; lunar days; nakshatras (the heavenly bodies); yogas (conjunctions); karanas — certain astrological divisions of the day, commonly reckoned as eleven in number, hence, calculations. One of the best known of the Hindu almanacs is the Tirukkanda Panchanga.
Passover ::: (Pesach) The major Jewish spring holiday (with agricultural aspects) also known as hag hamatzot (festival of unleavened bread) commemorating the Exodus or deliverance of the Hebrew people from Egypt (see Exodus 12-13). The festival lasts eight days, during which Jews refrain from eating all leavened foods and products. A special ritual meal called the Seder is prepared, and a traditional narrative called the Haggadah, supplemented by hymns and songs, marks the event. See calendar, liturgy.
Pentacost ::: (Greek, 50th [day]) See Shavuot/Shavuot, calendar.
Personal Digital Assistant "computer" (PDA) A small hand-held computer typically providing calendar, contacts, and note-taking applications but may include other applications, for example a {web browser} and {media player}. Small keyboards and pen-based input systems are most commonly used for user input. The {Apple Newton} was a fairly early example. [First? Notable examples? Current Best?] (2002-09-03)
Personal Digital Assistant ::: (computer) (PDA) A small hand-held computer typically providing calendar, contacts, and note-taking applications but may include other applications, for example a web browser and media player. Small keyboards and pen-based input systems are most commonly used for user input.The Apple Newton was a fairly early example.[First? Notable examples? Current Best?](2002-09-03)
pluviose ::: n. --> The fifth month of the French republican calendar adopted in 1793. It began January 20, and ended February 18. See Vendemiaire.
prairial ::: n. --> The ninth month of the French Republican calendar, which dated from September 22, 1792. It began May, 20, and ended June 18. See Vendemiaire.
Precisely how long a year is depends on the definition and the method of measurement, giving rise to different concepts such as the many different types of astronomical years, as well as a calendar year.
proemptosis ::: n. --> The addition of a day to the lunar calendar.
Purim ::: A Jewish festival commemorating the deliverance of Jews in Persia as described in the biblical book of Esther (Megillat Esther). Held in late winter (between Hanukkah and Passover), on the 14th of Adar. See calendar, megilah.
Quetzalcoatl, Quetzocohuatl (Toltec, Nahautl?) The name of a great teacher, according to the traditions of the Toltecs, who came to them from Tullan or Yucatan and dwelt for twenty years among the people, teaching them to follow a virtuous life, to cease all wars and violent deeds of any kind, to abolish human and animal sacrifices and instead to give offerings of bread and flowers. He taught the people, likewise, the art of picture-writing and the science of the calendar and the artistry of the workers in metals for which Cholula later became famed.
Rang 'byung rdo rje. (Rangjung Dorje) (1284-1339). A Tibetan Buddhist master recognized as the third KARMA PA, renowned for his erudition and his knowledge of practice traditions based on both new translation (GSAR MA) and old translation (RNYING MA) tantras. He was born either in the Skyid rong Valley or in the western Tibetan region of Ding ri and, according to traditional sources, as a child, was known for his exceptional perspicacity. The DEB THER SNGON PO ("Blue Annals") records that as a five-year-old boy, he met O RGYAN PA RIN CHEN DPAL, his principal guru, who recognized the young boy as the reincarnation of his teacher KARMA PAKSHI when the child climbed up on a high seat that had been prepared for O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal and declared himself to have been Karma Pakshi in his previous life (this was before the institution of incarnate lamas was established in Tibet). Rang 'byung rdo rje trained first at MTSHUR PHU monastery. He also studied with teachers from GSANG PHU and JO NANG. His collected works include explanations of the major YOGĀCĀRA and MADHYAMAKA treatises and commentaries and rituals based on the CAKRASAMVARA, HEVAJRA, GUHYASAMĀJA, and KĀLACAKRA tantras. According to his traditional biographies, while in retreat, he had a vision of VIMALAMITRA and PADMASAMBHAVA in which he received the complete transmission of the Rnying ma tantras. He received instructions on the RDZOGS CHEN doctrine from Rig 'dzin Gzhon nu rgyal po, and wrote short works on rdzogs chen. He also discovered a treasure text (GTER MA), known as the Karma snying thig. He was a renowned poet and wrote important works on GCOD practice. The third Karma pa was also a skilled physician and astrologer. He developed a new system of astrology known as Mtshur rtsi, or "Mtshur phu astrology," on the basis of which a new Tibetan calendar was formulated and promulgated at Mtshur phu monastery. In 1331, he was summoned to the court of the Yuan emperor Tugh Temür, but stopped enroute when he correctly interpreted portents that the emperor had died. He later traveled to the Mongol capital of Daidu (modern Beijing) during the reign of Togon Temür, for whom he procured an elixir of long life. After returning to Tibet, he was summoned once again to the Mongol capital, where he passed away while meditating in a three-dimensional CakrasaMvara MAndALA. Rang 'byung rdo rje's writings include the influential tantric work Zab mo nang don ("Profound Inner Meaning"). It is said that his image appeared in the full moon on the evening of his death, and illustrations of the third Karma pa often portray him seated amid a lunar disk.
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal ::: (humour) Back in the good old days - the Golden Era of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called Real Men and out that Real Men don't relate to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.)But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with TRASH-80s.There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12-year-old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings).LANGUAGESThe easiest way to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real Programmers use Fortran. Quiche Eaters use need all these abstract concepts to get their jobs done - they are perfectly happy with a keypunch, a Fortran IV compiler, and a beer.Real Programmers do List Processing in Fortran.Real Programmers do String Manipulation in Fortran.Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in Fortran.Real Programmers do Artificial Intelligence programs in Fortran.If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing.STRUCTURED PROGRAMMINGThe academics in computer science have gotten into the structured programming rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily in the world won't help you solve a problem like that - it takes actual talent. Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured Programming:Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTOs.Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO loops without getting confused.Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make the code more interesting.Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if they can save 20 nanoseconds in the middle of a tight loop.Real Programmers don't need comments - the code is obvious.Since Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated when necessary using assigned GOTOs.Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in certain circles. Languages, as we all know, have implicit typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name.OPERATING SYSTEMSWhat kind of operating system is used by a Real Programmer? CP/M? God forbid - CP/M, after all, is basically a toy operating system. Even little old ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M.Unix is a lot more complicated of course - the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week - but when it gets right systems: they send jokes around the world on UUCP-net and write adventure games and research papers.No, your Real Programmer uses OS 370. A good programmer can find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just got in his JCL manual. A great outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a 6 megabyte core dump without using a hex calculator. (I have actually seen this done.)OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming staff is people claim there is a Time Sharing system that runs on OS 370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken.PROGRAMMING TOOLSWhat kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back the first operating system for the CDC7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer.One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user whose system had includes a keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies.In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse.Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - Emacs and VI being two. The the Real Programmer wants a you asked for it, you got it text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise.It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine.For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary object Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called job security.Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers:Fortran preprocessors like MORTRAN and RATFOR. The Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See comments above on structured programming.Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps.Compilers with array bounds checking. They stifle creativity, destroy most of the interesting uses for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient.Source code maintenance systems. A Real Programmer keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it implies that its owner cannot leave his important programs unguarded [5].THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORKWhere does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real or sorting mailing lists for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!).Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers.Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions.It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies.Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating systems for cruise missiles.Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter.The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a Pascal program (or a Pascal programmer) for navigation to these tolerances.As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work for the U.S. Government - mainly the Defense Department. This is as it should be. Recently, programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing Fortran, so there are a fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL programs.THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAYGenerally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he would be breath of fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room:At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner talking about operating system security and how to get around it.At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper.At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in the sand.At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying Poor George, he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary.In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on running the cans past the laser checkout scanner himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time.THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITATWhat sort of environment does the Real Programmer function best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment where he can get his work done.The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal. Surrounding this terminal are:Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on, piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office.Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee. Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush.Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly interesting pages.Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969.Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter filled cheese bars - the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine.Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of double-stuff Oreos for special occasions.Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs, not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.)The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50 hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it that way. Bad response time project done on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In general:No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night).Real Programmers don't wear neckties.Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes.Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [9].A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He does, however, know the entire ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee.THE FUTUREWhat of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with the same ever learning Fortran! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and Pascal programmers?From my experience, I can only report that the future is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS 370 nor Fortran show any signs of dying out, one of them has a way of converting itself back into a Fortran 66 compiler at the drop of an option card - to compile DO loops like God meant them to be.Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating system worthy of any Real in - like having the best parts of Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses for
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal "humour" Back in the good old days - the "Golden Era" of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that didn't. A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10" and "ABEND" (they actually talked in capital letters, you understand), and the rest of the world said things like "computers are too complicated for me" and "I can't relate to computers - they're so impersonal". (A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't "relate" to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.) But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and anyone can buy and even understand their very own Personal Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with {TRASH-80s}. There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is made clear, it will give these kids something to aspire to -- a role model, a Father Figure. It will also help explain to the employers of Real Programmers why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12-year-old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings). LANGUAGES The easiest way to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real Programmers use {Fortran}. Quiche Eaters use {Pascal}. Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of Pascal, gave a talk once at which he was asked how to pronounce his name. He replied, "You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth'." One can tell immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater. The only parameter passing mechanism endorsed by Real Programmers is call-by-value-return, as implemented in the {IBM 370} {Fortran-G} and H compilers. Real programmers don't need all these abstract concepts to get their jobs done - they are perfectly happy with a {keypunch}, a {Fortran IV} {compiler}, and a beer. Real Programmers do List Processing in Fortran. Real Programmers do String Manipulation in Fortran. Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in Fortran. Real Programmers do {Artificial Intelligence} programs in Fortran. If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in {assembly language}. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing. STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING The academics in computer science have gotten into the "structured programming" rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the programmer uses some special language constructs and techniques. They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the examples they use to show their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or another - clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different computer languages, and create 1000-line programs that WORKED. (Really!) Then I got out into the Real World. My first task in the Real World was to read and understand a 200,000-line Fortran program, then speed it up by a factor of two. Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the Structured Coding in the world won't help you solve a problem like that - it takes actual talent. Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured Programming: Real Programmers aren't afraid to use {GOTOs}. Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO loops without getting confused. Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make the code more interesting. Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if they can save 20 {nanoseconds} in the middle of a tight loop. Real Programmers don't need comments - the code is obvious. Since Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated when necessary using {assigned GOTOs}. Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in certain circles. Wirth (the above-mentioned Quiche Eater) actually wrote an entire book [2] contending that you could write a program based on data structures, instead of the other way around. As all Real Programmers know, the only useful data structure is the Array. Strings, lists, structures, sets - these are all special cases of arrays and can be treated that way just as easily without messing up your programing language with all sorts of complications. The worst thing about fancy data types is that you have to declare them, and Real Programming Languages, as we all know, have implicit typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name. OPERATING SYSTEMS What kind of operating system is used by a Real Programmer? CP/M? God forbid - CP/M, after all, is basically a toy operating system. Even little old ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M. Unix is a lot more complicated of course - the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week - but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do Serious Work on Unix systems: they send jokes around the world on {UUCP}-net and write adventure games and research papers. No, your Real Programmer uses OS 370. A good programmer can find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just got in his JCL manual. A great programmer can write JCL without referring to the manual at all. A truly outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a 6 megabyte {core dump} without using a hex calculator. (I have actually seen this done.) OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming staff is encouraged. The best way to approach the system is through a keypunch. Some people claim there is a Time Sharing system that runs on OS 370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken. PROGRAMMING TOOLS What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back in the days when computers had front panels, this was actually done occasionally. Your typical Real Programmer knew the entire bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in whenever it got destroyed by his program. (Back then, memory was memory - it didn't go away when the power went off. Today, memory either forgets things when you don't want it to, or remembers things long after they're better forgotten.) Legend has it that {Seymore Cray}, inventor of the Cray I supercomputer and most of Control Data's computers, actually toggled the first operating system for the CDC7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer. One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user whose system had crashed in the middle of saving some important work. Jim was able to repair the damage over the phone, getting the user to toggle in disk I/O instructions at the front panel, repairing system tables in hex, reading register contents back over the phone. The moral of this story: while a Real Programmer usually includes a keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies. In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a single keypunch. The Real Programmer in this situation has to do his work with a "text editor" program. Most systems supply several text editors to select from, and the Real Programmer must be careful to pick one that reflects his personal style. Many people believe that the best text editors in the world were written at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for use on their Alto and Dorado computers [3]. Unfortunately, no Real Programmer would ever use a computer whose operating system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse. Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - {Emacs} and {VI} being two. The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise. It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine. For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary {object code} directly, using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or its equivalent on non-IBM machines). This works so well that many working programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original Fortran code. In many cases, the original source code is no longer available. When it comes time to fix a program like this, no manager would even think of sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called "job security". Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers: Fortran preprocessors like {MORTRAN} and {RATFOR}. The Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See comments above on structured programming. Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps. Compilers with array bounds checking. They stifle creativity, destroy most of the interesting uses for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient. Source code maintenance systems. A Real Programmer keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it implies that its owner cannot leave his important programs unguarded [5]. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK Where does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real Programmer would be caught dead writing accounts-receivable programs in {COBOL}, or sorting {mailing lists} for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!). Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers. Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions. It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies. Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating systems for cruise missiles. Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation - hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter. The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a Pascal program (or a Pascal programmer) for navigation to these tolerances. As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work for the U.S. Government - mainly the Defense Department. This is as it should be. Recently, however, a black cloud has formed on the Real Programmer horizon. It seems that some highly placed Quiche Eaters at the Defense Department decided that all Defense programs should be written in some grand unified language called "ADA" ((C), DoD). For a while, it seemed that ADA was destined to become a language that went against all the precepts of Real Programming - a language with structure, a language with data types, {strong typing}, and semicolons. In short, a language designed to cripple the creativity of the typical Real Programmer. Fortunately, the language adopted by DoD has enough interesting features to make it approachable -- it's incredibly complex, includes methods for messing with the operating system and rearranging memory, and Edsgar Dijkstra doesn't like it [6]. (Dijkstra, as I'm sure you know, was the author of "GoTos Considered Harmful" - a landmark work in programming methodology, applauded by Pascal programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language. The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing there's enough money in it. There are several Real Programmers building video games at Atari, for example. (But not playing them - a Real Programmer knows how to beat the machine every time: no challenge in that.) Everyone working at LucasFilm is a Real Programmer. (It would be crazy to turn down the money of fifty million Star Trek fans.) The proportion of Real Programmers in Computer Graphics is somewhat lower than the norm, mostly because nobody has found a use for computer graphics yet. On the other hand, all computer graphics is done in Fortran, so there are a fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL programs. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he would be doing for fun anyway (although he is careful not to express this opinion out loud). Occasionally, the Real Programmer does step out of the office for a breath of fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room: At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner talking about operating system security and how to get around it. At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper. At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in the sand. At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying "Poor George, he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary." In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on running the cans past the laser checkout scanner himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time. THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT What sort of environment does the Real Programmer function best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment where he can get his work done. The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal. Surrounding this terminal are: Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on, piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office. Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee. Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush. Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly interesting pages. Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969. Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter filled cheese bars - the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine. Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of double-stuff Oreos for special occasions. Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs, not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.) The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50 hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it that way. Bad response time doesn't bother the Real Programmer - it gives him a chance to catch a little sleep between compiles. If there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he tends to make things more challenging by working on some small but interesting part of the problem for the first nine weeks, then finishing the rest in the last week, in two or three 50-hour marathons. This not only impresses the hell out of his manager, who was despairing of ever getting the project done on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In general: No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night). Real Programmers don't wear neckties. Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes. Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [9]. A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He does, however, know the entire {ASCII} (or EBCDIC) code table. Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee. THE FUTURE What of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with the same outlook on life as their elders. Many of them have never seen a computer with a front panel. Hardly anyone graduating from school these days can do hex arithmetic without a calculator. College graduates these days are soft - protected from the realities of programming by source level debuggers, text editors that count parentheses, and "user friendly" operating systems. Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer scientists" manage to get degrees without ever learning Fortran! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and Pascal programmers? From my experience, I can only report that the future is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS 370 nor Fortran show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts of Pascal programmers the world over. Even more subtle tricks, like adding structured coding constructs to Fortran have failed. Oh sure, some computer vendors have come out with Fortran 77 compilers, but every one of them has a way of converting itself back into a Fortran 66 compiler at the drop of an option card - to compile DO loops like God meant them to be. Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating system worthy of any Real Programmer - two different and subtly incompatible user interfaces, an arcane and complicated teletype driver, virtual memory. If you ignore the fact that it's "structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated by the Real Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, variable names are seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of the Pointer data type is thrown in - like having the best parts of Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses for
rohatsu sesshin. (臘八攝心). In Japanese, lit. "retreat on the eighth [day] of the last [month]," typically refering to an intensive week-long session of meditation (SESSHIN) that ends on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month (rohatsu), the reputed day of the Buddha's enlightenment according to the East Asian calendar. The retreat begins with a ceremony on the first of the twelfth lunar month and ends on the morning of the eighth with another ceremony, which usually consists of a lecture by the abbot known as the rohatu jodo, and offerings made to an image of sĀKYAMUNI emerging from the mountains (shussan Shaka). (Cf. PRĀGBODHI[GIRI].) The rohatsu sesshin performed in the SAMGHA hall (SENGTANG) at ZEN monasteries often entails nonstop meditative practice with little or no sleep. See also YONGMAENG CHoNGJIN.
Rosh Hashanah ::: (Heb. head of the year) Jewish New Year celebration in the fall of the year, the month of Tishri. See also calendar.
Rosh Hodesh or Chodesh ::: (Heb. head of a lunar month) The New Moon Festival. See also calendar.
rtsod grwa. (tsodra). In Tibetan, lit. "debating institution," particularly a large DGE LUGS monastery where a central part of the monastic complex is the chos ra (chora), literally "fenced enclosure for dharma," hence "debate courtyard," often an enclosed open space close to the main assembly hall where monks who study scriptures assemble to debate points of doctrine. The term mtshan nyid grwa tsang (tsenyi dratsang) is often used in place of rtsod grwa. The origins of the rtsod grwa may go back to the model of study followed in BKA' GDAMS monasteries like GSANG PHU NE'U THOG, although such debate was also a part of the curriculum in the large monastic universities of northeast India, such as VIKRAMAsĪLA, NĀLANDĀ, and ODANTAPURĪ. The rtsod grwa is sometimes contrasted with teaching institutes (BSHAD GRWA) and places given over to meditation (sgrub khang), although most monasteries have parts dedicated to those activities as well. The best-known rtsod grwa are the six great Dge lugs monasteries of pre-1959 Tibet where the calendar year had strict debating periods; debate was raised to a high level there, forming a central part of the curriculum. For a month during the winter, 'Jang phu monastery to the southwest of LHA SA was the site of an intensive debate called the 'Jang dgun chos (Janggüncho) attended by students from the major Dge lugs monasteries in the greater Lha sa area, where debate focused particularly on the PRAMĀnAVĀRTTIKA of DHARMAKĪRTI.
Sabbath ::: The seventh day of the week (Shabbat), recalling the completion of the creation and the Exodus from Egypt. It is a day symbolic of new beginnings and one dedicated to God, a most holy day of rest. The commandment of rest is found in the Bible and has been elaborated by the rabbis. It is a special duty to study Torah on the Sabbath and to be joyful. Sabbaths near major festivals (see calendar) are known by special names.
Sacred Heart In modern times a Roman Catholic cult which uses the heart as a symbol, especially the heart of Jesus, to which they address devotions. From time to time there have been various Christians who have particularly stressed this aspect of their religious views, among them St. Gertrude and St. Francis of Sales (17th century) who gave this symbol to his order as its object. By edict of Pope Pius IX (1856) the day is observed in the general calendar of the Church.
Sacrifice ::: (Latin, perform a sacred act) A general term for the giving up of things of value for religious purposes, such as (1) liturgical sacrifices of animal life or of other valuables (grain, wine, etc.), and (2) personal sacrifices of time or money or talents or potential (e.g., taking holy orders). In classical Christianity, the death of Jesus is interpreted as a sacrifice for sin on behalf of humankind. Islam retains a liturgical use of animal sacrifice especially in connection with the hajj (see also calendar).
Shavuah Tov ::: (Heb.) Have a good week. ::: Shavuot ::: (Pentecost; Heb. weeks) Observed 50 days from the day the first sheaf of grain was offered to the priests; also known as the Festival of First Fruits. See calendar.
Shemini Atzeret ::: (the Eighth Day of Assembly). An eight-day festival that immediately follows the seven-day festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles). See also calendar.
Shevat :::Shevat is the eleventh of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Simcha ::: Happy occasion. ::: Simhat Torah ::: (Heb. rejoicing with the Torah) A festival that celebrates the conclusion of the annual reading cycle of the Torah. See calendar.
Sivan :::Sivan is the third of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Sukkot ::: (Tabernacles) (Heb. booths, tabernacles) Seven-day Jewish fall festival beginning on Tishri 15 commemorating the Sukkot where the Israelites lived in the wilderness after the Exodus; also known as hag haasiph, the Festival of Ingathering (of the harvest). See also calendar.
Taanit ::: Day of Fasting. There are six fast days in the Jewish calendar: Tsum Gedaliah, Yom Kippur, Asarah B'Tevet, Taanit Esther, Shivah Asar B'Tammuz, and Tisha B'av.
Tamuz :::Tamuz is the fourth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Tevet (or Teves) :::Tevet is the tenth of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
The 28th day of the month in the old Iranian calendar.
The Emperor Augustus consulted in the time of stress not only the Sibylline Books, but also a certain sibyl who dwelt in seclusion near Rome; as Numa, the second of the so-called legendary kings, consulted his consort Egeria, a wise woman who dwelt in seclusion in a forest, on all affairs of state. She is no more legendary than he, and it is upon the institutions he founded and the calendar he placed in order that the religious and civic institutions and the calendar of later Rome were built.
The Mayas of Yucatan had a calendar system, deciphered at least in part, that extended far back into the past. In this calendar we find not only the familiar cycles of the lunation and of the solar year, but others such as the synodical revolution of Venus, and exact periods of 250, 280, or 360 days. The Egyptians in their calendar time-measurements used three different years, one of which was a year of 365 days, adapted to the Julian year by a Sothic period of 1460 years. The lunar year of 12 lunations is one of immense antiquity, and formerly of almost universal usage, frequently combined with the solar year; and the lunar year is still used, with various systems of intercalation to adapt it to the tropical year. As to such periods as 280 and 260 days, one may wonder whether these numbers were merely used as convenient for computation, or whether they rest on actual cycles not recognized by modern astronomy. The 280 is evidently connected with the human gestation and prenatal period. The position of the equinoctal point in relation to the stellar zodiac is often referred to as an indication of the dates of ancient events; and cycles of successive conjunctions of all or most of the planets are frequently mentioned in the archaic literatures of different peoples.
The nomenclature of the seven days of the week according to the seven sacred planets is serially uniform in the various calendars, and points to a common origin of this knowledge. It can be arrived at by dividing the day into 24 hours and assigning a planet to each hour, for instance, first counting from Saturn, then Jupiter, then Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, down to the Moon when, by this system of counting and pausing at every fourth, both inclusive, the first planetary hour of each day, beginning with the sunrise, will be found to be governed by the planet which is assigned to that day. The same occurs with a ten-hour day, or by counting the planets in order and giving one to each quarter of the day (cf Fund 250).
thermidor ::: n. --> The eleventh month of the French republican calendar, -- commencing July 19, and ending August 17. See the Note under Vendemiaire.
The solstices and equinoxes are found in history as starting points for the year among different nations. Our own was intended for the winter solstice, but confusions of the calendar have shifted the date. The 4th of January is mentioned in theosophical writings as being the right time for the beginning of the civil year, as marking the date of the first full moon after a winter solstice coincident with a new moon. This has relation to initiatory rites.
Tirukkanda Panchanga (Tamil-Sanskrit) The Tirukkanda Almanac, a Tamil calendar compiled by Chintamany Raghanaracharya, son of the famous Government astronomer of Madras, and Tartakamala Venkata Krishna Rao in 1884-5 for the Kali yuga 4986. These learned Brahmins based their labor upon fragments of very ancient astronomical works attributed to Asuramaya — the celebrated Atlantean astronomer (SD 2:51). See also PANCHANGA
Tishrei :::Tishrei is the seventh of the twelve months of the Jewish calendar.
Tropical Year The time taken by the center of the sun’s disc to travel from one tropic to the same tropic again, and being 365.2422 mean solar days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45.5 seconds. This is shorter than the sidereal year (the interval between two successive passages of the sun across the same point in the stellar sphere), because the tropics recede by precession. On the tropical year depends the regular succession of the seasons, and it is the one which is adapted to the civil calendar by the Julian and Gregorian intercalations. See also YEAR
twelvemonth ::: n. --> A year which consists of twelve calendar months.
veadar ::: n. --> The thirteenth, or intercalary, month of the Jewish ecclesiastical calendar, which is added about every third year.
vendemiaire ::: n. --> The first month of the French republican calendar, dating from September 22, 1792.
ventose ::: n. --> A ventouse. ::: a. --> Windy; flatulent.
The sixth month of the calendar adopted by the first French republic. It began February 19, and ended March 20. See Vend/miaire.
Wesak. (S. Vaisākha; P. Vesākha; T. Sa ga zla ba). A modern rendering of Vesākha, the Pāli name for the fourth lunar month of the traditional Indian calendar (thus corresponding to April-May in the solar calendar); by extension, the term refers to the important event(s) in the life of the Buddha that occurred during that month and to their annual commemoration. According to the THERAVĀDA and Tibetan traditions, it was on the full moon of the fourth lunar month that the Buddha was born, was enlightened, and passed into PARINIRVĀnA. This date is therefore the most important in the Buddhist calendar of many traditions. Wesak is widely celebrated across much of the Buddhist world, but especially in Southeast Asia, where it is considered an especially important time to perform meritorious deeds. According to many East Asian traditions, the full moon of the fourth lunar month marks only the date of the Buddha's birth, with his enlightenment and passage into PARINIRVĀnA occurring in the twelfth and eleventh lunar months, respectively; Wesak is therefore not nearly as important in the East Asian calendar as it is in Southeast Asia and Tibet.
which, by altering the positions of the whole and broken lines form the changes in the diagrams. This has been assigned by scholars to Fu-Hsi (30th century BC). The first extant commentary on it is assigned to Ching Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 BC, and his son. There have been many explanations offered regarding this work, called by many the Qabbalah of China: some see in it only a system of divination, a lunar calendar, phallic worship, or again the vocabulary of a tribe whose very existence had to be postulated for this purpose. Both Taoists and Confucianists regard the I Ching as the holiest of books; Confucius declared that he would like to give another 50 years of his life to its study, while the only Chinese commentator who is said to have understood it was Chu Hsi (1130-1200).
Year end adjustments – Is the process of adjusting the entry to an account at the end of the calendar or fiscal year in order to properly state it for financial statement preparation purposes. Types of required adjustments include accrual or deferral of a revenue or expense item, reclassification, adjustments to conform book figures to physical counts (i.e., inventory), and reflecting unusual transactions.
Yixing. (J. Ichigyo; K. Irhaeng 一行) (683-727). In Chinese, "Single Practice"; a famous student of CHAN and master of esoteric Buddhism (MIJIAO), translator, and distinguished astronomer. Yixing was a native of Julu prefecture in present-day Hebei province. He became a monk under the eminent Chan master PUJI (651-739) in the Northern school (BEI ZONG) of the early Chan tradition and also studied the VINAYA under a monk by the name of Huizhen (d.u.). Having made a name for himself at the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai, in 717, Yixing was invited by Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756) to the palace in Luoyang. While residing at the palace, Yixing became a disciple of the TREPItAKA sUBHAKARASIMHA and, together, they translated the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA. Based on subhakarasiMha's oral interpretations provided in the course of preparing their translation, Yixing also composed an important commentary on the sutra, the Darijing shu. In 727, Yixing's reputation in astronomy and calendrics prompted the emperor to have him devise a new calendar, which is known as the Dayan li. Yixing also devised an elaborate celestial globe, which used hydraulic power to portray the precise movements of the sun, moon, and constellations across the firmament. After his death, he was bestowed the posthumous title Chan master Dahui (Great Wisdom).
Yom Kippur ::: (Heb. Day of Atonement) Annual day of fasting and atonement, occurring in the fall on Tishri 10 (just after Rosh Hashanah); the most solemn and important occasion of the Jewish religious year. See also calendar.
KEYS (10k)
2 Carl Sagan
1 Yosa Buson
1 Joseph Ratzinger
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
21 Ibrahim Ibrahim
18 Charles Dickens
13 Anonymous
9 Kurt Vonnegut
7 Terry Pratchett
7 David Allen
5 Richelle Mead
5 Mark Twain
5 Dan Simmons
4 Timothy Ferriss
4 Neil deGrasse Tyson
4 Mitch Albom
4 Michael Ende
4 Lang Leav
4 John C Maxwell
4 Jenn Bennett
4 Gillian Flynn
4 Charlaine Harris
4 Carl Sagan
3 William Gay
1:The old calendar fills me with gratitude like a song. ~ Yosa Buson, 1716-1783, #KEYS
2:We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
3:Without faith, our calendar is simply a way by which the revolutions of the earth around itself and around the sun are measured… In faith, time is measured…by the acts of God, whose heart is, in all his activity, turned toward man. ~ Joseph Ratzinger, #KEYS
4:The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 2:I've been on a calendar, but I've never been on time. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 3:There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 4:time is our priorities, is our strategy. Your calendar knows what you ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 5:Your calendar never lies. All we have is our time. The way we spend our ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 6:I'm getting so old my insurance company sends me 1/2 a calendar! ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 7:There are only two days on my calendar... today and the day of judgment ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 8:Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 9:I found that as I flipped the days on the calendar, the worries I had about our relationship had began to diminish. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 10:My wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 11:My wife’s jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 12:Maybe God is calling you to do something extraordinary that isn't on your calendar; something to revive your soul! ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 13:History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 14:Dates in Calendar are Closer Than They Appear! Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 15:On a specific day marked on the earth's calendar, and in a specific place on the earth's map, the Son of God came to the planet. It was love. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 16:We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 17:Upcoming Calendar: Look at future calendar events (long- and short-term). Capture actions about arrangements and preparations for any upcoming events. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 18:If you try to keep your most sacred ambitions off of your weekly calendar and your most genuine traits off of your resume, then you're missing out on the power of real integrity. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 19:There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive? The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks from the springs of the bed. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 20:The spring wakes us, nurtures us and revitalizes us. How often does your spring come? If you are a prisoner of the calendar, it comes once a year. If you are creating authentic power, it comes frequently, or very frequently. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 21:Previous Calendar Data: Review past calendar dates in detail for remaining action items, reference information, and so on, and transfer that data into the active system. Be able to archive your last week’s calendar with nothing left uncaptured. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 22:I saw a close friend of mine the other day. . . . He said, "Stephen, why haven't you called me?" I said, "I can't call everyone I want. My new phone has no five on it." He said, "How long have you had it?" I said, "I don't know . . . my calendar has no sevens on it." ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 23:We're entering our third century now, but it's wrong to judge our nation by its years. The calendar can't measure America because we were meant to be an endless experiment in freedom, with no limits to our reaches, no boundaries to what we can do, no end point to our hopes. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 24:But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 25:Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 26:Father Time is not always a hard parent and though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 27:The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 28:Process Your Notes: Review any journal entries, meeting notes, or miscellaneous notes scribbled on notebook paper. List action items, projects, waiting-fors, calendar events, and someday/ maybes, as appropriate. File any reference notes and materials. Stage your Read / Review material. Be ruthless with yourself, processing all notes and thoughts relative to interactions, projects, new initiatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purging those not needed. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 29:Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Death keeps no calendar. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
2:walking calendar of crime, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
3:Age is in the mind, not in calendar. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
4:IF IT’S ON THE CALENDAR, IT HAPPENS ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
5:The calendar? A mere convention. ~ Irina Ratushinskaya, #NFDB
6:The key to the Jewish calendar is Nature. ~ Norman Solomon, #NFDB
7:I've been on a calendar, but never on time. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
8:Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools. ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
9:My calendar lately is full of work. And you. ~ Mina V Esguerra, #NFDB
10:There is nothing so intractable as a calendar. ~ Margery Sharp, #NFDB
11:hurry is not a calendar issue—it’s a heart issue. ~ Pete Wilson, #NFDB
12:The calendar is full but the future is blank. ~ Tomas Transtr mer, #NFDB
13:My death will not be penciled on someone's calendar. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
14:I've been on a calendar, but I've never been on time. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
15:Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
16:I use a really simple calendar program on my computer. ~ Jamie Zawinski, #NFDB
17:My death will not be penciled in on someone's calendar. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
18:The Giza Plateau was the ancient Egyptian's calendar. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
19:Nature knows no calendar, the seasons move in a circle. ~ Flora Thompson, #NFDB
20:and having to look to Hanumanji calendar art for clarity. ~ Anuja Chauhan, #NFDB
21:December tumbled like a dead leaf from the calendar. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
22:There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
23:The eclipses of poets are not foretold in the calendar. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva, #NFDB
24:You're as young as your dreams, not as old as your calendar ~ Shimon Peres, #NFDB
25:There are only two days on my calendar, today and THAT DAY! ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
26:The Christian calendar is wrong, Jesus was born years earlier. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
27:Between the calendar and checkbook, ones priorities are laid bare. ~ L R W Lee, #NFDB
28:A year by the calendar since she’d vanished, one hour by the heart. ~ Tim Johnston, #NFDB
29:Put in your calendar that you are going to write, and then just do it. ~ A D Morel, #NFDB
30:The calendar was a mathematical progression with arbitrary surprises. ~ Paul Scott, #NFDB
31:I don't wait for the calendar to figure out when I should live life. ~ Gene Simmons, #NFDB
32:Your calendar never lies. All we have is our time. The way we spend our ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
33:A calendar was hung in the kitchen as if to say: Expect more of the same. ~ Gary Lutz, #NFDB
34:I'm getting so old my insurance company sends me 1/2 a calendar! ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
35:There are only two days on my calendar... today and the day of judgment ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
36:Weeks passed, but my Word-A-Day Calendar was stuck on "motherfucker. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
37:To keep a Sabbath is to give time and space on our calendar to the grace of God. ~ A J Swoboda, #NFDB
38:Too many people, when they get old, think that they have to live by the calendar. ~ John Glenn, #NFDB
39:Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
40:Even at the beginning of fall—which is only a date on the calendar in Texas; ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
41:The calendar is a human invention; time does not exist on the spiritual level. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
42:Calendar doesn't decide when you are going to change your life for better. You do. ~ Ika Natassa, #NFDB
43:I have no life and don’t need special “recovery days” reserved on the calendar. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
44:LIKE the Jews, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef observe a lunar calendar. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
45:Yesterday was not your defining moment. The calendar moved forward; why not you? ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
46:If you still think you're a young pup then you are, no matter what the calendar says ~ John Grogan, #NFDB
47:It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone. ~ Annie Proulx, #NFDB
48:Oprah's quitting in 2011. Now we know why the Mayans ended their calendar in 2012 ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
49:If the inspirational calendar had been a person, Gus would have punched it in the face. ~ T J Klune, #NFDB
50:On the calendar, all days look the same, but they do not carry the same weight. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
51:phony to force oneself to be jolly just because it happens to be marked on the calendar. ~ Marc Levy, #NFDB
52:Calendar does not decide when you are going to change your life for the better. You do. ~ Ika Natassa, #NFDB
53:Written on the wall calendar in big, tragic letters was “September 17th: Maureen Dies. ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
54:God has a thousand-year calendar with only one day marked on it. It is marked “TODAY”. ~ Reinhard Bonnke, #NFDB
55:The moon that rises within a woman doesn't follow the same calendar as the one in the sky. ~ Kim Dong Hwa, #NFDB
56:I once tried being dramatic when I was fourteen. My mother told me to add it to the calendar. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
57:I've never been one of those who wanted to fill my calendar up 90 percent of the time. ~ Gilbert Gottfried, #NFDB
58:If you love the things you do, you don’t age, you always remain young. Age is for the calendar. ~ Sol Hurok, #NFDB
59:Next time!' In what calendar are kept the records of those next times which never come? ~ Helen Hunt Jackson, #NFDB
60:If I had my way, I'd remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead. ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
61:It used to be a perfectly ordinary day but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.) ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
62:Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
63:It had very punctual prophets. You could set your calendar by them, if you had one big enough. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
64:More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined. ~ Fred Brooks, #NFDB
65:Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress. ~ Charles Kettering, #NFDB
66:Someone who lives always with a plane schedule in the drawer lives on a slightly different calendar. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
67:And that's how Nelson the vagabond became my first friend in New York City. Hello, full social calendar. ~ R S Grey, #NFDB
68:She was a page torn from a calendar, a year folded neatly and laid aside in some place you never look. ~ William Gay, #NFDB
69:Taylor is a boy, and you are my best friend. Taylor is a date, and you are my calendar. Understood? ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
70:Every holiday on the calendar, I check in a hotel and fast - I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't talk. ~ Dick Gregory, #NFDB
71:Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety's not my forte. ~ Alan Cumming, #NFDB
72:Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of
a good example. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar ~ Mark Twain,#NFDB
73:There was an old Qeng Ho saying, ‘You know you’ve stayed too long when you start using the locals’ calendar. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
74:Sixty Royal Cubits probably correspond to a one week (i.e., ten days) on the ancient Egyptian calendar. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
75:The cosmic calendar is quite a fertile mode for communicating how small we are over time and space. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
76:Because life doesn't always happen according to a timetable or calendar. And feelings can't be scheduled. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
77:More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined. ~ Frederick P Brooks Jr, #NFDB
78:Tuesday clouds this hectic splatter, distorts the calendar’s faith in progression, its suspicion of narrative. ~ Nate Pritts, #NFDB
79:he was probably too young to be this old, but life had a way of being about experience, rather than calendar days. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
80:Now, I think that’s pretty much Planning 101. You put the things that you really want do into your calendar. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
81:The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
82:There was mist in the nighttime air, like a note on a calendar. The end of summer was coming. Fall was on its way. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
83:God, he was probably too young to be this old, but life had a way of being about experience, rather than calendar days. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
84:Some work in posh offices with glorious views, others in dreary cubicles with Dilbert cartoons and a free calendar. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
85:We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
86:The Great Pyramid of Giza were meant to express the Vernal Equinox through its dimensions, not the whole calendar. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
87:Their lives had stopped, frozen, as if in a picture, and the days were nothing more than empty squares on a calendar. ~ Tom Franklin, #NFDB
88:I found that as I flipped the days on the calendar, the worries I had about our relationship had began to diminish. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
89:We human beings take everything into consideration except for death; hardly anybody has death on his calendar. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi, #NFDB
90:My wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
91:The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
92:You never know when an old calendar might come in handy! Sure, it's not 1985 right now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? ~ Homer, #NFDB
93:The Sun Stone, the famous Aztec calendar, is unquestionably a perfect summary of science, philosophy, art and religion. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
94:It always rains on Mondays anyway. Monday is the bitchingest day in the week and should be struck completely from the calendar. ~ Ed McBain, #NFDB
95:Jordan patted him on the arm. “And that calendar made my year as PTA President the largest grossing year ever. So thank you. ~ Marina Adair, #NFDB
96:Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
97:History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
98:One must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle — and a mystery. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
99:Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
100:The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughing stock from a mathematician's point of view. ~ Roger Bacon, #NFDB
101:I've found a formula for avoiding these exaggerated fears of age; you take care of every day - let the calendar take care of the years. ~ Ed Wynn, #NFDB
102:Every single day was just a box on the calendar that I could put a red X through; each one brought me closer to Lucas and to liberty. ~ Claudia Gray, #NFDB
103:As the rich history of broken calendar sync implementations demonstrates, multi-leader replication is a tricky thing to get right. ~ Martin Kleppmann, #NFDB
104:Walter cares more about what a book has to say than he does about whether he can turn it into a stuffed animal or a calendar or a movie. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
105:Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons of greed and my imperishable stupidity. ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB
106:There was nothing on my calendar to indicate that this would be anything other than a short-skirt day. No need for a “believe me” suit. ~ Marcia Clark, #NFDB
107:To-morrow! it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. Wisdom ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
108:I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar. ~ Bathroom Readers Institute, #NFDB
109:The full moon symbol on my calendar no longer seemed to be a period marking the end of something, but just another way of counting time. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
110:I don't make summer jams or albums based on time or seasons; my goal is to make quality music, timeless music. I'm not looking at the calendar. ~ One Be Lo, #NFDB
111:I never got into using my phone's calendar. It's easier to write in my Tiffany day planner. There's something charming about having a datebook. ~ Ali Larter, #NFDB
112:No day before October 10, 1582, actually occurred on the Gregorian calendar for that was when the calendar was implemented officially. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
113:On a specific day marked on the earth's calendar, and in a specific place on the earth's map, the Son of God came to the planet. It was love. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
114:Here I was, dick in hand, cum all over my liturgical desk calendar, and a picture of St. Augustine looking at me reproachfully from the wall. ~ Sierra Simone, #NFDB
115:I looked at all the people, feeling sorry for them. They were still subordinate to clock and calendar. Absolved of that, I stood becalmed. ~ Richard Matheson, #NFDB
116:The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
117:Ancient Egypt built using a heximal system; counted time based on a septimal system; and designed the Civil Calendar using a decimal system. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
118:Trying to keep a list on the calendar, which must then be reentered on another day if items don’t get done, is demoralizing and a waste of time. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
119:I’ve been staring at Joshua for so long, he’s become a color spectrum unto himself. He’s my days of the week. The squares on my calendar. “White, ~ Sally Thorne, #NFDB
120:Thus they went along, Punch and Judy, attracting each other and repelling, as love must do if it is not to end up as calendar art or a pop tune. ~ Julio Cort zar, #NFDB
121:We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
122:I had to let myself imagine a calendar with no lines; when every single day is being predetermined six months in advance, there's no more fluidity to time. ~ Feist, #NFDB
123:I opened my purse, shifted through panty shields, bills, and birth control pills—I call them poppa-stoppas—and took out my menstrual calendar. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey, #NFDB
124:In order to hold off the Forces of Darkness, you will need a number two pencil and a calendar, preferably one without pictures of kitties on it. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
125:Not scoring one for the whole calendar year last year was a bit disappointing but I didn't really feel any pressure to get my first one as skipper,. ~ Ricky Ponting, #NFDB
126:When you've got a date on your calendar saying that you will be putting this in front of people in four weeks, that will get your nerves good, yeah. ~ Ewan McGregor, #NFDB
127:Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push-ups. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
128:I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not found on the executive calendar of any country. ~ Martin Van Buren, #NFDB
129:But these AI lived at anywhere from a hundred to ten thousand times the rate of humans. In a calendar year they lived as much as ten thousand years. ~ William Hertling, #NFDB
130:DEFEND YOUR CREATIVE TIME Book time on your calendar for uninterrupted, focused work—and respect those blocks of time as you would any client meeting. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
131:We have the Google family calendar. Before a week starts, my wife and I sit down to decide who's driving who to school or when can we go out on a date. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
132:Earth Day is the first holy day...and is devoted to the harmony of nature... The celebration offends no historical calendar, yet it transcends them all. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
133:Bob was not yet twenty, after all, while Jesse was thirty-four and in physical decline; each calendar week subtracted from Jesse the powers that Bob accrued. ~ Ron Hansen, #NFDB
134:I have been looking forward to this age of my life for a long time. In my twenties, I marked the days on the calendar - I was sick of playing high-school kids. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
135:I want to grab your hand, allow you to pull me through, to take us wherever you want to go, fill my calendar with your smile and laugh the way we used to ~ Eric Gansworth, #NFDB
136:On New Year's Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher, #NFDB
137:The new year always brings us what we want Simply by bringing us alongto see A calendar with every day uncrossed, A field of snow without a single footprint. ~ Dana Gioia, #NFDB
138:I drew a picture on the back of a calendar in pencil. In those days they used to give out free calendars, I had no art paper, so I took whatever else I could. ~ Joe Shuster, #NFDB
139:There is presumably a calendar date a moment when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, secretly, the noes had it. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
140:A worm tells summer better than the clock,
The slug's a living calendar of days;
What shall it tell me if a timeless insect
Says the world wears away? ~ Dylan Thomas,#NFDB
141:No one marked April 25 on their calendar. In fact, most of the living were unaware that St. Mark even had a day named in his honor. But the dead remembered. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
142:Scrooge replied that the calendar was an arbitrary governor of a man's life and that the new year began anew whenever one decided to live his life in a new way. ~ Charlie Lovett, #NFDB
143:To Randy and the others, the business plan functions as Torah, master calendar,
motivational text, philosophical treatise. It is a dynamic, living document. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
144:if you tell me you want to spend every single day on the calendar this year falling in love with me, then I’m going to kiss you. And I promise it’ll be an eleven. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
145:So we ring each other on birthdays and at Christmas, that sort of thing. It’s a routine that allows us to stay in touch with the aid of a calendar, not our emotions. ~ Fiona Barton, #NFDB
146:Relationships can't be measured with a clock or a calendar, Never. It's about getting each other. You get me, and I get you. That's the only thing I give a shit about. ~ C M Stunich, #NFDB
147:The shared work calendar is one of the most destructive inventions of modern times. So much orbits around it, so much hinges on it, and so much is wrong because of it. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
148:My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
149:Despite my excellent mood, I don't have any sympathy for Romney. If he'd been a good candidate he wouldn't have had a different campaign for every month on the calendar. ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
150:He decided quite suddenly, having kept fairly good record on the calendar, that tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and zombies be damned. The Christmas lights were going up. ~ Joe R Lansdale, #NFDB
151:There are evil circumstances and environments, not evil per se. But here I sense the actions of a truly darkened mind. Wallander reached for Svedberg’s pocket calendar ~ Henning Mankell, #NFDB
152:This is not a day for asking questions, not a day on any calendar. This day is conscious of itself. This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness, more manifest than saying can say. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
153:I'm not nearly as well organized as I would like. I am a creature of to-do lists and calendars - if something doesn't get onto my Google Calendar, I don't show up for it. ~ Ethan Zuckerman, #NFDB
154:Climaxing a movement for calendar reform which had been developing for at least a century, in 1582 Pope Gregory ordained that October 4 was to be followed by October 15. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
155:5 over 6 is the temporal ratio that refers to the phases of the Moon which was embedded in the Aryan ancient calendar to complement the one sixth of the House of the Sun/Son. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
156:Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded; but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
157:The question is not, “Will my calendar be full?” but “Who will fill my calendar?” If we are leaders of others, the question is not, “Will I see people?” but “Who will I see?” My ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
158:Iran would do well to look at the calendar and realize there's a new president in the Oval Office. And Iran would do well not to test the resolve of this new president [Donald Trump]. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
159:The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology,” quoted Rincewind. “Ah,” said Eric, “Good.” “No,” said Rincewind patiently. “It means time measurement. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
160:Eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
161:Marissa took a sip from a glass of water. “It’s perfectly innocent.” “I’m doing a naked calendar,” the fallen angel started. “He had a jockstrap on.” “It was all done with a selfie stick. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
162:Tell me what you value and I might believe you,” management guru Peter Drucker once said, “but show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I’ll show you what you really value. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
163:What Now? Talk a walk Start your swipe file Go to the library Buy a notebook and use it Get yourself a calendar Start your logbook Give a copy of this book away Start a blog Take a nap ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
164:3. In order to hold off the Forces of Darkness, you will need a number two pencil and a calendar, preferably one without pictures of kitties on it. Keep it near you when you sleep. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
165:Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one thing in your calendar, that month is gone. ~ August Wilson, #NFDB
166:So often we look at a calendar of days as merely a symbol of the passage of time. We forget why we are on this earth. We forget that there is a reason for all the pain and the struggle. ~ Lynn Andrews, #NFDB
167:We are on a journey through the inward space of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar; for it is a journey out of time into eternity. ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
168:It is the beginning and the end of the astrological calendar, and so it is said that children born on March 21 are ancient sounds who possess the wonder and innocence of newborns. ~ Elizabeth Alexander, #NFDB
169:In the current Christian-based Gregorian calendar the year 1 B.C. was followed by the year A.D. 1—there was no year zero. Century reckoning is therefore shifted by one year. Before ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
170:Tell me what you value and I might believe you,” management guru Peter Drucker once said, “but show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I’ll show you what you really value.” So ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
171:The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology," quoted Rincewind. "Ah," said Eric, "Good." "No," said Rincewind patiently. "It means time measurement." "Oh. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
172:I’ve been tracking Nick’s moods. Toward me. Just to make sure I’m not crazy. I’ve got a calendar, and I put hearts on any day Nick seems to love me again, and black squares when he doesn’t. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
173:They were so handsome that they made me feel self-conscious. They could definitely make a calendar of Peruvian hunks. Or more accurately, Peruvian werewolves. I knew Cosette would buy one. As ~ Aileen Erin, #NFDB
174:It was somehow degrading, craving someone so... voraciously - another good calendar word - just because he was physically beautiful. I hadn't thought that was something women did, either. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
175:I write in the novel's afterword that our recent wars "finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy". ~ Chris Cleave, #NFDB
176:The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
177:We have to have genius creative thoughts precisely four times a year and on exact dates. I actually write them on my calendar. I write, 'Friday, Nov. 8. Three o'clock. Have a genius creative idea.' ~ Tom Ford, #NFDB
178:The First Day of Summer according to the Old Icelandic Calendar is observed on a Thursday from April 19-25 in any given year. The old calendar had only two seasons, winter and summer. The ~ Alda Sigmundsd ttir, #NFDB
179:The way I go about writing records is that I make a calendar date to start the new record, so I have nothing. I don't have a bunch of notes that I bring into the office, I start with nothing at all. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
180:off. Next I moved on to scrutinize the aged plaster walls near the desk. Beside a museum calendar featuring old woodblock prints was a taped-up paper that looked like a printed reproduction of an ~ Sujata Massey, #NFDB
181:The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart. ~ George Eliot,#NFDB
182:She's been surprised by weather, these last weeks. By its versatility and by the grandeur of its effects... A primitive and elemental form of time untamed by Greenwich or the Gregorian calendar. ~ Penelope Lively, #NFDB
183:The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology," quoted Rincewind.
"Ah," said Eric, "Good."
"No," said Rincewind patiently. "It means time measurement."
"Oh. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
184:Every Russian received the name of one of the saints in the Church calendar, and that saint’s day was his or her name day and was kept much as a birthday is kept in England and the United States.—A.M. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
185:(1) Jot down new tasks and assignments on your list during the day; (2) next morning, transfer these new items from your list onto your calendar; and (3) then take a couple of minutes to plan your day. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
186:From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
187:The calendar says I had known him only a few months but there exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time, independent of rotating, malicious music. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
188:Never slow down, never look back, live each day with adolescent verve and spunk and curiosity and playfulness. If you think you’re still a young pup, then maybe you are, no matter what the calendar says. ~ John Grogan, #NFDB
189:After that, she went silent again. It was a strained silence. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. Her period was not due yet. I imagined that something unpleasant might have happened at the office. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
190:a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive? The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
191:It was part of her ritual. In December she always got a new calendar at the grocery store and used the old one to write all the important dates on it.” “And she probably didn’t want you to forget, right? ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
192:The main thing is healthy eating, exercise, which I do for special events, like if it's Sports Illustrated, or the swim suit catalogue for Victoria's Secret, or my own calendar that I did for the year 2000. ~ Heidi Klum, #NFDB
193:Among all the things we fancy we have inherited from ancient Rome, from drains to place names, or the offices of the Catholic Church, the calendar is probably the most important and the most often overlooked. ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
194:Brother Zachariah,” Isabelle said. “Months January through December of the Hot Silent Brothers Calendar. What’s he doing here?”
“There’s a Hot Silent Brothers Calendar?” said Alec. “Do they sell it? ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
195:cause me physical pain. I was burning inside. Nothing and nobody could ease the pain. I became a gray figure in the corridors. My shadow merged with the walls. Days fell off the calendar like dead leaves. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
196:On the hill we used a different, vaguer calendar than the one I’ve since learned. The seasons ours described—summer, dimming, and winter—were suited to a different place: the mountain had two seasons at most. ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
197:Someone else has to be disseminating it. (Mark) Dis-a what? (Nick) Disseminating. It means distributing it. (Mark) Then why didn’t you say that? (Nick) Remind me to get him a word-of-the-day calendar. (Mark) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
198:They divided the year into twelve lunar months, six having thirty days, six twenty-nine; and as this made but 354 days in all, they added a thirteenth month occasionally to harmonize the calendar with the seasons ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
199:For most of us, Kashmir means a calendar hanging in our parents’ bedroom, or a mutton dish cooked in the traditional way on Shivratri, or a cousin’s marriage that the elders insist must be solemnized in Jammu. A ~ Rahul Pandita, #NFDB
200:I was looking the other day at the calendar and I was like oh my gosh we only have two weeks left and I've been on tour since June I don't know how I'm going to switch back into normal life. It's been so much fun. ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
201:Delegate - work smarter not harder; do what you do best and drop the rest; get control of your calendar; do what you love because it will give you energy; work with people you like so your energy isn't depleted. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
202:Nature. He disliked its prickly stems, its bramble and bush, the obstinate precision of its cycles, its preconfigured calendar, the coded tapestry of its hills, standing stubbornly in the way of human progress. ~ Viken Berberian, #NFDB
203:People who know me well have learned to insist that I commit to obligations by opening my laptop and putting them onto the appropriate calendar or list - a verbal agreement and a promise to remember won't work. ~ Ethan Zuckerman, #NFDB
204:The Old Days, the Lost Days -- in the half-closed eyes of memory (and in fact) they never marched across a calendar; they huddled round a burning log, leaned on a certain table, or listened to those certain songs. ~ Beryl Markham, #NFDB
205:You remembered.” “Of course,” Clark said. “That’s one thing I like about birthdays, they stay in one place. Same spot on the calendar, year in, year out.” “But the years keep going faster, have you noticed? ~ Emily St John Mandel, #NFDB
206:There are thirteen moons every calendar year.
They measure time differently on the moon.
The moon orbits the earth once every 28 days
As though she's looking for something she lost.
A long time ago. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
207:These two lists are your map for each day. Review them each morning, along with your calendar, and ask: What’s the plan for today? Where will I spend my time? How will it further my focus? How might I get distracted? ~ Peter Bregman, #NFDB
208:He told me to set my watch back an hour, since the northern hill country will have no dealings with new-fangled daylight time schemes. As I did so it seemed to me that I was likewise turning the calendar back a century. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
209:I stared at my calendar, the pen stilled in my hand. This little patch of paper suddenly bore a whole heap of responsibility. I had a hundred and seventeen days in which to convince Will Traynor that he had a reason to live. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
210:The spring wakes us, nurtures us and revitalizes us. How often does your spring come? If you are a prisoner of the calendar, it comes once a year. If you are creating authentic power, it comes frequently, or very frequently. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
211:Even before I had an assistant, my calendar was color-coded and I had all these different e-mail rules for how to prioritize e-mails, so I made it a point years ago to figure all that stuff out because my life was a mess. ~ Chris Hardwick, #NFDB
212:It popped up on my Outlook calendar, flagged in red like an inflamed pimple full of infected bureaucratic pus... I've been trying desperately to get it shifted, but no, it is stuck like a king-sized dildo in a guinea pig. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
213:prepare for a great push to be called Tong-Tan-cong-Noi-day (General Offensive, General Uprising). It would take place during Tet, which in 1968, according to the Chinese calendar, was to be Mau Than, the Year of the Monkey. ~ Mark Bowden, #NFDB
214:Someone else has to be disseminating it. (Mark)
Dis-a what? (Nick)
Disseminating. It means distributing it. (Mark)
Then why didn’t you say that? (Nick)
Remind me to get him a word-of-the-day calendar. (Mark) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
215:We have a family calendar and it's how everybody runs. In truth, there's no trick to balancing it. If you look at the calendar and you've seen you've gone ten days without a date night, you know you need to prioritize more. ~ Kristen Bell, #NFDB
216:it was only at that moment—more than a year after her burial, because of the anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from corresponding to the calendar of feelings—that I became conscious that she was dead. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
217:Guys have a mental calendar of days in the week, and below the days are empty boxes. On days when they have sex, the box gets a checked. The check mark means all is good and right in the world. An empty box means...not that. ~ Colleen McCarty, #NFDB
218:It seems highly probable to me that the unit of Royal Cubit -if it were defined based on its usage in the Pyramid's structure- were devised to account for one meter measure of length per ten days on a tropical year calendar. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
219:There is a small segment of people with autism that have savant skills, where they can memorize entire maps of whole entire city. They can do calendar calculations. And this is similar to some of the skills that animals have. ~ Temple Grandin, #NFDB
220:A gloomy, harebrained enthusiast, after his death may have a place in the calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself" (E:II:27o). ~ John Rawls, #NFDB
221:There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive? The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
222:Everywhere the air had become a vibrant yellow drum. A heavy sunlight freighted the foliage of the trees. Each leaf was a shutter about to swing back and reveal a miniature sun, one window in the immense advent calendar of nature. ~ J G Ballard, #NFDB
223:For three months of the year they could not be certain what year they were living in. Because the pope approved the Gregorian calendar, New England rejected it, stubbornly continuing to date the start of the new year to March 25. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
224:In the sorrow of a history buried alive, the year 1948 in Palestine fell from the calendar into exile, ceasing to reckon the marching count of days, months, and years, instead becoming an infinite mist of one moment in history. ~ Susan Abulhawa, #NFDB
225:If you say you’re a dedicated professional, but you show up late and unprepared, your behavior rats you out every time. You say your family is your top priority, but if they don’t appear on your busy calendar, they aren’t, really. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
226:There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive?
The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks from the springs of the bed. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
227:I write everything down. I e-mail the second I think of something, or I write notes in my BlackBerry calendar. I set up reminder alerts on my phone. And I have a notebook by my bedside so I can write down any last-minute ideas. ~ Giada De Laurentiis, #NFDB
228:The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that newborn bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar); ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
229:the 36 percent increase between 2004 and 2007 in lawsuits against attorneys for legal mistakes—the most common being simple administrative errors, like missed calendar dates and clerical screwups, as well as errors in applying the law. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
230:Chronological living is a kind of lie. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. Existence doesn’t have more meaning in one direction than it does in any other. Completing the days of your life in strict calendar order can feel forced. Arbitrary. ~ Charles Yu, #NFDB
231:For him time stood still and then every few years accelerated in a rush, like the quick re-wind of a film, but for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
232:A man’s life, Choje taught his monks, did not move in a linear progression, with each day an equal chit on the calendar of existence. Rather it moved from defining moment to defining moment, marked by the decisions that roiled the soul. ~ Eliot Pattison, #NFDB
233:If you can't take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar - even if it's a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
234:Every three days, I’d wake up, look at calendar, eat, drink, bathe, et cetera. I would only spend one hour awake each time. I did the math: for the next four months, 120 days total. I would spend only fourth hours in a conscious state. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh, #NFDB
235:Faced with a time shortage, we squeeze tasks into the nooks and crannies of our calendar, leaving less and less time to switch between them. As a result, we become less and less productive exactly when we need to be most productive. ~ Sendhil Mullainathan, #NFDB
236:Fashion is harder than the film industry. You have to constantly be able to crank out hit after hit after hit on demand and on a very tight calendar. I've come back, I've lost it, I've come back again. It's really as good as your last collection. ~ Tom Ford, #NFDB
237:Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
238:As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
239:I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
240:I believe the Rapture is the next great event on God’s prophetic calendar and could happen at any moment. There’s nothing that must occur for the Rapture to take place. It’s an event that is certain to occur, but when it will occur is uncertain. ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
241:I write my resolution in black Sharpie marker on top of a background made out of cut-up scriptures, words from newspaper headlines, and numbers from last year's calendar.
Be bold.
Be brave.
Be beautiful.
Be brilliant.
Be (your) best. ~ Ren e Watson,#NFDB
242:The base sides of the Great Pyramid of Giza referred to the solar calendar while the backbone of the structure itself (manifested in the whole design emanating from the base diagonal figure) was modeled according to the measure of the lunar year. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
243:You're earlier than expected, and appear to have gotten through the day without destroying any article of clothing. I must note this event down on my calendar."
"Bitch when I'm late, bitch when I'm early. You could go pro on the bitching circuit. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
244:He had followed the calendar, the years, time-
Bird farted.
And it came to me, as though it were riding one moment of the gusting wind, as though bird had had it in him all the time and had passed it to me in that one moment of instant corruption. ~ James Welch,#NFDB
245:I can’t altogether tell myself, Lillian. It’s not wholly a matter of the calendar. It’s the feeling that I’ve put a great deal behind me, where I can’t go back to it again—and I don’t really wish to go back. The way would be too long and too fatiguing. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
246:I had two cups of coffee, put Eric's jeans in the washer, read a romance for awhile, and studied my brand-new Word of the Day calendar, a Christmas gift from Arlene. My first word of the New Year was 'exsanguinate.' This was probably not a good omen. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
247:Of the five House Calendars, the Private Calendar is the one to which all Private Bills are referred. Private Bills deal with specific individuals, corporations, institutions, and so forth, as distinguished from public bills which deal with classes only. ~ Howard Coble, #NFDB
248:The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch, #NFDB
249:It's become such a cultural norm that people brag about it: "Oh yeah, you did that? I did this." Keeping up with the Joneses used to be about "I have the bigger house and car," and now it's much more about how much stuff you can cram into your calendar. ~ Brigid Schulte, #NFDB
250:But I spent just two calendar years at Cornell University, though it was covering more than three years of work, and then went to medical school and did become interested in psychiatry, and even helped form a kind of psychiatry club in medical school. ~ Robert Jay Lifton, #NFDB
251:Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar ~ Mark Twain,#NFDB
252:It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
253:Outrage steamed her brain. "I've waited three days... Do you know what day it is?"
He gave a one-sided shrug, his massive shoulder muscles shifting. "Who has time to check the calendar when people are shooting at you and snakes are biting you in the ass? ~ Dana Marton,#NFDB
254:Those moments aren't ours any more. They're shut up in a box, buried at the back of a cupboard, out of reach. They're frozen like on a postcard or a calendar. The colours will end up disappearing, fading. They're forbidden to our memories and our words. ~ Delphine de Vigan, #NFDB
255:Try the coca leaves. They’ll help,” said the hot guy from earlier. Even next to the calendar men, he stood out. His aura was so bright that if I looked too close it felt like staring into the sun. With all that gold, he’d be a summer month for sure. Mr. July? ~ Aileen Erin, #NFDB
256:Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
257:Her office is oddly decorated with all things dog. There's a dog calendar, a dog clock, a couple of framed photographs of dogs, a dog leash sitting on the corner of her desk. The only thing missing is the actual dog itself. Or maybe the leash is for me? ~ Catherine McKenzie, #NFDB
258:These are islands in time - with nothing to date them on the calendar of mankind. In these areas it is as though a person were looking backward into the ages and forward untold years. Here are bits of eternity, which have a preciousness beyond all accounting. ~ Harvey Broome, #NFDB
259:This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished, for you, my love, my loss, my lesion, a rosary of words to count out time's illusions, all the minutes, hours, days the calendar compounds as if the past existed somewhere like an inheritance still waiting to be claimed. ~ Dana Gioia, #NFDB
260:"We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand." ~ Leo Tolstoy"A Calendar of Wisdom", #NFDB
261:When the Day came -
The Day I had lived and died for -
The Day that is not in any calendar -
Clouds heavy with love
Showered me with wild abundance.
Inside me, my soul was drenched.
Around me, even the desert grew green.
~ Kabir, When The Day Came
,#NFDB
262:When you're depressed, there's no calendar. There are no dates, there's no day, there's no night, there's no seconds, there's no minutes, there's nothing. You're just existing in this cold, murky, ever-heavy atmosphere, like they put you inside a vial of mercury. ~ Rod Steiger, #NFDB
263:Katie is like my calendar, watching her grow
and change. She is growing up so fast, learning to have opinions of her own,
learning that I don’t have the answers to everything. And the moment a child
begins to understand that, you know you’re in trouble. ~ Cecelia Ahern,#NFDB
264:A child gets vaccinated and soon after, autism symptoms emerge. The apparent cause-and-effect is understandable but erroneous - more a coincidence of the calendar and childhood developmental stages than anything else, as repeated and exhaustive studies have shown. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB
265:Honest winter, snow clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; but that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping loom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honor of May - how often has it robbed me of heart and hope. ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
266:I think one of the concerns, anytime you're in the human business, like sports, it's a very high - risk endeavor. You do have to get players every year. You have to deal with calendar. You have to deal with all kinds of things in our sport, like every sport does. ~ Billie Jean King, #NFDB
267:Honest Winter, snow-clad, and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; But that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May how often has it robbed me of heart and hope? ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
268:Okay, so what’s your favorite color, your favorite ice cream flavor, and your favorite season? “Blue, coffee, and winter.” “Winter. No one likes winter.” “It gets dark early, I like that.” “Why?” Because that means the day has ended. I like checking days off a calendar— ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
269:Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have been selling his own country for years: he’s been kicked from land to land committing every crime on the calendar and now he’s back here, God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
270:[Ezekiel 1:1a] Hebrew On the fifth day of the fourth month, of the ancient Hebrew lunar calendar. A number of dates in Ezekiel can be cross-checked with dates in surviving Babylonian records and related accurately to our modern calendar. This event occurred on July 31, 593 B.C. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
271:In 1792 their decimal calendar replaced the 7-day week by a 10-day week called a décade, each day of which was given a Latin numerical name, three of which comprised a month. The day was divided into ten hours, each consisting of 100 minutes, each minute of 100 seconds. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
272:Oh,” he said, knocking a red ball into a hole. “It’s you.”
“You were expecting someone else?” I asked. “Am I interrupting your social
calendar?” I made a big show of glancing around the empty room. “I don’t want to keep you from the mob of fans beating down your door. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
273:We're entering our third century now, but it's wrong to judge our nation by its years. The calendar can't measure America because we were meant to be an endless experiment in freedom, with no limits to our reaches, no boundaries to what we can do, no end point to our hopes. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
274:I also suspected he was on the cover of the Denver Firefighters calendar, picture used for the month of July, he was that hot. If the firefighters merged with the police officers and they did a group shot that included Lawson and Jury, the paper might spontaneously combust. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
275:I love the Olympics. I love the idea of something happening every four years. I've always had love for Bulgaria, and I've always been a Bulgarian. That's also really part of why I want to play it. I know it's tough for the calendar, but at the same time, it's the Olympics. ~ Grigor Dimitrov, #NFDB
276:And looking at one single label on a jar, he felt himself gone round the calendar to the private day this summer when he had looked at the circling world and found himself at its center.
The word on the jar was RELISH.
And he was glad that he had decided to live. ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
277:Each day of war takes us farther from all we could hope to be or do. We gain nothing but heartbreak, and lose everything we cherish. Our lives erode and diminish, our children see no future except a calendar of anguish and death. Our only hope for tomorrow is for peace now. ~ Lloyd Alexander, #NFDB
278:In the end, it was only a few months that passed this way, and yet it was the longest period of time that Momo had ever lived through. Time can't simply be measured with a clock and a calendar, just as words alone can't describe the kind of loneliness Momo knew in these months. ~ Michael Ende, #NFDB
279:Oh,” he said, knocking a red ball into
a hole. “It’s you.”
“You were expecting someone else?” I asked. “Am I interrupting your social
calendar?” I made a big show of glancing around the empty room. “I don’t want to keep you from the mob of fans beating down your door. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
280:The units of measurement which were used in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza were those of the Calendar. It was not the meter which they knew about and utilized, but rather the abstract units of time which were in turn expressed and projected as units of length. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
281:I pass over the spectacle of Poirot on a camel. He started by groans and lamentations and ended by shrieks, gesticulations and invocations to the Virgin Mary and every Saint in the calendar. In the end, he descended ignominiously and finished the journey on a diminutive donkey. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
282:But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
283:We had been careful, ever since the September decrees, to adopt the new courtesies. Monsieur and madame were things of the past, like the old calendar. I had to remind myself also that today was the 19th Frimaire, Year II of the Republic, and no longer the 9th of December, 1793. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
284:the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
285:I've been gone on the road for the past three years; maybe I've been home for two or three weeks in a year. I literally live - it's like one of those old movies where they show a train, and pages of a calendar are peeling away like leaves, and then there's a picture of me with gray hair. ~ Chris Isaak, #NFDB
286:A charm of Goldfinches swooped in and settled on a stand of thistles, pecking at the down. It was a scene Jejeune had seen a thousand times on calendar pages, one of the most picturesque in nature. It still gave him a frisson of delight and he paused for a moment before speaking. p. 147 ~ Steve Burrows, #NFDB
287:In Venice, a long time ago, when we had our own calendar and stayed aloof from the world, we began the days at night. What use was the sun to us when our trade and our secrets and our diplomacy depended on darkness? In the dark you are in disguise and this is the city of disguises. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
288:Oh,” he said, knocking a red ball into
a hole. “It’s you.”
“You were expecting someone else?”
I asked. “Am I interrupting your social
calendar?” I made a big show of
glancing around the empty room. “I don’t
want to keep you from the mob of fans
beating down your door. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
289:Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, it is the breathing of eternity. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
290:At the end of each year, I sit on the floor and go page by page through the old calendar, inking annual events into the new one, all the while watching my year in 'dinner withs' skate by. When I'm done, I save the old calendar in the box of the new one and put it with the others on a shelf. ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
291:Ooh, let me see my one,” Megan cries, grabbing the camera from him and pressing at it wildly. My whole body tenses. Normally, I don’t mind sharing things—I even give half my advent-calendar chocolates to my brother, Tom—but my camera is different. It’s my most prized possession. It’s my safety net. ~ Zoe Sugg, #NFDB
292:Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
293:Practice: Please list the names of 5 people you could empower this month and how you could empower them with support, love, information, assistance, resources, knowledge, material objects or skills. Then, mark down in a Calendar or Time-Schedule by which day you will provide that Empowerment. ~ Frederick Dodson, #NFDB
294:Christmas Eve is my favorite... I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something - food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar - can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
295:LEADERS Initiate Lead; pick up phone and make contact Spend time planning anticipate problems Invest time with people Fill the calendar by priorities FOLLOWERS React Listen; wait for phone to ring Spend time living day-to-day; react to problems Spend time with people Fill the calendar by requests ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
296:But you have a heart that is big and beautiful and strong, and deserves to be shared with someone worthy. You get some perspective when you know you’re not going to get to flip a new month on the calendar. And I’ve realized that the Beatles got it wrong. Love isn’t all we need—love is all there is. ~ Morgan Matson, #NFDB
297:destroying beauty a rose red sunlight; I take it apart in the garage like a puzzle: the petals are as greasy as old bacon and fall like the maidens of the world backs to floor and I look up at the old calendar hung from a nail and touch my wrinkled face and smile because the secret is beyond me. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
298:these years later and from stirring it up I started having dreams again about the combat, only the dreams were all mixed in with things I started doing for certain people after the war. I was discharged on October 24, 1945, a day before my twenty-fifth birthday, but only according to the calendar. ~ Charles Brandt, #NFDB
299:When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity. ~ Walter Cronkite, #NFDB
300:His facial hair served not just as a calendar but also as a mask, absorbing the stares of others while allowing him a little privacy in plain sight. "I can hide behind it, I can play to stereotypes and assumptions. One of the benefits of being labeled a hermit is that it permits me strange behavior. ~ Michael Finkel, #NFDB
301:Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
302:The next thing working against us is the calendar. It has a tendency to represent tasks that can fit in thirty-minute or one-hour blocks. And tasks that take, say, fifty hours—which could be how long it takes you to complete a meaningful creative task—don’t naturally get represented in that calendar. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
303:Winter. No one likes winter.” “It gets dark early, I like that.” “Why?” Because that means the day has ended. I like checking days off a calendar—151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn’t ruined. 153 and I haven’t destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
304:Another way in which our system is unfair. Why do Iowans get so much of a bigger voice every four years than everybody else? Ditto for New Hampshire. There are proposals and it could well happen that we could have a rotating calendar where different years different states went first. I would endorse that. ~ Frank Bruni, #NFDB
305:I hold the Big Ben clock taken from a dead sheepherder’s wagon. The clock measures intervals of time, not the speed of time, and the calendar is a scaffolding we hang as if time were rushing water we could harness. Time-bound, I hinge myself to a linear bias—cause and effect all laid out in a neat row. ~ Gretel Ehrlich, #NFDB
306:Still, 150 years after its birth, Juneteenth remains largely unacknowledged on America’s national calendar. Many Americans are unaware of its existence, or its roots. Sadly, that ignorance of Juneteenth reflects a deeper issue: the continued existence of two histories, black and white, separate and unequal. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
307:The first great break-through—or, rather, breakdown—of society’s nudity/lewdity guilt-by-association was the now-famous Marilyn Monroe calendar. Marilyn’s respectability when she died was based principally upon her economic status, which is, in the final analysis, the only type our society really respects. ~ Lenny Bruce, #NFDB
308:What are we going to do? Such a bad harvest last summer and too little snow now to irrigate the fields come spring …” “The world is protesting. It feels like a summer cloudburst coming, yet the hymns of the high holidays still ring in our ears. Can the calendar turn inside out? Can a year run backward? ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
309:I harbored in my mind a sort of utopia about ‘an age of genius’ that supposedly existed in my life once upon a time, not in any calendar year but on a level above chronology, an age when everything blazed with godly colors and one took in the whole sky with a single breath, like a gulp of pure ultramarine. ~ Bruno Schulz, #NFDB
310:Jane put her hand on the calendar, as if she could take those days right in through her skin, her pores, into her blood and bones, hold them forever. But time didn’t work that way. Time was all about the present. It was where you were and what you were doing, in any given moment, that gave life its meaning. ~ Luanne Rice, #NFDB
311:On his way offstage, the president shook hands with Lin and said, "I'm proud of you, man." (In a gesture of self-restraint, Lin had stuck to the performance calendar they had announced before learning that President Obama was coming, the one that said Javier Muñoz would play Hamilton that afternoon.) ~ Lin Manuel Miranda, #NFDB
312:To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings. ~ Clifton Fadiman, #NFDB
313:All three fall feasts come in the seventh month on the Jewish calendar. First comes the Feast of Trumpets, better known as Rosh Hashanah, which is the secular Jewish new year. Then after ten days comes the Day of Atonement, followed after only five days by the seven-day festival known as the Feast of Tabernacles. ~ Sid Roth, #NFDB
314:Blue lightning flashed in the kitchen, and for a split second you could see every calendar on the wall in there. Than an almighty explosion like the crack of doom. She'd rolled a cherry bomb across the floor, and it went off right under the eight feet of the Cowgill brothers, the three big bruisers and Ernie. ~ Richard Peck, #NFDB
315:The first thing Gutenberg sought to publish, after the Bible, was a laxative timetable he called a “Purgation-Calendar.” Then there is the astonishing number of anal German folk sayings. “As the fish lives in water, so does the shit stick to the asshole!,” to select but one of the seemingly endless examples. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
316:I will wait till after Christmas.” What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worthwhile to set about anything we are disinclined to. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
317:The moon doesn’t go through phases. Our perspective of the moon goes through phases. No matter what the calendar says, the moon is always full. Regardless of someone’s opinion, perspective, or inability to see it as whole and complete, the moon is unapologetically full. I find wisdom and strength in this truth. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
318:what a beautiful metaphor this is for not mistaking the husk—the outer accoutrements of productivity like busyness, or a full calendar, or a clever auto-responder—not mistaking those for the kernel, the core and substance of the actual work produced. And he then says, ‘Those who work much, do not work hard.’ I ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
319:have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
320:Yom HaShoah is a vital day in the Jewish calendar, providing us with a focal point for our remembrance. We cannot bring the dead back to life, but we can bring their memory back to life and ensure they are not forgotten. We can undertake in our lives to do what they were so cruelly prevented from doing in theirs. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
321:of her husband’s cabinet, who had their own ideas for the president’s social calendar. The worst conflict, and the most upsetting for Mrs. Lincoln, was with John George Nicolay, the president’s personal secretary, who was charged with the responsibility of arranging state dinners. Single-minded in her resolve ~ Jennifer Chiaverini, #NFDB
322:The Julian calendar, which it replaced, computed the period of the earth’s orbit around the sun at 365.25 days. Pope Gregory XIII’s reform substituted a finer and more accurate calculation: 365.2425 days. Thanks to scientific advances since 1582 we now know that the exact length of the solar year is 365.2422 days. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
323:Americans understood dating to be about investments and gains, short or long term, but we saw romance and courtship as being about losses. After all, the only worthwhile courtship involved persuading a woman who could not be persuaded, not a woman already predisposed to examine her calendar for her availability. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
324:The Queen of Crafts herself, Martha Stewart, and I have the same birthday. I prefer to think it's the glue-gun wielding, perfect-tart-producing Martha and not the copper pan-throwing, jail-going Martha. But I suppose if I am going to share a calendar square with some of Martha, I have to share it with all of Martha. ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
325:Unaware, then, how short futures could be. How quick they could disappear, leave you with nothing but a long-ass present that held no surprises, no reason for hope, nothing but days that bled into one another with so little impact that another year was over and the calendar page in the kitchen was still stuck on March. ~ Dennis Lehane, #NFDB
326:A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with-that's poverty-but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you're clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it's clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar. (148) ~ Victoria Moran, #NFDB
327:A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with—that’s poverty—but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar. (148) ~ Victoria Moran, #NFDB
328:Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise? ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
329:There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is—the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It’s too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It’s been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks—the expiration date on her childhood. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
330:He was spilling out a year of his life blood with every convulsive painting that he tore from his vitals. It was not the length of his stay on earth that mattered to him ; it was what he did with the days of his life. For him time would have to be measured by the paintings he poured out, not by the fluttering leaves of a calendar. ~ Irving Stone, #NFDB
331:It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
332:I wore no jewels save the pendant Brisbane had given me with its secret code—the code that had given me my first inkling that he loved me. It had not been so very long since he had given it to me, a year only; twelve leaves of the calendar torn away, a few dozen weeks from then to now. But how much change that year had wrought! ~ Deanna Raybourn, #NFDB
333:How’s going, Harpy?” He teased Harper like we were back in high school. Like he hadn’t skipped out to go fight wildfires and left me naked in his bed. Like I hadn’t had to sneak out before his mom found me… like I was just another girl on his rotating calendar.
“Pretty good until you got here, Bash-hole,” she answered in kind. ~ Rebecca Yarros,#NFDB
334:What you’ve probably discovered, at least at some level, is that a calendar, though important, can really effectively manage only a small portion of what you need to organize. And daily to-do lists and simplified priority coding have proven inadequate to deal with the volume and variable nature of the average professional’s workload. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
335:at Heliopolis, where the Pyramid Texts were compiled, and announced ahead of time to all the other major temples up and down the Nile.53 I remembered that Sirius was referred to directly in the Pyramid Texts by ‘her name of the New Year’.54 Together with other relevant utterances (e.g., 66955), this confirmed that the Sothic calendar ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
336:but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
337:We need to lengthen the school day. We need to lengthen the school year. Our calendar is based upon the agrarian economy. Children in India and China are going to school 25, 30, 35 more days a year. They're just working harder than us. So, we need more time, particularly for disadvantaged children, who aren't getting those supports at home. ~ Arne Duncan, #NFDB
338:I hate it here... ...Everyday is actually three days, a freezing morning, a blistering day, and a cool night. You need a lot of clothes. And every day is the same day, which is why it's important to hang a calendar. I see why people move here and wake up one day scratching their heads, wondering when they turned forty or what year it is. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
339:MURRY: Why do we even celebrate the New Year? It's just this arbitrary quirk of how we measure time in years, right? Midnight tonight is the very same transition from day to day that we do every 24 hours. But this thing in my hands, it feels real in a way the numbered calendar box never does. Why? What makes midnight tonight any different? ~ Hillary DePiano, #NFDB
340:It is largely dissynchronous timing standards that have kept human beings off-balance and alienated from the natural cycles of the Earth they inhabit. The worst culprit is the Gregorian calendar, and by extension the "12:60 frequency" that it fosters - together these have become, in essence, the inescapable time clock of globalist capitalism. ~ Jose Arguelles, #NFDB
341:Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Sometimes, it sure seems that’s what life intends. After all, it’s basically like a centrifuge that spins every few years casting proximate bodies in disparate directions. And when the spinning stops, almost before we can catch our breath, life crowds us with a calendar of new concerns. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
342:The New Testament indicates that the Rapture of those who have put their trust in Christ is the next major event on the prophetic calendar. In other words, the Rapture awaits us on the horizon . . . it could happen at any moment. This is the clear message of the Bible, and it is a truth I have taught consistently throughout my years of ministry. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
343:Consider that in a galaxy far, far away (otherwise known as the 1990s), President Clinton felt that he had to assure an isolationist Republican Congress - repeat after me, an isolationist Republican Congress - that the 20,000 U.S. peacekeeping troops he promised Bosnia as part of the Dayton Accords would only stay deployed for a single calendar year. ~ Matt Welch, #NFDB
344:When the Coupling Equation Cube CEC is introduced with an apex - having the double value of the GPG's angle - in the new pyramidal model, it automatically projects that measure onto its base width; and halving the angle of the apex produces a base width which also projects that same angle yet reduced by the 10.88 Solar/Lunar Calendar difference. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
345:Each pleasure we feel is a pleasure less; each day a stroke on a calendar. What we will not accept is that the joy in the day and the passing of the day are inseparable. What makes our existence worthwhile is precisely that its worth and its while - its quality and duration - are as impossible to unravel as time and space in mathematics of relativity. ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
346:On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. One minute she was asleep, the next she was completely awake and dumped into despair. It was the kind of despair that she had known perhaps two thousand times before, there being 365 mornings in a calendar year. ~ John O Hara, #NFDB
347:If you have been expending lots of energy mingling, counseling, or socializing, you need some down time to recover. Put it on your calendar so you can be intentional about it. And for an hour or so, go to a place by yourself. Read, relax, or do nothing. No one is there to talk to you for those minutes. Enjoy your blessed aloneness for a brief season. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
348:When the Day came -- The Day I had lived and died for -- The Day that is not in any calendar -- Clouds heavy with love Showered me with wild abundance. Inside me, my soul was drenched. Around me, even the desert grew green. [1722.jpg] -- from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom, by Andrew Harvey / Eryk Hanut
~ Kabir, When the Day Came
,#NFDB
349:now was going to try to use her in an underhanded way. It made him feel guilty before he had even started. “Does she want to come in and talk?” Hinojos asked. “I’ll open my calendar.” “Actually, no, she doesn’t really need to talk,” Bosch said. “She’s going to college in September down at Chapman in Orange.” “Good school. What’s she going to study? ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
350:I like checking days off a calendar—151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn’t ruined. 153 and I haven’t destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. Sometimes I think I won’t ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don’t have to worry about life anymore. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
351:He is also experienced. Though I don’t know Ralph’s age, I do know that, like many of our managers, he is over 65. At Berkshire, we look to performance, not to the calendar. Charlie and I, at 71 and 64 respectively, now keep George Foreman’s picture on our desks. You can make book that our scorn for a mandatory retirement age will grow stronger every year. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
352:I'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?' ~ Jodie Foster, #NFDB
353:He wants to feel good, he always used to feel good at every turning of the year, every vacation or end of vacation, every new sheet on the calendar: but his adult life has proved to have no seasons, only changes of weather, and the older he gets, the less weather interests him. The house next to his old house still has the FOR SALE sign up. He tries his front door ~ John Updike, #NFDB
354:No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late. ~ Natalie Babbitt, #NFDB
355:The Earth is 4.54 billion years old. A span of time that big is too mind-boggling to comprehend, so let’s collapse the planet’s entire history into a single calendar year.1 Right now, as you’re reading this page, it is 31st December, just before the stroke of midnight. (Thankfully, fireworks were invented nine seconds ago.) Humans have only existed for the 30 minutes or fewer. ~ Ed Yong, #NFDB
356:I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it. ~ Hans Zimmer, #NFDB
357:For the majority of mankind, religion is a habit, or, more precisely, tradition is their religion. Though it seems strange, I think that the first step to moral perfection is your liberation from the religion in which you were raised. Not a single person has come to perfection except by following this way. ~ Leo Tolstoy paraphrasing Thoreau, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), #NFDB
358:As he sat on the side of the bed, he felt the room, the house and the night as empty. In the next room Nicole muttered something in her sleep. For him time stood still and then every few years accelerated in a rush, like the quick re-wind of a film, but for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
359:Hanukkah, officially instituted by the Hasmoneans, was, like Tabernacles, eight days, and it was also the eight-day period corresponding to the pagan winter solstice festivities celebrating the return of light, lustily celebrated in Greece and Rome. Triumphal days in the Greek style – like the Day of Nicanor commemorating the defeat of that general – were added to the calendar. ~ Simon Schama, #NFDB
360:Christians have created a holiday that has become a beast that cannot be fed. Christmas gets longer and longer and longer, and you don't care, do you? You just take more and more of the calendar for yourself. It's unbelievable. How long does it take you people to shop? It's beyond belief. It's insane. When I was a kid, Halloween was Halloween, and Santa wasn't poking his ass into it. ~ Lewis Black, #NFDB
361:I sometimes subscribe to the belief that all historical events occur simultaneously, like a dream in the mind of God. Perhaps it is only man who views time sequentially and tries to impose a solar calendar upon it. What if other people, both dead and unborn, are living out their lives in the same space we occupy, without our knowledge or consent?"
The Glass Rainbow, p. 138 ~ James Lee Burke,#NFDB
362:I have long enjoyed asking candidate programmers, "Where is next November?" If the question is too cryptic, then, "Tell me about your mental model of the calendar." The really good programmers have strong spatial senses; they usually have geometric models of time; and they quite often understand the first question without elaboration. They have highly individualistic models. ~ Frederick P Brooks Jr, #NFDB
363:The architectural proof of ancient Egypt's heximal system is demonstrated by its very first constructed pyramid (of Djoser) which consisted of six mastabas. Then came the Great Pyramid later on and coupled theology with astronomy using the septimal system. And Menkaure culminated the process by marking Egypt with the new decimal system. Ancient Egypt breathed through its calendar. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
364:The ancient Egyptians encountered the same miscalculation in the Great Pyramid as that which the Romans faced in their Julian Calendar; 10 days drift away from the 20th/21st of March (i.e., Equinox day). The Romans amended the calendar into the Gregorian system, and the ancient Egyptians tried to correct the GPG's height using the capstone and the base underneath the Great Pyramid. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
365:In astrophysics, we care about how matter, motion and energy manifest in objects and phenomenon in the universe. Stars are born. They live out their lives. They die. Some of the ones that die explode. Our sun will not be one of those, but it will die. And it'll take Earth with us. So we make sure we have other destinations in mind when that happens. And I've got it on my calendar. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
366:The triangle which Scott Onstott and Gary Osborn have annexed (based on some numbers that were calculated and discovered by other researchers) is so beautiful and significant to the calendar insomuch that it drifts away from a perfect angle of 40 degrees by an amount of one unit length of 32.5 in reference to the triangle side which has the length of the natural logarithm constant, e. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
367:I can't think of another actor who acquired stardom so quickly, who held it for such a short time, and then kept it for such a long time. James Dean became a star in one calendar year, and then he left us. But he's still being talked about, he's still being revered, he's still being iconized forty years later. I don't think there's another example like it in the entire history of movies. ~ Leonard Maltin, #NFDB
368:Avoiding moments of disillusionment...
I don’t want dates on my calendar...
If it comes to love.
I do not want to hear any more cute songs.
I do not want to see or send any flowers.
Tell love not to touch my door.
I'm not home.
And please don’t come back tomorrow.
I’m on vacation, a vacation away from love.
Say goodbye for me.
Love knows my reasons... ~ Jos N Harris,#NFDB
369:The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain? ~ Myrtle Reed, #NFDB
370:It's so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that's the worst in your life, but to everybody else it's just an ordinary night. Like, on my calendar at home, I would mark this as being one of the most horrific days of my life. This and the day Daisy died. But for the rest of the world, this was just an ordinary day. Or maybe it was even a good day. Maybe somebody won the lottery today. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
371:It’s so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that’s the worst in your life, but to everybody else it’s just an ordinary night. Like, on my calendar at home, I would mark this as being one of the most horrific days of my life. This and the day Daisy died. But for the rest of the world, this was just an ordinary day. Or maybe it was even a good day. Maybe somebody won the lottery today. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
372:It's so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that's the worst in your life, but to everybody else it's just an ordinary night. Like on my calendar at home, I would mark this as being one of the most horrific days of my life. This and the day Daisy died. But for the rest of the world, this was just an ordinary day. Or may be it was even a good day. May be somebody won the lottery today. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
373:The provisions for the poor which structure both land ownership and the sacred calendar in ancient Israel, the rights of gleaners and of those widows, orphans, and strangers who pass through the fields, and the cycles of freedom from debt and restoration of alienated persons and property, all work against the emergence of the poor as a class, as people marked by deprivation and hopelessness. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
374:Whatever I paid before I was a sperm, Lord,” he said under his breath, “I want it back. Every cent, or I’m reporting your ass to the Better Business Bureau. I was promised much that I did not receive. The marketing was deceptive. I am not completely satisfied. I would like a full refund and a personal apology from the maitre d’. And a free calendar. Not a shitty one. One with naked girls on it. ~ Johnny B Truant, #NFDB
375:No more bereavement food. I was sick of it. It’s funny how time is measured after you’ve lost someone. Everything relates back to that second your life swerved. The calendar isn’t measured by the names of the months or seasons anymore, but by those significant dates. The day we met. The first time we kissed. The first dinner with his family. The anniversary of his death. The date of his funeral. ~ Kristan Higgins, #NFDB
376:I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
377:It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. he considered Monday specially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood of work and discipline. He shuddered at the very thought of school: the dismal yellow building; the fire-eyed Vedanayagam, his class teacher, and headmaster with his thin long cane... ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
378:And you, my friends who have been called away,
I have been spared to mourn for you and weep,
not as a frozen willow over your memory,
but to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.
What names are those!
I slam shut the calendar,
down on your knees, all!
Blood of my heart,
the people of Leningrad march out in even rows,
the living, the dead: fame can't tell them apart. ~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
379:Even before the start of history, the sky must have been commonly used as a compass, a clock, and a calendar. It could not have been difficult to notice that the Sun rises every morning in more or less the same direction, that during the day one can tell how much time there is before night from the height of the Sun in the sky, and that hot weather will follow the time of year when the day lasts longest. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
380:I chose to visit Charles on weekdays, when I knew Kyle would be in Liverpool. Yet, as the days on the calendar dwindled and my departure for London grew imminent, I allowed myself one final Saturday visit. I couldn’t bear to leave without seeing him one more time. But I wasn’t going to let him see me. I took Father’s Kodak from the closet in his library and hid it in the zippered compartment of my handbag ~ Camille Di Maio, #NFDB
381:This does not mean that creative persons are hyperactive, always “on,” constantly churning away. In fact, they often take rests and sleep a lot. The important thing is that the energy is under their own control—it is not controlled by the calendar, the clock, an external schedule. When necessary they can focus it like a laser beam; when it is not, they immediately start recharging their batteries. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
382:I have always thought of Christmastime, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
383:Holy men? Holy cabbages! Holy bean-pods! What do they do but live and suck in sustenance and grow fat? If that be holiness, I could show you hogs in this forest who are fit to head the calendar. Think you it was for such a life that this good arm was fixed upon my shoulder, or that head placed upon your neck? There is work in the world, man, and it is not by hiding behind stone walls that we shall do it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
384:We give them different names, those nights lit only by fire and the moon, depending on the country and the calendar, but we know what they are. They call up the world that was before the Lord came down among us; the world where good and evil were not so certain, so fixed as they are today, where the known and the unheard-of could mingle as they chose...where truth had its doubts, do you see?
(By Moonlight) ~ Peter S Beagle,#NFDB
385:Let me explain what happened. I’ll try to keep it as emotion free as possible for the sake of all the people who can’t deal with the ups and the downs, and the drama and the angst. This is because I’m one of those people. I can’t deal with the drama. Admittedly, this is likely because I was raised in a drama-free household. I once tried being dramatic when I was fourteen. My mother told me to add it to the calendar. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
386:Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings - even the poets - so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can't help believing the author's hearts were moved by some divine power. And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
387:From your “due date” calendar, write down a weekly to-do list of twenty or fewer key items. Each night, create the next day’s daily to-do list from the items on the weekly to-do list. Keep it to five to ten items. Try not to add to the daily list once you’ve made it unless it involves some unanticipated but important item (you don’t want to start creating endless lists). Try to avoid swapping out items on your list. ~ Barbara Oakley, #NFDB
388:long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
389:The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
390:Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
391:The calendar and his glass and the solicitude of his juniors may tell a man that he is old, and he can see for himself that the world and all around him have aged, but secretly he knows that he is still a youth of eighteen or twenty. And what I have said of a man, I have said because a man is what I am. It must be even more true of a woman, to whom youth and beauty and vitality are so much more to be treasured and conserved. ~ Gary Jennings, #NFDB
392:The first several scenes are about sexual addiction. They're not specifically political at all... I didn't sit down and think, ''I am going to write something about the religious right.'' I started out by writing something about sexual addiction, and it evolved... I don't look at a calendar and say: ''Oh! There's going to be an election in 1996. I think now, in 1993, I'll start writing a play that'll be ready for it.'' ~ Christopher Durang, #NFDB
393:I hate the calendar, which is both a circle and a straight line, a wheel and an arrow, grinding each anniversary, each day a reminder of my failures, my lost plans, unfulfilled objectives and wishes, the days aren't taken off the calendar, subtracted one by one, but added, another small stone accumulated, another foot moved ahead, the arrow flying forward instead of falling back to earth, when all I want is a complete stop. ~ Gregory Galloway, #NFDB
394:Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
395:Sure, that sounds kinda cool,” I’d say, dropping it in the calendar. Later, I’d pay the price of massive distraction and overwhelm. My agenda became a list of everyone else’s agendas. Saying yes to too much “cool” will bury you alive and render you a B-player, even if you have A-player skills. To develop your edge initially, you learn to set priorities; to maintain your edge, you need to defend against the priorities of others. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
396:Christmas-time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
397:If we do not require a calendar to be geared to a tropical year (earth's orbit), but only that it be geared to some part of the celestial clock, then the Maya calendar was more accurate than the Julian calendar, more accurate than the Babylonian (solar-lunar) calendar; it intermeshed the "gear wheels" of Sun, Moon and Venus, and was based on a more accurate "gear ratio" than the other calendars, repeating itself only once in 52 years. ~ Petr Beckmann, #NFDB
398:In my opinion what distinguishes the Bible from the other books is its sense of time. Its first concern is to establish a calendar. Then it traces a genealogy. It imposes rhythms, it orders, it operates, it does not abandon the earth where its destiny must be fulfilled and whose own destiny must be fulfilled by it. Its history will be that of men and not of idle gods. The whole spirit must become incarnate and explore the possible. ~ Adrienne Monnier, #NFDB
399:With the garden I planted for the Reina Sofia, each plant related to different celebrations along the calendar - Christmas with evergreen trees, Valentine's Day with roses, Halloween with pumpkins. All these symbols are so culturally loaded, but they are organic living entities - just like the fish in the tanks. They grow on their own. The symbolic ecosystem is growing without a narrative anymore. It's a physical and mental landscape. ~ Pierre Huyghe, #NFDB
400:No matter what, the day didn't feel like Christmas to her.
She remembered years ago, when she had been just a little kid, and the word had been enough to make her happy. Nothing stirred in her now. Her childhood felt like it had been in another life. As she sat alone in her room with tears drying to her face, she resolved that no matter what the calendar said, it wasn't Christmas.
If it was, she'd feel happy, not depressed. ~ Kayla Krantz,#NFDB
401:Okay, okay,' I said to my husband as he picked up a food dehydrator off the table and shot me a look. 'Maybe I did get carried away. Maybe the world won't end in a year, maybe it won't end until 2028, when the Aztec calendar stops.'
'The Bugles will be very old by then,' my husband said. 'They will have lost their snappy crunch.'
'They weren't to eat,' I said. 'They were to put on our fingers and poke the eyes out of looters. ~ Laurie Notaro,#NFDB
402:Summer has weeks left, but once the calendar displays the word “September,” you’d think it was Latin for “evacuate.” I pity them for missing the best weather and the most energized time of year…It’s an extremely impressive display of life at the apogee of summer, the year’s productivity mounded and piled past the angle of repose. It is a world lush with the living, a world that-despite the problems- still has what it takes to really produce. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
403:The man could grace the covers of magazines and romance novels, but if she needed eye candy, she’d buy herself a beefcake calendar. She knew they made one with guys from the NYFD. Maybe they made one with mechanics. She had no problem imagining Nick with the zipper of his coveralls pulled low, showing his muscled chest, washboard abs, and treasure trail leading down to. . .well, let’s just say she wouldn’t mind checking out his undercarriage. ~ Robin Kaye, #NFDB
404:Father Time is not always a hard parent and though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
405:The almond blossom from the tree has gone, to be replaced by new green shoots. It smells of spring, and mown grass, and tilled earth from the fields beyond. Now is the month of Germinal in the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
406:You see it in the 36 percent increase between 2004 and 2007 in lawsuits against attorneys for legal mistakes—the most common being simple administrative errors, like missed calendar dates and clerical screwups, as well as errors in applying the law. You see it in flawed software design, in foreign intelligence failures, in our tottering banks—in fact, in almost any endeavor requiring mastery of complexity and of large amounts of knowledge. Such ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
407:Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and every day, after writing, cross off the day with a big red X. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld explained. “You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
408:The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
409:The mark of Wagy was based 10 days before god's resting instead of 6; it was also based 7 days after Osiris' death as it is presented on the zodiac on the location of Menkaure's Pyramid (which is itself located 10 days away from the beginning of the calendar). The significance of the 7 days were shown on the statue of Osiris which were placed for seven days unburied upon branches of sycamores and even the company of gods in Abydos was seven members. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
410:The idea that somebody out there is that eager to hear my music in advance can only be a good thing. But growing up, I always liked that system where "release day" was a big thing, and for bands I really liked, I'd know that date. It'd be on my calendar, and I'd go to the record store that day. Sitting down and listening to the record for the first time was a real event. I wish it was still that way, but that's not the way the world works any more. ~ John Britt Daniel, #NFDB
411:My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
412:Waiting for a sign? What sign do you await, besides your own misery? What sign, besides the calendar that reminds you how many days and years you’ve thrown away? What other sign do you need besides the burning inner fire that demands you’re better than what you’ve settled for? Stop lying to yourself! You have seen so many signs… you know what you want… no more delays… no more excuses! Our days are too limited to wait for signs… Life IS a sign! Go live it! ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
413:The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean. She held up a calendar and said, "Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer.' You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
414:When I stopped touring, it was like trying to stop a bullet train or a giant lead ball falling from a 100 stories up - it's momentum and it doesn't just stop. I drew a line in the calendar and made it a brick wall and just stopped dead. There was no other way. It would've taken another 100 years to slow down slowly. I had to let myself imagine a calendar with no lines; when every single day is being predetermined six months in advance, there's no more fluidity to time. ~ Feist, #NFDB
415:In the same way that certain sections of the city were mortal battlegrounds, some parts of the calendar were always more warlike than others, and during the days between Christmas and the new year all elements seemed to conspire to subdue the soul. Fire, rain, sickness, cold, and death were everywhere spread through the dark as in a painting of hell. People struggled until exhaustion, giving everything they had, and the days were packed with trials and mysteries. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
416:I was just beginning to wrap my mind around the way daily life unfolded here: wake up early, get your work done, eat, relax, and go to bed. Repeat daily. There wasn’t a calendar of events or dinner dates with friends in town or really much room for recreation--because that just meant double the work when you got back to work. It was hard for me not to wonder when any of these people ever went out and had a good time, or built a snowman.
Or slept past 5:00 A.M. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
417:You need a formal business reinvention process. Put it in your calendar. Every three months, take your most trusted advisers, employees, backers, and even customers and get away from the phones for a little while.
Start from scratch. “If we were starting over—no office, no employees, no customers—would we choose to be where we are today?” If the answer isnʼt, yes, then itʼs time to take a hard look at the path you took and the impact it has had on your business. ~ Seth Godin,#NFDB
418:Earth’s axis precesses 360 degrees in 25,772 years; which means that it precesses one degree in 71.5888 years marking thereby an offset of 0.4111 from a full 72 years. This offset scales up the precessional cycle by an amount of 148 years - which happens to equal the exact amount of days in the ancient Egyptian calendar of 360 days (i.e., 0.4111*360=148). In other words, the precision of the precession is already encoded in the decanal calendar of ancient Egypt. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
419:I’ve got some athletes who do best on 70% carbs, 20% protein, 10% fat.
But they deserve their carbohydrates. They’ve got a great pancreas, they’re in-
sulin-sensitive, blah, blah, blah, they’ve got a lot of muscle mass. But some
athletes, they’re allowed 10 licks of a dried prune every 6 months. That’s all
they deserve and that’s all they’ll get. And after 6 months, they’re actually al-
lowed to look at calendar pictures of cakes once a week. ~ Timothy Ferriss,#NFDB
420:And You, My Friends Who Have Been Called Away
And you, my friends who have been called away,
I have been spared to mourn for you and weep,
Not as a frozen willow over your memory,
But to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.
What names are those!
I slam shut the calendar,
Down on your knees, all!
Blood of my heart,
The people of Leningrad march out in even rows,
The living, the dead : fame can't tell them apart.
~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
421:When Jack came in he found him sitting before a tray of bird's skins and labels. Stephen looked up, and after a moment said, 'To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more irritating than comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.'
'Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat. ~ Patrick O Brian,#NFDB
422:A runaway calendar will keep you from simplifying your life. It holds you hostage to tangible things—meetings, appointments, and projects—without giving proper priority to the intangibles: who you are becoming, your relationships with family and friends, your connectedness to God. Without conscious intervention, this pattern of chronically overscheduling ensures that the priorities you care about most will take a backseat to the urgent priorities of others every time. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
423:Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty that can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push-ups. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
424:In what resides the most characteristic Virtue of humanity?
In good works?
Possibly.
In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps.
But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar; for no mortal being was ever more completely divested of the trammels of the personal and the particular, none ever practiced with more consummated success the divine art of impartiality ~ Lytton Strachey,#NFDB
425:Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages. It's still in the fifteenth century or whatever. And Christianity in the fifteenth century, after all, was full of inquisitions and burnings at the stake, and so on and so on. So give Islam time, and it will reach the point of maturity that other religions have. But Mormonism is much younger than Islam, and it's got there already. So I don't think that's an argument that works. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
426:When your alarm goes off and you jump out of bed, what is the nature of the mind in that moment? Are you already like, "oh my God," your calendar pops into your mind and you're driven already, or can you take a moment and just lie in bed and just feel your body breathing. And remember, "oh yeah, brand new day and I'm still alive." So, I get out of bed with awareness, brush my teeth with awareness. When you're in the shower next time check and see if you're in the shower. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
427:It occurred to her, sadly, and not for the first time, that as you grew older you became busier, and time went faster and faster, the months pushing each other rudely out of the way, and the years slipping off the calendar and into the past. Once, there had been time. Time to stand, or sit, and just look at daffodils. Or to abandon housekeeping, on the spur of the moment, walk out of the back door and up the hill, into the lark-song emptiness of a summer morning. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher, #NFDB
428:A runaway calendar will keep you from simplifying your life. It holds you hostage to tangible things—meetings, appointments, and projects—without giving proper priority to the intangibles: who you are becoming, your relationships with family and friends, your connectedness to God. Without conscious intervention, this pattern of chronically overscheduling ensures that the priorities you care about most will take a backseat to the urgent priorities of others every time. GRABBING ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
429:He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. He lived in the past, by his diary. He was a history man, his head full of dead leaves. It was a form of reassurance, he knew. There were too many roads into the future and he didn't like not having a map for it.
("Wait") ~ Conrad Williams,#NFDB
430:Today was the first day of summer, she realized, her spirits lifting like a kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children. ~ Mary Alice Monroe, #NFDB
431:The ancient Egyptian calendar is Precessionally Sexagesimal (Besides being theologically/decanally decimal). That means that the toggling between its "enhanced" Civil Calendar (i.e., 365 days yearly) and the geometrical Original Calendar (i.e., 360 days yearly) is based on the precession of the equinoxes (rather than being solely anchored in the solar system); where 148 squared over 365 equals to 60; and 148 multiples of 360 over 365 equals to the height of the Great Pyramid. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
432:True celebration should come from your life, in your life. And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing. Either, the misery is false, or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November has gone, you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
433:between a trailer and a house. Technically, it was her home, her house . . . but everyone in River Bend who wanted to dig at Zoe’s status made sure they referred to it as a trailer. Her BFFs, Mel and Jo, never said trailer. Even on nights like this . . . when the calendar said it was early summer but the evenings in River Bend, Oregon, didn’t get the memo. Those paper-thin walls that lacked insulation and girth didn’t do a good job of keeping away the cold. The rain had held out for ~ Catherine Bybee, #NFDB
434:Colonel Matterson reading from wrinkled scripture of that long yellow hand:
The flag is America. America is the plum. The peach. The watermelon. America is the gumdrop. The pumpkin seed. America is television.
Now, the cross is Mexico. Mexico is the walnut. The hazelnut. The acorn. Mexico is the rainbow. The rainbow is wooden. Mexico is wooden.
Now, the green sheep is Canada Canada is the fir tree. The wheat field. The calendar.
The night is the Pacific Ocean. ~ Ken Kesey,#NFDB
435:The cool air Edie speaks of? It drifts down off the mountain, unraveling itself through trees, dipping its fingers in the streams. It comes in through the back door and through the windows cast open for it. The fat possums shiver and return to their meals. It lifts up the months on the calendar and leafs through the newspaper pattern in a pile on the table. It fills up the yellow kitchen and overflows into the hallway and spills into the rooms.
Rose closes her eyes again and smiles. ~ Karen Foxlee,#NFDB
436:the sage Lenny Millstein, who not only was an excellent basketball man but an excellent person as well, who knew how to handle fourteen-year-old boys because he understood that fourteen was the worst possible age on the calendar of human life, and therefore all fourteen-year-olds were confused and fractured beings, not one of them a child anymore and not one of them an adult, none quite right in the head or at home in his unfinished body, and in the furnace of that claustrophobic arena of ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
437:Going into the forest with my dad was a backdrop to my young life. It was just what people did. I was expected to be able to identify the species of trees and to know how to avoid getting lost. Nature wasn’t something that you drove to, or planned on seeing, or for which you bought a fancy outdoor wardrobe. I worry that now it is an activity that must compete with soccer practices, homework, piano lessons, and all the other responsibilities that fill up the calendar of a family with children. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
438:You don’t have a wife then? No family of your own?” Sophia kept her tone light, stealing furtive glances at Quinn’s hawk’s-beak nose and heavy brow between questions.
“Not as yet, miss.”
“But surely you’ve a sweetheart for Saturdays?”
Quinn gave a rough laugh. “Oh, I’ve one for every day of the week, Miss Turner.”
Sophia stilled her charcoal and lifted an eyebrow. “What a relief to learn that your calendar is full, Mr. Quinn. For I warn you, I shan’t be tempted to stray from Gervais. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
439:How I Like to Spend My Time At what time of day do I feel energized? When do I drag? Do I like racing from one activity to another, or do I prefer unhurried transitions? What activities take up my time but aren’t particularly useful or stimulating? Would I like to spend more time with friends, or by myself? Do I have several things on my calendar that I anticipate with pleasure? What can I do for hours without feeling bored? What daily or weekly activity did I do for fun when I was ten years old? ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
440:If you want to create capacity and margin in your life, I suggest that you do the following: • Delegate so you’re working smarter, not just harder. • Do what you do best and drop the rest. • Get control of your calendar; otherwise other people will. • Do what you love because it will give you energy. • Work with people you like so your energy isn’t depleted. If you do those things while doing the right work with purpose in the right place with people you love, you will be living the good life. 4. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
441:Invention
Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,
and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look
like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.
But eventually -by the end of the month,
I reckon -it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,
and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen.
~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
442:He came back into the room and frowned at the calendar. He didn’t want to know what today’s message said, because yesterday’s was the absolute worst. He’d said hello and everything had turned upside down.
Gus frowned, because he was good at it.
“Ugh,” he said. “Fine.”
We don’t meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our path for a reason.
Gus stared at the inspirational calendar.
“Are you spying on me?” he eventually whispered.
The inspirational calendar did not reply. ~ T J Klune,#NFDB
443:The day the system says “no food” is a cleanup day. Since most people are not aware of which day their body should go without food, the day of Ekadashi was fixed in the Indian calendar. Ekadashi is the eleventh day of the lunar segment and recurs every fourteen days. It is traditionally regarded as the day to fast. If some people are unable to go without food because their activity levels demand it, or if they do not have the appropriate spiritual practice to support it, they can opt to go on a fruit diet. If ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
444:When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
445:Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it’s hard for a five-year-old to keep up with a child born many months earlier. But most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away. But it doesn’t. It’s just like hockey. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
446:When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
447:Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
448:The Olmec were but the first of many societies that arose in Mesoamerica in this epoch. Most had religions that focused on human sacrifice, dark by contemporary standards, but their economic and scientific accomplishments were bright. They invented a dozen different systems of writing, established widespread trade networks, tracked the orbits of the planets, created a 365-day calendar (more accurate than its contemporaries in Europe), and recorded their histories in accordion-folded "books" of fig tree bark paper. ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
449:My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others. ~ Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930), #NFDB
450:Chet took a sip of lime cordial from his martini glass and asked, 'What does it take to be a librarian?' I started listing off the requirements on my fingers. 'A corkscrew for the wine, a closet full of cardigans, the optimism to assume that all brown mystery stains found in books are chocolate, a desk calendar featuring cats in hilarious costumes, and, um, did I mention the cardigans ? Sometimes you need to wear a cardigan over top of your other cardigan if the library is really cold or you spilled wine on yourself. ~ Angela Pepper, #NFDB
451:He looked up at a 1992 calendar, level with his eyes, and about ten inches away. Someone had quit pulling the months off, in August. It advertised a commercial real estate firm, and was decorated with a drastically color-saturated daytime photograph of the New York skyline, complete with the black towers of the World Trade Center. These were so intensely peculiar-looking, in retrospect, so monolithically sci-fi blank, unreal, that they now seemed to Milgrim to have been Photoshopped into every image he encountered them in. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
452:Then it came about that a simple atmospheric variation was sufficient to provoke in me that modulation, without there being any need for me to await the return of a season. For often in one we find a day that has strayed from another, that makes us live in that other, evokes at once and makes us long for its particular pleasures, and interrupts the dreams that we were in process of weaving, by inserting out of its turn, too early or too late, this leaf torn from another chapter in the interpolated calendar of Happiness. But ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
453:When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder.
Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer,#NFDB
454:Buy the best you can afford • Extra-virgin Olive Oil, pressed in the last calendar year • Whole chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy • Chocolate and Cocoa Powder Buy whole and prepare yourself • Pick and chop fresh herbs (and always use Italian or flat-leaf parsley). • Juice lemons and limes • Peel, chop, and pound garlic • Grind spices • Soak, rinse, filet, and chop salt-packed anchovies • Make chicken stock when you can (see for a recipe). Or buy fresh or frozen stock from your butcher, rather than the boxed or canned stuff ~ Samin Nosrat, #NFDB
455:But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
456:The ways in which acquired savants show up are usually the same ways that congenital, or non-acquired, savant syndrome shows up. They tend to show up in the same areas: music, art, math, visual, spatial skills, and calendar calculating, although calendar calculating probably isn't quite as prominent in that group. They tend to show up quite quickly, or sort of explode on the scene and they then tend to have an obsessive sort of forceful quality about them in the same way as savant skills. So they tend to show up in the same ways. ~ Darold Treffert, #NFDB
457:But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
458:I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
459:Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
460:One of the most intensely unlikeable figures of the twentieth century, fanatical anti-Semite, enemy of labour unions and proud recipient of medals from Nazi Germany, where Hitler held him in veneration, Henry Ford was also an employer who paid his workers more than his competitors, an innovator who pioneered the assembly line and a visionary whose part in the creation of the twentieth century was so great that Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, prefigured a society whose calendar was divided into BF and AF-Before Ford and After Ford. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
461:Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
462:You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up" and "Down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom,
Was never deep in anything but — Wine.
Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? — Nay
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday. ~ Omar Khayy m,#NFDB
463:If the age of the Earth were a calendar year and today were a breath before midnight on New Year's Eve, we showed up a scant fifteen minutes ago, and all of recorded history has blinked by in the last sixty seconds. Luckily for us, our planet-mates--the fantastic meshwork of plants, animals, and microbes--have been patiently perfecting their wares since March, an incredible 3.8 billion years since the first bacteria. ...After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival. ~ Janine Benyus, #NFDB
464:The most important thing to understand is that while we courted, Americans dated, a pragmatic custom whereby a male and a female set a mutually agreeable time to meet, as if to negotiate a potentially profitable business venture. Americans understood dating to be about investments and gains, short or long term , but we saw romance and courtship as being about losses. After all, the only worthwhile courtship involved persuading a woman who could not be persuaded, not a woman already predisposed to examine her calendar for her availability. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
465:The bodily ascension of Jesus in Roman Christianity -which has not been granted to David- is a calendrical event which takes place in synchronicity with (i.e. in reference to) the solar culmination on the Summer Solstice when the Sun/Son reaches its highest point in the sky; as the circular zodiac of Dendera reveals to us through its illustrated decanic structure. The Passover on the other hand occurs - as we see on the zodiac and the decanic calendar- during the low tide of the Nile river; which is due around the time of the Winter Solstice. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
466:EROS AND THANATOS Beyond all this, the wish to be alone However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flagstaff— Beyond all this, the wish to be alone Beneath it all desire of oblivion runs Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death — Beneath it all desire of oblivion runs. • PHILIP LARKIN ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB
467:The most important moments rarely come at a convenient time. Sometimes you wish that God would check your calendar first. The ironic part is that our schedules get packed with the mundane and ordinary, and we become irritated with God when He interrupts us with the miraculous and extraordinary. The Scriptures are full of stories about people who were rudely interrupted by God. We read them and long to have the kind of adventure experienced by those men and women. Yet when God interrupts us, are we willing to respond on a moment’s notice? STUCK ~ Erwin Raphael McManus, #NFDB
468:I have often been asked whether one should believe in something like numerology, or feng shui, or horoscopes and almanacs. The truth is that NONE of these matter when you are trying to create your own reality. The spiritual masters have told us, time and time again, that the power is WITHIN us. It is not in something that is outside of us. Even positive psychology says this: That when we ascribe power to something that is outside of us (such as what an ancient book says, or what an ancient calendar says), then in essence we are “giving our power away”. ~ Richard Dotts, #NFDB
469:Briefly, the Long Count consists of a tabulation of days elapsed since the supposed inception of the calendar, the total being expressed as so many cycles of differing magnitudes. The largest of these cycles is the baktun, containing 144,000 days; next, the katun, 7,200 days; then the tun, with 360 days; the uinal, with 20; and the smallest of all, always at the bottom of the column, the kin of one day. Each of these in the days of Maya ascendancy was shown with its own hieroglyph, while to its left stood the coefficient by which it was to be multiplied. ~ Michael D Coe, #NFDB
470:Dustin Wax says it well: No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don’t stop every now and again to look at the “big picture,” you’re going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what’s thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.16 Find a time for your weekly review, add it to your calendar, and commit to doing it every week. I really can’t over-emphasize the importance of this discipline. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
471:I take many things seriously. Rudyard Kipling, Harper Lee, Oscar Wilde, and Elmore Leonard are all held in the highest regard. I am dead serious when I discuss the many reasons that Ernest Hemingway’s greatest contribution to literature was his generous decision to take his own life. I will not be sucked into a discussion of politics by people who prefer emotion to reason. The designated hitter is an abomination, and the day pitchers and catchers report is the start of the new year despite what those ill-informed calendar makers might try to tell you.” “I ~ Brian D Meeks, #NFDB
472:In the face of uncertainty, many companies will default to asking their innovators to study and analyze, which can't actually ever provide a definitive answer. The decision-making systems here are meant to deal with the reality that decisions about innovative ideas will rely on patterns and intuitions. The best venture capital organizations deal with this challenge by staging investment, actively participating in startups they fund, tying decisions to learning as opposed to artificial dates on the calendar, and assembling a diverse team of decision-makers. ~ Scott D Anthony, #NFDB
473:When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. "This is often considered to be man's first attempt at a calendar" she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. 'My question to you is this - what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar. It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women's contributions? ~ Sandi Toksvig, #NFDB
474:When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. 'This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar' she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’ It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions? ~ Sandi Toksvig, #NFDB
475:This is the first time a newly inaugurated president has had any impact on a current budget." What that means is that normally when a president's inaugurated in January, the budget for the first calendar year of his term or the first nine months is already done. So from January 21st all the way 'til October when the new budget's done, the president has to deal with the previous Congress' budget and has nothing to say about it. What they're saying is that Donald Trump has had a record-breaking, never-before-seen thing by having an impact on the budget in his first year. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
476:Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”
― Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
477:The Mayan system made more sense than the Western system does. Since the Western calendar was created at a time when there was no zero, we never see a day zero, or a year zero. This apparently insignificant omission caused a great deal of trouble; it kindled the controversy over the start of the millenium. The Mayans would never have argued about whether 2000 or 2001 was the first year in the twenty-first century. But it was not the Mayans who formed our calendar; it was the Egyptians and, later, the Romans. For this reason, we are stuck with a troublesome, zero-free calendar. ~ Charles Seife, #NFDB
478:A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar. ~ A Bartlett Giamatti, #NFDB
479:Index #: 238-B Contents: User's Guide to HOGMA Knish-8 with Vapidity, by JASTRE019R45R0722-110 Notes: User's manual describing the installation and capabilities of a piece of software (Knish-8) for a device (the HOGMA) which allows the user to genetically modify "hollow" (undifferentiated?) plant material to produce cultivated plants with desired qualities. "Vapidity" may be a form of digital rights management. Textual clues indicate authorship by a non-human (robot?) in the Canadian Nation of World Peace, Triumphant, in the year 112 (approximately 2220-2250 by the Gregorian calendar). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
480:The day of her long interview with Tietjens, amongst the amassed beauties of Macmaster furnishings, she marked in the calendar of her mind as her great love scene. That had been two years ago; he had been going into the army. Now he was going out again. From that she knew what a love scene was. It passed without mention of the word 'love'; it passed in impulses; warmths; rigors of the skin. Yet with every word they had said to each other they had confessed their love; in that way, when you listen to the nightingale you hear the expressed craving of your lover beating upon your heart. ~ Ford Madox Ford, #NFDB
481:When I get back to my dorm room, there it is, staring at me from above my bed. The Vladimir Putin calendar. Ha! I guess Katerina got a copy of it for me after my drunken rant at the secret supper club about how I had to ironically have one.
This is a girl after my own heart.
You have to see this calendar.
July: Vladimir Putin fly-fishing topless. March: Vladimir Putin smelling a flower. November: Vladimir Putin holding a puppy. I'm not kidding. Holding a puppy!
I laugh to myself. Katerina sure has my number. Maybe she will be my BFF even after I go back to the States. ~ Andrea Portes,#NFDB
482:Chairing the inquiry was Professor George Taylor of the University of Pennsylvania, himself an arbitrator and industrial relations adviser to five U.S. presidents. As impressive as the group’s credentials was its work ethic: members took less than three months to present their findings. Though received too late in the legislative calendar for any action to be taken in 1966, Rockefeller assured the committee it had not labored in vain. Enactment of the Taylor Law—so christened because no politician would put his name on it—became a top gubernatorial priority the following year. The ~ Richard Norton Smith, #NFDB
483:I have now been an officer in this Church for a very long time. I am an old man who cannot deny the calendar. I have lived long enough and served in enough different capacities to have removed from my mind, if such were necessary, any doubt of the divinity of this, the work of God. We respect those of other churches. We desire their friendship and hope to render meaningful service with them. We know they all do good, but we unabashedly state—and this frequently brings criticism upon us—that this is the true and living Church of our Father in Heaven and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
484:Something amazing happens when the rest of the world is sleeping. I am glued to my chair. I forget that I ever wanted to do anything but write. The crowded city, the crowded apartment, and the crowded calendar suddenly seem spacious. Three or four hours pass in a moment; I have no idea what time it is, because I never check the clock. If I chose to listen, I could hear the swish of taxis bound for downtown bars or the soft saxophone riffs that drift from a neighbor's window, but nothing gets through. I am suspended in a sensory deprivation tank, and the very lack of sensation is delicious. ~ Anne Fadiman, #NFDB
485:Well Nat and Fran wanted me to do this BBW calendar.” “A what?” “It’s a calendar for big beautiful women.” I studied her for a minute before saying a word. “Is there a TBW calendar?” She looked at me with her usual lost at sea look when I spring something on her. “What’s that?” “I’m guessing it would be thin beautiful women.” She laughed shyly and came to sit beside me. “I don’t think so babe. That’s a given.” “That’s part of your problem, why can’t it just be beautiful women? If skinny women don’t have to stipulate their size why the fuck should you? Beauty is beauty it doesn’t have a size. ~ Jordan Silver, #NFDB
486:So, based on that, we’d say you’re seven weeks one day along.”
I mentally pull up my calendar app in my head. “I’ve kept accurate records. I should be just shy of seven weeks.”
“Our measurements might be off, but it’s also likely that you ovulated earlier than you thought you did.”
I look at Chase. “The patrol car.”
“Seriously?” He lowers his voice though the room is small enough the tech can probably hear him anyway. “Neighborhood Hot Cop knocked you up?”
I giggle again at the name of the game we’d played that night. “Yep. Neighborhood Hot Cop knocked me up. ~ Laurelin Paige,#NFDB
487:when John Lloyd was putting together the Not 1982 calendar, and was stuck for things to put on the bottoms of the pages (and also the tops and quite a few middles). He turned out the drawer, chose a dozen or so of the best new words, and inserted them in the book under the name Oxtail English Dictionary. This quickly turned out to be one of the most popular bits of Not 1982, and the success of the idea in this small scale suggested the possibility of a book devoted to it—and here it is: The Meaning of Liff, the product of a hard lifetime’s work studying and chronicling the behaviour of man. From ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
488:Of the billions and billions of people who have ever lived, One stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of influence. More schools, colleges, hospitals, and orphanages have been started because of him than because of anyone else. More art was created, more music written, and more humanitarian acts performed due to him and his influence than anyone else ever. Great international encyclopedias devote twenty thousand words to describing him and his influence on the world. Even our calendar is based on his birth. And all this he accomplished in a public ministry that lasted just three and a half years! ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
489:There were experiences in previous centuries which might well have challenged this unqualified optimism. But the expansion of man's power over nature proceeded at such a pace that all doubts were quieted, allowing the nineteenth century to become the “century of hope” and to express the modern mood in its most extravagant terms. History, refusing to move by the calendar, actually permitted the nineteenth century to indulge its illusions into the twentieth. Then came the deluge. Since 1914 one tragic experience has followed another, as if history had been designed to refute the vain delusions of modern man. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
490:You can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine - you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April because it was what you were reading the first time you fell in love. It turns out that what's important is not everything that you've accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
491:wit had made her career, and it’s what had attracted him to her in the first place. He still loved Heather plenty, but too often she seemed incapable of having an adult conversation. “Do you want me to get the school calendar? I know what the ‘things’ are. Lila’s is a dance. Not prom. The other one.” “Oh, ‘the other one.’ I remember my Other One. I wore pink chiffon. My date was Jimmy Breslin, and he could only get this powder-blue tux that smelled like cats had peed on it. Or were still peeing on it, like it had hidden compartments in the tux for urinating cats to do their thing. He was a total dork, but I gave him ~ Sean Platt, #NFDB
492:Profane had got into this way of thinking, and along with parties in the daytime and a rotating shift system devised by Bung the foreman whereby you didn’t know till the day before which hours you would be working the next, it put him on a weird calendar which was not ruled off into neat squares at all but more a mosaic of tilted street-surfaces that changed position according to sunlight, streetlight, moonlight, nightlight…
He wasn’t comfortable in this street. The people mobbing the pavement between the stalls seemed no more logical than the objects in his dream. “They don’t have faces,” he said to Angel. ~ Thomas Pynchon,#NFDB
493:But on a Sunday morning when I want to grab an omelet over girl talk, I’m at a loss. My Chicago friends are the let’s-get-dinner-on-the-books-a-month-in-advance type. We email, trading dates until we find an open calendar slot amidst our tight schedules of workout classes, volunteer obligations (no false pretenses here, the volunteers are my friends, not me, sadly), work events, concert tickets and other dinners scheduled with other girls. I’m looking for someone to invite to watch The Biggest Loser with me at the last minute or to text “pedicure in half an hour?” on a Saturday morning. To me, that’s what BFFs are. ~ Rachel Bertsche, #NFDB
494:For many years I kept grandfather’s church calendar with his notes written inside it. The words “Saved from calamity by these benefactors” were written in straight letters and red ink on the day of Joachim and Anna. I remember that calamity. Worried about supporting his failed children, grandfather had begun to lend money, secretly holding his debtors’ possessions in hock. Someone informed against him, and one night the police descended on the house to search it. There was a great commotion, but it all turned out fine. Grandfather prayed until sunrise, and in the morning I watched him write those words in the calendar. ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
495:In Mesoamerica, timekeeping provided the stimulus that accounting gave to the Middle East. Like contemporary astrologers, the Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec believed that celestial phenomena like the phases of the moon and Venus affect daily life. To measure and predict these portents requires careful sky watching and a calendar. Strikingly, Mesoamerican societies developed three calendars: a 365-day secular calendar like the contemporary calendar; a 260-day sacred calendar that was like no other calendar on earth; and the equally unique Long Count, a one-by-one tally of the days since a fixed starting point thousands of years ago. ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
496:I've a habit of placing a happy-face or a frowny-face on my calendar, depending on what kind of day I've had. Often I slap a droopy circle in the box, discouraged by the things I failed to accomplish and the unpleasant encounters endured. But then, invariably, a wise muse stops to ask me these three questions:
Did your children let you hug them today? Yes.
Did you do a kind deed for someone? Anyone? Yes.
Did God forsake you today? No.
Then, my dear, despite your challenges, it was a good day after all.
Standing corrected, I twist that frowny-face upside down and smile. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
497:Then comes the investment. Newcomers are instructed to connect the app to their calendar service, granting Any.do access to the user’s schedule. In doing so, users give the app permission to send a notification after the next scheduled meeting ends. This external trigger prompts users to return to the app to record a follow-up task from the meeting they just attended. In the Any.do scenario, the app sends an external trigger to users at the moment when they are most likely to experience the internal trigger of anxiety about forgetting to do a task after a meeting. The Any.do app has anticipated a need and sets users up for success. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
498:I plucked a creased note from the table. Eight weeks ago, Curran, the Beast Lord of Atlanta, the lord and master of fifteen hundred shapeshifters, and my own personal psycho, had sat in the kitchen of my apartment in Atlanta and written out a menu on this piece of paper. I’d lost a bet to him, and according to the terms of our wager, I owed him one naked dinner. He’d added a disclaimer explaining that he’d settle for my wearing a bra and panties, since he wasn’t a complete beast—an assertion very open to debate.
He’d set a date, November 15, which was today. I knew this because I had checked the calendar three times already. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
499:If you do not know me, you whose presence is not even essential to me, it can only mean that this calendar has been badly printed. Your photographs on my walls and the bitter memories that our meetings have impressed upon my heart have only a paltry role in my love! You figure large in my dreams, ever-present, alone on the stage yet destitute of any role.
I encounter you rarely on my path. I am of an age when one begins to contemplate one's emaciated fingers, and at which youth is so full, so real that it cannot be long before it begins to fade. Your lips bring tears to my eyes; you sleep naked in my brain and I dare not rest. ~ Louis Aragon,#NFDB
500:If you do not know me, you whose presence is not even essential to me, it can only mean that this calendar has been badly printed. Your photographs on my walls and the bitter memories that our meetings have impressed upon my heart have only a paltry role in my love! You figure large in my dreams, ever-present, alone on the stage yet destitute of any role.
I encounter you rarely on my path. I am of an age when one begins to contemplate one's emaciated fingers, and at which youth is so full, so real that it cannot be long before it begins to fade. Your lips bring tears to my eyes; you sleep naked in my brain and I dare not rest. ~ Robert Desnos,#NFDB
501:why has almost everyone done the calendar thing, but almost no one has moved everything else in their life into a similar zone, by capturing it all and creating the habit of assessing it all appropriately? Three reasons: First, the data that is entered onto a calendar has already been thought through and determined; it’s been translated down to the physical action level. You agreed to call Jim at noon on Monday: there is no more thinking required about what the appropriate action is, or where and when you’re going to do it. Second, you know where those kinds of actions need to be parked (calendar), and it’s a familiar and available tool. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
502:Every year, Blue and her mother, Maura, had come to the same place, and every year it was chilly. But this year, without Maura here with her, it felt colder. It was April 24, St. Mark’s Eve. For most people, St. Mark’s Day came and went without note. It wasn’t a school holiday. No presents were exchanged. There were no costumes or festivals. There were no St. Mark’s Day sales, no St. Mark’s Day cards in the store racks, no special television programs that aired only once a year. No one marked April 25 on their calendar. In fact, most of the living were unaware that St. Mark even had a day named in his honor. But the dead remembered. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
503:The walls, where there was room, were well decorated with calendars and posters showing bright, improbable girls with pumped-up breasts and no hips - blondes, brunettes and redheads, but always with this bust development, so that a visitor of another species might judge from the preoccupation of artist and audience that the seat of procreation lay in the mammaries. Alice Chicoy...who worked among the shining girls, was wide-hipped and sag-chested and she walked well back on her heels...She was not in the least jealous of the calendar girls and the Coca-Cola girls. She had never seen anyone like them, and she didn't think anyone ever had. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
504:Vaughn?” she inquired. “One of them. Neil. It’s a family business.” Winsome and Gerry showed their warrant cards and Neil Vaughn invited them inside. The side of an old cardboard box served as a doormat, and they wiped their feet as best they could without reducing it to shreds. Vaughn seemed to be the only person around. After he asked them to sit down, he returned to a desk littered with papers and swiveled his chair to face them. The inside of the trailer was bleak, as such places usually are, and on the pasteboard walls were hung with a girlie calendar curling at the edges, a large chart with written-in squares and an Ordnance Survey ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
505:Thoreau writes, ‘The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk.’ Think of what a beautiful metaphor this is for not mistaking the husk—the outer accoutrements of productivity like busyness, or a full calendar, or a clever auto-responder—not mistaking those for the kernel, the core and substance of the actual work produced. And he then says, ‘Those who work much, do not work hard.’ I love that. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
506:Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
.........
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,#NFDB
507:think about how impossible it is to explain to the young what happens when you know you’re not immune from death. Everything changes. You look at the world differently. When you’re young, you have no perspective. You think life lasts forever—days and months and years stretching out to infinity. You think you don’t have to choose. You think you can waste time doing drugs and alcohol. You think time will always be on your side. But time, once your friend, becomes your enemy. It gallops by as you get older. Holidays come faster and faster. Years fly off the calendar as in old movies. All you long for is to go back and do it all over, correct the mistakes, ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
508:was one of just 27 women out of 235 students in my class at Yale Law School. The first woman partner at the oldest law firm in Arkansas. The first woman to chair the national board of the Legal Services Corporation. The person who declared on the world stage that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” The first First Lady to be elected to public office. The first woman Senator from New York. In fact, for a few weeks, I was both. By a quirk of the calendar, I was sworn in before Bill left office. And I was the first woman to be nominated for President by a major political party and win the national popular vote. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
509:To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine—unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
510:Father God, I am working to make room in my life for more of the things that please You. I want my daily activities, priorities, and choices to reflect my love for You and my commitment to You. Give me a discerning mind so that I make space for
family, prayer, devotion, worship, and caring for others and myself. Amen.
HEART ACTION
Take back control of your time and your days. Flip to your calendar and make three white spaces just for you. You'll be on your way to a new sense of freedom and peace.
The effect of tea is cooling and as a beverage it is most suitable. It is especially fitting for persons of self-restraint and inner worth.
Lu Yu ~ Emilie Barnes,#NFDB
511:She saw her mother appearing at her bedroom door. “Daddy and I want to talk to you about something.” It would not happen to Liam the way it had happened to her. Over her dead body. It was the one thing she’d always known she could and would spare him from. Her beautiful, grave-faced little boy would not feel the loss and confusion she’d felt that awful summer all those years ago. He would not pack a little overnight bag every second Friday. He would not have to check a calendar on the refrigerator to see where he was sleeping each weekend. He would not learn to think before he spoke whenever one parent asked a seemingly innocuous question about the other. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
512:More Sonnets At Christmas Ii
The day's at end and there's nowhere to go,
Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying;
Get up and once again politely lying
Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe
With greedy eyes that stare like an old crow.
How pleasantly the holly wreaths did hang
And how stuffed Santa did his reindeer clang
Above the golden oaken mantel, years ago!
Then hang this picture for a calendar,
As sheep for goat, and pray most fixedly
For the cold martial progress of your star,
With thoughts of commerce and society,
Well-milked Chinese, Negroes who cannot sing,
The Huns gelded and feeding in a ring.
~ Allen Tate,#NFDB
513:There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging ti it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
514:[Anna] In February, I woke up from a nap. A bouquet of flowers gathered from the various bushes and shrubs scattered around the island lay on the blanket beside me, a small length of rope wound around their stems.
I found T.J. down at the shore. “Someone’s been checking the calendar.”
He grinned. “I didn’t want to miss Valentine’s Day.”
I kissed him. “You’re sweet to me.”
Pulling me closer, he said, “It’s not hard, Anna.”
I stared into T.J.’s eyes, and he started to sway. My arms went around his neck and we danced, moving in a circle, the sand soft and warm under our feet.
“You don’t need music, do you?”
“No,” T.J. said. “But I do need you. ~ Tracey Garvis Graves,#NFDB
515:I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
516:Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. you stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the lobe on the desk... The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. all is suspect, a trick to lull us, rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time. ~ Lucia Berlin, #NFDB
517:But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it, can be apart from that—as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
518:of my France travels. Although when I spy the trepidation on Katie’s face as she sizes up the teeny-tiny bedroom and the single bed we are supposed to sleep in together, I know we’ll have to make other arrangements. That’s the thing with my France friends—they are all so lovely and welcoming and hospitable, but they are also very last minute and sometimes hard to pin down when it comes to plans. They don’t have the obsession with planning that we Americans have—the way we plot out our entire lives down to the minute on a Google calendar, send Evites ten weeks in advance to book friends for a simple dinner party, and start planning Thanksgiving and Christmas in July. In France, my friends don’t ~ Juliette Sobanet, #NFDB
519:Somewhat less appropriate was the blast that came from the loudspeaker, recently it had spoken on certain days, on others not at all, but always at the same time, as had been promised, clearly there was a timer in the transmitter which at the precise moment started up the recorded tape, the reason why it should have broken down from time to time we are never likely to know, these are matters for the outside world, it is in any case serious enough, insofar as it muddled up the calendar, the so-called counting of the days, which some blind men, natural obsessives, or lovers of order, which is a moderate form of obsession, had tried scrupulously to follow by making little knots in a piece of string... ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
520:It was because 'in 1776 our fathers retired the gods from politics.' The basic principle of the American Republic is the freedom of man in society.
The Declaration of Independence was the product of Intellectual Emancipation, and that is why, from thenceforth, our date of existence should be recorded, not from the mythical birth of Jesus Christ, but from the day of our Independence! This should be the year one hundred and seventy-eight in our calendar!
Despite discouraging signs here and there, the seeds of freedom planted by the American Revolution will take root, and throughout the world, if man will learn to zealously guard his freedom, Peace and Progress will come to all the world. ~ Joseph Lewis,#NFDB
521:Here In This Spring
Here in this spring, stars float along the void;
Here in this ornamental winter
Down pelts the naked weather;
This summer buries a spring bird.
Symbols are selected from the years'
Slow rounding of four seasons' coasts,
In autumn teach three seasons' fires
And four birds' notes.
I should tell summer from the trees, the worms
Tell, if at all, the winter's storms
Or the funeral of the sun;
I should learn spring by the cuckooing,
And the slug should teach me destruction.
A worm tells summer better than the clock,
The slug's a living calendar of days;
What shall it tell me if a timeless insect
Says the world wears away?
~ Dylan Thomas,#NFDB
522:But the events that transpired on those various dates did not throw the city of Moscow into upheaval. When the page was torn from the calendar, the bedroom windows did not suddenly shine with the light of a million electric lamps; that Fatherly gaze did not suddenly hang over every desk and appear in every dream; nor did the drivers of a hundred Black Marias turn the keys in their ignitions and fan out into the shadowy streets. For the launch of the First Five-Year Plan, Bukharin’s fall from grace, and the expansion of the Criminal Code to allow the arrest of anyone even countenancing dissension, these were only tidings, omens, underpinnings. And it would be a decade before their effects were fully felt. No. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
523:At 1.30 she left the hospital to do some shopping. Both men were sound asleep. Gentle afternoon sunlight flooded the room, and I felt as though I might drift off at any moment perching on my stool. Yellow and white chrysanthemums in a vase on the table by the window reminded people it was autumn. In the air floated the sweet smell of boiled fish left over from lunch. The nurses continued to clip-clop up and down the hall, talking to each other in clear, penetrating voices. They would peep into the room now and then and flash me a smile when they saw that both patients were sleeping. I wished I had something to read, but there were no books or magazines or newspapers in the room, just a calendar on the wall. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
524:Tenebrae is Latin for ‘darkness’, so it is a service of darkness. Tenebrae services are held on the night of Good Friday, and its purpose is to recreate the emotional aspects of the passion story. Specifically, Tenebrae is a Christian service with no benefits of Christ’s resurrection. There is no sermon, no prayer in Jesus’ name, no offering as there is no Christian work, and no benediction. There are no announcements, and there is no coffee hour. There is no chat before or after the service. It recreates the betrayal, abandonment and agony of the events of Christ’s death, and it is left unfinished, because the service isn’t over until Easter Day, making it technically the longest service of the Christian calendar. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
525:rhythmic philosophy. This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep. The chain method is a good example of the rhythmic philosophy of deep work scheduling because it combines a simple scheduling heuristic (do the work every day), with an easy way to remind yourself to do the work: the big red Xs on the calendar. Another common way to implement the rhythmic philosophy is to replace the visual aid of the chain method with a set starting time that you use every day for deep work. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
526:[We] have a tendency during meetings to let our minds run wild and cycle through a plethora of thoughts about the past and the future, destroying any aspirations for Zen-like calm and preventing us from being in the here and now: Did I turn off the stove? What will I do for lunch? When do I need to leave here in order to get to where I need to be next?
What if you could rely on others in your life to handle these things and you could narrow your attentional filter to that which is right before you, happening right now?...A professional musician friend... describes this state as "happily lost." He doesn't need to look at his calendar more than a day in advance, allowing each day to be filled with wonder and possibility. ~ Daniel J Levitin,#NFDB
527:Then on the fifth of October, to cheer the populace, we are given a new calendar. From this day forward, no one is to celebrate the Catholic festivals or use the calendar that dates from Christ’s birth. “We are a nation of thinkers,” Danton declares, “and as such, we shall celebrate the glorious rationalism that has brought us to such liberty.”
Not a single journalist in all of Paris dares to point out that our new liberty has imprisoned us within the city. That our dead are buried the same day they die—in mass graves—because there is no longer room and even gravediggers are not allowed outside the city gates. And so we all must pretend to embrace this new calendar. Those who do not use it are branded enemies of the patrie. ~ Michelle Moran,#NFDB
528:She wasn't planning on being a saint, right? Why would she? She'd get old and then regret it. What pleasure was there in being a saint? All you'd do is be in a picture on the church wall, or they'd hand you out during the priest's Christmastime visit or sell you at church fairs, or you'd have your name in the calendar. But you have to be a big-time saint for that. You'd have to kick another saint off, because there's already four or five of them for every day. Even the most saintly ones are going to get squeezed out soon. It's not worth the effort. On top of everything else, you never know if it's only down here you're considered a saint, but afterwards you're actually going to go roast in hell. How can we know what happens afterwards? ~ Wies aw My liwski, #NFDB
529:…I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking…
…I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you've ever said to me.
If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.
You would say it's too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can't be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast…. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
530:I now think that was distanced me from Tricia and from the Rape Crisis Center was their use of generalities. I did not want to be one of a group or compared with others. It somehow blindsided my sense that I was going to survive. Tricia prepared me for failure by saying that it would be okay if I failed. She did this by showing me that the odds out there were against me. But what she told me, I didn't want to hear. In the face of dismal statistics regarding arrest, prosecution, and even full recovery for the victim, I saw no choice but to ignore the statistics. I needed what gave me hope, like being assigned a female assistant district attorney, not the news that the number of rape prosecutions in Syracuse for that calendar year had been nil. ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
531:unemotional as possible when you’re asking for a raise. First, be really honest with yourself and make sure that you deserve the raise that you’re asking for. You do not automatically deserve a raise just because you’ve been somewhere for a certain amount of time. But if you can articulate the reasons why you deserve a pay increase, then schedule time to meet with your boss and let her know in advance what you want to talk about. This can be as simple as “I’d like to schedule some time with you to talk about my salary. Is it okay if we put something on the calendar?” Talk to your boss about this in person. Hitting him up on Gchat is not appropriate. If your company does regular yearly reviews, that can also be your chance to talk about money. ~ Sophia Amoruso, #NFDB
532:A calendar helps you plan work, gives you concrete goals, and keeps you on track. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a calendar method that helps him stick to his daily joke writing. He suggests that you get a wall calendar that shows you the whole year. Then, you break your work into daily chunks. Each day, when you’re finished with your work, make a big fat X in the day’s box. Every day, instead of just getting work done, your goal is to just fill a box. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld says. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” Get a calendar. Fill the boxes. Don’t break the chain. ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
533:As if the weather knew the calendar the last day of August broke with a hard killing frost. Where the sun fell the world spangled, autumn arriving in glacial brilliance, almost suggesting snow over the grass and low shrubbery. Where the sun has not yet struck it was ghostly, a pewter finish over the sagging grass and wilted goldenrod stems. The pods of milkweed were brittle and broke open to release their slight spherical webs of seed onto any straggle of breeze. Smoke streamed white straight up from chimney tops and mist obscured the lake, hanging in sheets of cold vapor that disintegrated slowly from the top down as the sun came over the hills. A third-quarter moon hung against the endless fathoms of a colbalt heaven, the moon a quartzite river stone. ~ Jeffrey Lent, #NFDB
534:Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
535:{Debbs' letter to Robert Ingersoll's granddaughter}
I was the friend of your immortal grandfather and I loved him truly… the name of Ingersoll is revered in our home, worshipped by us all, and the date of birth is holy in our calendar... I have never loved another mortal as I have loved Robert Green Ingersoll. ~ Eugene V Debs,#NFDB
536:Lots of stuff. We were in a space race! First we were going to put a city on the moon and then spread out to fill the planets. But somehow, for no reason I can find, they just stopped. And look at these broadcasts. If these are at all up to date, then none of what they’d always promised ever happened. No jet packs. No flying cars. It’s a good decade past the year 2000, according to their calendar, but where did the future go?” “We can make jet packs for them,” Kyal said, trying to calm him. “It’s sort of a primitive device, but I suppose we could fabricate a few, if you want.” “That’s not the point,” Danny said. “It’s not what we could make for them, it’s about what they didn’t become. It’s like the entire history of Earth after I left was one giant broken promise. ~ Gardner Dozois, #NFDB
537:When a puppy reaches maturity is becomes a dog; when ice melts it is called water; when twelve months have been used up, we get a new calendar with the proper chronological name; when "magic" becomes scientific fact we refer to it as medicine, astronomy, etc. When one name is no longer appropriate for a given thing it is only logical to change it to a new on which better fits the subject. Why, then, do we not follow suit in the area of religion? Why continue to call a religion the same name when the tenets of that religions no longer fit the original one? Or, if the religion does preach the same things that it always has, but its followers practice nearly none of its teachings, why do they continue to call themselves by the name given to followers of that religion? ~ Anton Szandor LaVey, #NFDB
538:Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all. ~ Mark Z Danielewski, #NFDB
539:Argument
Days that cannot bring you near
or will not,
Distance trying to appear
something more obstinate,
argue argue argue with me
endlessly
neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.
Distance: Remember all that land
beneath the plane;
that coastline
of dim beaches deep in sand
stretching indistinguishably
all the way,
all the way to where my reasons end?
Days: And think
of all those cluttered instruments,
one to a fact,
canceling each other's experience;
how they were
like some hideous calendar
"Compliments of Never & Forever, Inc."
The intimidating sound
of these voices
we must separately find
can and shall be vanquished:
Days and Distance disarrayed again
and gone...
~ Elizabeth Bishop,#NFDB
540:why has almost everyone done the calendar thing, but almost no one has moved everything else in their life into a similar zone, by capturing it all and creating the habit of assessing it all appropriately? Three reasons: First, the data that is entered onto a calendar has already been thought through and determined; it’s been translated down to the physical action level. You agreed to call Jim at noon on Monday: there is no more thinking required about what the appropriate action is, or where and when you’re going to do it. Second, you know where those kinds of actions need to be parked (calendar), and it’s a familiar and available tool. And third, if you lose track of calendar actions and commitments, you will encounter obvious and rapid negative feedback from people you consider important. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
541:Furber had come in the late fall following that enormous summer, now famous, in which the temperature had hung in the high nineties along the river for weeks, parching the fields, drying and destroying; weeks which had, unmindful of the calendar, fallen undiminished into October so that the leaves shriveled before they fell and fell while green, the river level fell, exposing flat stretches of mud and bottom weed, the Siren Rocks were seen for the first time in twenty years, quite round and disappointingly small, and an unmoving cover of dust lay thickly everywhere, on fields, trees, buildings, on the river itself which crawled beneath it blindly like a mole. -- William H. Gass, Omensetter's Luck, p. 97, Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 1997 (first published by The New American Library 1966). ~ William H Gass, #NFDB
542:Nothing happened for a whole day. Then, in a little hollow on the edge of the brooding hill, a few grains of sand shifted and left a tiny hole.
Something emerged. Something invisible. Something joyful and selfish and marvellous. Something as intangible as an idea, which is exactly what it was. A wild idea.
It was old in a way not measurable by any calendar known to Man and what it had, right now, was memories and needs. It remembered life, in other times and other universes. It needed people.
It rose against the stars, changing shape, coiling like smoke.
There were lights on the horizon.
It liked lights.
It regarded them for a few seconds and then, like an invisible arrow, extended itself towards the city and sped away.
It liked action, too . . . ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
543:We have almost all had the experience of gazing at the full moon. But those of us who are neither astronomers nor astronauts are unlikely to have scheduled moongazing appointments. For Zen Buddhists in Japan, however, every year, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar, followers gather at nightfall around specially constructed cone-shaped viewing platforms, where for several hours prayers are read aloud which use the moon as a springboard for reflections on Zen ideas of impermanence, a ritual known as tsukimi. Candles are lit and white rice dumplings (tsukimi dango) are prepared and shared out among strangers in an atmosphere at once companionable and serene, a feeling thereby supported by a ceremony, by architecture, by good company and by food. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
544:Next to her he felt both young and old. Old in his habits and fears, young in his curiosity and desires. And he wanted so badly to feel young. He never felt young, not even when the calendar said he was. He never had a one night stand, never went partying all night, never bought a one-way ticket to an island in the middle of the Pacific with no other plans than lazing around and drinking beer, and the list could on. Was he ever in his twenties? Or did he jump right into his mid-forties, a time of introspection and responsibilities? Now, not only was he obsessed by what he still didn’t have and concerned for what the future may bring, he also felt he had less time to accomplish everything he ever wanted. And it had to be everything. His forties were as angst-ridden as his twenties, if not even more. ~ Carol Vorvain, #NFDB
545:But we all die, and all death is violent, the overthrowing of the state of life, so why did that year [1968]seem so terrible? Are King or Kennedy or some peasant folk in a village more important than the starved-out of Biafra, the names on the Detroit homicide list? Maybe I'm playing an intellectual game, marking out one year or two on a calendar as special in horror so I can add that they were also special in significance, and thus compensate for the horror, or even redeem it. Humans are fond of finding ways to be grateful for their suffering, calling falls fortunate and deaths resurrection. It's not a bad idea, I guess: since you're going to have the suffering anyway, you might as well be grateful for it. Sometimes, though, I think if we didn't expect the suffering, we wouldn't have so much of it. ~ Marilyn French, #NFDB
546:Now this girl was about twenty-one years old. A sweet little coed. Spends a night with a married man. Goes home the next day and tells her mama and daddy. Don’t ask me why. Maybe just to rub their faces in it. They decide she needs a lesson. Whole family drives out into the desert, right out to that spot we just passed. All three of them plus the girl’s pet dog. Papa tells the girl to dig a shallow grave. Mama gets down on her hands and knees and holds the dog by the collar. When the girl is all through digging, papa gives her a .22 caliber revolver and tells her to shoot the dog. A real touching family scene. Make a good calendar for some religious group to give away. The girl puts the weapon to her temple and kills herself. Now isn’t that a heartwarming story? Restores my faith in just about everything. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
547:Each month was given a crackpot name that was supposed to sound like a Greek or Latin word for seasonal attributes: Vendémiaire (harvest); Brumaire (mist); Frimaire (cold); Nivôse (snow); Pluviôse (rain); Ventôse (wind); Germinal (seeding); Floréal (flowering); Prairial (meadow); Messidor (summer harvest); Thermidor (heat); and Fructidor (fruit). (The new calendar also included an observance known as “Kwanzaa,” which to this day no one has ever been able to explain.) The British recast the new French months as “Slippy, Nippy, Drippy; Freezy, Wheezy, Sneezy; Showery, Flowery, Bowery; Heaty, Wheaty, and Sweety.” Napoleon mercifully abolished the French Revolutionary Calendar on January 1, 1806, twelve years after its creation. Only the strong arm of a military dictatorship could save the French from themselves. Even ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
548:Seinfeld began his advice to Isaac with some common sense, noting “the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes,” and then explaining that the way to create better jokes was to write every day. Seinfeld continued by describing a specific technique he used to help maintain this discipline. He keeps a calendar on his wall. Every day that he writes jokes he crosses out the date on the calendar with a big red X. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld said. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” This chain method (as some now call it) soon became a hit among writers and fitness enthusiasts—communities that thrive on the ability to do hard things consistently. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
549:They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o’-shanter which wasn’t any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.
I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:
“You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective? ~ Raymond Chandler,#NFDB
550:The year is done. I spread the past three hundred sixty-five days before me on the living room carpet. Here is the month I decided to shed everything not deeply committed to my dreams. The day I refused to be a victim to the self-pity. Here is the week I slept in the garden. The spring I wrung the self-doubt by its neck. Hung your kindness up. Took down the calendar. The week I danced so hard my heart learned to float above water again. The summer I unscrewed all the mirrors from their walls. No longer needed to see myself to feel seen. Combed the weight out of my hair. I fold the good days up and place them in my back pocket for safekeeping. Draw the match. Cremate the unnecessary. The light of the fire warms my toes. I pour myself a glass of warm water to cleanse myself for january. Here I go. Stronger and wiser into the new. ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
551:Increase Your Productivity We live in a demanding and distracting world. Being productive can sometimes feel like an impossible feat. Here are three ways to get more done without burning out: Keep one to-do list. Include everything you want or need to do in one place. Writing it down helps get it off your mind and leaves you free to focus on the task at hand. Do the most important thing first. Before you leave work in the evening, decide what one thing you need to accomplish the next day. Do it first thing in the morning, when you’re likely to have the most energy and fewest distractions. Schedule time for non-urgent things. It’s easy to get caught up in the pressing issues of the day. Block off time in your calendar to do things that would otherwise get squeezed out, like writing, thinking creatively, or building relationships. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
552:An Autumn—blooming Rose
I found, and plucked, an autumn-blooming rose,
And shut my eyes, and scented all its savour:
When lo! as in the month the blackthorn blows,
Lambs 'gan to bleat, and merle and lark to quaver.
Flower of my life! inestimably dear,
Now that its calendar wanes sere and sober,
To me your freshness, turning back the year,
Makes that seem April others call October.
With me 'tis Autumn, and with you 'tis Spring,
But Love hath brought these seasons sweet together.
Within your leafy life I sit and sing,
And you with me share wealth of harvest weather.
Thus all things we exchange, and nothing lose:
Take you life's wisdom, lend to me life's sweetness.
Your vernal voice shall wed my mellow muse,
And song give youth, and youth give song, completeness.
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
553:Guns a-Blazin’
Ladd and the kids were shipping cattle one morning when a big thunderstorm moved in. Sometimes, if it’s just a standard morning of working cattle, they can stop and take a break as they wait for the rain to stop. But because the road was lined with cattle trucks, the show had to go on…so they just worked through the rain and were drenched from head to toe all morning.
I know this is a family-friendly cookbook and everything, but if there’s ever such a thing as a cowboy calendar, I’d like to enter my husband for the months of January through December. I love the smile on his face, even more so because he was soaked, had a big morning of work ahead, and on this day of all days, had every reason not to be smiling.
But his smile is definitely not the first thing I’m looking at in these photos. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
554:The Jew refers to Shavuot as Atzeret (i.e. holding back, refraining) because after the Counting of the Omer, the festival of Passover gets linked to that of the Holdover (i.e. Pentecost). However, Pentecost in Roman Christianity signals the coming of the Holy Spirit 40 days after Easter. To the Jew, the Counting of the Omer, which starts the day after Passover, symbolizes the Exodus and the freedom from 49 gates of his impurities and falling -in the same incarnation- on the 50th gate is irreversible where soul correction becomes impossible. What is astonishing about all this is that all of these details are graphically expressed -according to the ancient Egyptian decanic Calendar- on the circular zodiac of Dendera where the symbol of the Pig anchors the 50th gate which the Pharaonic spirit of the Jew is trying to evade at all costs. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
555:It's like escaping a hot, bright room
for the serenity of a city at night, covered in snow.
People eliminated. A carpet of silence
for taxis to whisper across. The world becoming
a pleasant dream of itself. The itch
of want smoldering to life on skin. Memory sends
a chill vanishing between vertebrae.
It's New Year's Eve. Hail the Calendar! As if
clocks will pause for a moment
before reloading their long rifles. Years are tiny
freckles on the face of a century.
Where is the constellation we gazed at each night
Through a bill rolled so tight
the first President lost his breath, as our eyeballs
literally unraveled? I am alone
in the rectangular borough in the observatory,
where even fire trucks can't rescue
the arsonist stretching his calves in my brain. ~ Jeffrey McDaniel,#NFDB
556:Today is an ephemeral ghost...
A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."
In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up!
But this day holds another secret—it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...
A day of unlocked potential.
Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you?
Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability! ~ Vera Nazarian,#NFDB
557:There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew: “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
558:There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
559:There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
560:She needed Andrew Simpson Smith, it was that simple. And he had spent his life training to help people like her. Gods.
"Okay, Andrew. But let's leave today. I'm in a hurry."
"Of course. Today." He stroked the place where his slight beard was beginning to grow. "These ruins where your friends are waiting? Where are they?"
Tally glances up at the sun, still low enough to indicate the eastern horizon. After a moment's calculation, she pointed off to the northwest, back toward the city and beyond that, the Rusty Ruins. "About a week's walk that way."
"A week?"
"That means seven days."
"Yes, I know the gods' calendar," he said huffily. "But a whole week?"
"Yeah. That's not so far, is it?" The hunters had been tireless on their march the night before.
He shook his head, an awed expression on his face. "But that is beyond the edge of the world. ~ Scott Westerfeld,#NFDB
561:The Book of Jubilees follows a solar calendar of 364 days per year, to which it refers as a “complete year”, and so is 1 Enoch 71 which additionally refers to the eastern six gates and points to the solar revolution northwards and eastwards between them as I have demonstrated on the circular zodiac of Dendera. The Book of Enoch goes on with the narrative acknowledging the presence of four days (in Chapter 74) which are not counted in the computation of the year during the monthly reckoning (as in the case with my discovery of the six days on the zodiac which I called, the Eastern Portals); the year hence according to both books consists of 364 days. This is a major evidence of the tampered narrative of the Bible which has implanted ancient Egyptian system of theology according to the ancient Egyptian calendar which I was able to decipher from the zodiac of Dendera. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
562:She used these moments as she used all such time now to gird herself for the coming necessities. Time pressed; a special calendar drove her. She had looked at a calendar before leaving Chapter House, caught as often happened to her by the persistence of time and its language: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. . . Standard Years, to be precise. Persistence was an inadequate word for the phenomenon. Inviolability was more like it. Tradition. Never disturb tradition. She held the comparisons firmly in mind, the ancient flow of time imposed on planets that did not tick to the primitive human clock. A week was seven days. Seven! How powerful that number remained. Mystical. It was enshrined in the Orange Catholic Bible. The Lord made a world in six days “and on the seventh day He rested.” Good for Him! Odrade thought. We all should rest after great labors. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
563:There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" Fred, A Christmas Carol. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
564:When the Babylonians began to chart the stars, they first of all grouped them together into constellations of lions, virgins, archers, and scorpions-shaped them into sub-assemblies, celestial holons. The first calendar-makers wove the linear thread of time into the hierarchic pattern of solar days, lunar months, stellar years, Olympic cycles. Similarly, the Greek astronomers broke up homogenous space into the hierarchy of the eight heavenly spheres, each equipped with its clockwork of epicycles.
We cannot help interpreting Nature as an organisation of parts-within-parts, because all living matter and all stable inorganic systems have a part-within-part architecture, which lends them articulation, coherence, and stability; and where the structure is not inherent or discernible, the mind provides it by projecting butterflies into the ink-blot and camels into the clouds. ~ Arthur Koestler,#NFDB
565:Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
566:Any chance you might be pregnant?”
I knew that wasn’t it. “Well, it wouldn’t be impossible,” I humored him. “But I know that’s not what it is. I got this same thing on our honeymoon, just as soon as we got to Australia. It’s definitely some kind of vertigo/inner ear thing.” I swallowed hard, wishing I’d brought along some Froot Loops.
“When was your wedding?” he asked, looking at the calendar on the wall of the exam room.
“September twenty-first,” I answered. “But again…I know it’s my ears.”
“Well, let’s just rule it out,” the doctor said. “I’ll send the nurse in here in a minute, okay?”
Waste of time, I thought. “Okay, but…do you think there’s anything we can do about my ears?” I really didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
“Marcy will be in here in just a second,” he repeated. He wasn’t acknowledging my self-diagnosis at all. What kind of doctor is this? ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
567:When Miss Petitfour made a fancy salad, Minky watched the way the lettuce leaves bent under the slight weight of the Parmesan; when Miss Petitfour had cheese toast for tea, Minky noticed how the cheddar melted into every little crevice and crater of the toast. She licked her whiskers greedily when Miss Petitfour lowered her hand to feed her snippets and smidgens, pinches and wedges, slices and crumbs. Minky loved all cheese--Swiss cheese, Edam cheese, Gruyere and Roquefort, Brie cheese and blue cheese, mozzarella and Parmesan, hard cheese, crumbly cheese, creamy cheese, lumpy cheese. Minky even had a cheese calendar that she kept with, which Miss Petitfour had given to her for Christmas. Each month there was a big picture of a different kind of cheese in a mouthwatering pose: blue cheese cavorting with pears, cheddar laughing with apples, Gruyere lounging with grapes, Edam joking with parsley. ~ Anne Michaels, #NFDB
568:FRIDAY Luke 21:25–36 REFLECTION This Jesus taught as a second Jeremiah. “The world’s a scary place, but don’t let your hearts be troubled. I have overcome the world. So wait in the midst of it all, just before the dawn, for in the midst of the night there are strange and redeeming events afoot.” And with this the church begins a new year, asked to begin afresh, not just on a calendar, but in individual hearts, in relationships, in congregations, and in our yearning for a promise worth living for. Hearers of this passage are bidden to live lives of faithful, active waiting in the meantime because they hear again the name of the One who holds them in the ending time. WESLEY D. AVRAM RESPONSE What fresh thing is waiting to be born in your life or the life of the congregation of which you are a part? PRAYER Redeeming God, I wait with fresh eyes and ears for the new things you will do in my life. Amen. ~ Kathleen Long Bostrom, #NFDB
569:Veteran Sirens
The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now
To laugh at them, were she to see them here,
So brave and so alert for learning how
To fence with reason for another year.
Age offers a far comelier diadem
Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace,
When time’s malicious mercy cautions them
To think a while of number and of space.
The burning hope, the worn expectancy,
The martyred humor, and the maimed allure,
Cry out for time to end his levity,
And age to soften its investiture;
But they, though others fade and are still fair,
Defy their fairness and are unsubdued;
Although they suffer, they may not forswear
The patient ardor of the unpursued.
Poor flesh, to fight the calendar so long;
Poor vanity, so quaint and yet so brave;
Poor folly, so deceived and yet so strong,
So far from Ninon and so near the grave.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
570:We’re influenced by how issues are framed. Many 401(k) plans no longer ask employees whether they want to contribute. Instead, they ask employees if they want to opt out of participating. If we were rational, it wouldn’t matter how the question was framed. But in this case, it produces a radically different outcome. By asking employees if they want to opt out, 401(k) plans tap into our tendency toward inertia and make participation appear to be the norm. Result: Many more employees put away money for retirement. Similarly, we can be influenced by how investment gains and losses are framed. We might be told that, “over the past 50 years, stocks have made money in 75 percent of all calendar years.” Alternatively, we might be told that “over the past 50 years, stocks have lost money in 25 percent of all calendar years.” The two sentences tell us the same thing—yet the first description makes stocks seem more appealing. ~ Jonathan Clements, #NFDB
571:Inside each man, though he did not know it, nor ever considered it, was the image of the woman he someday must love. Whether she was composed of all the music he had ever heard or all the trees he had ever seen or all the friends of his childhood, certainly no one could tell. Whether the eyes were his mother's, and the chin that of a girl cousin swimming in a summer lake twenty-five years ago, this was unknowable also. But most men carried this image, like a locket, like a pearl-cameo, in their head a lifetime, taking it out only rarely, taking it never, after marriage, afraid then to compare it to the reality. And most men never saw the woman they would love anywhere, in the dark theatre, in a book, or passing on the street. They saw her only after midnight when the city was asleep and the pillow was cool under their heads. And she was a composite of all dreams and all women and every moonlit night since the calendar began ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
572:The first thing I do is take a final look at my e-mail inbox to ensure that there’s nothing requiring an urgent response before the day ends. The next thing I do is transfer any new tasks that are on my mind or were scribbled down earlier in the day into my official task lists. (I use Google Docs for storing my task lists, as I like the ability to access them from any computer—but the technology here isn’t really relevant.) Once I have these task lists open, I quickly skim every task in every list, and then look at the next few days on my calendar. These two actions ensure that there’s nothing urgent I’m forgetting or any important deadlines or appointments sneaking up on me. I have, at this point, reviewed everything that’s on my professional plate. To end the ritual, I use this information to make a rough plan for the next day. Once the plan is created, I say, “Shutdown complete,” and my work thoughts are done for the day. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
573:Inside each man, though he did not know it, nor ever considered it, was the image of the woman he someday must love. Whether she was composed of all the music he had ever heard or all the trees he had ever seen or all the friends of his childhood, certainly no one could tell. Whether the eyes were his mother's, and the chin that of a girl cousin swimming in a summer lake twenty-five years ago, this was unknowable also. But most men carried this image, like a locket, like a pearl-cameo, in their head a lifetime, taking it out only rarely, taking it never, after marriage, afraid then to compare it to the reality. And most men never saw the woman they would love anywhere, in the dark theatre, in a book, or passing on the street. They saw her only after midnight when the city was asleep and the pillow was cool under their heads. And she was a composite of all dreams and all women and every moonlit night since the calendar began. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
574:To The Seasons
Having overcome the accidents of Winter, Summer, Spring, and the Rains,
I welcome at my heart’s evening the void, the null, the absolute zero
No longer prey to the whimsy of the seasons, I rejoice
In freedom from function,
liberty from thought, lightness of death
No longer wronged by the contingent, the wails of the grieving,
Laughter and shrieks of the whirling months, I yield at most
To the malaise of old age, to the body’s loss of humors
Markings in a dead script on a calendar no longer in use
In a ruined palace my moving finger points to rusty locks hanging
From rows of the chained doors of long deserted chambers
Dimmed is the former chiaroscuro, my heart is monochrome
A late autumn landscape with gray fog shading into a pallid moon
In my ears the ageless sea confirms what I already know
I have for company only the void, the vacuum, the zero
~ Buddhadeb Bosu,#NFDB
575:Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale”
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths. ~ Dan Albergotti,#NFDB
576:Grateful for their generosity, Muhammad orders the land to be leveled, the graves dug up, and the palm trees cut down for timber to build a modest home. He envisions a courtyard roofed in palm leaves, with living quarters made of wood and mud lining the walls. But this will be more than a home. This converted drying-ground and cemetery will serve as the first masjid, or mosque, of a new kind of community, one so revolutionary that many years later, when Muslim scholars seek to establish a distinctly Islamic calendar, they will begin not with the birth of the Prophet, nor with the onset of Revelation, but with the year Muhammad and his band of Emigrants came to this small federation of villages to start a new society. That year, 622 C.E., will forever be known as Year 1 A.H. (After Hijra); and the oasis that for centuries had been called Yathrib will henceforth be celebrated as Medinat an-Nabi: “The City of the Prophet,” or more simply, Medina. There ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
577:The mind is a glass floor.
The mind is the spirit’s tear.
The mind is our prior and subsequent ghost.
The mind is the Bullion Express and the blood on the tracks.
The mind is a stone door.
The silver on the backs of mirrors.
The wave that defines the coast.
It’s what the drunk grave robbers couldn’t stuff in their sacks.
The mind is the sum of all and more.
The spasm between one and zero in the Calendar of Black-Hole Years.
The contract between the lash and the whipping post.
A quilt of dreams stitched with facts.
A meaningless argument among whores.
Rain that keeps falling when the sky clears.
A masquerade party, guest and host.
A candlelit landscape of puddled wax.
The mind is what thought is for.
The parking lot at the Mall of Fears.
The fire-pit for the piggy roast.
What the soul surrendered and won’t take back.
The mind is neither either nor or.
The real center of an empty sphere. ~ Jim Dodge,#NFDB
578:The Search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
579:But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he ought not therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth upwards, and to have gone through the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness; the honourable mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls. Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived. Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience. Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge. Yes, ~ Plato, #NFDB
580:Moreover: then, you say, science itself will teach man (though this is really a luxury in my opinion) that in fact he has neither will nor caprice, and never did have any, and that he himself is nothing but a sort of piano key or a sprig in an organ;14 and that, furthermore, there also exist in the world the laws of nature; so that whatever he does is done not at all according to his own wanting, but of itself, according to the laws of nature. Consequently, these laws of nature need only be discovered, and then man will no longer be answerable for his actions, and his life will become extremely easy. Needless to say, all human actions will then be calculated according to these laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms, up to 108,000, and entered into a calendar; or, better still, some well-meaning publications will appear, like the present-day encyclopedic dictionaries, in which everything will be so precisely calculated and designated that there will no longer be any actions or adventures in the world. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
581:The establishment of a precise calendar was necessary for tax collection, the development of irrigation works, fixing the times of sowing and harvest, and so for determining when a war could be waged. (At the center of this, the problem of intercalation: the lunar calendar determined the months, but, since the twelve lunar months did not completely fill the solar year, there was a constant gap which was made up for gradually, and then in one go, with the intercalation of a thirteenth month.)
At the level of an extended empire, these calculations and the decisions which followed from them could only be centralized. Cosmo- or theogonic knowledge was also linked to political power. [...] Linked to political power and the State apparatus in these two ways, knowledge is quite naturally located in the hands of functionaries: knowledge is a State service and political instrument. Hence its necessary secret character. It does not have to circulate or be widespread. It is linked directly to the possession of power. ~ Michel Foucault,#NFDB
582:The traditional Roman year was only 355 days long, and it had for centuries been the job of Roman priests to add in an extra month from time to time to keep the civic calendar in step with the natural seasons. For whatever reason – probably a combination of lack of expertise and lack of will – they had signally failed to get their calculations correct. The result was that the calendar year and the natural year were sometimes many weeks apart, with the Roman equivalent of harvest festivals falling when the crops were still growing and the climate in what was called April feeling more like February (which it was). The truth is that it is always dangerous in Republican history to assume that any given date is an accurate indication of the weather. Using Alexandrian know-how, Caesar corrected the error and, for the future, established a year with 365 days, with an extra day inserted at the end of February every four years. This was a far more significant outcome of his visit to Egypt than any dalliance with Cleopatra. Other ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
583:The calendar was divided into twelve columns and each day was marked with an F or an N, depending on whether it was fastus or nefastus—lucky or unlucky, lawful or unlawful. On the former days, business could be conducted, the law courts could sit, farmers could begin plowing or harvesting crops. Especially fortunate days were marked with a C (for comitialis), which meant that popular assemblies could meet. Some days were thought to be so unlucky that it was not even permissible to hold religious ceremonies: these included the days following the Kalends (first of a month), Nones (the ninth day before the Ides), the Ides (the thirteenth or fifteenth of the month) and the anniversaries of national disasters. If a day was nefastus, the gods frowned on human exertion (although one was allowed to continue a task already started). An added complication was that some days were partly lucky and partly unlucky. According to a stone-carved calendar discovered at Antium, 109 days were nefasti, 192 comitiales, and 11 were mixed. ~ Anthony Everitt, #NFDB
584:Squaring the Circle was devised upon disbelief in Adam's heritage (which were granted to him by God) by the ancients to replace his tradition with that of the "Christ" whom was proclaimed anew in each age. The Egyptian Royal Cubit (according to Michell) equals to 1.728 feet; it was used in Squaring the Circle of the New Jerusalem which was based on the Great Pyramid's model. The Great Pyramid's base diagonal equals to one complete circular rotation of a Royal Cubit pace (622/360=1.728), and its structure is raised in an angle into the skies to project the Moon's rotation (622=51.85*12). We can link the meter as a unit of measurement to ancient Egypt -even though it was only recently devised- because it harmonizes with its decanic calendar which is still in use today by the Judeo-Christian heirs of Pharaoh's religion. The Royal Cubit angularly articulates the Primal Creation on yearly, monthly (0.5236*180/pi) and weekly (pi/6) basis and that is exactly why it was utilized; it served as a good tool for Squaring the Circle. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
585:But what one finds in the New World os not just a collection of houses and buildings, which might have had the same common ancestor in the mesolithic hamlet. One discovers, rather, a parallel collection of cultural traits: highly developed fertility ceremonies, a pantheon of cosmic deities, a magnified ruler and central authority who personifies the whole community, great temples whose forms recall such functionally different structures as the pyramid and the ziggurat, along with the same domination of a peasantry by an original hunter-warrior group, or (among the early Mayas) an even more ancient priesthood. Likewise the same division of castes and specialization of vocational groups, and the beginnings of writing, time measuring, and the calendar-including an immense extension of time perspectives among the Mayas, which surpasses in complexity and accuracy even what we know of the cosmic periods of the Babylonians and the Egyptians. These traits seem too specific to have been spontaneously repeated in a whole constellation. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
586:Then he withdrew in silence, but shaking his head as though inwardly exclaiming, “An Unbeliever.” No! low as I have fallen, I am not an unbeliever. God is my witness that I believe in Him. But how did that old man address me? Nothing to be felt, nothing to affect me, nothing to draw forth tears, nothing which sprung from his heart to enter into mine, — nothing which was addressed from himself to myself. On the contrary, there was something vague, inaccentuated, applicable to any case and to none in particular: emphatic where it should have been profound, flat where it ought to have been simple; a species of sentimental sermon and theological elegy. Now and then a quotation in Latin; here and there the names of Saint Augustine and Saint Gregory, and others of the Calendar. And throughout he had the air of reciting a lesson which he had already twenty times repeated; seeming to go over a theme almost obliterated in his memory from being so long known; but not one look in his eyes, not one accent in his voice, to indicate that he was interested! ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
587:For Japanese people before 1868, Europeans were little more than curious beasts, strange and incomprehensible. Then, after the Meiji Restoration, everything changed. Along with European science and technology, European art flooded into Japan, all forms of it representing themselves as the universal—and most advanced—model. The same was true of novels. The Japanese, with characteristic diligence, began to read masterpieces of European literature, first in the original and then in translation. And such is the power of literature that through the act of reading, little by little the Japanese came to live the lives of Europeans as if they were their own. They began to live the ambitions of Julien Sorel, the happiness of Jane Eyre, the sufferings of young Werther, and the despair of Anna Karenina as if they were their own. They thus began living a new temporality—that which flows in the West, dictated by the Gregorian calendar, marked by major historical events in the West. And by so doing, they eventually joined what the Europeans called "humanity. ~ Minae Mizumura, #NFDB
588:But I do know that when you and I approach God for help, filled with our cares and distresses, our prayers are not confined to this calendar date, to this particular month and year. What may seem to be His silence and avoidance from where you sit today is already reverberating in future places. If not right here, if not right now, you can be sure His ability is taking visible, tangible shape somewhere, even if beyond the scope of your current sightline. You and I are living right this minute on a tiny dot of time within a vast sea of God-moments. And the ripple effect of today’s prayer, today’s faith—today’s now—spirals out in all directions for all eternity, bumping something here, affecting something there, all under God’s watchful eye and wisdom. Each time we turn to Him, each time we trust, each time we bring our all to the surpassing greatness of His all, we find ourselves instantly connected to every future time zone where His ability lives. We link up across generations where He is already working, present-tense, to make His glory known. ~ Priscilla Shirer, #NFDB
589:Ix who?"
"Ix Caut. Your name in this life meant 'Little Snake.'" Bill watched her face change. "It was a term of endearment in the Mayan culture. Sort of."
"The same way getting your head impaled on a stick was an honor?"
Bill rolled his stone eyes. "Stop being so ethnocentric.That means thinking your own culture is superior to other cultures."
"I know what it means," she said, working the band into her dirty hair. "But I'm not being superior. I just don't think having my head stuck on one of these racks would be so great." There was a faint thrumming in the air,like faraway drumbeats.
"That's exactly the sort of thing Ix Caut would say! You always were a little bit backward!"
"What do you mean?"
"See,you-Ix Caut-were born during the Wayeb',which are these five odd days at the end of Mayan year that everyone gets real superstitious about because they don't fit into the calendar. Kind of like leap-year days.It's not exactly lucky to be born during the Wayeb'. So no one was shocked when you grew up to be an old maid. ~ Lauren Kate,#NFDB
590:I’m talking to God here, be with ye as soon as we’re done,— Is Mason going to get angry and into a fight? Will he stand and announce, “This is none of God’s judgment,— to be offended as gravely by Calendar Reform as by Mortal Sin, requires a meanness of spirit quite out of the reach of any known Deity,— tho’ well within the resources of Stroud, it seems.” And walk out thro’ their stunn’d ranks to the Embrace of the Night, and never enter the place again? No.— He buys ev’ryone another Pint, instead, and resigns himself to seeking out his Family tomorrow,— tho’ sure Agents of Melancholy, they sooner or later feel regretful for it, whilst Regret is just the sort of Sentiment that regular life at The George depends on having no part of. The Landlord is kind and forthright, the Ale as good as any in Britain, the Defenestration of the Clothiers in ’56 has inscrib’d the place forever in Legend, and Good Eggs far outnumber Bad Hats,— yet so dismal have these late Hours in it been for Mason, as to make him actually look forward to meeting his Relations again. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
591:But despite these signs of ill-omen, the city was poised, with a new myth glinting in the corners of its eyes. August in Bombay: a month of festivals, the month of Krishna's birthday and Coconut Day; and this year - fourteen hours to go, thirteen, twelve - there was an extra festival on the calendar because a nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with Middle Kingdom Egypt, was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of phenomenal collective will - except in a dream we all agreed to dream; it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat, and would periodically need the satisfaction and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood. India, the new myth - a collective fiction in which everything was possible, a fable rivaled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
592:Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as pendulum clocks placed next to one another soon beat in unison. Fireflies in a tree flash on and off as one. The sun comes up and it goes down. The moon waxes and wanes and usually the morning paper hits the porch at six thirty-five.
Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. You stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the globe on the desk. Persia, the Belgian Congo. The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. All is suspect, a trick to lull us, to rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time. ~ Lucia Berlin,#NFDB
593:Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book published in 1516. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church of England, a decision which ended his political career and led to his execution as a traitor. In 1935, four hundred years after his death, More was canonized in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI, and was later declared the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen. He shares his feast day, June 22 on the Catholic calendar of saints, with Saint John Fisher, the only Bishop during the English Reformation to maintain his allegiance to the Pope. More was added to the Anglican Churches' calendar of saints in 1980. Source: Wikipedia ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
594:...eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in…
And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star
Both intimate and ultimate,
And you will be heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper
Oh let me, for a while longer, enter the two
Beautiful bodies of your lungs...
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for your eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of a single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life- just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
Still another…
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world. ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
595:passions without truth, truths without passion; heroes without heroic deeds, history without events; development, whose sole driving force seems to be the calendar, wearying with constant repetition of the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to lose their sharpness and fall away without being able to resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded exertions and philistine terror at the danger of the world’s coming to an end, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court comedies played by the world redeemers, who in their laisser aller remind us less of the Day of Judgment than of the times of the Fronde – the official collective genius of France brought to naught by the artful stupidity of a single individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks through universal suffrage, seeking its appropriate expression through the inveterate enemies of the interests of the masses, until at length it finds it in the self-will of a filibuster. If any section of history has been painted gray on gray, it is this. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
596:Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it, an old podium that once held a Bible, on which we have repurposed an old chemistry handbook as the Book of Lilith. In its pages is our own liturgical calendar: Saint Clementine and All Wayfarers; Saints Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, observed in the summer with blueberries to symbolize the sapphire ring; the Vigil of Saint Juliette, complete with mints and dark chocolate; Feast of the Poets, during which Mary Oliver is recited over beds of lettuce, Kay Ryan over a dish of vinegar and oil, Audre Lorde over cucumbers, Elizabeth Bishop over some carrots; The Exaltation of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated with escargots boiling in butter and garlic and cliffhangers recited by an autumn fire; the Ascension of Frida Khalo with self-portraits and costumes; the Presentation of Shirley Jackson, a winter holiday started at dawn and ended at dusk with a gambling game played with lost milk teeth and stones. Some of them with their own books; the major and minor arcana of our little religion. ~ Carmen Maria Machado, #NFDB
597:The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
598:The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?
No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
599:Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you. PSALM 9:10 SEPTEMBER 29 A missionary’s wife in central China during World War II knew the Japanese were approaching her city. She was with her baby girl, two months old, and her son, just over a year old. Her husband had been taken to a hospital, himself ill. He was one hundred and fifteen miles away and would not be back for perhaps a month. The poor woman was filled with fear—she was alone and unprotected, in bitter January weather. When morning came, she realized that she was without food for her children. She pulled off the calendar page. That day’s verse stated simply: “So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children” (Genesis 50:21). There was a rap at the door. “We knew you would be hungry,” said a longtime neighbor, “and you didn’t know how to milk the goats. So I have milked your goats. Here is milk for your children.” Will you try to explain this away, handle it on an intellectual basis as just pure coincidence? When you come right down to it, what is coincidence? It is an act of God in the midst of time. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
600:Long before the Aryan Judeo-Christian plagiarization of the Semite's Scripture took place, the ancient Egyptian concept of the Trinity was a calendrical system of theology. The Aryan Osirian Jew annexed the ancient Egyptian calendar through Osiris' Scepter, while the Aryan Atenian Christian did so through Horus' Scepter. Both Scepters, however, symbolize that very same calendrical anchor when the cow-god YHWH annually rested in ancient Egypt; an event which the Jew and the Christian projected weekly and commemorated on Scepterday and Sonday, consecutively. The Jew has temporally reduced the symbol of the Scepter to the Sabbath, whereas the Christian has spatially reduced it to the Sun; a temporospatial ancient Egyptian unholiness of plagiarizing Semitic Scripture and its seven-days week calendar. That Judeo-Christian Trinity -which the former is trying so hard to conceal while the latter shies not from proclaiming- consists of the three ancient Egyptian calendrical elements: Sky, Moon and Sun. These elements were Hathor, Osiris and Horus who later on became to be identified as YHWH, the departed King coming as the Holy Spirit and the Son. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
601:I do not use Gematria, and neither were it used as a scientific tool by Muslims before. It is, as wiki puts it, an Assyro-Babylonian-Greek system of code and numerology later adopted into Jewish culture that assigns numerical value to a word or phrase in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to nature, a person's age, the calendar year, or the like.
Therefore, I am not a numerologist who places faith in numerical patterns and draws pseudo-scientific inferences from them. I only engage in observational studies of mathematical patterns without assigning numerical values to events, texts, words and phrases. This is what scientists do and Mathematics per se is after all the science of quantity; hence, I do not need to assign quantities to any specific concepts or physical objects but rather deal with quantities as they are conceptually and physically regardless of the unit of measurement used. And finally comes a phase of interpretation where different units of measurements are linked to one another according to some rule. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,#NFDB
602:We are all driven to select a mate. Those of us who don’t do not pass our genes on to the future. A human female is apparently driven to select a mate that will provide for her and her offspring. If nothing else, such behavior or motivation would be consistent with the tenets of sexual selection. A human male selects a mate that is, by his reckoning, well suited to carrying his genes forward. The female has to make her genes appear valuable by “playing hard to get,” as the old saying was and is so often said. But really … all things in moderation. Look around. So much of what goes on in our society is motivated by the process of sexual selection, and there are many subtle and not-so-subtle things that affect that process: There’s mascara. Expensive watches. Amazing shoes. Sports cars, perfume, skirts, ties, jeans, boots, and on and on. Now, compare us to everybody else. By everybody else I mean dogs and cats and lions and tigers and bears … and squids and whales. All the other animals around, and all the plants, have seasons to their mating. We humans don’t seem to. When it comes to our babies, birthdays are pretty well distributed around the calendar. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB
603:Many of us spend hours filling out forms on computers—forms that require names, dates, addresses, telephone numbers, monetary sums, and other information in a fixed, rigid format. Worse, often we are not even told the correct format until we get it wrong. Why not figure out the variety of ways a person might fill out a form and accommodate all of them? Some companies have done excellent jobs at this, so let us celebrate their actions. Consider Microsoft’s calendar program. Here, it is possible to specify dates any way you like: “November 23, 2015,” “23 Nov. 15,” or “11.23.15.” It even accepts phrases such as “a week from Thursday,” “tomorrow,” “a week from tomorrow,” or “yesterday.” Same with time. You can enter the time any way you want: “3:45 PM,” “15.35,” “an hour,” “two and one-half hours.” Same with telephone numbers: Want to start with a + sign (to indicate the code for international dialing)? No problem. Like to separate the number fields with spaces, dashes, parentheses, slashes, periods? No problem. As long as the program can decipher the date, time, or telephone number into a legal format, it is accepted. I hope the team that worked on this got bonuses and promotions. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
604:The Exorcists
And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.
For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid.
I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to us and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us, squalled out, we breathed in rain
and stroked past the boat.
We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped
in green and that suddenly inadequate stain
of lightning belling around
our skin. Bodies in air
we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack.
It was yellow inside, the sound
of the underwing of the sun. I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a-brac
of summer loves, I know
you not.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
605:Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, [...] came to teach [the ancient inhabitants of Mexico] the benefits of settled agriculture and the skills necessary to build temples. Although this deity is frequently depicted as a serpent, he is more often shown in human form--the serpent being his symbol and his alter ego--and is usually described as "a tall bearded white man" ... "a mysterious person ... a white man with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes and a flowing beard." Indeed, [...] the attributes and life history of Quetzalcoatl are so human that it is not improbable that he may have been an actual historical character ... the memory of whose benefactions lingered after his death, and whose personality was eventually deified. The same could very well be said of Oannes--and just like Oannes at the head of the Apkallu (likewise depicted as prominently bearded) it seems that Quetzalcoatl traveled with his own brotherhood of sages and magicians. We learn that they arrived in Mexico "from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles," and that Quetzalcoatl was regarded as having been "the founder of cities, the framer of laws and the teacher of the calendar. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
606:Structure of the Calendar When we talk about the Mayan Calendar, we are really talking about two calendars—one that measures ordinary time, and one that measures sacred time. These two calendars interpenetrate in such a way as to integrate and synthesize the secular and sacred dimensions of reality. In this book we shall be primarily concerned with the measure of ritual time, usually called the tzolk’in and sometimes referred to as the Ritual Almanac or Divinatory Almanac. We do not know what the ancient Maya called this ritual or sacred aspect of the Calend a r . M o s t s c h o l a r s u s e t h e Y u c a t e c t e r m t z o l k’i n (f ro m tzol = count and k’in = day, hence "count of days"), but this term may not have been used by the Classic Maya and is in fact based on the equivalent K’iche’ term ch’olq’ij. 1 The tzolk’in is a unique method of reckoning time. It consists of twenty named days combined with thirteen numbers. Each day-name is repeated thirteen times during the Calendar cycle, for a total of 260 days (13 x 20 = 260). The twenty days, with their glyphs, directional correspondences, Mayan names, and some of their most common English meanings, are shown here as “The Names of the Days. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
607:Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent. Everywhere, in every family, every tribe, every great community, crimes, crimes, crimes. War is clean by comparison. The hangman is a gentle dove by comparison. Attila, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan reckless automatons by comparison. Your father, your darling mother, your sweet sister: do you know the foul crimes they harbor in their breasts? Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
608:When you left
you left behind a field
of silent flowers
under a sky
full of unstirred clouds...you left
a million butterflies
mid-silky flutters
You left like midnight rain
against my dreaming ears
Oh and how you left
leaving my coffee scentless
and my couch comfortless
leaving upon my fingers
the melting snow of you
you left behind
a calendar full of empty days
and seasons full of aimless wanders
leaving me alone
with an armful of sunsets
your reflection behind
in every puddle
your whispers
upon every curtain
your fragrance
inside every petal
you left your echoes in between
the silence of my eyes
Oh and how you left
leaving my sands footless
and my shores songless
leaving me with windows full of
moistened moonlight
nights and nights
of only a half-warmed soul
and when you left...
you left behind a lifetime
of moments untouched
the light of a million stars
unshed
and when you left
you somehow
left my poem...unfinished.
(Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11
Number 1 June 2012) ~ Sanober Khan,#NFDB
609:work on it for an hour of completely focused and undistracted effort (notice I haven’t opened e-mail yet). Then, every morning at 7 a.m., I have what I call my calibration appointment, a recurring appointment set in my calendar, where I take fifteen minutes to calibrate my day. This is where I brush over my top three one-year and five-year goals, my key quarterly objectives, and my top goal for the week and month. Then, for the most important part of the calibration appointment, I review (or set) my top three MVPs (Most Valuable Priorities) for that day, asking myself, “If I only did three things today, what are the actions that will produce the greatest results in moving me closer to my big goals?” Then, and only then, do I open e-mail and send out a flurry of tasks and delegations to get the rest of my team started on their day. I then quickly close down my e-mail and go to work on my MVPs. The rest of the day can take a million different shapes, but as long as I go through my morning routine, a majority of the key disciplines I need to be practicing are taken care of, and I’m properly grounded and prepared to perform at a much higher level than if I started each day erratically—or worse, with a set of bad habits. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
610:Someone
someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie
eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea
scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last
shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out
spraying with deodorant her coarse armpit grass
someone today is leaving home on business
saluting, terminally, the neighbours who will join in the cortege
someone is paring his nails for the last time, a precious moment
someone’s waist will not be marked with elastic in the future
someone is putting out milkbottles for a day that will not come
someone’s fresh breath is about to be taken clean away
someone is writing a cheque that will be rejected as ‘drawer deceased’
someone is circling posthumous dates on a calendar
someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast
someone is making rash promises to friends
someone’s coffin is being sanded, laminated, shined
who feels this morning quite as well as ever
someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today’s date
perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament
someone today is seeing the world for the last time
as innocently as he had seen it first
~ Dennis O'Driscoll,#NFDB
611:This chain method (as some now call it) soon became a hit among writers and fitness enthusiasts—communities that thrive on the ability to do hard things consistently. For our purposes, it provides a specific example of a general approach to integrating depth into your life: the rhythmic philosophy. This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep. The chain method is a good example of the rhythmic philosophy of deep work scheduling because it combines a simple scheduling heuristic (do the work every day), with an easy way to remind yourself to do the work: the big red Xs on the calendar. Another common way to implement the rhythmic philosophy is to replace the visual aid of the chain method with a set starting time that you use every day for deep work. In much the same way that maintaining visual indicators of your work progress can reduce the barrier to entry for going deep, eliminating even the simplest scheduling decisions, such as when during the day to do the work, also reduces this barrier. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
612:Delete it. The message isn’t important or it requires no response. The simplest action is to get rid of it. If you think it might be important, then you will put the message into an archive folder. Defer it. If a message requires a task that takes 5 or more minutes to complete, then defer it and schedule a date and time when you will do it. One of the main reasons people get bogged down is that they try to take action on emails that require you to complete a lengthy task. For emails like this, it makes sense to estimate the time required, write down the specific action into your calendar, respond back to the recipient with a date when they should expect it and then filter the email into your “Follow-Up” folder. You can use the items on your calendar to schedule the rest of your week. Another option for deferring an item is to use the Boomerang extension, which creates reminders for specific tasks. Delegate it. You may not be the best person to handle the task. If you have a team or subordinates, then delegate the task to the appropriate person. After that, create a reminder in your calendar to follow up and make sure it has been handled. Do it. If it takes less than 5 minutes to respond to an email or complete the required task, then take care of it immediately. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
613:In genealogy you might say that interest lies in the eye of the gene holder. The actual descendants are far more intrigued with it all than the listeners, who quickly sink into a narcoleptic coma after the second or third great-great-somebody kills a bear or beheads Charles I, invents the safety pin or strip-mines Poland, catalogues slime molds, dances flamenco, or falls in love with a sheep. Genealogy is a forced march through stories. Yet everyone loves stories, and that is one reason we seek knowledge of our own blood kin.
Through our ancestors we can witness their times. Or, we think, there might be something in their lives, an artist’s or a farmer’s skill, an affection for a certain landscape, that will match or explain something in our own. If we know who they were, perhaps we will know who we are. And few cultures have been as identity-obsessed as ours. So keen is this fascination with ancestry, genealogy has become an industry. Family reunions choke the social calendar. Europe crawls with ancestor-seeking Americans. Your mother or your spouse or your neighbors are too busy to talk to you because they are on the Internet running “heritage quests.” We have climbed so far back into our family trees, we stand inches away from the roots where the primates dominate. ~ Ellen Meloy,#NFDB
614:Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
615:I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking.
I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you.
I want you under me. On your back.
I'm sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can't stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn't be enough.
I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you've ever said to me.
If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.
You would say it's too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can't be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
616:handwritten on the photos. Ballard assumed these were the dates of their acceptance of Jesus Christ. “If you are here to talk me out of a complaint, then you can save your words,” he said. “I decided that charity would be more useful than anger.” Ballard thought about Bosch’s saying that it would be suspicious if McMullen did not make a complaint. “Thank you,” she said. “I was coming to apologize if we offended you. We had an incomplete description of the van we were looking for.” “I understand,” McMullen said. Ballard nodded at the wall behind him. “Those are the people you’ve baptized?” she asked. McMullen glanced behind him at the wall and smiled. “Just some of them,” he said. “There are many more.” Ballard looked up at the calendar. The photo showed a gold and maroon sunset and a quote: Commit your way to the LORD.
Trust HIM and HE will help you. Her eyes scanned down to the dates and she noticed that a number was scribbled in each day’s square. Most were single digits but on some days the number was higher. “What do the numbers mean?” she asked. McMullen followed her eyes to the calendar. “Those are the numbers of souls who receive the sacrament,” he said. “Each night I count how many people took the Lord and Savior into their hearts. Each dark sacred night brings more souls to Christ. ~ Michael Connelly,#NFDB
617:Stop that." Mortified, she reached out to slam the door shut. "Somebody could come in." "Then stop squirming," he suggested, and gently peeled back the bandage. He nodded in approval. "You did a decent job." Even as she hissed at him, he lowered his head and touched his lips to the cut. "All better," he said with a grin just as the door opened. Peabody gaped, flushed, then
stammered out, "Excuse me." "Just leaving," Roarke said, patting the bandage back in place while Eve ground her teeth. "How did you come through this
morning's excitement, Peabody?" "Okay, it was... well, actually." She cleared her throat and shot him a hopeful glance. "I got this little nick right here." She rubbed her finger at her jawline, heart fluttering pleasantly when he
smiled at her. "So you do." He stepped to her, angled his head, and touched his lips to the tiny cut. "Take care of yourself." "Man, man, oh man," was the best she could manage when he'd left. "He's got such a great mouth. How do you stop yourself from just biting it?" "Wipe the drool off your chin, for Christ's sake. And sit down. We've got a report to write for the
commander." "I almost got blown up and got kissed by Roarke all in the same morning. I'm writing it on my calendar." "Settle down." "Yes, sir." She took out her log and got to work. But with a smile on her face. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
618:That’s why time-friendly people tend to make fewer emotional commitments than my friend Bernard does. They have a profound understanding of how much time it takes to be there for someone, so they think, deliberate, and pray long and hard before they decide to invest in a relationship. You might think they’re aloof or uncaring. They’re not. They are, instead, unwilling to write bad checks, emotionally speaking. Another friend, Pamela, recently passed the time test with flying colors. We’ve known each other a long time, and I needed her input on a big decision I was making. I knew she was busy, but I called her anyway, asking, “Can we do lunch?” Pamela lives quite a drive away, but she checked her calendar (another trait of safe people!), and we made an appointment. A few days later, we met, and I told her how much it meant to me for her to take the time out for me. She was genuinely surprised. “Well, I told you I’d be here, didn’t I?” Tears came to my eyes. For Pamela, a relationship means that you’re there for good. End of conversation. Look for people who are “anchored” over time. Don’t go for flashy, intense, addictive types. A Ford that will be there tomorrow is a lot better than a Maserati that might be gone. There are stable Maseratis. But it’s best to drive them awhile, that is, test out the relationship over time, to make sure. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
619:Though other cultures-like the Sumerian, the Mayan, and the Indic-coupled human destiny with long vistas of abstract calendar time, the essential contribution of the Renascence was to relate the cumulative results of history to the variety of cultural achievements that marked the successive generations. By unburying statues, monuments, buildings, cities, by reading old books and inscriptions, by re-entering a long-abandoned world of ideas, these new explorers in time became aware of fresh potentialities in their own existence. These pioneers of the mind invented a time-machine more wonderful than H.G. Wells' technological contraption.
At a moment when the new mechanical world-picture had no place for 'time' except as a function of movement in space, historic time-duration, in Henri Bergson's sense, which includes persistence through replication, imitation, and memory-began to play a conscious part in day-to-day choices. If the living present could be visibly transformed, or at least deliberately modified from Gothic to a formalized Classic structure, so could the future be remolded, too. Historic time could be colonized and cultivated, and human culture itself became a collective artifact. The sciences actually profited by this historic restoration, getting a fresh impetus from Thales, Democritus, Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria. ~ Lewis Mumford,#NFDB
620:Not for the first time I felt myself confronted by the dizzying possibility that an entire episode in the story of mankind might have been forgotten. Indeed it seemed to me then, as I overlooked the mathematical city of the gods from the summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, that our species could have been afflicted with some terrible amnesia and that the dark period so blithely and dismissively referred to as `prehistory' might turn out to conceal unimagined truths about our own past. What is prehistory, after all, if not a time forgotten--a time for which we have no records? What is prehistory if not an epoch of impenetrable obscurity through which our ancestors passed but about which we have no conscious remembrance? It was out of this epoch of obscurity, configured in mathematical code along astronomical and geodetic lines, that Teotihuacan with all its riddles was sent down to us. And out of that same epoch came the great Olmec sculptures, the inexplicably precise and accurate calendar the Mayans inherited from their predecessors, the inscrutable geoglyphs of Nazca, the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco ... and so many other marvels of which we do not know the provenance. It is almost as though we have awakened into the daylight of history from a long and troubled sleep, and yet continue to be disturbed by the faint but haunting echoes of our dreams ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
621:For those who live in Kashmir, the expectations of justice, rarely fulfilled in the Indian subcontinent, are more than optimistic; they belong to fantasy. It makes it all the more difficult for the victims to bear their human losses. At Dalal's house, the once carefully tended plants and hedges were already running wild just a few weeks after his murder, the fish in the pond were mostly dead, and few men sat slumped on the floor in a bare hall under the Islamic calendar of mourning. His mother, persuaded by her male relatives to emerge from the dark room where she had taken to since her son's death, broke down as soon as she noticed the photos of Dalal I had been studying. The pictures showed a young man in dark glasses and trendy clothes, a happy, contented man, someone who had managed to find, amid the relentless violence of the insurgency, a new style and identity for himself, and when Dalal's mother, still crying, while her mother, Dalal's grandmother, sat beside her, quietly wiping her tears with the frayed end of her headscarf, asked what was the point of talking to the press, of speaking about her son to me- he was gone and wouldn't come back; the people who had killed him were too powerful- it was hard not to feel pierced by the truth of what she was saying, hard not to be moved by her grief, and the pain, amid the great human waste of Kashmir, of her helplessness. ~ Pankaj Mishra, #NFDB
622:Then I said to myself, "If the centuries are going by, mine will come too, and will pass, and after a time the last century of all will come, and then I shall understand." And I fixed my eyes on the ages that were coming and passing on; now I was calm and resolute, maybe even happy. Each age brought its share of light and shade, of apathy and struggle, of truth and error, and its parade of systems, of new ideas, of new illusions; in each of them the verdure of spring burst forth, grew yellow with age, and then, young once more, burst forth again. While life thus moved with the regularity of a calendar, history and civilization developed; and man, at first naked and unarmed, clothed and armed himself, built hut and palace, villages and hundred-gated Thebes, created science that scrutinizes and art that elevates, made himself an orator, a mechanic, a philosopher, ran all over the face of the globe, went down into the earth and up to the clouds, performing the mysterious work through which he satisfied the necessities of life and tried to forget his loneliness. My tired eyes finally saw the present age go by end, after it, future ages. The present age, as it approached, was agile, skillful, vibrant, proud, a little verbose, audacious, learned, but in the end it was as miserable as the earlier ones. And so it passed, and so passed the others, with the same speed and monotony. ~ Machado de Assis, #NFDB
623:She gave a little sob deep in her throat.
'Call it a prophecy, call it a prediction, call it fate - call it what you will. I fought against it hard enough, God knows. But the evidence of my own eyes, my own ears, my own senses, is too much for me. And the time's too short now. I'm afraid to take a chance. I haven't got the nerve to bluff it out, to sit pat. You don't gamble with a human life. Today's the 13th, isn't it? It's too close to the 14th; there isn't time-margin enough left now to be skeptical, to keep it to myself any longer. Day by day I've watched him cross off the date on his desk-calendar, drawing nearer to death. There are only two leaves left now, and I want help! Because on the 14th - at the exact stroke of midnight, as the 15th is beginning -'
She covered her face with both arms and shook silently.
'Yes?' urged McManus. 'Yes?'
'He's become convinced - oh, and almost I have too - that at exactly midnight on the 14th he's to die. Not just die but meet his death in full vigor and health, a death rushing down to him from the stars he was born under - rushing down even before he existed at all. A death inexorable, inescapable. A death horrid and violent, inconceivable here in this part of the world where we live.'
She took a deep, shuddering breath, whispered the rest of it. 'Death at the jaws of a lion.' ("Speak To Me Of Death") ~ Cornell Woolrich,#NFDB
624:The more monetized society is, the more anxious and hurried its citizens. In parts of the world that are still somewhat outside the money economy, where subsistence farming still exists and where neighbors help each other, the pace of life is slower, less hurried. In rural Mexico, everything is done mañana. A Ladakhi peasant woman interviewed in Helena Norberg-Hodge's film Ancient Futures sums it all up in describing her city-dwelling sister: "She has a rice cooker, a car, a telephone — all kinds of time-saving devices. Yet when I visit her, she is always so busy we rarely have time to talk."
For the animal, child, or hunter-gatherer, time is essentially infinite. Today its monetization has subjected it, like the rest, to scarcity. Time is life. When we experience time as scarce, we experience life as short and poor. If you were born before adult schedules invaded childhood and children were rushed around from activity to activity, then perhaps you still remember the subjective eternity of childhood, the afternoons that stretched on forever, the timeless freedom of life before the tyranny of calendar and clocks.
"Clocks," writes John Zerzan, "make time scarce and life short." Once quantified, time too could be bought and sold, and the scarcity of all money-linked commodities afflicted time as well. "Time is money," the saying goes, an identity confirmed by the metaphor "I can't afford the time. ~ Charles Eisenstein,#NFDB
625:June
The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead
if the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half
with dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square
on the calendar. Perhaps the scissors were really
lawn mowers or hoes. Perhaps God's calendar is Chinese.
As first I didn't understand those burlap dolls
slouched in Central Pennsylvania craft stores.
Where were the button eyes, the tiny pearl nostrils?
the smudgy pink watercolor cheeks?
I enter the woods--part Gretel, part Little Red.
Such a small patch of sun makes it to the ground
through the leaves. The tree trunks are all elbows and knees,
all arthritis and gripes. The Amish think it's wrong
to render nature, quilts abstracting each pattern's name
of tree, buggy, corn, horse, farm.
My uncle, not Amish but superstitious, holds his palm
to the camera in a Christmas photo. Before she died
my grandmother ripped up all the pictures of herself.
She liked a novel with mystery, magazines without nudity.
The boy was killed by a drunk driver. My Amish neighbors
forgive. I prefer seeing it all, the snot, the optical nerve, the liver
behind the belly's skin. I prefer a good fight,
a wailing of grief. The Farmers' Market sells apples
as red as tricycles. The dolls without faces
want it silent. The forest, all anger and yesterday,
newspapers blank as white cotton sheets.
the branches, the teeth, the awful vees.
~ Denise Duhamel,#NFDB
626:Learning to like something new takes longer than you’d think, however. Your brain doesn’t see it as important information if it doesn’t trigger your happy chemicals. And new things are hard to focus on because the neurons don’t fire easily. Here’s a simple example. Fred wants to drink less alcohol. He decides to substitute a new pleasure with fewer side effects. He looks around for something that can grow on him and remembers how he enjoyed sketching when he was young. He resolves to take out his sketch pad every time he feels like drinking. Fred doesn’t actually feel like sketching when he longs for a drink. And once he starts sketching, he doesn’t feel fabulous. So he accepts that he will live with bad feelings for a while. He plans to do this for two months because he has a big event on the calendar then. At first, he finds it hard. He hates his sketches and he hates the feeling he gets when he doesn’t drink. But he sticks to his goal of repeating the strategy whether it feels good immediately or not. After a while, Fred learns to see the sketching time as a gift he’s given himself rather than an extra burden on his already hard life. He learns that his unhappy feelings pass without killing him, and once they’ve passed, he discovers the pleasure of being alert and responsible. Before the two months is over, he stops looking at the calendar. His sketching circuit has grown as big as his alcohol circuit.Now, he’s a healthy person with a fun hobby and a cool skill, not a person at war with himself ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
627:That dog’s smarter than I am.” She winked at Ash, and Ashley giggled. Then she left the house. Kristin gazed through the window and in the near distance, saw Rick, Madison, Danny and Quincy on their boat coming into dock. She immediately understood what her daughter hadn’t voiced. The dog’s real family was here now. Ashley would be left out. “The hordes will want lunch, so I’ve got to leave,” said Cathy. “I came over to invite you guys to supper. We’ll grill outside - very informal. I hope you can make it.” Kristin did not have a social calendar, but neither was she sure about having Rick’s “hands-on” family in her personal life. Still, after last night’s get together, it was probably too late for keeping many secrets. “What can we bring to the party?” “Oh, goody!” Cathy was back in form. “Rick will be happy.” The two women walked outside in time to see Quincy race toward Ashley and cover her with kisses. “Ugh!” Ashley protested. “You’re all wet and yucky, Quince.” She stepped back. “You would be too if you kept jumping in the lake for a swim.” Rick joined them, tee shirt soaked, hair standing on end. Eyes bright. He jerked his head toward his sister. “From now on, it’s either the hound or your monsters. Not both.” She punched him lightly on the arm. “Sure, sure, sure. When I see it, I’ll believe it. Ricky, the kids play you the way you play a fish - pulling in the line, letting it out, pulling it in until they catch you. And they always catch you.” She grinned at Kristin. “A real fish might escape, but this fish doesn’t have a chance with the kids. He ~ Linda Barrett, #NFDB
628:Gentlemen,” the king called out, “and ladies, First Meal is getting cold.”
Which was the cue for everyone to head back to the dining room and actually eat what had been only studiously ignored up until now.
With Payne safe and at home, appetites were free to roam once more . . . although as God was his witness he was not going to think about what the hell that surgeon and his sister were no doubt about to get into.
As he groaned, Jane tightened her arm around his waist. “Are you all right?”
He glanced down at his shellan. “I don’t think my sister is old enough to have sex.”
“V, she’s the same age you are.”
He frowned for a moment. Was she? Or had he been born first?
Yeah, only one place to go for the answer to that. Shit, he hadn’t even thought of his mother in all this. And now that he was . . . he had absolutely no desire or interest to pop up there and announce that Payne was doing great, fuck you very much.
Nope. If the Scribe Virgin wanted to keep tabs on what her “children” were up to? She could look into those fakakta seeing bowls she liked so much.
He kissed his shellan. “I don’t care what the calendar says or about the birth order. That’s my baby sister, and she’s never going to be old enough to . . . ‘um, yeah.’ ”
Jane laughed and retucked herself under his arm. “You are a very sweet male.”
“Nah.”
“Yeah.”
Leading her into the dining room and over to the table, he gallantly pulled her chair out for her, and then he sat to her left so that she was at his dagger hand.
- Vishous & Jane ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
629:Devon,” she said breathlessly, when they were both naked and he had lowered beside her, “I…I should confess to a small prevarication.” She wanted complete honesty between them. No secrets, nothing held back.
“Yes?” he asked with his lips against her throat, one of his thighs pressing between hers.
“Until recently, I hadn’t really checked my calendar to make certain I was--” She broke off as he used the edge of his teeth to delicately score her throat. “--counting days properly. And I had already resolved to take full responsibility for…” His tongue was playing in the hollow at the base of her neck. “…what happened that morning. After breakfast. You remember.”
“I remember,” he said, kissing his way down to her breasts.
Kathleen grasped his head in her hands, urging him to look at her and pay attention. “Devon. What I’m trying to say is that I may have misled you last night…” She swallowed hard and forced herself to finish. “…when I said that my monthly courses had started.”
He went very still. His face was wiped clean of all expression as he stared down at her. “They haven’t?”
She shook her head, her anxious gaze searching his. “In fact, I’m quite late.”
One of his hands came to her face, a tremor running through his long fingers. “You might be pregnant?” he asked huskily.
“I’m almost certain of it.”
Devon stared down at her dazedly, a flush covering his face. “My sweet, beautiful love, my angel--” He began to look over her intently, pressing kisses along her body, caressing her stomach. “My God. This settles it: I am the luckiest sod in England. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
630:Courage
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
50
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
631:Eric had fang showing.
"Hello, Eric," Quinn said calmly. His deep voice rumbled along my spine. "Sookie, you look good enough to eat." He smiled at me, and the tremors along my spine spread into another area entirely. I would never have believed that in Eric's presence I could think another man was attractive. I'd have been wrong to think so.
"You look very nice, too," I said, trying not to beam like an idiot. It was not cool to drool.
Eric said, "What have you been telling Sookie, Quinn?"
The two tall men looked at each other. I didn't believe I was the source of their animosity. I was a symptom, not the disease. Something lay underneath this.
"I've been telling Sookie that the queen requires Sookie's presence at the conference as part of her party, and that the queen's summons supercedes yours," Quinn said flatly.
"Since when has the queen given orders through a shifter?" Eric said, contempt flattening his voice.
"Since this shifter performed a valuable service for her in the line of business," Quinn answered, with no hesitation. "Mr. Cataliades suggested to Her Majesty that I might be helpful in a diplomatic capacity, and my partners were glad to give me extra time to perform any duties she might give me."
I wasn't totally sure I was following this, but I got the gist of it.
Eric was incensed, to use a good entry from my Word of the Day calendar. In fact, his eyes were almost throwing sparks, he was so angry. "This woman has been mine, and she will be mine," he said, in tones so definite I thought about checking my rear end for a brand. ~ Charlaine Harris,#NFDB
632:A hundred years hence
Who it is
With such curiosity
Reads my poems
A hundred years hence!
Shall I be able to send you
An iota of joy of this fresh spring morning
The flower that blooms today
The songs that the birds sing
The glow of todays setting sun
Filled with my feelings of love?
Yet for a moment
Open up your southern gate
And take your seat at the window
Look at the far horizon
And visualize in your minds eye
One day a hundred years ago
A restless ecstasy drifted from the skies
And touched the heart of this world
The early spring mad with joy
Knew no bounds
Spreading its restless wings
The southern breeze blew
Carrying the scent of flowers pollen
All on a sudden soon
They coloured the world with a youthful glow
A hundred years ago.
That day a young poet kept awake
With an excited heart filled with songs
With so much ardour
Anxious to express so many things
Like buds of flowers straining to bloom
One day a hundred years ago.
A hundred years hence
What young poet
Sings songs in your homes!
For him
I send my tidings of joy of this spring.
Let it echo for a moment
In your spring, in your heartbeats,
In the humming of the bees
In the rustling of the leaves
A hundred years hence.
A transcreation of the poem 1400 Sal (The year 1400) from the collection Chitra by Rabindranath Tagore.
It was written on the 2nd of Falgun (first month of spring), 1302 (1895-96), of the Bengali calendar. Translated by Kumud Biswas.
Translated by Kumud Biswas
~ Rabindranath Tagore, A Hundred Years Hence
,#NFDB
633:The effort of religions to inspire a sense of community does not stop at introducing us to one other. Religions have also been clever at solving some of what goes wrong inside groups once they are formed.
It has been the particular insight of Judaism to focus on anger: how easy it is to feel it, how hard it is to express it and how frightening and awkward it is to appease it in others. We can see this especially clearly in the Jewish Day of Atonement, one of the most psychologically effective mechanisms ever devised for the resolution of social conflict.
Falling on the tenth day of Tishrei, shortly after the beginning of the Jewish new year, the Day of Atonement (or Yom Kippur) is a solemn and critical event in the Hebrew calendar. Leviticus instructs that on this date, Jews must set aside their usual domestic and commercial activities and mentally review their actions over the preceding year, identifying all those whom they have hurt or behaved unjustly towards. Together in synagogue, they must repeat in prayer:
‘We have sinned, we have acted treacherously,
we have robbed, we have spoken slander.
We have acted perversely, we have acted wickedly,
we have acted presumptuously, we have been violent,
we have framed lies.’
They must then seek out those whom they have frustrated, angered, discarded casually or otherwise betrayed and offer them their fullest contrition. This is God’s will, and a rare opportunity for blanket forgiveness. ‘All the people are in fault,’ says the evening prayer, and so ‘may all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst’. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
634:Significance of madness in the history of morality. — When in spite of that fearful pressure of ‘morality of custom’ under which all the communities of mankind have lived, many millennia before the beginnings of our calendar and also on the whole during the course of it up to the present day (we ourselves dwell in the little world of the exceptions and, so to speak, in the evil zone): — when, I say, in spite of this, new and deviate ideas, evaluations, drives again and again broke out, they did so accompanied by a dreadful attendant: almost everywhere it was madness which prepared the way for the new idea, which broke the spell of a venerated usage and superstition. Do you understand why it had to be madness which did this? Something in voice and bearing as uncanny and incalculable as the demonic moods of the weather and the sea and therefore worthy of a similar awe and observation? something that bore so visibly the sign of total unfreedom as the convulsions and froth of the epileptic, that seemed to mark the madman as the mask and speaking-trumpet of a divinity? Something that awoke in the bearer of a new idea himself reverence for and dread of himself and no longer pangs of conscience and drove him to become the prophet and martyr of his idea? — while it is constantly suggested to us today that, instead of his grain of salt, a grain of spice of madness is joined to genius, all earlier people found it much more likely that wherever there is madness there is also a grain of genius and wisdom — something ‘divine’, as one whispered to oneself. Or rather: as one said aloud forcefully enough. ‘It is through madness that the greatest good things have come to Greece’, Plato said, in concert with all ancient mankind. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
635:THE 1920’S, IT IS SAID, WERE A TIME OF “DISILLUSIONMENT.” Progressivism had failed. The war for democracy had ended in the debacle of Versailles; idealism gave way to “normalcy.” Defeated, intellectuals turned away from reform. Following H. L. Mencken, they now ridiculed “the people,” whom they had once idolized. Many of them fled to Europe. Others cultivated the personal life, transferring their search for salvation from society to the individual. Still others turned to Communism. In the general confusion, only one thing was certain: the old ideals, the old standards, were dead, and liberal democracy was part of the wreckage. Such is the standard picture of the twenties; but it is a gross distortion, a caricature, of the period. It has the unfortunate effect, moreover, of isolating the twenties from the rest of American history, of making them seem a mere interval between two periods of reform, and thus of obscuring the continuity between the twenties and the “progressive era” on the one hand and the period of the New Deal on the other. The idea of historical “periods” is misleading in itself. It exercises a subtle tyranny over the historical imagination. Essentially a verbal and pedagogical convenience, it tends to become a principle of historical interpretation as well; and as such it leads people to think of history not as the development of social organisms far too complicated to be depicted in simple linear terms but as a succession of neatly defined epochs, happily corresponding, moreover, to the divisions of the calendar, each century, each decade even, having its own distinctive “spirit of the age.” Thus the Zeitgeist of the twenties, it is assumed, must have been “disillusionment,” just as that of the thirties was reform. The ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
636:They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.
Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.
However more abbreviated than it's cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.
February is pitiless, and it's boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.
Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within" February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui holding both progress and contentment at bay.
If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Where you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May. ~ Tom Robbins,#NFDB
637:The meeting started well enough. Balsillie explained how BlackBerry could be synchronized with a user’s desktop computer calendar and contacts. You just have to put the device in this cradle, he said, pointing to a prototype. Normally, the cradle would have had a cable connecting it to the computer, but the cord was missing from the demonstration. One Intel executive, Sean Maloney, VP of worldwide sales, was confused. “What are you saying, how does it do that?” Maloney asked. Klimstra saw why the Intel executive was puzzled. He doesn’t realize there’s supposed to be a cable connecting the cradle to the computer, he thought. Balsillie appeared stumped too, saying nothing. To Klimstra, the lengthy silence that followed was agonizing. This must be my cue, he thought. Clearing his throat, Klimstra piped up: “That cradle is just a mock-up.” Maloney nodded as Klimstra explained it would normally have a cable attached. Balsillie turned to Klimstra. “Eric,” he said, growing cold with fury. “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever”—Klimstra’s stomach twisted with each “ever”—“interrupt me in a meeting again.” After an awkward silence, Balsillie continued the presentation. As they filed out after the meeting, Maloney’s eyes met Klimstra’s. The young evangelist could read the look: “Kid, I’m sorry if I got you fired.” Outside, Balsillie was unapologetic. “Never interrupt me when I’m in the zone,” he said. “I was very specific in directing them in a certain way and I didn’t want to go down any other path.” It wasn’t that Klimstra had said anything wrong. What bothered Balsillie was that he had said anything at all. “He could have been about to take us over a cliff” by inadvertently blurting out a corporate secret as he explained how the system worked, Balsillie says of his strict stick-to-the-script rule. ~ Jacquie McNish, #NFDB
638:In the words of Andy Grove: “To understand a company’s strategy, look at what they actually do rather than what they say they will do.”….
Here is a way to frame the investments that we make in the strategy that becomes our lives: we have resources – which include personal time, energy, talent and wealth – and we are using them to try to grow several “businesses” in our personal lives… How should we devote our resources to these pursuits?
Unless you manage it mindfully, your personal resource allocation process will decide investments for you according to the “default” criteria that essentially are wired into your brain and your heart. As is true in companies, your resources are not decided and deployed in a single meeting or when you review your calendar for the week ahead. It is a continuous process –and you have, in your brain, a filter for making choices about what to prioritize.
But it’s a messy process. People ask for your time and energy every day, and even if you are focused on what’s important to you, it’s still difficult to know which are the right choices. If you have an extra ounce of energy or a spare 30 minutes, there are a lot of people pushing you to spend them here rather than there. With so many people and projects wanting your time and attention, you can feel like you are not in charge of your own destiny. Sometimes that’s good: opportunities that you never anticipated emerge. But other times, those opportunities can take you far off course…
The danger for high-achieving people is that they’ll unconsciously allocate their resources to activities that yield the most immediate, tangible accomplishments…
How you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend. ~ Clayton M Christensen,#NFDB
639:Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
640:Litany
This is a litany of lost things,
a canon of possessions dispossessed,
a photograph, an old address, a key.
It is a list of words to memorize
or to forget–of amo, amas, amat,
the conjugations of a dead tongue
in which the final sentence has been spoken.
This is the liturgy of rain,
falling on mountain, field, and ocean–
indifferent, anonymous, complete–
of water infinitesimally slow,
sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,
gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,
only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.
This is a prayer to unbelief,
to candles guttering and darkness undivided,
to incense drifting into emptiness.
It is the smile of a stone Madonna
and the silent fury of the consecrated wine,
a benediction on the death of a young god,
brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree.
This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
'Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.'
Savor its taste–the bitterness of earth and ashes.
This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished,
for you, my love, my loss, my lesion,
a rosary of words to count out time's
illusions, all the minutes, hours, days
the calendar compounds as if the past
existed somewhere–like an inheritance
still waiting to be claimed.
10
Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,
my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist
steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,
the shattered river rising as it falls–
splintering the light, swirling it skyward,
neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,
even as it vanishes–were not our life.
~ Dana Gioia,#NFDB
641:Olo-keZ G-- a tc
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.
-ECCLESIASTES 3:1
What would we do without our day planners? I have a large one for my desk and a carry-all that goes with me. I don't know how a person functions without some type of organizer. I just love it; it truly has become my daily-calendar bible. I take it with me everywhere. My whole life is in that book. Each evening I peek in to see what tomorrow has to bring. I just love to see a busy calendar; it makes me feel so alive. I've got this to do and that to do.
Then I come upon a day that has all white space. Not one thing to do. What, oh what, will I do to fill the space and time? That's the way I used to think and plan. All my spaces had appointments written down, and many times they even overlapped.
I now plan for white spaces. I even plan ahead weeks or months and black out "saved for me or my family" days. I have begun to realize that there are
precious times for myself and my loved ones. Bob and I really try to protect these saved spaces just for us. We may not go anywhere or do anything out of the ordinary, but it's our special time. We can do anything we want: sleep in, stay out late, go to lunch, read a book, go to a movie, or take a nap. I really look forward with great anticipation to when these white spaces appear on my calendar.
I've been so impressed when I've read biographies of famous people. Many of them are controllers of their own time. They don't let outsiders dictate their schedules. Sure, there are times when things have to be done on special days, but generally that isn't the case. When we begin to control our calendars, we will find that our lives are more enjoyable and that the tensions of life are more manageable. Make those white spaces your friend, not your enemy. ~ Emilie Barnes,#NFDB
642:In general, repression had been good to Luka. As he’d discovered through talking with the copy of Ellie he’d brought with him from the San Francisco, repression had enabled him to function in circumstances where others might have given up. But repression was only one tool, and Luka now knew that the structures one built were often defined—or at least profoundly influenced—by the tools one used to build them. Repression was like constantly building upward in order to avoid the work of building out a more stable foundation, but eventually the instability compounded to the point where your life had no choice but to topple. Another problem with the past was that every year, it came back around. The cycle of the Gregorian calendar was like the constant rotation of a cylinder with 365 chambers, and the longer you lived, the more rounds filled those holes. Except these bullets were never fully spent, and rather than proving lethal, the wounds they left were a gradual accumulation of debilitating injury. A much better calendrical system would have been one where days never repeated; where lives were marked with infinitely incrementing integers, constantly leaving the things everyone wanted to forget further and further behind; where every second of every day was a chance to completely reinvent oneself out of newly created time that had no inherent knowledge whatsoever of the past. In the one year since Luka and Ayla had been alone together aboard the Hawk, they had each experienced a lot of anniversaries: the days they’d left their home pod systems as children; the times each had lost people they loved; the moments they’d been forced right up to the very edge of death—in fact, well past the point of peace and acceptance—only to be unexpectedly pulled back into the worlds they thought they were finally leaving behind. And the day that was ~ Christian Cantrell, #NFDB
643:Wait a second,” said Ash. “How is there a ‘moon in springtime before the start of the new year’? I think it’s a riddle. It makes no sense.”
“Yes, it does,” said Jared. “The new year was in March in England until the 1700s, when the pope introduced a new calendar.”
Everyone stared at him. Jared flushed slightly, scar thrown into relief, and muttered, “I read a lot of old books.”
“Well done,” said Jon. “See where learning gets you, lads? So much better than messing around with girls or playing those video games which one hears are full of violence.”
Kami, as a witness to many of her father’s video game marathons, gave him a long judgmental stare. “You total hypocrite.”
“Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about,” Jon said. “Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off.”
Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere.
“It’s true reading is a wonderful thing,” Rusty observed. “I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass.”
Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush.
“Those tips are working,” he said. “Don’t pretend you haven’t all noticed. I know the truth.”
Kami rolled up a magazine on the table—sadly, for the sake of dramatic irony, not a Cosmo—and hit Rusty over the head with it. “Does anybody have anything else to say—I can’t stress this enough—specifically about Elinor Lynburn and medieval New Year?”
“Want to know what it was called? You’ll like this,” Jared added, and he looked at Kami. It was a simple glance from his gray eyes, but it felt like being put in a room that was just the two of them. “Lady Day.”
Kami beamed at him. “You know what I like, sugarprune ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,#NFDB
644:And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
645:Becoming aware of her presence in the doorway, the men looked up. Westcliff rose from his half-seated position on the desk. “My lord,” Daisy said, “if I might have a word with you?”
Although she spoke calmly, something in her expression must have alerted him. He didn’t waste a second in coming to her. “Yes, Daisy?”
“It’s about my sister,” she whispered. “It seems her labor has started.”
She had never seen the earl look so utterly taken aback.
“It’s too early,” he said.
“Apparently the baby doesn’t think so.”
“But…this is off-schedule.” The earl seemed genuinely baffled that his child would have failed to consult the calendar before arriving.
“Not necessarily,” Daisy replied reasonably. “It’s possible the doctor misjudged the date of the baby’s birth. Ultimately it’s only a matter of guesswork.”
Westcliff scowled. “I expected far more accuracy than this! It’s nearly a month before the projected…” A new thought occurred to him, and he turned skull-white. “Is the baby premature?”
Although Daisy had entertained a few private concerns about that, she shook her head immediately. “Some women show more than others, some less. And my sister is very slender. I’m sure the baby is fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “Lillian has had pains for the past four or five hours, and now they’re coming every ten minutes or so, which Annabelle says—”
“She’s been in labor for hours and no one told me?” Westcliff demanded in outrage.
“Well, it’s not technically labor unless the intervals between the pains are regular, and she said she didn’t want to bother you until—”
Westcliff let out a curse that startled Daisy. He turned to point a commanding but unsteady finger at Simon Hunt. “Doctor,” he barked, and took off at a dead run.
Simon Hunt appeared unsurprised by Westcliff’s primitive behavior. “Poor fellow,” he said with a slight smile, reaching over the desk to slide a pen back into its holder. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
646:This is not to say that he was not qualified, though he concealed his beginnings as a scullion, to lend a hand like anyone else. It required some exceptional circumstance nevertheless to induce him one day to carve the turkeys himself. I was out, but I heard afterwards that he carved them with a sacerdotal majesty, surrounded, at a respectful distance from the service-table, by a ring of waiters who, endeavouring thereby not so much to learn the art as to curry favour with him, stood gaping in open-mouthed admiration. The manager, however, as he plunged his knife with solemn deliberation into the flanks of his victims, from which he no more deflected his eyes, filled with a sense of his high function, than if he were expecting to read some augury therein, was totally oblivious of their presence. The hierophant was not even conscious of my absence. When he heard of it, he was distressed: “What, you didn’t see me carving the turkeys myself?” I replied that having failed, so far, to see Rome, Venice, Siena, the Prado, the Dresden gallery, the Indies, Sarah in Phèdre, I had learned to resign myself, and that I would add his carving of turkeys to my list. The comparison with the dramatic art (Sarah in Phèdre) was the only one that he seemed to understand, for he had learned through me that on days of gala performances the elder Coquelin had accepted beginners’ roles, even those of characters who had only a single line or none at all. “All the same, I’m sorry for your sake. When shall I be carving again? It will need some great event, it will need a war.” (It needed the armistice, in fact.) From that day onwards, the calendar was changed, and time was reckoned thus: “That was the day after the day I carved the turkeys myself.” “It was exactly a week after the manager carved the turkeys himself.” And so this prosectomy furnished, like the Nativity of Christ or the Hegira, the starting point for a calendar different from the rest, but neither so extensively adopted nor so long observed. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
647:Llewellen Powell
Villain, when the word is spoken,
And your chains at last are broken
When the gibbet's chilling shade
Ceases darkly to enfold you,
And the angel who enrolled you
As a master of the trade
Of assassination sadly
Blots the record he has made,
And your name and title paints
In the calendar of saints;
When the devils, dancing madly
In the midmost Hell, are very
Multitudinously merry
Then beware, beware, beware!
Nemesis is everywhere!
You shall hear her at your back,
And, your hunted visage turning,
Fancy that her eyes are burning
Like a tiger's on your track!
You shall hear her in the breeze
Whispering to summer trees.
You shall hear her calling, calling
To your spirit through the storm
When the giant billows form
And the splintered lightning, falling
Down the heights of Heaven, appalling,
Splendors all the tossing seas!
On your bed at night reclining,
Stars into your chamber shining
As they roll around the Pole,
None their purposes divining,
Shall appear to search your soul,
And to gild the mark of Cain
That burns into your tortured brain!
And the dead man's eyes shall ever
Meet your own wherever you,
Desperate, shall turn you to,
And you shall escape them never!
332
By your heritage of guilt;
By the blood that you have spilt;
By the Law that you have broken;
By the terrible red token
That you bear upon your brow;
By the awful sentence spoken
And irrevocable vow
Which consigns you to a living
Death and to the unforgiving
Furies who avenge your crime
Through the periods of time;
By that dread eternal doom
Hinted in your future's gloom,
As the flames infernal tell
Of their power and perfection
In their wavering reflection
On the battlements of Hell;
By the mercy you denied,
I condemn your guilty soul
In your body to abide,
Like a serpent in a hole!
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
648:Menstruation At Forty
I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.
In two days it will be my birthday
and as always the earth is done with its harvest.
This time I hunt for death,
the night I lean toward,
the night I want.
Well then—
speak of it!
It was in the womb all along.
I was thinking of a son ...
You! The never acquired,
the never seeded or unfastened,
you of the genitals I feared,
the stalk and the puppy’s breath.
Will I give you my eyes or his?
Will you be the David or the Susan?
(Those two names I picked and listened for.)
Can you be the man your fathers are—
the leg muscles from Michelangelo,
hands from Yugoslavia
somewhere the peasant, Slavic and determined,
somewhere the survivor bulging with life—
and could it still be possible,
all this with Susan’s eyes?
All this without you—
two days gone in blood.
I myself will die without baptism,
a third daughter they didn’t bother.
My death will come on my name day.
What’s wrong with the name day?
137
It’s only an angel of the sun.
Woman,
weaving a web over your own,
a thin and tangled poison.
Scorpio,
bad spider—
die!
My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right—
It’s a warm room,
the place of the blood.
Leave the door open on its hinges!
Two days for your death
and two days until mine.
Love! That red disease—
year after year, David, you would make me wild!
David! Susan! David! David!
full and disheveled, hissing into the night,
never growing old,
waiting always for you on the porch ...
year after year,
my carrot, my cabbage,
I would have possessed you before all women,
calling your name,
calling you mine.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
649:Pinup
The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,
and as you look closer you notice that this month's
is not the one pushing the lawn mower, wearing
a straw hat and very short blue shorts,
her shirt tied in a knot just below her breasts.
Nor is it the one in the admiral's cap, bending
forward, resting her hands on a wharf piling,
glancing over the tiny anchors on her shoulders.
No, this is March, the month of great winds,
so appropriately it is the one walking her dog
along a city sidewalk on a very blustery day.
One hand is busy keeping her hat down on her head
and the other is grasping the little dog's leash,
so of course there is no hand left to push down
her dress which is billowing up around her waist
exposing her long stockinged legs and yes the secret
apparatus of her garter belt. Needless to say,
in the confusion of wind and excited dog
the leash has wrapped itself around her ankles
several times giving her a rather bridled
and helpless appearance which is added to
by the impossibly high heels she is teetering on.
You would like to come to her rescue,
gather up the little dog in your arms,
untangle the leash, lead her to safety,
and receive her bottomless gratitude, but
the mechanic is calling you over to look
at something under your car. It seems that he has
run into a problem and the job is going
to cost more than he had said and take
much longer than he had thought.
Well, it can't be helped, you hear yourself say
as you return to your place by the workbench,
knowing that as soon as the hammering resumes
you will slowly lift the bottom of the calendar
46
just enough to reveal a glimpse of what
the future holds in store: ah,
the red polka dot umbrella of April and her
upturned palm extended coyly into the rain.
~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
650:Uriel
It fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coin'd itself
Into calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Sayd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discuss'd
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirr'd the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.'
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,
A shudder ran around the sky;
The stern old war-gods shook their heads;
The seraphs frown'd from myrtle-beds;
Seem'd to the holy festival
The rash word boded ill to all;
The balance-beam of Fate was bent;
The bounds of good and ill were rent;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion.
A sad self-knowledge withering fell
On the beauty of Uriel;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew that hour into his cloud;
Whether doom'd to long gyration
In the sea of generation,
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight.
Straightway a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But, now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels' veiling wings;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,
And the gods shook, they knew not why
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Uriel
,#NFDB
651:Darkness Always Ends No matter how your day goes, the sun always rises the next day. You get a fresh start. Likewise, I’ve learned every dark season in life comes to an end. If you hang in there long enough, you’ll reach the dawn. I believe God created that sunrise-sunset pattern as a reminder for us when life gets difficult. For official records, we measure time by the midnight hour. Our calendar days go from midnight to midnight. We begin and end our days in darkness. And when we consider our days, we split them into two parts: daytime first, followed by nighttime. Light first, then the darkness. But not everyone views the cycle that way. The biblical account of creation reverses our cycle: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). The Jewish calendar follows suit with that original creation account. That calendar runs from sunset to sunset. The full hours of darkness come first, followed by the full hours of light. In other words, from God’s perspective, each day ends with light. Year after year, I’ve derived such encouragement from that picture. I believe this is why the psalmist David wrote, “Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). You have every reason to believe for a miracle. You have every reason to believe God won’t abandon you. Nothing in this life lasts forever. Your dark season will come to an end. And chances are, it won’t take until your dying day. It won’t kill you. Things might look bleak at first, but they can improve. With night and day, God has given us a picture of hope. The sun always rises. Things will always get brighter. “The end of a matter is better than its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). Whether it’s a day or a season in your life, it doesn’t matter how things look in the midst of it. What matters is how it ends. Oftentimes, for the circumstances to improve, we must take particular steps along the way. A bright outcome might depend, in part, on how we choose to respond to what has occurred. Or preemptive steps might put us at an advantage down the road. God give us a role to perform. But the breakthrough is available. ~ John Herrick, #NFDB
652:Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie.
He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, "Wait. Wait."
I was already waiting. What else was there to do?
"Here you are," he said. "Look! What's this?"
At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. "The death of the socialist dream," he said.
He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, that time was slipping away. The moment had passed. Goodbye to all that.
Easy to be clever with hindsight, I know, but I was right, wasn't I? Look back on that night from the perspective of now, the closing weeks of the closing century of our second millennium - if the calendar of some esoteric and fast-disappearing religious sect counts for anything any more - and you have to admit that I was right. And so was Benjamin's brother, the little bastard, with his sparkler and his horrible grin and that nasty gleam of incipient victory in his twelve-year-old eyes. Goodbye to all that, he was saying. He'd worked it out already. He knew what the future held in store. ~ Jonathan Coe,#NFDB
653:Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time. It is a phenomenon with roots deeper than our money system, for it depends on the prior quantification of time. An animal or a child has “all the time in the world.” The same was apparently true for Stone Age peoples, who usually had very loose concepts of time and rarely were in a hurry. Primitive languages often lacked tenses, and sometimes lacked even words for “yesterday” or “tomorrow.” The comparative nonchalance primitive people had toward time is still apparent today in rural, more traditional parts of the world. Life moves faster in the big city, where we are always in a hurry because time is scarce. But in the past, we experienced time as abundant. The more monetized society is, the more anxious and hurried its citizens. In parts of the world that are still somewhat outside the money economy, where subsistence farming still exists and where neighbors help each other, the pace of life is slower, less hurried. In rural Mexico, everything is done mañana. A Ladakhi peasant woman interviewed in Helena Norberg-Hodge’s film Ancient Futures sums it all up in describing her city-dwelling sister: “She has a rice cooker, a car, a telephone—all kinds of time-saving devices. Yet when I visit her, she is always so busy we barely have time to talk.” For the animal, child, or hunter-gatherer, time is essentially infinite. Today its monetization has subjected it, like the rest, to scarcity. Time is life. When we experience time as scarce, we experience life as short and poor. If you were born before adult schedules invaded childhood and children were rushed around from activity to activity, then perhaps you still remember the subjective eternity of childhood, the afternoons that stretched on forever, the timeless freedom of life before the tyranny of calendar and clocks. “Clocks,” writes John Zerzan, “make time scarce and life short.” Once quantified, time too could be bought and sold, and the scarcity of all money-linked commodities afflicted time as well. “Time is money,” the saying goes, an identity confirmed by the metaphor “I can’t afford the time.” If the material world ~ Charles Eisenstein, #NFDB
654:what she ought to have done as soon as she discovered that Lady Webb was not in London to help her. She was going to find the Earl of Durbury if he was still in town. If he was not, she was going to find out where the Bow Street Runners had their headquarters and go there. She was going to write to Charles. She was going to tell her story to anyone who would listen. She was going to embrace her fate. Perhaps she would be arrested and tried and convicted of murder. Perhaps that would mean a hanging or at the very least transportation or lifelong imprisonment. But she would not give in meekly. She would fight like the very devil to the last moment—but not by running away and hiding. She was going to come out into the open at last and fight. But not just yet. That was the agreement she made with herself as she pulled weeds from about the rosebushes and turned the soil until it was a richer brown. A definite time limit must be set so that she would not continue to procrastinate week after week, month after month. She was going to give herself one month, one calendar month, starting today. One month to be Jocelyn’s mistress, his love, though he would not be aware of the latter, of course. One month to spend with him as a person, as a friend in the den, if he ever returned there, as a lover in the bed upstairs. One month. And then she was going to give herself up. Without telling him. There might be scandal for him, of course, when it became known that he had harbored her at Dudley House for three weeks, or if anyone knew that she had been his mistress here. But she would not worry about that. His life had been one scandal after another. He appeared to thrive on them. She thought he would probably be rather amused by this particular one. One month. Jane leaned back on her heels to inspect her work, but Phillip was approaching from the direction of the house. “Mr. Jacobs sent me, ma’am,” he said, “to tell you that a new pianoforte just arrived and an easel and other parcels too. He wants to know where you want them put.” Jane got to her feet, her heart soaring, and followed him back to the house. One glorious month, in which she would not even try to guard her feelings. One month of love. There followed a week during ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
655:We look back on history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling; revolutions and counter-revolutions succeeding one another; wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed; one nation dominant and then another. As Shakespeare’s King Lear puts it, “the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.” In one lifetime I’ve seen my fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, and the great majority of them convinced – in the words of what is still a favorite song – that God has made them mighty and will make them mightier yet. I’ve heard a crazed Austrian announce the establishment of a German Reich that was to last for a thousand years; an Italian clown report that the calendar will begin again with his assumption of power; a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I’ve seen America wealthier than all the rest of the world put together; and with the superiority of weaponry that would have enabled Americans, had they so wished, to outdo an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of conquest. All in one little lifetime – gone with the wind: England now part of an island off the coast of Europe, threatened with further dismemberment; Hitler and Mussolini seen as buffoons; Stalin a sinister name in the regime he helped to found and dominated totally for three decades; Americans haunted by fears of running out of the precious fluid that keeps their motorways roaring and the smog settling, by memories of a disastrous military campaign in Vietnam, and the windmills of Watergate. Can this really be what life is about – this worldwide soap opera going on from century to century, from era to era, as old discarded sets and props litter the earth? Surely not. Was it to provide a location for so repetitive and ribald a production as this that the universe was created and man, or homo sapiens as he likes to call himself – heaven knows why – came into existence? I can’t believe it. If this were all, then the cynics, the hedonists, and the suicides are right: the most we can hope for from life is amusement, gratification of our senses, and death. But it is not all. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge, #NFDB
656:The letter had been crumpled up and tossed onto the grate. It had burned all around the edges, so the names at the top and bottom had gone up in smoke. But there was enough of the bold black scrawl to reveal that it had indeed been a love letter. And as Hannah read the singed and half-destroyed parchment, she was forced to turn away to hide the trembling of her hand.
—should warn you that this letter will not be eloquent. However, it will be sincere, especially in light of the fact that you will never read it. I have felt these words like a weight in my chest, until I find myself amazed that a heart can go on beating under such a burden.
I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking. My love, you don't belong with a man like me. In the past I've done things you wouldn't approve of, and I've done them ten times over. I have led a life of immoderate sin. As it turns out, I'm just as immoderate in love. Worse, in fact.
I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you.
I want you under me. On your back.
I'm sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can't stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn't be enough.
I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you've ever said to me.
If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.
You would say it's too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can't be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast. If only you—
And there it stopped. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
657:THE GHOST OF THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER HAS A CONVERSATION WITH HIS FIANCÉE ABOUT HIGHWAYS
...and down south, honey. When the side of the road began to swell with dead and dying things, that's when us black children knew it was summer. Daddy didn't keep clocks in the house. Ain't no use when the sky round those parts always had some flames runnin' to horizon, lookin' like the sun was always out. back when I was a little girl, I swear, them white folk down south would do anything to stop another dark thing from touching the land, even the nighttime. We ain't have streetlights, or some grandmotherly voice riding through the fields on horseback tellin' us when to come inside. What we had was the stomach of a deer, split open on route 59. What we had was flies resting on the exposed insides of animals with their tongues touching the pavement. What we had was the smell of gunpowder and the promise of more to come, and, child, that'll get you home before the old folks would break out the moonshine and celebrate another day they didn't have to pull the body of someone they loved from the river. I say 'river' because I want you to always be able to look at the trees without crying. When we moved east, I learned how a night sky can cup a black girl in its hands and ask for forgiveness. My daddy sold the pistol he kept in the sock drawer and took me to the park. Those days, I used to ask him what he feared, and he always said "the bottom of a good glass." And then he stopped answering. And then he stopped coming home altogether.
Something about the first day of a season, honey. Something always gotta sacrifice its blood. Everything that has its time must be lifted from the earth. My boys don't bother with seasons anymore. My sons went to sleep in the spring once and woke up to a motherless summer. All they know now is that it always be colder than it should be. I wish I could fix this for you. I'm sorry none of my children wear suits anymore. I wish ties didn't remind my boys of shovels, and dirt, and an empty living room. They all used to look so nice in ties. I'm sorry that you may come home one day to the smell of rotting meat, every calendar you own, torn off the walls, burning in a trashcan.
And it will be the end of spring.
And you will know. ~ Hanif Abdurraqib,#NFDB
658:From a nitty-gritty, practical standpoint, here is the drill that can get you there: Loose Papers Pull out all miscellaneous scraps of paper, business cards, receipts, and so on that have crept into the crevices of your desk, clothing, and accessories. Put it all into your in-basket for processing. Process Your Notes Review any journal entries, meeting notes, or miscellaneous notes scribbled on notebook paper. List action items, projects, waiting-fors, calendar events, and someday/ maybes, as appropriate. File any reference notes and materials. Stage your “Read/Review” material. Be ruthless with yourself, processing all notes and thoughts relative to interactions, projects, new initiatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purging those not needed. Previous Calendar Data Review past calendar dates in detail for remaining action items, reference information, and so on, and transfer that data into the active system. Be able to archive your last week’s calendar with nothing left uncaptured. Upcoming Calendar Look at future calendar events (long- and short-term). Capture actions about arrangements and preparations for any upcoming events. Empty Your Head Put in writing (in appropriate categories) any new projects, action items, waiting-fors, someday/maybes, and so forth that you haven’t yet captured. Review “Projects” (and Larger Outcome) Lists Evaluate the status of projects, goals, and outcomes one by one, ensuring that at least one current kick-start action for each is in your system. Review “Next Actions” Lists Mark off completed actions. Review for reminders of further action steps to capture. Review “Waiting For” List Record appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received items. Review Any Relevant Checklists Is there anything you haven’t done that you need to do? Review “Someday/Maybe” List Check for any projects that may have become active and transfer them to “Projects.” Delete items no longer of interest. Review “Pending” and Support Files Browse through all work-in-progress support material to trigger new actions, completions, and waiting-fors. Be Creative and Courageous Are there any new, wonderful, hare-brained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas you can add to your system? ~ David Allen, #NFDB
659:Who is America named after? Not the Italian merchant and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci, but Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant. Ameryk was the chief investor in the second transatlantic voyage of John Cabot—the English name of the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto, whose voyages in 1497 and 1498 laid the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada. He moved to London from Genoa in 1484 and was authorized by King Henry VII to search for unknown lands to the west. On his little ship Matthew, Cabot reached Labrador in May 1497 and became the first recorded European to set foot on American soil, predating Vespucci by two years. Cabot mapped the North American coastline from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. As the chief patron of the voyage, Richard Ameryk would have expected discoveries to be named after him. There is a record in the Bristol calendar for that year: “…on Saint John the Baptist’s day [June 24], the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristowe called the Mathew,” which clearly suggests this is what happened. Although the original manuscript of this calendar has not survived, there are a number of references to it in other contemporary documents. This is the first use of the term America to refer to the new continent. The earliest surviving map to use the name is Martin Waldseemüller’s great map of the world of 1507, but it only applied to South America. In his notes Waldseemüller makes the assumption that the name is derived from a Latin version of Amerigo Vespucci’s first name, because Vespucci had discovered and mapped the South American coast from 1500 to 1502. This suggests he didn’t know for sure and was trying to account for a name he had seen on other maps, possibly Cabot’s. The only place where the name “America” was known and used was Bristol—not somewhere the France-based Waldseemüller was likely to visit. Significantly, he replaced “America” with “Terra Incognita” in his world map of 1513. Vespucci never reached North America. All the early maps and trade were British. Nor did he ever use the name of America for his discovery. There’s a good reason for this. New countries or continents were never named after a person’s first name, but always after the second (as in Tasmania, Van Diemen’s Land, or the Cook Islands). America would have become Vespucci Land (or Vespuccia) if the Italian explorer had consciously given his name to it. ~ John Lloyd, #NFDB
660:During the writing of this book, I found myself questioning why the sixteenth-century history of the Irish-English conflict—“the Mother of All the Irish Rebellions”—has been utterly ignored or forgotten. This episode was by far the largest of Elizabeth’s wars and the last significant effort of her reign. It was also the most costly in English lives lost, both common and noble. By some estimates, the rebellion resulted in half the population of Ireland dying through battle, famine, and disease, and the countryside—through the burning of forestland—was changed forever. Yet almost no one studies it, writes of it, or discusses it, even as the impact of that revolt continues to make headlines across the world more than four hundred years later. Likewise, few people outside Ireland have ever heard of Grace O’Malley, surely one of the most outrageous and extraordinary personalities of her century—at least as fascinating a character as her contemporary and sparring partner Elizabeth I. Of course history is written by the victors, and England was, by all accounts, the winner of the Irish Rebellion of the sixteenth century. But the mystery only deepens when we learn that the only contemporary knowledge we have of Grace’s exploits—other than through Irish tradition and legend—is recorded not in Ireland’s histories, but by numerous references and documentation in England’s Calendar of State Papers, as well as numerous official dispatches sent by English captains and governors such as Lords Sidney, Maltby, and Bingham. As hard as it is to believe, Grace O’Malley’s name never once appears in the most important Irish history of the day, The Annals of the Four Masters. Even in the two best modern books on the Irish Rebellion—Cyril Fall’s Elizabeth’s Irish Wars and Richard Berleth’s The Twilight Lords—there is virtually no mention made of her. Tibbot Burke receives only slightly better treatment. Why is this? Anne Chambers, author of my two “bibles” on the lives of Grace O’Malley (Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley) and Tibbot Burke (Chieftain to Knight)—the only existing biographies of mother and son—suggests that as for the early historians, they might have had so little regard for women in general that Grace’s exclusion would be expected. As for the modern historians, it is troubling that in their otherwise highly detailed books, the authors should ignore such a major player in the history of the period. It ~ Robin Maxwell, #NFDB
661:While you're alive it's shameful to worm your way into
the Calendar of Saints.
Disbelief in yourself is more saintly.
It takes real talent not to dread being terrified
by your own agonizing lack of talent.
Disbelief in yourself is indispensable.
Indispensable to us is the loneliness
of being gripped in the vise,
so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you
and skin your temples with the stars,
so that streetcars will crash into the room,
wheels cutting across your face,
so the dangling rope, terrible and alive,
will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air.
Indispensable is any mangy ghost
in tattered, overplayed stage rags,
and if even the ghosts are capricious,
I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive.
Indispensable amidst babbling boredom
are the deadly fear of uttering the right words
and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone
graveyard grass already grows.
It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious,
to fail, to leap into emptiness.
Probably, only in despair is it possible
to speak all the truth to this age.
It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts,
to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule,
to reassemble your shattered hands
from fingers that rolled under the dresser.
Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel
and the observation of the small mercies,
when a step toward falsely high goals
makes the trampled stars squeal out.
It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger,
to gnaw a verb right down to the bone.
Only one who is by nature from the naked poor
is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity.
And if from out of the dirt,
you have become a prince,
but without principles,
unprince yourself and consider
how much less dirt there was before,
when you were in the real, pure dirt.
Our self-esteem is such baseness....
The Creator raises to the heights
only those who, even with tiny movements,
tremble with the fear of uncertainty.
Better to cut open your veins with a can opener,
to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park,
than to come to that very comfortable belief
in your own special significance.
Blessed is the madcap artist,
who smashes his sculpture with relish-
hungry and cold-but free
from degrading belief in himself. ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko,#NFDB
662:Life within a Templar house was designed where possible to resemble that of a Cistercian monastery. Meals were communal and to be eaten in near silence, while a reading was given from the Bible. The rule accepted that the elaborate sign language monks used to ask for necessities while eating might not be known to Templar recruits, in which case "quietly and privately you should ask for what you need at table, with all humility and submission." Equal rations of food and wine were to be given to each brother and leftovers would be distributed to the poor. The numerous fast days of the Church calendar were to be observed, but allowances would be made for the needs of fighting men: meat was to be served three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Should the schedule of annual fast days interrupt this rhythm, rations would be increased to make up for lost sustenance as soon as the fasting period was over.
It was recognized that the Templars were killers. "This armed company of knights may kill the enemies of the cross without stated the rule, neatly summing up the conclusion of centuries of experimental Christian philosophy, which had concluded that slaying humans who happened to be "unbelieving pagans" and "the enemies of the son of the Virgin Mary" was an act worthy of divine praise and not damnation. Otherwise, the Templars were expected to live in pious self-denial.
Three horses were permitted to each knight, along with one squire whom "the brother shall not beat." Hunting with hawks—a favorite pastime of warriors throughout Christendom—was forbidden, as was hunting with dogs. only beasts Templars were permitted to kill were the mountain lions of the Holy Land. They were forbidden even to be in the company of hunting men, for the reason that "it is fitting for every religious man to go simply and humbly without laughing or talking too much." Banned, too, was the company of women, which the rule scorned as "a dangerous thing, for by it the old devil has led man from the straight path to paradise the flower of chastity is always [to be] maintained among you.... For this reason none Of you may presume to kiss a woman' be it widow, young girl, mother, sister, aunt or any other.... The Knighthood of Christ should avoid at all costs the embraces of women, by which men have perished many times." Although married men were permitted to join the order, they were not allowed to wear the white cloak and wives were not supposed to join their husbands in Templar houses. ~ Dan Jones,#NFDB
663:Like most people, when I look back, the family house is held in time, or rather it is now outside of time, because it exists so clearly and it does not change, and it can only be entered through a door in the mind.
I like it that pre-industrial societies, and religious cultures still, now, distinguish between two kinds of time – linear time, that is also cyclical because history repeats itself, even as it seems to progress, and real time, which is not subject to the clock or the calendar, and is where the soul used to live. This real time is reversible and redeemable. It is why, in religious rites of all kinds, something that happened once is re-enacted – Passover, Christmas, Easter, or, in the pagan record, Midsummer and the dying of the god. As we participate in the ritual, we step outside of linear time and enter real time.
Time is only truly locked when we live in a mechanised world. Then we turn into clock-watchers and time-servers. Like the rest of life, time becomes uniform and standardised.
When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed – for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little.
Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.
Why did I leave home when I was sixteen? It was one of those important choices that will change the rest of your life. When I look back it feels like I was at the borders of common sense, and the sensible thing to do would have been to keep quiet, keep going, learn to lie better and leave later.
I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.
And here is the shock – when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy.
You are unhappy. Things get worse.
It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded.
And then all the cowards come out and say, ‘See, I told you so.’
In fact, they told you nothing. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
664:My cold-weather gear left a lot to be desired: black maternity leggings under boot-cut maternity jeans, and a couple of Marlboro Man’s white T-shirts under an extra-large ASU sweatshirt. I was so happy to have something warm to wear that I didn’t even care that I was wearing the letters of my Pac-10 rival. Add Marlboro Man’s old lumberjack cap and mud boots that were four sizes too big and I was on my way to being a complete beauty queen. I seriously didn’t know how Marlboro Man would be able to keep his hands off of me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the feed truck, I’d shiver violently.
But really, when it came right down to it, I didn’t care. No matter what I looked like, it just didn’t feel right sending Marlboro Man into the cold, lonely world day after day. Even though I was new at marriage, I still sensed that somehow--whether because of biology or societal conditioning or religious mandate or the position of the moon--it was I who was to be the cushion between Marlboro Man and the cruel, hard world. That it was I who’d needed to dust off his shoulders every day. And though he didn’t say it, I could tell that he felt better when I was bouncing along, chubby and carrying his child, in his feed truck next to him.
Occasionally I’d hop out of the pickup and open gates. Other times he’d hop out and open them. Sometimes I’d drive while he threw hay off the back of the vehicles. Sometimes I’d get stuck and he’d say shit. Sometimes we’d just sit in silence, shivering as the vehicle doors opened and closed. Other times we’d engage in serious conversation or stop and make out in the snow.
All the while, our gestating baby rested in the warmth of my body, blissfully unaware of all the work that awaited him on this ranch where his dad had grown up. As I accompanied Marlboro Man on those long, frigid mornings of work, I wondered if our child would ever know the fun of sledding on a golf course hill…or any hill, for that matter. I’d lived on the ranch for five months and didn’t remember ever hearing about anyone sledding…or playing golf…or participating in any recreational activities at all. I was just beginning to wrap my mind around the way daily life unfolded here: wake up early, get your work done, eat, relax, and go to bed. Repeat daily. There wasn’t a calendar of events or dinner dates with friends in town or really much room for recreation--because that just meant double the work when you got back to work. It was hard for me not to wonder when any of these people ever went out and had a good time, or built a snowman.
Or slept past 5:00 A.M. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
665:--How I Was Visited By Messengers--
Something clicked in the clock on the wall, and I was visited by messengers. at first, I did not realize that I was visited by messengers. instead, I thought that something was wrong with the clock. but then I saw that the clock worked just fine, and probably told the correct time. then I noticed that there was a draft in the room. and then it shocked me: what kind of thing could, at the same time, cause a clock to click and a draft to start in the room? I sat down on a chair next to the divan and looked at the clock, thinking about that. the big hand was on the number nine, and the little one on the four, therefore, it was a quarter till four. there was a calendar on the wall below the clock, and its leafs were flipping, as if there was a strong wind in my room. my heart was beating very fast and I was so scared it almost made me collapse.
"i should have some water," I said. on the table next to me was a pitcher with water. I reached out and took the pitcher.
"water should help," I said and looked at the water.
it was then that I realized that I had been visited by messengers, and that I could not tell them apart from the water. I was scared to drink the water, because I could, by accident, drink a messenger. what does that mean? nothing. one can only drink liquids. could the messengers be liquid? no. then, I can drink the water, there is nothing to be afraid of. but I couldn't find the water. I walked around the room and looked for the water. I tried putting a belt in my mouth, but it was not the water. I put the calendar in my mouth -- that also was not the water. I gave up looking for the water and started to look for the messengers. but how could I find them? what do they look like? I remembered that I could not distinguish them from the water, therefore, they must look like water. but what does water look like? I was standing and thinking. I do not know for how long I stood and thought, but suddenly I came to.
"there is the water," I thought.
but that wasn't the water and instead I got an itch in my ear.
I looked under the cupboard and under the bed, hoping that there I might find the water or the messengers. but under the cupboard, in a pile of dust, I found a little ball, half eaten by a dog, and under the bed I found some pieces of glass.
under the chair I found a half-eaten steak, I ate it and it made me feel better. it wasn't drafty anymore, the clock was ticking steadily, telling the time: a quarter till four.
"well, this means the messengers are gone," I said quietly and started to get dressed, since I had a visit to make.
-August 22, 1937 ~ Daniil Kharms,#NFDB
666:So which is more probable: That today's atheist apocalyptans are unique and right? Or that they are like their many predecessors—at the very least, in their motivations? If anything, the vehemence with which the believers in emergent complexity debunk all religion may betray their own creeping awareness of the religious underpinnings and precedents for their declarations.
In fact, the concept of Armageddon first emerged in response to the invention of monotheism by the ancient Persian priest Zoroaster, around the tenth or eleventh century BCE. Until that time, the dominant religions maintained a pantheon of gods reigning in a cyclical precession along with the heavens, so there was little need for absolutes. As religions began focusing on a single god, things got a bit trickier. For if there is only one god, and that god has absolute power, then why do bad things happen? Why does evil still exist?
If one's god is fighting for control of the universe against the gods of other people, then there's no problem. Just as in polytheism, the great achievements of one god can be undermined by the destructive acts of another. But what if a religion, such as Judaism of the First and Second Temple era, calls for one god and one god alone? How do its priests and followers explain the persistence of evil and suffering?
They do it the same way Zoroaster did: by introducing time into the equation. The imperfection of the universe is a product of its incompleteness. There's only one true god, but he's not done yet. In the monotheist version, the precession of the gods was no longer a continuous cycle of seasonal deities or metaphors. It was nor a linear story with a clear endpoint in the victory of the one true and literal god. Once this happens, time can end.
Creation is the Alpha, and the Return is the Omega. It's all good.
This worked well enough to assuage the anxieties of both the civilization of the calendar and that of the clock. But what about us? Without time, without a future, how to we contend with the lingering imperfections in our reality? As members of a monotheist culture—however reluctant—we can't help but seek to apply its foundational framework to our current dilemma. The less aware we are of this process—or the more we refuse to admit its legacy in our construction of new models—the more vulnerable we become to its excesses. Repression and extremism are two sides of the same coin.
In spite of their determination to avoid such constructs, even the most scientifically minded futurists apply the Alpha-Omega framework of messianic time to their upgraded apocalypse narratives. Emergence takes the place of the hand of God, mysteriously transforming a chaotic system into a self-organized one, with coherence and cooperation. Nobody seems able to explain how this actually happens. ~ Douglas Rushkoff,#NFDB
667:I hope you’ll consider marrying me sooner rather than later.” Another kiss, slow and devastating. “Because I long for you, Kathleen, my dearest love. I want to sleep with you every night, and wake with you every morning.” His mouth caressed her with deepening pressure until her arms curled around his neck. “And I want children with you. Soon.”
The truth was there, in his voice, his eyes, on his lips. She could taste it.
She realized in wonder that somehow, in the past months, his heart had indeed changed. He was becoming the man fate had intended for him to be…his true self…a man who could make commitments and meet his responsibilities, and most of all, love without holding anything back.
Sixty years? A man like that shouldn’t have to wait even sixty seconds.
Fumbling a little with the watch chain, she lifted it and slipped it over her head. The glimmering gold timepiece settled over her heart. She looked up at him with swimming eyes. “I love you, Devon. Yes, I’ll marry you, yes--”
He hauled her against him and kissed her without reserve. And he continued to kiss her hungrily as he undressed her, his mouth tender and hot as he ravished every exposed inch of skin. He removed everything but the little gold watch, which Kathleen insisted on keeping.
“Devon,” she said breathlessly, when they were both naked and he had lowered beside her, “I…I should confess to a small prevarication.” She wanted complete honesty between them. No secrets, nothing held back.
“Yes?” he asked with his lips against her throat, one of his thighs pressing between hers.
“Until recently, I hadn’t really checked my calendar to make certain I was--” She broke off as he used the edge of his teeth to delicately score her throat. “--counting days properly. And I had already resolved to take full responsibility for…” His tongue was playing in the hollow at the base of her neck. “…what happened that morning. After breakfast. You remember.”
“I remember,” he said, kissing his way down to her breasts.
Kathleen grasped his head in her hands, urging him to look at her and pay attention. “Devon. What I’m trying to say is that I may have misled you last night…” She swallowed hard and forced herself to finish. “…when I said that my monthly courses had started.”
He went very still. His face was wiped clean of all expression as he stared down at her. “They haven’t?”
She shook her head, her anxious gaze searching his. “In fact, I’m quite late.”
One of his hands came to her face, a tremor running through his long fingers. “You might be pregnant?” he asked huskily.
“I’m almost certain of it.”
Devon stared down at her dazedly, a flush covering his face. “My sweet, beautiful love, my angel--” He began to look over her intently, pressing kisses along her body, caressing her stomach. “My God. This settles it: I am the luckiest sod in England. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
668:To Begin With, the Sweet Grass"
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.
2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.
And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.
5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.
6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?
And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
your life—
what would do for you?
7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
669:This is the mighty and branching tree called mythology which ramifies round the whole world whose remote branches under separate skies bear like colored birds the costly idols of Asia and the half-baked fetishes of Africa and the fairy kings and princesses of the folk-tales of the forest and buried amid vines and olives the Lares of the Latins, and carried on the clouds of Olympus the buoyant supremacy of the gods of Greece. These are the myths and he who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men. But he who has most Sympathy with myths will most fully realize that they are not and never were a religion, in the sense that Christianity or even Islam is a religion. They satisfy some of the needs satisfied by a religion; and notably the need for doing certain things at certain dates; the need of the twin ideas of festivity and formality. But though they provide a man with a calendar they do not provide him with a creed. A man did not stand up and say 'I believe in Jupiter and Juno and Neptune,' etc., as he stands up and says 'I believe in God the Father Almighty' and the rest of the Apostles' Creed.... Polytheism fades away at its fringes into fairy-tales or barbaric memories; it is not a thing like monotheism as held by serious monotheists. Again it does satisfy the need to cry out on some uplifted name, or some noble memory in moments that are themselves noble and uplifted; such as the birth of a child or the saving of a city. But the name was so used by many to whom it was only a name. Finally it did satisfy, or rather it partially satisfied, a thing very deep in humanity indeed; the idea of surrendering something as the portion of the unknown powers; of pouring out wine upon the ground, of throwing a ring into the sea; in a word, of sacrifice....A child pretending there is a goblin in a hollow tree will do a crude and material thing like leaving a piece of cake for him. A poet might do a more dignified and elegant thing, like bringing to the god fruits as well as flowers. But the degree of seriousness in both acts may be the same or it may vary in almost any degree. The crude fancy is no more a creed than the ideal fancy is a creed. Certainly the pagan does not disbelieve like an atheist, any more than he believes like a Christian. He feels the presence of powers about which he guesses and invents. St. Paul said that the Greeks had one altar to an unknown god. But in truth all their gods were unknown gods. And the real break in history did come when St. Paul declared to them whom they had worshipped. The substance of all such paganism may be summarized thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all..... There is nothing in Paganism whereby one may check his own exaggerations.... The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull’s blood, as did Julian the Apostate. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
670:From A German War Primer
AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.
The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.
For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.
They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.
If the lowly do not
Think about what's low
They will never rise.
THE BREAD OF THE HUNGRY HAS
ALL BEEN EATEN
Meat has become unknown. Useless
The pouring out of the people's sweat.
The laurel groves have been
Lopped down.
From the chimneys of the arms factories
Rises smoke.
THE HOUSE-PAINTER SPEAKS OF
GREAT TIMES TO COME
The forests still grow.
The fields still bear
The cities still stand.
The people still breathe.
ON THE CALENDAR THE DAY IS NOT
21
YET SHOWN
Every month, every day
Lies open still. One of those days
Is going to be marked with a cross.
THE WORKERS CRY OUT FOR BREAD
The merchants cry out for markets.
The unemployed were hungry. The employed
Are hungry now.
The hands that lay folded are busy again.
They are making shells.
THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
WHEN THE LEADERS SPEAK OF PEACE
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY: PEACE
AND WAR
Are of different substance.
But their peace and their war
Are like wind and storm.
War grows from their peace
Like son from his mother
He bears
Her frightful features.
Their war kills
Whatever their peace
Has left over.
22
ON THE WALL WAS CHALKED:
They want war.
The man who wrote it
Has already fallen.
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY:
This way to glory.
Those down below say:
This way to the grave.
THE WAR WHICH IS COMING
Is not the first one. There were
Other wars before it.
When the last one came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY COMRADESHIP
Reigns in the army.
The truth of this is seen
In the cookhouse.
In their hearts should be
The selfsame courage. But
On their plates
Are two kinds of rations.
WHEN IT COMES TO MARCHING MANY DO NOT
KNOW
That their enemy is marching at their head.
The voice which gives them their orders
Is their enemy's voice and
The man who speaks of the enemy
Is the enemy himself.
IT IS NIGHT
The married couples
Lie in their beds. The young women
Will bear orphans.
23
GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.
~ Bertolt Brecht,#NFDB
671:I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.
But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.
"You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old."
I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty.
The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever.
Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time.. ~ Emily Giffin,#NFDB
672:General Kelly, the homeland security secretary and retired four-star Marine general, was furious when he learned that the White House was working on a compromise on immigration for “Dreamers”—a central issue in the immigration debate. Dreamers are immigrant children brought to the United States by their parents who as adults had entered illegally. Under the 2012 legislation called DACA—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—President Obama had given 800,000 Dreamers protection from deportation and made work permits available to them, hoping to bring them out of the shadow economy and give them an American identity. Kelly, a hard-liner on immigration, was supposed to be in charge of these matters now. But Jared Kushner had been working a backchannel compromise. He had been inviting Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who was number two in his party’s leadership, and Lindsey Graham to his office to discuss a compromise. Graham later asked Kelly, “Didn’t Jared tell you we’ve been working on this for months? We’ve got a fix.” Kelly called Bannon. “If the son-in-law is going to run it, then have the son-in-law run it. I don’t need to run it. I need to come see the president. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not going to be up there and be blindsided and humiliated on something that I’ve got to be in the loop on.” Bannon believed the administration owned the hard-line immigration posture—except for Trump himself. “He’s always been soft on DACA. He believes the left-wing thing. They’re all valedictorians. They’re all Rhodes Scholars. Because Ivanka over the years has told him that.” Kelly voiced his distress to Priebus, who along with Bannon feared Kelly might quit. “Get Kelly some time on the calendar,” Bannon proposed. “Let him come see the boss and light Jared up. Because this is Jared’s shit, doing stuff behind people’s back.” Priebus didn’t do it. “Get it on the fucking calendar,” Bannon insisted. Priebus continued to stall. It would expose disorganization in the White House. “What are you talking about?” Bannon asked. This was laughable! Of course Priebus didn’t have control of Jared. And people were always going behind someone’s back. So Bannon and Priebus both told Kelly, We’ll take care of it. To go to the president would cause unnecessary consternation. We’ll make sure it won’t happen again and you’re going to be in the loop. Kelly, team player for the moment, didn’t push it further. When he later mentioned it obliquely in the president’s presence, Trump didn’t respond. Lindsey Graham wandered into Bannon’s West Wing office. “Hey, here’s the deal. You want your wall?” Trump would get wall funding in exchange for the Dreamers. “Stop,” Bannon said. A deal on the Dreamers was amnesty. “We will never give amnesty for one person. I don’t care if you build 10 fucking walls. The wall ain’t good enough. It’s got to be chain migration.” Chain migration, formally called the family reunification policy, allowed a single legal immigrant to bring close family members into the United States—parents, children, a spouse and, in some cases, siblings. These family members would have a path to legal permanent residency or citizenship. They might be followed by a “chain” of their own spouses, children, parents or siblings. Two thirds (68 percent) of legal permanent residents entered under family reunification or chain migration in 2016. This was at the heart of Trump’s and Bannon’s anti-immigration stance: They wanted to stop illegal immigration and limit legal immigration. Bannon wanted a new, stricter policy. Graham and he were not able to come close to agreement. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
673:Shopping For Pomegranates At Wal-Mart On New
Year's Day
Beneath a ten-foot-tall apparition of Frosty the Snowman
with his corncob pipe and jovial, over-eager, button-black eyes,
holding, in my palm, the leathery, wine-colored purse
of a pomegranate, I realize, yet again, that America is a country
about which I understand everything and nothing at all,
that this is life, this ungovernable air
in which the trees rearrange their branches, season after season,
never certain which configuration will bear the optimal yield
of sunlight and water, the enabling balm of nutrients,
that so, too, do Wal-Mart’s ferocious sales managers
relentlessly analyze their end-cap placement, product mix,
and shopper demographics, that this is the culture
in all its earnestness and absurdity, that it never rests,
that each day is an eternity and every night is New Year’s Eve,
a cavalcade of B-list has-beens entirely unknown to me,
needy comedians and country singers in handsome Stetsons,
sitcom stars of every social trope and ethnic denomination,
pugilists and oligarchs, femmes fatales and anointed virgins
throat-slit in offering to the cannibal throng of Times Square.
Who are these people? I grow old. I lie unsleeping
as confetti falls, ash-girdled, robed in sweat and melancholy,
click-shifting from QVC to reality TV, strings of commercials
for breath freshener, debt reconsolidation, a new car
lacking any whisper of style or grace, like a final fetid gasp
from the lips of a dying Henry Ford, potato-faced actors
impersonating real people with real opinions
offered forth with idiot grins in the yellow, herniated studio light,
actual human beings, actual souls bought too cheaply.
That it never ends, O Lord, that it never ends!
That it is relentless, remorseless, and it is on right now.
That one sees it and sees it but sometimes it sees you, too,
cowering in a corner, transfixed by the crawler for the storm alert,
home videos of faces left dazed by the twister, the car bomb,
the war always beginning or already begun, always
the special report, the inside scoop, the hidden camera
revealing the mechanical lives of the sad, inarticulate people
we have come to know as “celebrities.”
20
Who assigns such value, who chose these craven avatars
if not the miraculous hand of the marketplace,
whose torn cuticles and gaudily painted fingernails resemble nothing
so much as our own? Where does the oracle reveal our truths
more vividly than upon that pixillated spirit glass
unless it is here, in this tabernacle of homely merchandise,
a Copernican model of a money-driven universe
revolving around its golden omphalos, each of us summed
and subtotalled, integers in an equation of need and consumption,
desire and consummation, because Hollywood had it right all along,
the years are a montage of calendar pages and autumn leaves,
sheet music for a nostalgic symphony of which our lives comprise
but single trumpet blasts, single notes in the hullabaloo,
or even less—we are but motes of dust in that atmosphere
shaken by the vibrations of time’s imperious crescendo.
That it never ends, O Lord. That it goes on,
without pause or cessation, without pity or remorse.
That we have willed it into existence, dreamed it into being.
That it is our divine monster, our factotum, our scourge.
That I can imagine nothing more beautiful
than to propitiate such a god upon the seeds of my own heart.
~ Campbell McGrath,#NFDB
674:Thanks again to Alan Butler's work, this time I was able to inspect the work of Hesiod in connection with the Phaistos Disc for being calendrical, and now I view it through the lens of ancient Egypt by projecting it directly onto the circular zodiac of Dendera. Hesiod has used three different references to the days in his work: (the first ..); (the middle ..); and (.. of the month). With this system which he had used, I linked the "first" references to the zodiac's portals on the East; the "middle" references to the Fullmoon days of the month which are located on the zodiac's western portals; and the "of the month" references to the zodiac's days which are located right after passing by and finishing the rotation beyond the eastern portals.
Therefore, Hesiod has recognized Egypt's month's count of days (And tell your slaves the thirtieth is the month's best-suited day). He has also explicitly identified the beginning of the Equinox and Solstice portals on the zodiac based on the zodiac's anticlockwise orientation while emphasizing the more prominent role of the Summer Solstice in the calendar system (The first and fourth and seventh days are holy days to men, the eighth and ninth as well). Hesiod has also issued a warning against, Apophis, the snake demon (But shun the fifth day, fifth days are both difficult and dread).
Hesiod has recognized Egypt's royal-cosmic copulation event that takes place at the culmination of the Summer Solstice (The first ninth, though, for human beings, is harmless, quite benign for planting and for being born; indeed, it's very fine For men and women both; this day is never bad all through)
Hesiod has identified the exact position of the newly born infant boy on the zodiac (For planting vines the middle sixth is uncongenial but good for the birth of males) and also established the Minoan bull's head rhyton connection with Egypt (The middle fourth, which is a day to soothe and gently tame the sheep and curved-horned), (Open a jar on the middle fourth),(And on the fourth the long and narrow boats can be begun).
Hesiod gave Osiris' role in the ancient Egyptian agrarian Theology to men (two Days of the waxing month stand out for tasks men have to do, the eleventh and the twelfth) and pointed out the right location of the boar on the zodiac (Geld your boar on the eighth of the month) and counted on top of these days the days of the mule which comes afterward (on the twelfth day of the month [geld] the long-laboring mule) - since the reference to the mule in the historical text comes right after that of the boar's and both are grouped together conceptually with the act of gelding.
He has also identified the role of Isis for resurrecting Osiris after the Summer Solstice event (On the fourth day of the month bring back a wife to your abode) and even referred to the two female figures on the zodiac and identified them as, Demeter and Persephone, the two mythical Greek queens (Upon the middle seventh throw Demeter's holy grain) where we see them along with the reference to Poseidon (i.e. fishes and water) right next to them as the account exists in the Greek mythology.
Even more, Hesiod knows when the sequence of the boats' appearances begins on the zodiac (And on the fourth the long and narrow boats can be begun).
Astonishingly enough, he mentions the solar eclipse when the Moon fully blocks the Sun (the third ninth's best of all, though this is known by few) and also glorifies sunrise and warns from sunset on that same day (Again, few know the after-twentieth day of the month is best ..) and identifies the event's dangerous location on the west (.. at dawn and that it worsens when the sun sinks in the west). ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,#NFDB
675:break?" She stared back at him, but speaking was beyond her. She was so taken aback by the concern and care he couldn't hide. This was just one more aspect of his personality that she was seeing, whether he wanted her to see it or not. She sucked in a ragged breath. She had one thought and one thought only. She was falling in love with the Neanderthal. **** During the evening and night, Logan fed her soup and made her drink Gatorade and lots of water. Lauren knew he'd called someone, she suspected it was his mother, because she'd heard him talking on the phone. After that, he timed her medicine and alternated between giving her ibuprofen and acetaminophen. He took care of her, and she left any worries she might have had to him. Since the following day was Friday, she already knew she wasn't going in to work, and so did her immediate boss. It had been more than obvious when Lauren had left with chills and a fever and he had called out, "See you Monday." She knew he didn't want her spreading what she had all over the office. So Lauren alternated between sleeping through the evening and night, and being taken care of by Logan. All she had to do on her own was pick her way to the bathroom, and a couple of times, she hadn't even had to do that. He'd lifted her up when she'd swayed a little too much for his liking, and deposited her in the bathroom and closed the door. He'd been there waiting for her, ready to carry her back after she opened the door. They watched some television together, and at about midnight, he carried her through to the bedroom and held her as she slept. Lauren couldn't ever remember having had so much fun being sick. She reveled in his care; she luxuriated in the undivided attention he was showing her. Nothing anyone had ever done for her had ever felt so . . . compelling. The next morning when she realized that he wasn't going to go to work, she rebelled against that. "I'm okay. I'm going to live. Please go to work." He frowned in obvious agitation. "Your fever might flare up again." "I just took the ibuprofen. I'll take some more meds in a couple of hours, okay?" He watched her as if debating the idea. "I think you still need me." God, yes, she needed him. "I'll be fine." She watched him warily, a thousand emotions bouncing around in her head. "You can come back after work if you want." He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. "That's a given, baby." **** Lauren went back to work on Monday but was slow to fully get her strength back. Two weeks later, however, she was full steam ahead. She'd laid low at work, put a lot of stuff on the back burner as she recovered from what she guessed was a mild case of the flu. Then one day, feeling much better, she took a look at her upcoming calendar and almost flipped out. She had a full schedule packed into the next ten days or so, starting with an out of town trip. Logan took her out to dinner that evening, and after they'd eaten and she'd delayed as long as she could, she lowered the boom on him. After she told him about the trip, he turned in his seat to stare down at her. He said nothing for a moment, as if not trusting himself to speak. The waiter walked by, and Logan motioned for the check with a jerk of his hand. Every motion of his body indicated his heightened stress level. "Logan, you're overreacting," Lauren chided softly. "Am I?" he asked, staring across the restaurant, out the windows, looking everywhere else but not at her while he drummed his fingers on the table. "Yes. It's no big deal, really, I'll be home before you know it," she tried to soothe. "I don't think you understand," he said flatly as he turned to look at her. Oh, Lauren was pretty sure she did understand and told him so in no uncertain terms. "I ~ Lynda Chance, #NFDB
676:Mugging (I)
Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—
Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood
Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors
Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in
ground
—Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,
past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped
on brick
Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall
painted green & purple Puerto Rican style
Along E. 10th’s glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair
adolescents’ crowded house fronts—
Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer sky Halloween,
thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police for a season?
thinking what’s all this Weathermen, secrecy & selfrighteousness beyond
reason—F.B.I. plots?
Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb—
past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes leaning against a ravaged
Buick
—and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop—a boy stepped up, put his
arm around my neck
tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against
my skull,
and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot ’gainst
my ankle—
as I went down shouting Om Ah Hūm to gangs of lovers on the stoop
watching
slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean strange business
with what—my pockets, bald head, broken-healed-bone leg, my softshoes, my
heart—
Have they knives? Om Ah Hūm—Have they sharp metal wood to shove in
eye ear ass? Om Ah Hūm
& slowly reclined on the pavement, struggling to keep my woolen bag of poetry
address calendar & Leary-lawyer notes hung from my shoulder
dragged in my neat orlon shirt over the crossbar of a broken metal door
dragged slowly onto the fire-soiled floor an abandoned store, laundry candy
counter 1929—
54
now a mess of papers & pillows & plastic car seat covers cracked cockroachcorpsed ground—
my wallet back pocket passed over the iron foot step guard
and fell out, stole by God Muggers’ lost fingers, Strange—
Couldn’t tell—snakeskin wallet actually plastic, 70 dollars my bank money for a
week,
old broken wallet—and dreary plastic contents—Amex card & Manf. Hanover
Trust Credit too—business card from Mr. Spears British Home Minister Drug
Squad—my draft card—membership ACLU & Naropa Institute Instructor’s
identification
Om Ah Hūm I continued chanting Om Ah Hūm
Putting my palm on the neck of an 18 year old boy fingering my back pocket
crying “Where’s the money”
“Om Ah Hūm there isn’t any”
My card Chief Boo-Hoo Neo American Church New Jersey & Lower East Side
Om Ah Hūm —what not forgotten crowded wallet—Mobil Credit, Shell? old
lovers addresses on cardboard pieces, booksellers calling cards—
—“Shut up or we’ll murder you”—“Om Ah Hūm take it easy”
Lying on the floor shall I shout more loud?—the metal door closed on blackness
one boy felt my broken healed ankle, looking for hundred dollar bills behind my
stocking weren’t even there—a third boy untied my Seiko Hong Kong watch
rough from right wrist leaving a clasp-prick skin tiny bruise
“Shut up and we’ll get out of here”—and so they left,
as I rose from the cardboard mattress thinking Om Ah Hūm didn’t stop em
enough,
the tone of voice too loud—my shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars full of poetry left
on the broken floor—
~ Allen Ginsberg,#NFDB
677:FOR MY SPIRITUAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help others... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with God... ? FOR MY PHYSICAL HEALTH... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to relieve my stress... ? FOR MY PERSONAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skill at ... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time for myself... ? FOR MY KEY RELATIONSHIPS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make my family stronger... ? FOR MY JOB... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help my team succeed... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to further my career... ? FOR MY BUSINESS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more competitive... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve our customer experience... ? FOR MY FINANCES... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to eliminate my credit card debt... ? BIG IDEAS So how do you make The ONE Thing part of your daily routine? How do you make it strong enough to get extraordinary results at work and in the other areas of your life? Here’s a starter list drawn from our experience and our work with others. Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action. Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more productive and your personal life more rewarding. Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results. Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.” Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board. Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal achievements, or any other part of their lives. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
678:I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.
I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.
I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.
I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this. ~ Lemony Snicket,#NFDB
679:The Royal Jester
Once on a time, so ancient poets sing,
There reigned in Godknowswhere a certain king.
So great a monarch ne'er before was seen:
He was a hero, even to his queen,
In whose respect he held so high a place
That none was higher,-nay, not even the ace.
He was so just his Parliament declared
Those subjects happy whom his laws had spared;
So wise that none of the debating throng
Had ever lived to prove him in the wrong;
So good that Crime his anger never feared,
And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard;
So brave that if his army got a beating
None dared to face him when he was retreating.
This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth,
And loved him tenderly despite his worth.
Prompted by what caprice I cannot say,
He called the Fool before the throne one day
And to that jester seriously said:
'I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead,
While I, attired in motley, will make sport
To entertain your Majesty and Court.'
'T was done and the Fool governed. He decreed
The time of harvest and the time of seed;
Ordered the rains and made the weather clear,
And had a famine every second year;
Altered the calendar to suit his freak,
Ordaining six whole holidays a week;
Religious creeds and sacred books prepared;
Made war when angry and made peace when scared.
New taxes he inspired; new laws he made;
Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed,
In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not
Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot
Made the whole country with his praises ring,
Declaring he was every inch a king;
And the High Priest averred 't was very odd
If one so competent were not a god.
551
Meantime, his master, now in motley clad,
Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad,
That some condoled with him as with a brother
Who, having lost a wife, had got another.
Others, mistaking his profession, often
Approached him to be measured for a coffin.
For years this highborn jester never broke
The silence-he was pondering a joke.
At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed,
He strode into the Council and displayed
A long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloom
Like a gilt epithet within a tomb.
Posing his bauble like a leader's staff,
To give the signal when (and why) to laugh,
He brought it down with peremptory stroke
And simultaneously cracked his joke!
I can't repeat it, friends. I ne'er could school
Myself to quote from any other fool:
A jest, if it were worse than mine, would start
My tears; if better, it would break my heart.
So, if you please, I'll hold you but to state
That royal Jester's melancholy fate.
The insulted nation, so the story goes,
Rose as one man-the very dead arose,
Springing indignant from the riven tomb,
And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb!
All to the Council Chamber clamoring went,
By rage distracted and on vengeance bent.
In that vast hall, in due disorder laid,
The tools of legislation were displayed,
And the wild populace, its wrath to sate,
Seized them and heaved them at the Jester's pate.
Mountains of writing paper; pools and seas
Of ink, awaiting, to become decrees,
Royal approval-and the same in stacks
Lay ready for attachment, backed with wax;
Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them;
With mucilage convenient to extend them;
Scissors for limiting their application,
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And acids to repeal all legislationThese, flung as missiles till the air was dense,
Were most offensive weapons of offense,
And by their aid the Fool was nigh destroyed.
They ne'er had been so harmlessly employed.
Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap,
His mouth egurgitating ink on tap,
His eyelids mucilaginously sealed,
His fertile head by scissors made to yield
Abundant harvestage of ears, his pelt,
In every wrinkle and on every welt,
Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gills
And thickly studded with a pride of quills,
The royal Jester in the dreadful strife
Was made (in short) an editor for life!
An idle tale, and yet a moral lurks
In this as plainly as in greater works.
I shall not give it birth: one moral here
Would die of loneliness within a year.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
680:On Love
TO the assembled folk
At great St. Kavin’s spoke
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve;
I give you joy, my friends,
That as the round year ends,
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave.
On other festal days
For penitence or praise
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving;
To-night we calendar
The rising of that star
Which lit the old world with new joy of living.
Ah, we disparage still
The Tidings of Good Will,
Discrediting Love’s gospel now as then!
And with the verbal creed
That God is love indeed,
Who dares make Love his god before all men?
Shall we not, therefore, friends,
Resolve to make amends
To that glad inspiration of the heart;
To grudge not, to cast out
Selfishness, malice, doubt,
Anger and fear; and for the better part,
To love so much, so well,
The spirit cannot tell
The range and sweep of her own boundary!
There is no period
Between the soul and God;
Love is the tide, God the eternal sea.…
To-day we walk by love;
To strive is not enough,
Save against greed and ignorance and might.
We apprehend peace comes
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Not with the roll of drums,
But in the still processions of the night.
And we perceive, not awe
But love is the great law
That binds the world together safe and whole.
The splendid planets run
Their courses in the sun;
Love is the gravitation of the soul.
In the profound unknown,
Illumined, fair, and lone,
Each star is set to shimmer in its place.
In the profound divine
Each soul is set to shine,
And its unique appointed orbit trace.
There is no near nor far,
Where glorious Algebar
Swings round his mighty circuit through the night,
Yet where without a sound
The winged seed comes to ground,
And the red leaf seems hardly to alight.
One force, one lore, one need
For satellite and seed,
In the serene benignity for all.
Letting her time-glass run
With star-dust, sun by sun,
In Nature’s thought there is no great nor small.
There is no far nor near
Within the spirit’s sphere.
The summer sunset’s scarlet-yellow wings
Are tinged with the same dye
That paints the tulip’s ply.
And what is colour but the soul of things?
(The earth was without form;
God moulded it with storm,
Ice, flood, and tempest, gleaming tint and hue;
Lest it should come to ill
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For lack of spirit still,
He gave it colour,—let the love shine through.)…
Of old, men said, ‘Sin not;
By every line and jot
Ye shall abide; man’s heart is false and vile.’
Christ said, ‘By love alone
In man’s heart is God known;
Obey the word no falsehood can defile.’…
And since that day we prove
Only how great is love,
Nor to this hour its greatness half believe.
For to what other power
Will life give equal dower,
Or chaos grant one moment of reprieve!
Look down the ages’ line,
Where slowly the divine
Evinces energy, puts forth control;
See mighty love alone
Transmuting stock and stone,
Infusing being, helping sense and soul.
And what is energy,
In-working, which bids be
The starry pageant and the life of earth?
What is the genesis
Of every joy and bliss,
Each action dared, each beauty brought to birth?
What hangs the sun on high?
What swells the growing rye?
What bids the loons cry on the Northern lake?
What stirs in swamp and swale,
When April winds prevail,
And all the dwellers of the ground awake?…
What lurks in the deep gaze
Of the old wolf? Amaze,
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear.
But deeper than all these
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Love muses, yearns, and sees,
And is the self that does not change nor veer.
Not love of self alone,
Struggle for lair and bone,
But self-denying love of mate and young,
Love that is kind and wise,
Knows trust and sacrifice,
And croons the old dark universal tongue.…
And who has understood
Our brothers of the wood,
Save he who puts off guile and every guise
Of violence,—made truce
With panther, bear, and moose,
As beings like ourselves whom love makes wise?
For they, too, do love’s will,
Our lesser clansmen still;
The House of Many Mansions holds us all;
Courageous, glad and hale,
They go forth on the trail,
Hearing the message, hearkening to the call.…
Open the door to-night
Within your heart, and light
The lantern of love there to shine afar.
On a tumultuous sea
Some straining craft, maybe,
With bearings lost, shall sight love’s silver star.
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
681:Interim
The room is full of you!—As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—
Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change.
Save here. Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gate
Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped
Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange,
Sweet garden of a thousand years ago
And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!"
You are not here. I know that you are gone,
And will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent step must wake across the hall;
If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes
Would kiss me from the door.—So short a time
To teach my life its transposition to
This difficult and unaccustomed key!—
The room is as you left it; your last touch—
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly—hallows now each simple thing;
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light.
There is your book, just as you laid it down,
Face to the table,—I cannot believe
That you are gone!—Just then it seemed to me
You must be here. I almost laughed to think
How like reality the dream had been;
Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.
That book, outspread, just as you laid it down!
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Perhaps you thought, "I wonder what comes next,
And whether this or this will be the end";
So rose, and left it, thinking to return.
Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed
Out of the room, rocked silently a while
Ere it again was still. When you were gone
Forever from the room, perhaps that chair,
Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while,
Silently, to and fro...
And here are the last words your fingers wrote,
Scrawled in broad characters across a page
In this brown book I gave you. Here your hand,
Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.
Here with a looping knot you crossed a "t,"
And here another like it, just beyond
These two eccentric "e's." You were so small,
And wrote so brave a hand!
How strange it seems
That of all words these are the words you chose!
And yet a simple choice; you did not know
You would not write again. If you had known—
But then, it does not matter,—and indeed
If you had known there was so little time
You would have dropped your pen and come to me
And this page would be empty, and some phrase
Other than this would hold my wonder now.
Yet, since you could not know, and it befell
That these are the last words your fingers wrote,
There is a dignity some might not see
In this, "I picked the first sweet-pea to-day."
To-day! Was there an opening bud beside it
You left until to-morrow?—O my love,
The things that withered,—and you came not back
That day you filled this circle of my arms
That now is empty. (O my empty life!)
That day—that day you picked the first sweet-pea,—
And brought it in to show me! I recall
With terrible distinctness how the smell
Of your cool gardens drifted in with you.
I know, you held it up for me to see
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And flushed because I looked not at the flower,
But at your face; and when behind my look
You saw such unmistakable intent
You laughed and brushed your flower against my lips.
(You were the fairest thing God ever made,
I think.) And then your hands above my heart
Drew down its stem into a fastening,
And while your head was bent I kissed your hair.
I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands!
Somehow I cannot seem to see them still.
Somehow I cannot seem to see the dust
In your bright hair.) What is the need of Heaven
When earth can be so sweet?—If only God
Had let us love,—and show the world the way!
Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal books
When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!
That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is.
It seems to me I laid it down somewhere,
And yet,—I am not sure. I am not sure,
Even, if it was white or pink; for then
'Twas much like any other flower to me
Save that it was the first. I did not know
Then, that it was the last. If I had known—
But then, it does not matter. Strange how few,
After all's said and done, the things that are
Of moment.
Few indeed! When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
"I had you and I have you now no more."
There, there it dangles,—where's the little truth
That can for long keep footing under that
When its slack syllables tighten to a thought?
Here, let me write it down! I wish to see
Just how a thing like that will look on paper!
"I had you and I have you now no more."
O little words, how can you run so straight
Across the page, beneath the weight you bear?
How can you fall apart, whom such a theme
Has bound together, and hereafter aid
In trivial expression, that have been
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So hideously dignified?—Would God
That tearing you apart would tear the thread
I strung you on! Would God—O God, my mind
Stretches asunder on this merciless rack
Of imagery! O, let me sleep a while!
Would I could sleep, and wake to find me back
In that sweet summer afternoon with you.
Summer? Tis summer still by the calendar!
How easily could God, if He so willed,
Set back the world a little turn or two!
Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again!
We were so wholly one I had not thought
That we could die apart. I had not thought
That I could move,—and you be stiff and still!
That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb!
I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof
In some firm fabric, woven in and out;
Your golden filaments in fair design
Across my duller fibre. And to-day
The shining strip is rent; the exquisite
Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart
Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled
In the damp earth with you. I have been tom
In two, and suffer for the rest of me.
What is my life to me? And what am I
To life,—a ship whose star has guttered out?
A Fear that in the deep night starts awake
Perpetually, to find its senses strained
Against the taut strings of the quivering air,
Awaiting the return of some dread chord?
Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor;
All else were contrast,—save that contrast's wall
Is down, and all opposed things flow together
Into a vast monotony, where night
And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life,
Are synonyms. What now—what now to me
Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers
That clutter up the world? You were my song!
Now, let discord scream! You were my flower!
Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not
65
Plant things above your grave—(the common balm
Of the conventional woe for its own wound!)
Amid sensations rendered negative
By your elimination stands to-day,
Certain, unmixed, the element of grief;
I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truth
With travesties of suffering, nor seek
To effigy its incorporeal bulk
In little wry-faced images of woe.
I cannot call you back; and I desire
No utterance of my immaterial voice.
I cannot even turn my face this way
Or that, and say, "My face is turned to you";
I know not where you are, I do not know
If Heaven hold you or if earth transmute,
Body and soul, you into earth again;
But this I know:—not for one second's space
Shall I insult my sight with visionings
Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed
Beholds, self-conjured, in the empty air.
Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears!
My sorrow shall be dumb!
What do I say?
God! God!—God pity me! Am I gone mad
That I should spit upon a rosary?
Am I become so shrunken? Would to God
I too might feel that frenzied faith whose touch
Makes temporal the most enduring grief;
Though it must walk a while, as is its wont,
With wild lamenting! Would I too might weep
Where weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreaths
For its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it is
That keeps the world alive. If all at once
Faith were to slacken,—that unconscious faith
Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone
Of all believing,—birds now flying fearless
Across would drop in terror to the earth;
Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins
Would tangle in the frantic hands of God
And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!
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O God, I see it now, and my sick brain
Staggers and swoons! How often over me
Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight
In which I see the universe unrolled
Before me like a scroll and read thereon
Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl
Dizzily round and round and round and round,
Like tops across a table, gathering speed
With every spin, to waver on the edge
One instant—looking over—and the next
To shudder and lurch forward out of sight—
Ah, I am worn out—I am wearied out—
It is too much—I am but flesh and blood,
And I must sleep. Though you were dead again,
I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,#NFDB
682:The Bounty
[for Alix Walcott]
Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true
Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah's elations
force a rose from the sand. The thirty-third canto
cores the dawn clouds with concentric radiance,
the breadfruit opens its palms in praise of the bounty,
bois-pain, tree of bread, slave food, the bliss of John Clare,
torn, wandering Tom, stoat-stroker in his county
of reeds and stalk-crickets, fiddling the dank air,
lacing his boots with vines, steering glazed beetles
with the tenderest prods, knight of the cockchafer,
wrapped in the mists of shires, their snail-horned steeples
palms opening to the cupped pool—but his soul safer
than ours, though iron streams fetter his ankles.
Frost whitening his stubble, he stands in the ford
of a brook like the Baptist lifting his branches to bless
cathedrals and snails, the breaking of this new day,
and the shadows of the beach road near which my mother lies,
with the traffic of insects going to work anyway.
The lizard on the white wall fixed on the hieroglyph
of its stone shadow, the palms' rustling archery,
the souls and sails of circling gulls rhyme with:
"In la sua volont è nostra pace,"
In His will is our peace. Peace in white harbours,
in marinas whose masts agree, in crescent melons
left all night in the fridge, in the Egyptian labours
of ants moving boulders of sugar, words in this sentence,
shadow and light, who live next door like neighbours,
57
and in sardines with pepper sauce. My mother lies
near the white beach stones, John Clare near the sea-almonds,
yet the bounty returns each daybreak, to my surprise,
to my surprise and betrayal, yes, both at once.
I am moved like you, mad Tom, by a line of ants;
I behold their industry and they are giants.
ii
There on the beach, in the desert, lies the dark well
where the rose of my life was lowered, near the shaken plants,
near a pool of fresh tears, tolled by the golden bell
of allamanda, thorns of the bougainvillea, and that is
their bounty! They shine with defiance from weed and flower,
even those that flourish elsewhere, vetch, ivy, clematis,
on whom the sun now rises with all its power,
not for the Tourist Board or for Dante Alighieri,
but because there is no other path for its wheel to take
except to make the ruts of the beach road an allegory
of this poem's career, of yours, that she died for the sake
of a crowning wreath of false laurel; so, John Clare, forgive me,
for this morning's sake, forgive me, coffee, and pardon me,
milk with two packets of artificial sugar,
as I watch these lines grow and the art of poetry harden me
into sorrow as measured as this, to draw the veiled figure
of Mamma entering the standard elegiac.
No, there is grief, there will always be, but it must not madden,
like Clare, who wept for a beetle's loss, for the weight
of the world in a bead of dew on clematis or vetch,
and the fire in these tinder-dry lines of this poem I hate
as much as I love her, poor rain-beaten wretch,
redeemer of mice, earl of the doomed protectorate
of cavalry under your cloak; come on now, enough!
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iii
Bounty!
In the bells of tree-frogs with their steady clamour
in the indigo dark before dawn, the fading morse
of fireflies and crickets, then light on the beetle's armour,
and the toad's too-late presages, nettles of remorse
that shall spring from her grave from the spade's heartbreak.
And yet not to have loved her enough is to love more,
if I confess it, and I confess it. The trickle of underground
springs, the babble of swollen gulches under drenched ferns,
loosening the grip of their roots, till their hairy clods
like unclenching fists swirl wherever the gulch turns
them, and the shuddering aftermath bends the rods
of wild cane. Bounty in the ant's waking fury,
in the snail's chapel stirring under wild yams,
praise in decay and process, awe in the ordinary
in wind that reads the lines of the breadfruit's palms
in the sun contained in a globe of the crystal dew,
bounty in the ants' continuing a line of raw flour,
mercy on the mongoose scuttling past my door,
in the light's parallelogram laid on the kitchen floor,
for Thine is the Kingdom, the Glory, and the Power,
the bells of Saint Clement's in the marigolds on the altar,
in the bougainvillea's thorns, in the imperial lilac
and the feathery palms that nodded at the entry
into Jerusalem, the weight of the world on the back
of an ass; dismounting, He left His cross there for sentry
and sneering centurion; then I believed in His Word,
in a widow's immaculate husband, in pews of brown wood,
when the cattle-bell of the chapel summoned our herd
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into the varnished stalls, in whose rustling hymnals I heard
the fresh Jacobean springs, the murmur Clare heard
of bounty abiding, the clear language she taught us,
"as the hart panteth," at this, her keen ears pronged
while her three fawns nibbled the soul-freshening waters,
"as the hart panteth for the water-brooks" that belonged
to the language in which I mourn her now, or when
I showed her my first elegy, her husband's, and then her own.
iv
But can she or can she not read this? Can you read this,
Mamma, or hear it? If I took the pulpit, lay-preacher
like tender Clare, like poor Tom, so that look, Miss!
the ants come to you like children, their beloved teacher
Alix, but unlike the silent recitation of the infants,
the choir that Clare and Tom heard in their rainy county,
we have no solace but utterance, hence this wild cry.
Snails move into harbour, the breadfruit plants on the Bounty
will be heaved aboard, and the white God is Captain Bligh.
Across white feathery grave-grass the shadow of the soul
passes, the canvas cracks open on the cross-trees of the Bounty,
and the Trades lift the shrouds of the resurrected sail.
All move in their passage to the same mother-country,
the dirt-clawing weasel, the blank owl or sunning seal.
Faith grows mutinous. The ribbed body with its cargo
stalls in its doldrums, the God-captain is cast adrift
by a mutinous Christian, in the wake of the turning Argo
plants bob in the ocean's furrows, their shoots dip and lift,
and the soul's Australia is like the New Testament
after the Old World, the code of an eye for an eye;
the horizon spins slowly and Authority's argument
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diminishes in power, in the longboat with Captain Bligh.
This was one of your earliest lessons, how the Christ-Son
questions the Father, to settle on another island, haunted by Him,
by the speck of a raging deity on the ruled horizon,
diminishing in meaning and distance, growing more dim:
all these predictable passages that we first disobey
before we become what we challenged; but you never altered
your voice, either sighing or sewing, you would pray
to your husband aloud, pedalling the hymns we all heard
in the varnished pew: "There Is a Green Hill Far Away,"
"Jerusalem the Golden." Your melody faltered
but never your faith in the bounty which is His Word.
All of these waves crepitate from the culture of Ovid,
its sibilants and consonants; a universal metre
piles up these signatures like inscriptions of seaweed
that dry in the pungent sun, lines ruled by mitre
and laurel, or spray swiftly garlanding the forehead
of an outcrop (and I hope this settles the matter
of presences). No soul was ever invented,
yet every presence is transparent; if I met her
(in her nightdress ankling barefoot, crooning to the shallows),
should I call her shadow that of a pattern invented
by Graeco-Roman design, columns of shadows
cast by the Forum, Augustan perspectives—
poplars, casuarina-colonnades, the in-and-out light of almonds
made from original Latin, no leaf but the olive's?
Questions of pitch. Faced with seraphic radiance
(don't interrupt!), mortals rub their skeptical eyes
that hell is a beach-fire at night where embers dance,
with temporal fireflies like thoughts of Paradise;
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but there are inexplicable instincts that keep recurring
not from hope or fear only, that are real as stones,
the faces of the dead we wait for as ants are transferring
their cities, though we no longer believe in the shining ones.
I half-expect to see you no longer, then more than half,
almost never, or never then—there I have said it—
but felt something less than final at the edge of your grave,
some other something somewhere, equally dreaded,
since the fear of the infinite is the same as death,
unendurable brightness, the substantial dreading
its own substance, dissolving to gases and vapours,
like our dread of distance; we need a horizon,
a dividing line that turns the stars into neighbours
though infinity separates them, we can think of only one sun:
all I am saying is that the dread of death is in the faces
we love, the dread of our dying, or theirs;
therefore we see in the glint of immeasurable spaces
not stars or falling embers, not meteors, but tears.
vi
The mango trees serenely rust when they are in flower,
nobody knows the name for that voluble cedar
whose bell-flowers fall, the pomme-arac purples its floor.
The blue hills in late afternoon always look sadder.
The country night waiting to come in outside the door;
the firefly keeps striking matches, and the hillside fumes
with a bluish signal of charcoal, then the smoke burns
into a larger question, one that forms and unforms,
then loses itself in a cloud, till the question returns.
Buckets clatter under pipes, villages begin at corners.
A man and his trotting dog come back from their garden.
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The sea blazes beyond the rust roofs, dark is on us
before we know it. The earth smells of what's done,
small yards brighten, day dies and its mourners
begin, the first wreath of gnats; this was when we sat down
on bright verandahs watching the hills die. Nothing is trite
once the beloved have vanished; empty clothes in a row,
but perhaps our sadness tires them who cherished delight;
not only are they relieved of our customary sorrow,
they are without hunger, without any appetite,
but are part of earth's vegetal fury; their veins grow
with the wild mammy-apple, the open-handed breadfruit,
their heart in the open pomegranate, in the sliced avocado;
ground-doves pick from their palms; ants carry the freight
of their sweetness, their absence in all that we eat,
their savour that sweetens all of our multiple juices,
their faith that we break and chew in a wedge of cassava,
and here at first is the astonishment: that earth rejoices
in the middle of our agony, earth that will have her
for good: wind shines white stones and the shallows' voices.
vii
In spring, after the bear's self-burial, the stuttering
crocuses open and choir, glaciers shelve and thaw,
frozen ponds crack into maps, green lances spring
from the melting fields, flags of rooks rise and tatter
the pierced light, the crumbling quiet avalanches
of an unsteady sky; the vole uncoils and the otter
worries his sleek head through the verge's branches;
crannies, culverts, and creeks roar with wrist-numbing water.
Deer vault invisible hurdles and sniff the sharp air,
squirrels spring up like questions, berries easily redden,
63
edges delight in their own shapes (whoever their shaper).
But here there is one season, our viridian Eden
is that of the primal garden that engendered decay,
from the seed of a beetle's shard or a dead hare
white and forgotten as winter with spring on its way.
There is no change now, no cycles of spring, autumn, winter,
nor an island's perpetual summer; she took time with her;
no climate, no calendar except for this bountiful day.
As poor Tom fed his last crust to trembling birds,
as by reeds and cold pools John Clare blest these thin musicians,
let the ants teach me again with the long lines of words,
my business and duty, the lesson you taught your sons,
to write of the light's bounty on familiar things
that stand on the verge of translating themselves into news:
the crab, the frigate that floats on cruciform wings,
and that nailed and thorn riddled tree that opens its pews
to the blackbird that hasn't forgotten her because it sings.
~ Derek Walcott,#NFDB
683:Monadnoc
Thousand minstrels woke within me,
Our music's in the hills;
Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-colored rills.
Up!If thou knew'st who calls
To twilight parks of beech and pine,
High over the river intervals,
Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls;
Up!where the airy citadel
O'erlooks the purging landscape's swell.
Let not unto the stones the day
Her lily and rose, her sea and land display;
Read the celestial sign!
Lo! the South answers to the North;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater Spirit bids thee forth,
Than the gray dreams which thee detain.
Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrive the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Accept the bounty of thy birth;
Taste the lordship of the earth.
I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.
Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
Round about, a hundred miles,
With invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.
In his own loom's garment drest,
By his own bounty blest,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an arial isle,
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore,
Pillar which God aloft had set
So that men might it not forget,
It should be their life's ornament,
And mix itself with each event;
Their calendar and dial,
Barometer, and chemic phial,
Garden of berries, perch of birds,
Pasture of pool-haunting herds,
Graced by each change of sum untold,
Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.
The Titan minds his sky-affairs,
Rich rents and wide alliance shares;
Mysteries of color daily laid
By the great sun in light and shade,
And, sweet varieties of chance,
And the mystic seasons' dance,
And thief-like step of liberal hours
Which thawed the snow-drift into flowers.
O wondrous craft of plant and stone
By eldest science done and shown!
Happy, I said, whose home is here,
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer!
Boon nature to his poorest shed
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.
Intent I searched the region round,
And in low hut my monarch found.
He was no eagle and no earl,
Alas! my foundling was a churl,
With heart of cat, and eyes of bug,
Dull victim of his pipe and mug;
Woe is me for my hopes' downfall!
Lord! is yon squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time out of mind this forge of ores,
Quarry of spars in mountain pores,
Old cradle, hunting ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear, and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;
Factory of river, and of rain;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And what obedient nature can,
Is this colossal talisman
Kindly to creature, blood, and kind,
And speechless to the master's mind?
I thought to find the patriots
In whom the stock of freedom roots.
To myself I oft recount
Tales of many a famous mount.
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells,
Roys, and Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here now shall nature crowd her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,
And, lifting man to the blue deep
Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by the moral of his place,
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
But if the brave old mould is broke,
And end in clowns the mountain-folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!
Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men;
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant, slow as child,
Smoking in a squalid room,
Where yet the westland breezes come.
Close hid in those rough guises lurk
Western magicians, here they work;
Sweat and season are their arts,
Their talismans are ploughs and carts;
And well the youngest can command
Honey from the frozen land,
With sweet hay the swamp adorn,
Change the running sand to corn,
For wolves and foxes, lowing herds,
And for cold mosses, cream and curds;
Weave wood to canisters and mats,
Drain sweet maple-juice in vats.
No bird is safe that cuts the air,
From their rifle or their snare;
No fish in river or in lake,
But their long hands it thence will take;
And the country's iron face
Like wax their fashioning skill betrays,
To fill the hollows, sink the hills,
Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,
And fit the bleak and howling place
For gardens of a finer race,
The world-soul knows his own affair,
Fore-looking when his hands prepare
For the next ages men of mould,
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life pulse strong, but slow.
Bitter winds and fasts austere.
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
They bide their time, and well can prove,
If need were, their line from Jove,
Of the same stuff, and so allayed,
As that whereof the sun is made;
And of that fibre quick and strong
Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.
Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
Their secret now in dullness keep.
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach,
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords,
These they turn in other fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture well.
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here unvalued underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground and never soars,
While Jake retorts and Reuben roars,
Tough and screaming as birch-bark,
Goes like bullet to its mark,
While the solid curse and jeer
Never balk the waiting ear:
To student ears keen-relished jokes
On truck, and stock, and farming-folks,
Nought the mountain yields thereof
But savage health and sinews tough.
On the summit as I stood,
O'er the wide floor of plain and flood,
Seemed to me the towering hill
Was not altogether still,
But a quiet sense conveyed;
If I err not, thus it said:
Many feet in summer seek
Betimes my far-appearing peak;
In the dreaded winter-time,
None save dappling shadows climb
Under clouds my lonely head,
Old as the sun, old almost as the shade.
And comest thou
To see strange forests and new snow,
And tread uplifted land?
And leavest thou thy lowland race,
Here amid clouds to stand,
And would'st be my companion,
Where I gaze
And shall gaze
When forests fall, and man is gone,
Over tribes and over times
As the burning Lyre
Nearing me,
With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years.
Ah! welcome, if thou bring
My secret in thy brain;
To mountain-top may muse's wing
With good allowance strain.
Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,
And how the hills began,
The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.
'Tis the law of bush and stone
Each can only take his own.
Let him heed who can and will,
Enchantment fixed me here
To stand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.
If thou trowest
How the chemic eddies play
Pole to pole, and what they say,
And that these gray crags
Not on crags are hung,
But beads are of a rosary
On prayer and music strung;
And, credulous, through the granite seeming
Seest the smile of Reason beaming;
Can thy style-discerning eye
The hidden-working Builder spy,
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,
With hammer soft as snow-flake's flight;
Knowest thou this?
O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin.
For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune,
Rhyme the pipe, and time the warder,
Cannot forget the sun, the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune,
None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound,
And, though a pyramid, will bound.
Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among,
But well I know, no mountain can
Measure with a perfect man;
For it is on Zodiack's writ,
Adamant is soft to wit;
And when the greater comes again,
With my music in his brain,
I shall pass as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.
Through all time
I hear the approaching feet
Along the flinty pathway beat
Of him that cometh, and shall come,
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As now the round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams,
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,
And the long Alleghanies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.
Every morn I lift my head,
Gaze o'er New England underspread
South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,
From Katshill east to the sea-bound.
Anchored fast for many an age,
I await the bard and sage,
Who in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,
Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.
Comes that cheerful troubadour,
This mound shall throb his face before,
As when with inward fires and pain
It rose a bubble from the plain.
When he cometh, I shall shed
From this well-spring in my head
Fountain drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth.
There's fruit upon my barren soil
Costlier far than wine or oil;
There's a berry blue and gold,
Autumn-ripe its juices hold,
Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancor, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight;
I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat and juice to drink,
So the thoughts that he shall think
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.
He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South-Cove and City-wharf;
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath,
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow;
Open the daunting map beneath,
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city tops a glimmering haze:
I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;
See there the grim gray rounding
Of the bullet of the earth
Whereon ye sail,
Tumbling steep
In the uncontinented deep;
He looks on that, and he turns pale:
'Tis even so, this treacherous kite,
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,
Thoughtless of its anxious freight,
Plunges eyeless on for ever,
And he, poor parasite,
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,
Who is the captain he knows not,
Port or pilot trows not,
Risk or ruin he must share.
I scowl on him with my cloud,
With my north wind chill his blood,
I lame him clattering down the rocks,
And to live he is in fear.
Then, at last, I let him down
Once more into his dapper town,
To chatter frightened to his clan,
And forget me, if he can.
As in the old poetic fame
The gods are blind and lame,
And the simular despite
Betrays the more abounding might,
So call not waste that barren cone
Above the floral zone,
Where forests starve:
It is pure use;
What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind,
Of a celestial Ceres, and the Muse?
Ages are thy days,
Thou grand expressor of the present tense,
And type of permanence,
Firm ensign of the fatal Being,
Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief
That will not bide the seeing.
Hither we bring
Our insect miseries to the rocks,
And the whole flight with pestering wing
Vanish and end their murmuring,
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which, who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Replacing frieze and architrave;
Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave,
Still is the haughty pile erect
Of the old building Intellect.
Complement of human kind,
Having us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,
O barren mound! thy plenties fill.
We fool and prate,
Thou art silent and sedate.
To million kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense,
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.
Thou seest, O watchman tall!
Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable Good
For which we all our lifetime grope,
In shifting form the formless mind;
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou in our astronomy
An opaker star,
Seen, haply, from afar,
Above the horizon's hoop.
A moment by the railway troop,
As o'er some bolder height they speed,
By circumspect ambition,
By errant Gain,
By feasters, and the frivolous,
Recallest us,
And makest sane.
Mute orator! well-skilled to plead,
And send conviction without phrase,
Thou dost supply
The shortness of our days,
And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Monadnoc
,#NFDB
684:The Shadow
Paul Jannes was working very late,
For this watch must be done by eight
To-morrow or the Cardinal
Would certainly be vexed. Of all
His customers the old prelate
Was the most important, for his state
Descended to his watches and rings,
And he gave his mistresses many things
To make them forget his age and smile
When he paid visits, and they could while
The time away with a diamond locket
Exceedingly well. So they picked his pocket,
And he paid in jewels for his slobbering kisses.
This watch was made to buy him blisses
From an Austrian countess on her way
Home, and she meant to start next day.
Paul worked by the pointed, tulip-flame
Of a tallow candle, and became
So absorbed, that his old clock made him wince
Striking the hour a moment since.
Its echo, only half apprehended,
Lingered about the room. He ended
Screwing the little rubies in,
Setting the wheels to lock and spin,
Curling the infinitesimal springs,
Fixing the filigree hands. Chippings
Of precious stones lay strewn about.
The table before him was a rout
Of splashes and sparks of coloured light.
There was yellow gold in sheets, and quite
A heap of emeralds, and steel.
Here was a gem, there was a wheel.
And glasses lay like limpid lakes
Shining and still, and there were flakes
Of silver, and shavings of pearl,
And little wires all awhirl
With the light of the candle. He took the watch
396
And wound its hands about to match
The time, then glanced up to take the hour
From the hanging clock.
Good, Merciful Power!
How came that shadow on the wall,
No woman was in the room! His tall
Chiffonier stood gaunt behind
His chair. His old cloak, rabbit-lined,
Hung from a peg. The door was closed.
Just for a moment he must have dozed.
He looked again, and saw it plain.
The silhouette made a blue-black stain
On the opposite wall, and it never wavered
Even when the candle quavered
Under his panting breath. What made
That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade
Of something so lovely, so exquisite,
Cast from a substance which the sight
Had not been tutored to perceive?
Paul brushed his eyes across his sleeve.
Clear-cut, the Shadow on the wall
Gleamed black, and never moved at all.
Paul's watches were like amulets,
Wrought into patterns and rosettes;
The cases were all set with stones,
And wreathing lines, and shining zones.
He knew the beauty in a curve,
And the Shadow tortured every nerve
With its perfect rhythm of outline
Cutting the whitewashed wall. So fine
Was the neck he knew he could have spanned
It about with the fingers of one hand.
The chin rose to a mouth he guessed,
But could not see, the lips were pressed
Loosely together, the edges close,
And the proud and delicate line of the nose
Melted into a brow, and there
Broke into undulant waves of hair.
The lady was edged with the stamp of race.
397
A singular vision in such a place.
He moved the candle to the tall
Chiffonier; the Shadow stayed on the wall.
He threw his cloak upon a chair,
And still the lady's face was there.
From every corner of the room
He saw, in the patch of light, the gloom
That was the lady. Her violet bloom
Was almost brighter than that which came
From his candle's tulip-flame.
He set the filigree hands; he laid
The watch in the case which he had made;
He put on his rabbit cloak, and snuffed
His candle out. The room seemed stuffed
With darkness. Softly he crossed the floor,
And let himself out through the door.
The sun was flashing from every pin
And wheel, when Paul let himself in.
The whitewashed walls were hot with light.
The room was the core of a chrysolite,
Burning and shimmering with fiery might.
The sun was so bright that no shadow could fall
From the furniture upon the wall.
Paul sighed as he looked at the empty space
Where a glare usurped the lady's place.
He settled himself to his work, but his mind
Wandered, and he would wake to find
His hand suspended, his eyes grown dim,
And nothing advanced beyond the rim
Of his dreaming. The Cardinal sent to pay
For his watch, which had purchased so fine a day.
But Paul could hardly touch the gold,
It seemed the price of his Shadow, sold.
With the first twilight he struck a match
And watched the little blue stars hatch
Into an egg of perfect flame.
He lit his candle, and almost in shame
At his eagerness, lifted his eyes.
398
The Shadow was there, and its precise
Outline etched the cold, white wall.
The young man swore, 'By God! You, Paul,
There's something the matter with your brain.
Go home now and sleep off the strain.'
The next day was a storm, the rain
Whispered and scratched at the window-pane.
A grey and shadowless morning filled
The little shop. The watches, chilled,
Were dead and sparkless as burnt-out coals.
The gems lay on the table like shoals
Of stranded shells, their colours faded,
Mere heaps of stone, dull and degraded.
Paul's head was heavy, his hands obeyed
No orders, for his fancy strayed.
His work became a simple round
Of watches repaired and watches wound.
The slanting ribbons of the rain
Broke themselves on the window-pane,
But Paul saw the silver lines in vain.
Only when the candle was lit
And on the wall just opposite
He watched again the coming of IT,
Could he trace a line for the joy of his soul
And over his hands regain control.
Paul lingered late in his shop that night
And the designs which his delight
Sketched on paper seemed to be
A tribute offered wistfully
To the beautiful shadow of her who came
And hovered over his candle flame.
In the morning he selected all
His perfect jacinths. One large opal
Hung like a milky, rainbow moon
In the centre, and blown in loose festoon
The red stones quivered on silver threads
To the outer edge, where a single, fine
Band of mother-of-pearl the line
399
Completed. On the other side,
The creamy porcelain of the face
Bore diamond hours, and no lace
Of cotton or silk could ever be
Tossed into being more airily
Than the filmy golden hands; the time
Seemed to tick away in rhyme.
When, at dusk, the Shadow grew
Upon the wall, Paul's work was through.
Holding the watch, he spoke to her:
'Lady, Beautiful Shadow, stir
Into one brief sign of being.
Turn your eyes this way, and seeing
This watch, made from those sweet curves
Where your hair from your forehead swerves,
Accept the gift which I have wrought
With your fairness in my thought.
Grant me this, and I shall be
Honoured overwhelmingly.'
The Shadow rested black and still,
And the wind sighed over the window-sill.
Paul put the despised watch away
And laid out before him his array
Of stones and metals, and when the morning
Struck the stones to their best adorning,
He chose the brightest, and this new watch
Was so light and thin it seemed to catch
The sunlight's nothingness, and its gleam.
Topazes ran in a foamy stream
Over the cover, the hands were studded
With garnets, and seemed red roses, budded.
The face was of crystal, and engraved
Upon it the figures flashed and waved
With zircons, and beryls, and amethysts.
It took a week to make, and his trysts
At night with the Shadow were his alone.
Paul swore not to speak till his task was done.
The night that the jewel was worthy to give.
Paul watched the long hours of daylight live
400
To the faintest streak; then lit his light,
And sharp against the wall's pure white
The outline of the Shadow started
Into form. His burning-hearted
Words so long imprisoned swelled
To tumbling speech. Like one compelled,
He told the lady all his love,
And holding out the watch above
His head, he knelt, imploring some
Littlest sign.
The Shadow was dumb.
Weeks passed, Paul worked in fevered haste,
And everything he made he placed
Before his lady. The Shadow kept
Its perfect passiveness. Paul wept.
He wooed her with the work of his hands,
He waited for those dear commands
She never gave. No word, no motion,
Eased the ache of his devotion.
His days passed in a strain of toil,
His nights burnt up in a seething coil.
Seasons shot by, uncognisant
He worked. The Shadow came to haunt
Even his days. Sometimes quite plain
He saw on the wall the blackberry stain
Of his lady's picture. No sun was bright
Enough to dazzle that from his sight.
There were moments when he groaned to see
His life spilled out so uselessly,
Begging for boons the Shade refused,
His finest workmanship abused,
The iridescent bubbles he blew
Into lovely existence, poor and few
In the shadowed eyes. Then he would curse
Himself and her! The Universe!
And more, the beauty he could not make,
And give her, for her comfort's sake!
He would beat his weary, empty hands
401
Upon the table, would hold up strands
Of silver and gold, and ask her why
She scorned the best which he could buy.
He would pray as to some high-niched saint,
That she would cure him of the taint
Of failure. He would clutch the wall
With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall
He could catch, and hold her, and make her live!
With sobs he would ask her to forgive
All he had done. And broken, spent,
He would call himself impertinent;
Presumptuous; a tradesman; a nothing; driven
To madness by the sight of Heaven.
At other times he would take the things
He had made, and winding them on strings,
Hang garlands before her, and burn perfumes,
Chanting strangely, while the fumes
Wreathed and blotted the shadow face,
As with a cloudy, nacreous lace.
There were days when he wooed as a lover, sighed
In tenderness, spoke to his bride,
Urged her to patience, said his skill
Should break the spell. A man's sworn will
Could compass life, even that, he knew.
By Christ's Blood! He would prove it true!
The edge of the Shadow never blurred.
The lips of the Shadow never stirred.
He would climb on chairs to reach her lips,
And pat her hair with his finger-tips.
But instead of young, warm flesh returning
His warmth, the wall was cold and burning
Like stinging ice, and his passion, chilled,
Lay in his heart like some dead thing killed
At the moment of birth. Then, deadly sick,
He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick
Phantasmagoria crowded his brain,
And his body shrieked in the clutch of pain.
The crisis passed, he would wake and smile
With a vacant joy, half-imbecile
402
And quite confused, not being certain
Why he was suffering; a curtain
Fallen over the tortured mind beguiled
His sorrow. Like a little child
He would play with his watches and gems, with glee
Calling the Shadow to look and see
How the spots on the ceiling danced prettily
When he flashed his stones. 'Mother, the green
Has slid so cunningly in between
The blue and the yellow. Oh, please look down!'
Then, with a pitiful, puzzled frown,
He would get up slowly from his play
And walk round the room, feeling his way
From table to chair, from chair to door,
Stepping over the cracks in the floor,
Till reaching the table again, her face
Would bring recollection, and no solace
Could balm his hurt till unconsciousness
Stifled him and his great distress.
One morning he threw the street door wide
On coming in, and his vigorous stride
Made the tools on his table rattle and jump.
In his hands he carried a new-burst clump
Of laurel blossoms, whose smooth-barked stalks
Were pliant with sap. As a husband talks
To the wife he left an hour ago,
Paul spoke to the Shadow. 'Dear, you know
To-day the calendar calls it Spring,
And I woke this morning gathering
Asphodels, in my dreams, for you.
So I rushed out to see what flowers blew
Their pink-and-purple-scented souls
Across the town-wind's dusty scrolls,
And made the approach to the Market Square
A garden with smells and sunny air.
I feel so well and happy to-day,
I think I shall take a Holiday.
And to-night we will have a little treat.
I am going to bring you something to eat!'
He looked at the Shadow anxiously.
403
It was quite grave and silent. He
Shut the outer door and came
And leant against the window-frame.
'Dearest,' he said, 'we live apart
Although I bear you in my heart.
We look out each from a different world.
At any moment we may be hurled
Asunder. They follow their orbits, we
Obey their laws entirely.
Now you must come, or I go there,
Unless we are willing to live the flare
Of a lighted instant and have it gone.'
A bee in the laurels began to drone.
A loosened petal fluttered prone.
'Man grows by eating, if you eat
You will be filled with our life, sweet
Will be our planet in your mouth.
If not, I must parch in death's wide drouth
Until I gain to where you are,
And give you myself in whatever star
May happen. O You Beloved of Me!
Is it not ordered cleverly?'
The Shadow, bloomed like a plum, and clear,
Hung in the sunlight. It did not hear.
Paul slipped away as the dusk began
To dim the little shop. He ran
To the nearest inn, and chose with care
As much as his thin purse could bear.
As rapt-souled monks watch over the baking
Of the sacred wafer, and through the making
Of the holy wine whisper secret prayers
That God will bless this labour of theirs;
So Paul, in a sober ecstasy,
Purchased the best which he could buy.
Returning, he brushed his tools aside,
And laid across the table a wide
Napkin. He put a glass and plate
404
On either side, in duplicate.
Over the lady's, excellent
With loveliness, the laurels bent.
In the centre the white-flaked pastry stood,
And beside it the wine flask. Red as blood
Was the wine which should bring the lustihood
Of human life to his lady's veins.
When all was ready, all which pertains
To a simple meal was there, with eyes
Lit by the joy of his great emprise,
He reverently bade her come,
And forsake for him her distant home.
He put meat on her plate and filled her glass,
And waited what should come to pass.
The Shadow lay quietly on the wall.
From the street outside came a watchman's call
'A cloudy night. Rain beginning to fall.'
And still he waited. The clock's slow tick
Knocked on the silence. Paul turned sick.
He filled his own glass full of wine;
From his pocket he took a paper. The twine
Was knotted, and he searched a knife
From his jumbled tools. The cord of life
Snapped as he cut the little string.
He knew that he must do the thing
He feared. He shook powder into the wine,
And holding it up so the candle's shine
Sparked a ruby through its heart,
He drank it. 'Dear, never apart
Again! You have said it was mine to do.
It is done, and I am come to you!'
Paul Jannes let the empty wine-glass fall,
And held out his arms. The insentient wall
Stared down at him with its cold, white glare
Unstained! The Shadow was not there!
Paul clutched and tore at his tightening throat.
He felt the veins in his body bloat,
405
And the hot blood run like fire and stones
Along the sides of his cracking bones.
But he laughed as he staggered towards the door,
And he laughed aloud as he sank on the floor.
The Coroner took the body away,
And the watches were sold that Saturday.
The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy
Such watches, and the prices were high.
~ Amy Lowell,#NFDB
685:Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or clapping of shepherd's hands,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 't was the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even unto May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay? or hark,
Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token
That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things.
Beneath the calm, within the light,
A hid unruly appetite
Of swifter life, a surer hope,
Strains every sense to larger scope,
Impatient to anticipate
The halting steps of aged Fate.
Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:
When Nature falters, fain would zeal
Grasp the felloes of her wheel,
And grasping give the orbs another whirl.
Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!
And sun this frozen side,
Bring hither back the robin's call,
Bring back the tulip's pride.
Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?
The hardy bunting does not chide;
The blackbirds make the maples ring
With social cheer and jubilee;
The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,
The robins know the melting snow;
The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves;
And thou, by science all undone,
Why only must thy reason fail
To see the southing of the sun?
As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,
So Spring will not, foolish fond,
Mix polar night with tropic glow,
Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,
Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,
But she has the temperance
Of the gods, whereof she is one,--
Masks her treasury of heat
Under east-winds crossed with sleet.
Plants and birds and humble creatures
Well accept her rule austere;
Titan-born, to hardy natures
Cold is genial and dear.
As Southern wrath to Northern right
Is but straw to anthracite;
As in the day of sacrifice,
When heroes piled the pyre,
The dismal Massachusetts ice
Burned more than others' fire,
So Spring guards with surface cold
The garnered heat of ages old:
Hers to sow the seed of bread,
That man and all the kinds be fed;
And, when the sunlight fills the hours,
Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.
The world rolls round,--mistrust it not,--
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
When late I walked, in earlier days,
All was stiff and stark;
Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,
In the sky no spark;
Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,
Struggling through the drifted roads;
The whited desert knew me not,
Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;
The summer dells, by genius haunted,
One arctic moon had disenchanted.
All the sweet secrets therein hid
By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.
Eldest mason, Frost, had piled,
With wicked ingenuity,
Swift cathedrals in the wild;
The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts
In the star-lit minster aisled.
I found no joy: the icy wind
Might rule the forest to his mind.
Who would freeze in frozen brakes?
Back to books and sheltered home,
And wood-fire flickering on the walls,
To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games,
Without the baffled north-wind calls.
But soft! a sultry morning breaks;
The cowslips make the brown brook gay;
A happier hour, a longer day.
Now the sun leads in the May,
Now desire of action wakes,
And the wish to roam.
The caged linnet in the Spring
Hearkens for the choral glee,
When his fellows on the wing
Migrate from the Southern Sea;
When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,
And the new-born tendrils twine,
The old wine darkling in the cask
Feels the bloom on the living vine,
And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring:
And so, perchance, in Adam's race,
Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace
Survived the Flight, and swam the Flood,
And wakes the wish in youngest blood
To tread the forfeit Paradise,
And feed once more the exile's eyes;
And ever when the happy child
In May beholds the blooming wild,
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing,
"Onward," he cries, "your baskets bring,--
In the next field is air more mild,
And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier Spring."
Not for a regiment's parade,
Nor evil laws or rulers made,
Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,
But for a lofty sign
Which the Zodiac threw,
That the bondage-days are told,
And waters free as winds shall flow.
Lo! how all the tribes combine
To rout the flying foe.
See, every patriot oak-leaf throws
His elfin length upon the snows,
Not idle, since the leaf all day
Draws to the spot the solar ray,
Ere sunset quarrying inches down,
And half-way to the mosses brown;
While the grass beneath the rime
Has hints of the propitious time,
And upward pries and perforates
Through the cold slab a thousand gates,
Till green lances peering through
Bend happy in the welkin blue.
April cold with dropping rain
Willows and lilacs brings again,
The whistle of returning birds,
And trumpet-lowing of the herds.
The scarlet maple-keys betray
What potent blood hath modest May;
What fiery force the earth renews,
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;
Joy shed in rosy waves abroad
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.
Hither rolls the storm of heat;
I feel its finer billows beat
Like a sea which me infolds;
Heat with viewless fingers moulds,
Swells, and mellows, and matures,
Paints, and flavours, and allures,
Bird and brier inly warms,
Still enriches and transforms,
Gives the reed and lily length,
Adds to oak and oxen strength,
Boils the world in tepid lakes,
Burns the world, yet burnt remakes;
Enveloping heat, enchanted robe,
Wraps the daisy and the globe,
Transforming what it doth infold,
Life out of death, new out of old,
Painting fawns' and leopards' fells,
Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells,
Fires garden with a joyful blaze
Of tulips in the morning's rays.
The dead log touched bursts into leaf,
The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf.
What god is this imperial Heat,
Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat?
Doth it bear hidden in its heart
Water-line patterns of all art,
All figures, organs, hues, and graces?
Is it Daedalus? is it Love?
Or walks in mask almighty Jove,
And drops from Power's redundant horn
All seeds of beauty to be born?
Where shall we keep the holiday,
And duly greet the entering May?
Too strait and low our cottage doors,
And all unmeet our carpet floors;
Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall,
Suffice to hold the festival.
Up and away! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods:
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy;
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new-delivered streams,
And the murmuring rivers of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees,
Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,
Which for a spike of tender green
Bartered its powdery cap;
And the colours of joy in the bird,
And the love in its carol heard,
Frog and lizard in holiday coats,
And turtle brave in his golden spots;
We will hear the tiny roar
Of the insects evermore,
While cheerful cries of crag and plain
Reply to the thunder of river and main.
As poured the flood of the ancient sea
Spilling over mountain chains,
Bending forests as bends the sedge,
Faster flowing o'er the plains,--
A world-wide wave with a foaming edge
That rims the running silver sheet,--
So pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o'er the land,
Painting artless paradises,
Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,
Fanning secret fires which glow
In columbine and clover-blow,
Climbing the northern zones,
Where a thousand pallid towns
Lie like cockles by the main,
Or tented armies on a plain.
The million-handed sculptor moulds
Quaintest bud and blossom folds,
The million-handed painter pours
Opal hues and purple dye;
Azaleas flush the island floors,
And the tints of heaven reply.
Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring
To-day shall all her dowry bring,
The love of kind, the joy, the grace,
Hymen of element and race,
Knowing well to celebrate
With song and hue and star and state,
With tender light and youthful cheer,
The spousals of the new-born year.
Lo Love's inundation poured
Over space and race abroad!
Spring is strong and virtuous,
Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,
Quickening underneath the mould
Grains beyond the price of gold.
So deep and large her bounties are,
That one broad, long midsummer day
Shall to the planet overpay
The ravage of a year of war.
Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,
And send the nectar round;
The feet that slid so long on sleet
Are glad to feel the ground.
Fill and saturate each kind
With good according to its mind,
Fill each kind and saturate
With good agreeing with its fate,
Willow and violet, maiden and man.
The bitter-sweet, the haunting air,
Creepeth, bloweth everywhere;
It preys on all, all prey on it,
Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,
Stings the strong with enterprise,
Makes travellers long for Indian skies,
And where it comes this courier fleet
Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,
As if to-morrow should redeem
The vanished rose of evening's dream.
By houses lies a fresher green,
On men and maids a ruddier mien,
As if time brought a new relay
Of shining virgins every May,
And Summer came to ripen maids
To a beauty that not fades.
The ground-pines wash their rusty green,
The maple-tops their crimson tint,
On the soft path each track is seen,
The girl's foot leaves its neater print.
The pebble loosened from the frost
Asks of the urchin to be tost.
In flint and marble beats a heart,
The kind Earth takes her children's part,
The green lane is the school-boy's friend,
Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,
The fresh ground loves his top and ball,
The air rings jocund to his call,
The brimming brook invites a leap,
He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.
The youth reads omens where he goes,
And speaks all languages the rose.
The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise
The far halloo of human voice;
The perfumed berry on the spray
Smacks of faint memories far away.
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings,
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,
Stepping daily onward north
To greet staid ancient cavaliers
Filing single in stately train.
And who, and who are the travellers?
They were Night and Day, and Day and Night,
Pilgrims wight with step forthright.
I saw the Days deformed and low,
Short and bent by cold and snow;
The merry Spring threw wreaths on them,
Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell;
Many a flower and many a gem,
They were refreshed by the smell,
They shook the snow from hats and shoon,
They put their April raiment on;
And those eternal forms,
Unhurt by a thousand storms,
Shot up to the height of the sky again,
And danced as merrily as young men.
I saw them mask their awful glance
Sidewise meek in gossamer lids;
And to speak my thought if none forbids.
It was as if the eternal gods,
Tired of their starry periods,
Hid their majesty in cloth
Woven of tulips and painted moth.
On carpets green the maskers march
Below May's well-appointed arch,
Each star, each god, each grace amain,
Every joy and virtue speed,
Marching duly in her train,
And fainting Nature at her need
Is made whole again.
'T was the vintage-day of field and wood,
When magic wine for bards is brewed;
Every tree and stem and chink
Gushed with syrup to the brink.
The air stole into the streets of towns,
And betrayed the fund of joy
To the high-school and medalled boy:
On from hall to chamber ran,
From youth to maid, from boy to man,
To babes, and to old eyes as well.
'Once more,' the old man cried, 'ye clouds,
Airy turrets purple-piled,
Which once my infancy beguiled,
Beguile me with the wonted spell.
I know ye skilful to convoy
The total freight of hope and joy
Into rude and homely nooks,
Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books,
On farmer's byre, on meadow-pipes,
Or on a pool of dancing chips.
I care not if the pomps you show
Be what they soothfast appear,
Or if yon realms in sunset glow
Be bubbles of the atmosphere.
And if it be to you allowed
To fool me with a shining cloud,
So only new griefs are consoled
By new delights, as old by old,
Frankly I will be your guest,
Count your change and cheer the best.
The world hath overmuch of pain,--
If Nature give me joy again,
Of such deceit I'll not complain.'
Ah! well I mind the calendar,
Faithful through a thousand years,
Of the painted race of flowers,
Exact to days, exact to hours,
Counted on the spacious dial
Yon broidered zodiac girds.
I know the pretty almanac
Of the punctual coming-back,
On their due days, of the birds.
I marked them yestermorn,
A flock of finches darting
Beneath the crystal arch,
Piping, as they flew, a march,--
Belike the one they used in parting
Last year from yon oak or larch;
Dusky sparrows in a crowd,
Diving, darting northward free,
Suddenly betook them all,
Every one to his hole in the wall,
Or to his niche in the apple-tree.
I greet with joy the choral trains
Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes.
Best gems of Nature's cabinet,
With dews of tropic morning wet,
Beloved of children, bards, and Spring,
O birds, your perfect virtues bring,
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart's delight,
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof,
Here weave your chamber weather-proof,
Forgive our harms, and condescend
To man, as to a lubber friend,
And, generous, teach his awkward race
Courage, and probity, and grace!
Poets praise that hidden wine
Hid in milk we drew
At the barrier of Time,
When our life was new.
We had eaten fairy fruit,
We were quick from head to foot,
All the forms we look on shone
As with diamond dews thereon.
What cared we for costly joys,
The Museum's far-fetched toys?
Gleam of sunshine on the wall
Poured a deeper cheer than all
The revels of the Carnival.
We a pine-grove did prefer
To a marble theatre,
Could with gods on mallows dine,
Nor cared for spices or for wine.
Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned,
Arch on arch, the grimmest land;
Whistle of a woodland bird
Made the pulses dance,
Note of horn in valleys heard
Filled the region with romance.
None can tell how sweet,
How virtuous, the morning air;
Every accent vibrates well;
Not alone the wood-bird's call,
Or shouting boys that chase their ball,
Pass the height of minstrel skill,
But the ploughman's thoughtless cry,
Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat,
And the joiner's hammer-beat,
Softened are above their will.
All grating discords melt,
No dissonant note is dealt,
And though thy voice be shrill
Like rasping file on steel,
Such is the temper of the air,
Echo waits with art and care,
And will the faults of song repair.
So by remote Superior Lake,
And by resounding Mackinac,
When northern storms and forests shake,
And billows on the long beach break,
The artful Air doth separate
Note by note all sounds that grate,
Smothering in her ample breast
All but godlike words,
Reporting to the happy ear
Only purified accords.
Strangely wrought from barking waves,
Soft music daunts the Indian braves,--
Convent-chanting which the child
Hears pealing from the panther's cave
And the impenetrable wild.
One musician is sure,
His wisdom will not fail,
He has not tasted wine impure,
Nor bent to passion frail.
Age cannot cloud his memory,
Nor grief untune his voice,
Ranging down the ruled scale
From tone of joy to inward wail,
Tempering the pitch of all
In his windy cave.
He all the fables knows,
And in their causes tells,--
Knows Nature's rarest moods,
Ever on her secret broods.
The Muse of men is coy,
Oft courted will not come;
In palaces and market squares
Entreated, she is dumb;
But my minstrel knows and tells
The counsel of the gods,
Knows of Holy Book the spells,
Knows the law of Night and Day,
And the heart of girl and boy,
The tragic and the gay,
And what is writ on Table Round
Of Arthur and his peers,
What sea and land discoursing say
In sidereal years.
He renders all his lore
In numbers wild as dreams,
Modulating all extremes,--
What the spangled meadow saith
To the children who have faith;
Only to children children sing,
Only to youth will spring be spring.
Who is the Bard thus magnified?
When did he sing, and where abide?
Chief of song where poets feast
Is the wind-harp which thou seest
In the casement at my side.
AEolian harp,
How strangely wise thy strain!
Gay for youth, gay for youth,
(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)
In the hall at summer eve
Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.
From the eager opening strings
Rung loud and bold the song.
Who but loved the wind-harp's note?
How should not the poet doat
On its mystic tongue,
With its primeval memory,
Reporting what old minstrels said
Of Merlin locked the harp within,--
Merlin paying the pain of sin,
Pent in a dungeon made of air,--
And some attain his voice to hear,
Words of pain and cries of fear,
But pillowed all on melody,
As fits the griefs of bards to be.
And what if that all-echoing shell,
Which thus the buried Past can tell,
Should rive the Future, and reveal
What his dread folds would fain conceal?
It shares the secret of the earth,
And of the kinds that owe her birth.
Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
But of the Overgods alone:
It trembles to the cosmic breath,--
As it heareth, so it saith;
Obeying meek the primal Cause,
It is the tongue of mundane laws:
And this, at least, I dare affirm,
Since genius too has bound and term,
There is no bard in all the choir,
Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,
Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
Scott, the delight of generous boys,
Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--
Not one of all can put in verse,
Or to this presence could rehearse,
The sights and voices ravishing
The boy knew on the hills in Spring,
When pacing through the oaks he heard
Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
The heavy grouse's sudden whirr,
The rattle of the kingfisher;
Saw bonfires of the harlot flies
In the lowland, when day dies;
Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
The first far signal-fire of morn.
These syllables that Nature spoke,
And the thoughts that in him woke,
Can adequately utter none
Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
And best can teach its Delphian chord
How Nature to the soul is moored,
If once again that silent string,
As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.
Not long ago, at eventide,
It seemed, so listening, at my side
A window rose, and, to say sooth,
I looked forth on the fields of youth:
I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates,
Stronger and bolder far than I,
With grace, with genius, well attired,
And then as now from far admired,
Followed with love
They knew not of,
With passion cold and shy.
O joy, for what recoveries rare!
Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,
See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--
Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!
Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
Of life resurgent from the soil
Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.
Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze!
So on thy broad mystic van
Lie the opal-coloured days,
And waft the miracle to man.
Soothsayer of the eldest gods,
Repairer of what harms betide,
Revealer of the inmost powers
Prometheus proffered, Jove denied;
Disclosing treasures more than true,
Or in what far to-morrow due;
Speaking by the tongues of flowers,
By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,
Singing by the oriole songs,
Heart of bird the man's heart seeking;
Whispering hints of treasure hid
Under Morn's unlifted lid,
Islands looming just beyond
The dim horizon's utmost bound;--
Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid,
Or taunt us with our hope decayed?
Or who like thee persuade,
Making the splendour of the air,
The morn and sparkling dew, a snare?
Or who resent
Thy genius, wiles, and blandishment?
There is no orator prevails
To beckon or persuade
Like thee the youth or maid:
Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales,
Thy blooms, thy kinds,
Thy echoes in the wilderness,
Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress,
Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.
For thou, O Spring! canst renovate
All that high God did first create.
Be still his arm and architect,
Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;
Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,
Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,
New-tint the plumage of the birds,
And slough decay from grazing herds,
Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,
Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,
Purge alpine air by towns defiled,
Bring to fair mother fairer child,
Not less renew the heart and brain,
Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,
Make the aged eye sun-clear,
To parting soul bring grandeur near.
Under gentle types, my Spring
Masks the might of Nature's king,
An energy that searches thorough
From Chaos to the dawning morrow;
Into all our human plight,
The soul's pilgrimage and flight;
In city or in solitude,
Step by step, lifts bad to good,
Without halting, without rest,
Lifting Better up to Best;
Planting seeds of knowledge pure,
Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-Day
,#NFDB
686:The Prophecy Of Famine
A SCOTS PASTORAL INSCRIBED TO JOHN WILKES, ESQ.
Nos patriam fugimus.--VIRGIL.
When Cupid first instructs his darts to fly
From the sly corner of some cook-maid's eye,
The stripling raw, just enter'd in his teens,
Receives the wound, and wonders what it means;
His heart, like dripping, melts, and new desire
Within him stirs, each time she stirs the fire;
Trembling and blushing, he the fair one views,
And fain would speak, but can't--without a Muse.
So to the sacred mount he takes his way,
Prunes his young wings, and tunes his infant lay,
His oaten reed to rural ditties frames,
To flocks and rocks, to hills and rills, proclaims,
In simplest notes, and all unpolish'd strains,
The loves of nymphs, and eke the loves of swains.
Clad, as your nymphs were always clad of yore,
In rustic weeds--a cook-maid now no more-Beneath an aged oak Lardella lies-Green moss her couch, her canopy the skies.
From aromatic shrubs the roguish gale
Steals young perfumes and wafts them through the vale.
The youth, turn'd swain, and skill'd in rustic lays,
Fast by her side his amorous descant plays.
Herds low, flocks bleat, pies chatter, ravens scream,
And the full chorus dies a-down the stream:
The streams, with music freighted, as they pass
Present the fair Lardella with a glass;
And Zephyr, to complete the love-sick plan,
Waves his light wings, and serves her for a fan.
But when maturer Judgment takes the lead,
These childish toys on Reason's altar bleed;
Form'd after some great man, whose name breeds awe,
Whose every sentence Fashion makes a law;
Who on mere credit his vain trophies rears,
And founds his merit on our servile fears;
Then we discard the workings of the heart,
244
And nature's banish'd by mechanic art;
Then, deeply read, our reading must be shown;
Vain is that knowledge which remains unknown:
Then Ostentation marches to our aid,
And letter'd Pride stalks forth in full parade;
Beneath their care behold the work refine,
Pointed each sentence, polish'd every line;
Trifles are dignified, and taught to wear
The robes of ancients with a modern air;
Nonsense with classic ornaments is graced,
And passes current with the stamp of taste.
Then the rude Theocrite is ransack'd o'er,
And courtly Maro call'd from Mincio's shore;
Sicilian Muses on our mountains roam,
Easy and free as if they were at home;
Nymphs, naiads, nereids, dryads, satyrs, fauns,
Sport in our floods, and trip it o'er our lawns;
Flowers which once flourish'd fair in Greece and Rome,
More fair revive in England's meads to bloom;
Skies without cloud, exotic suns adorn,
And roses blush, but blush without a thorn;
Landscapes, unknown to dowdy Nature, rise,
And new creations strike our wondering eyes.
For bards like these, who neither sing nor say,
Grave without thought, and without feeling gay,
Whose numbers in one even tenor flow,
Attuned to pleasure, and attuned to woe;
Who, if plain Common-Sense her visit pays,
And mars one couplet in their happy lays,
As at some ghost affrighted, start and stare,
And ask the meaning of her coming there:
For bards like these a wreath shall Mason bring,
Lined with the softest down of Folly's wing;
In Love's pagoda shall they ever doze,
And Gisbal kindly rock them to repose;
My Lord ----, to letters as to faith most true-At once their patron and example too-Shall quaintly fashion his love-labour'd dreams,
Sigh with sad winds, and weep with weeping streams;
Curious in grief (for real grief, we know,
Is curious to dress up the tale of woe),
From the green umbrage of some Druid's seat
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Shall his own works, in his own way, repeat.
Me, whom no Muse of heavenly birth inspires,
No judgment tempers when rash genius fires;
Who boast no merit but mere knack of rhyme,
Short gleams of sense, and satire out of time;
Who cannot follow where trim fancy leads,
By prattling streams, o'er flower-empurpled meads;
Who often, but without success, have pray'd
For apt Alliteration's artful aid;
Who would, but cannot, with a master's skill,
Coin fine new epithets, which mean no ill:
Me, thus uncouth, thus every way unfit
For pacing poesy, and ambling wit,
Taste with contempt beholds, nor deigns to place
Amongst the lowest of her favour'd race.
Thou, Nature, art my goddess--to thy law
Myself I dedicate! Hence, slavish awe!
Which bends to fashion, and obeys the rules
Imposed at first, and since observed by fools;
Hence those vile tricks which mar fair Nature's hue,
And bring the sober matron forth to view,
With all that artificial tawdry glare
Which virtue scorns, and none but strumpets wear!
Sick of those pomps, those vanities, that waste
Of toil, which critics now mistake for taste;
Of false refinements sick, and labour'd ease,
Which art, too thinly veil'd, forbids to please;
By Nature's charms (inglorious truth!) subdued,
However plain her dress, and 'haviour rude,
To northern climes my happier course I steer,
Climes where the goddess reigns throughout the year;
Where, undisturb'd by Art's rebellious plan,
She rules the loyal laird, and faithful clan.
To that rare soil, where virtues clustering grow,
What mighty blessings doth not England owe!
What waggon-loads of courage, wealth, and sense,
Doth each revolving day import from thence?
To us she gives, disinterested friend!
Faith without fraud, and Stuarts without end.
When we prosperity's rich trappings wear,
Come not her generous sons and take a share?
And if, by some disastrous turn of fate,
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Change should ensue, and ruin seize the state,
Shall we not find, safe in that hallow'd ground,
Such refuge as the holy martyr found?
Nor less our debt in science, though denied
By the weak slaves of prejudice and pride.
Thence came the Ramsays, names of worthy note,
Of whom one paints, as well as t'other wrote;
Thence, Home, disbanded from the sons of prayer
For loving plays, though no dull Dean was there;
Thence issued forth, at great Macpherson's call,
That old, new, epic pastoral, Fingal;
Thence Malloch, friend alike to Church and State,
Of Christ and Liberty, by grateful Fate
Raised to rewards, which, in a pious reign,
All daring infidels should seek in vain;
Thence simple bards, by simple prudence taught,
To this wise town by simple patrons brought,
In simple manner utter simple lays,
And take, with simple pensions, simple praise.
Waft me, some Muse, to Tweed's inspiring stream,
Where all the little Loves and Graces dream;
Where, slowly winding, the dull waters creep,
And seem themselves to own the power of sleep;
Where on the surface lead, like feathers, swims;
There let me bathe my yet unhallow'd limbs,
As once a Syrian bathed in Jordan's flood-Wash off my native stains, correct that blood
Which mutinies at call of English pride,
And, deaf to prudence, rolls a patriot tide.
From solemn thought which overhangs the brow
Of patriot care, when things are--God knows how;
From nice trim points, where Honour, slave to Rule,
In compliment to Folly, plays the fool;
From those gay scenes, where Mirth exalts his power,
And easy Humour wings the laughing hour;
From those soft better moments, when desire
Beats high, and all the world of man's on fire;
When mutual ardours of the melting fair
More than repay us for whole years of care,
At Friendship's summons will my Wilkes retreat,
And see, once seen before, that ancient seat,
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That ancient seat, where majesty display'd
Her ensigns, long before the world was made!
Mean narrow maxims, which enslave mankind,
Ne'er from its bias warp thy settled mind:
Not duped by party, nor opinion's slave,
Those faculties which bounteous nature gave,
Thy honest spirit into practice brings,
Nor courts the smile, nor dreads the frown of kings.
Let rude licentious Englishmen comply
With tumult's voice, and curse--they know not why;
Unwilling to condemn, thy soul disdains
To wear vile faction's arbitrary chains,
And strictly weighs, in apprehension clear,
Things as they are, and not as they appear.
With thee good humour tempers lively wit;
Enthroned with Judgment, Candour loves to sit;
And nature gave thee, open to distress,
A heart to pity, and a hand to bless.
Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot
Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot,
Who, might calm reason credit idle tales,
By rancour forged where prejudice prevails,
Or starves at home, or practises, through fear
Of starving, arts which damn all conscience here.
When scribblers, to the charge by interest led,
The fierce North Briton foaming at their head,
Pour forth invectives, deaf to Candour's call,
And, injured by one alien, rail at all;
On northern Pisgah when they take their stand,
To mark the weakness of that Holy Land,
With needless truths their libels to adorn,
And hang a nation up to public scorn,
Thy generous soul condemns the frantic rage,
And hates the faithful, but ill-natured page.
The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride;
True is the charge, nor by themselves denied.
Are they not, then, in strictest reason clear,
Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here?
If, by low supple arts successful grown,
They sapp'd our vigour to increase their own;
If, mean in want, and insolent in power,
They only fawn'd more surely to devour,
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Roused by such wrongs, should Reason take alarm,
And e'en the Muse for public safety arm?
But if they own ingenuous virtue's sway,
And follow where true honour points the way,
If they revere the hand by which they're fed,
And bless the donors for their daily bread,
Or, by vast debts of higher import bound,
Are always humble, always grateful found:
If they, directed by Paul's holy pen,
Become discreetly all things to all men,
That all men may become all things to them,
Envy may hate, but Justice can't condemn.
Into our places, states, and beds they creep;
They've sense to get, what we want sense to keep.
Once--be the hour accursed, accursed the place!-I ventured to blaspheme the chosen race.
Into those traps, which men call'd patriots laid,
By specious arts unwarily betray'd,
Madly I leagued against that sacred earth,
Vile parricide! which gave a parent birth:
But shall I meanly error's path pursue,
When heavenly truth presents her friendly clue?
Once plunged in ill, shall I go farther in?
To make the oath, was rash: to keep it, sin.
Backward I tread the paths I trod before,
And calm reflection hates what passion swore.
Converted, (blessed are the souls which know
Those pleasures which from true conversion flow,
Whether to reason, who now rules my breast,
Or to pure faith, like Lyttelton and West),
Past crimes to expiate, be my present aim
To raise new trophies to the Scottish name;
To make (what can the proudest Muse do more?)
E'en faction's sons her brighter worth adore;
To make her glories, stamp'd with honest rhymes,
In fullest tide roll down to latest times.
Presumptuous wretch! and shall a Muse like thine,
An English Muse, the meanest of the Nine,
Attempt a theme like this? Can her weak strain
Expect indulgence from the mighty Thane?
Should he from toils of government retire,
And for a moment fan the poet's fire;
249
Should he, of sciences the moral friend,
Each curious, each important search suspend,
Leave unassisted Hill of herbs to tell,
And all the wonders of a cockleshell;
Having the Lord's good grace before his eyes,
Would not the Home step forth and gain the prize?
Or if this wreath of honour might adorn
The humble brows of one in England born,
Presumptuous still thy daring must appear;
Vain all thy towering hopes whilst I am here.
Thus spake a form, by silken smile and tone,
Dull and unvaried, for the Laureate known,
Folly's chief friend, Decorum's eldest son,
In every party found, and yet of none.
This airy substance, this substantial shade,
Abash'd I heard, and with respect obey'd.
From themes too lofty for a bard so mean,
Discretion beckons to an humbler scene;
The restless fever of ambition laid,
Calm I retire, and seek the sylvan shade.
Now be the Muse disrobed of all her pride,
Be all the glare of verse by truth supplied.
And if plain nature pours a simple strain,
Which Bute may praise, and Ossian not disdain,-Ossian, sublimest, simplest bard of all,
Whom English infidels Macpherson call,-Then round my head shall Honour's ensigns wave,
And pensions mark me for a willing slave.
Two boys, whose birth, beyond all question, springs
From great and glorious, though forgotten, kings-Shepherds, of Scottish lineage, born and bred
On the same bleak and barren mountain's head;
By niggard nature doom'd on the same rocks
To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks;
Fresh as the morning, which, enrobed in mist,
The mountain's top with usual dulness kiss'd,
Jockey and Sawney to their labours rose;
Soon clad, I ween, where nature needs no clothes;
Where, from their youth inured to winter-skies,
Dress and her vain refinements they despise.
Jockey, whose manly high-boned cheeks to crown,
With freckles spotted, flamed the golden down,
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With meikle art could on the bagpipes play,
E'en from the rising to the setting day;
Sawney as long without remorse could bawl
Home's madrigals, and ditties from Fingal:
Oft at his strains, all natural though rude,
The Highland lass forgot her want of food;
And, whilst she scratch'd her lover into rest,
Sunk pleased, though hungry, on her Sawney's breast.
Far as the eye could reach, no tree was seen;
Earth, clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green:
The plague of locusts they secure defy,
For in three hours a grasshopper must die:
No living thing, whate'er its food, feasts there,
But the cameleon, who can feast on air.
No birds, except as birds of passage, flew;
No bee was known to hum, no dove to coo:
No streams, as amber smooth, as amber clear,
Were seen to glide, or heard to warble here:
Rebellion's spring, which through the country ran,
Furnish'd, with bitter draughts, the steady clan:
No flowers embalm'd the air, but one white rose,
Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows;
By instinct blows at morn, and when the shades
Of drizzly eve prevail, by instinct fades.
One, and but one poor solitary cave,
Too sparing of her favours, nature gave;
That one alone (hard tax on Scottish pride!)
Shelter at once for man and beast supplied.
There snares without, entangling briars spread,
And thistles, arm'd against the invader's head,
Stood in close ranks, all entrance to oppose;
Thistles now held more precious than the rose.
All creatures which, on nature's earliest plan,
Were formed to loathe and to be loathed by man,
Which owed their birth to nastiness and spite,
Deadly to touch, and hateful to the sight;
Creatures which, when admitted in the ark,
Their saviour shunn'd, and rankled in the dark,
Found place within: marking her noisome road
With poison's trail, here crawl'd the bloated toad;
There webs were spread of more than common size,
And half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies;
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In quest of food, efts strove in vain to crawl;
Slugs, pinch'd with hunger, smear'd the slimy wall:
The cave around with hissing serpents rung;
On the damp roof unhealthy vapour hung;
And Famine, by her children always known,
As proud as poor, here fix'd her native throne.
Here, for the sullen sky was overcast,
And summer shrunk beneath a wintry blast-A native blast, which, arm'd with hail and rain,
Beat unrelenting on the naked swain,
The boys for shelter made; behind, the sheep,
Of which those shepherds every day _take keep_,
Sickly crept on, and, with complainings rude,
On nature seem'd to call, and bleat for food.
JOCKEY.
_Sith_ to this cave by tempest we're confined,
And within _ken_ our flocks, under the wind,
Safe from the pelting of this perilous storm,
Are laid _emong_ yon thistles, dry and warm,
What, Sawney, if by shepherds' art we try
To mock the rigour of this cruel sky?
What if we tune some merry roundelay?
Well dost thou sing, nor ill doth Jockey play.
SAWNEY.
Ah! Jockey, ill advisest thou, _I wis_,
To think of songs at such a time as this:
Sooner shall herbage crown these barren rocks,
Sooner shall fleeces clothe these ragged flocks,
Sooner shall want seize shepherds of the south,
And we forget to live from hand to mouth,
Than Sawney, out of season, shall impart
The songs of gladness with an aching heart.
JOCKEY.
Still have I known thee for a silly swain;
Of things past help, what boots it to complain?
Nothing but mirth can conquer fortune's spite;
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No sky is heavy, if the heart be light:
Patience is sorrow's salve: what can't be cured,
So Donald right areads, must be endured.
SAWNEY.
Full silly swain, _I wot_, is Jockey now.
How didst thou bear thy Maggy's falsehood? How,
When with a foreign loon she stole away,
Didst thou forswear thy pipe and shepherd's lay?
Where was thy boasted wisdom then, when I
Applied those proverbs which you now apply?
JOCKEY.
Oh, she was _bonny_! All the Highlands round
Was there a rival to my Maggy found?
More precious (though that precious is to all)
Than the rare medicine which we Brimstone call,
Or that choice plant, so grateful to the nose,
Which, in I know not what far country, grows,
Was Maggy unto me: dear do I rue
A lass so fair should ever prove untrue.
SAWNEY.
Whether with pipe or song to charm the ear,
Through all the land did Jamie find a peer?
Cursed be that year by every honest Scot,
And in the shepherd's calendar forgot,
That fatal year when Jamie, hapless swain!
In evil hour forsook the peaceful plain:
Jamie, when our young laird discreetly fled,
Was seized, and hang'd till he was dead, dead, dead.
JOCKEY.
Full sorely may we all lament that day,
For all were losers in the deadly fray.
Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,
Well dost thou know were none more hopeful swains;
Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride;
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Two in the field, and three on gibbets died.
Ah, silly swains! to follow war's alarms;
Ah! what hath shepherds' life to do with arms?
SAWNEY.
Mention it not--there saw I strangers clad
In all the honours of our ravish'd plaid;
Saw the Ferrara, too, our nation's pride,
Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side.
There fell our choicest youth, and from that day
_Mote_ never Sawney tune the merry lay;
Bless'd those which fell! cursed those which still survive,
To mourn Fifteen renew'd in Forty-five!
Thus plain'd the boys, when, from her throne of turf,
With boils emboss'd, and overgrown with scurf,
Vile humours which, in life's corrupted well
Mix'd at the birth, not abstinence could quell,
Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes,
Where hunger e'en to madness seem'd to rise,
Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart,
Strain'd to get loose, and from their orbs to start:
Her hollow cheeks were each a deep-sunk cell,
Where wretchedness and horror loved to dwell;
With double rows of useless teeth supplied,
Her mouth, from ear to ear, extended wide,
Which, when for want of food her entrails pined,
She oped, and, cursing, swallow'd nought but wind:
All shrivell'd was her skin; and here and there,
Making their way by force, her bones lay bare:
Such filthy sight to hide from human view,
O'er her foul limbs a tatter'd plaid she threw.
Cease, cried the goddess, cease, despairing swains!
And from a parent hear what Jove ordains.
Pent in this barren corner of the isle,
Where partial fortune never deign'd to smile;
Like nature's bastards, reaping for our share
What was rejected by the lawful heir;
Unknown amongst the nations of the earth,
Or only known to raise contempt and mirth;
Long free, because the race of Roman braves
254
Thought it not worth their while to make us slaves;
Then into bondage by that nation brought,
Whose ruin we for ages vainly sought;
Whom still with unslaked hate we view, and still,
The power of mischief lost, retain the will;
Consider'd as the refuse of mankind,
A mass till the last moment left behind,
Which frugal nature doubted, as it lay,
Whether to stamp with life or throw away;
Which, form'd in haste, was planted in this nook,
But never enter'd in Creation's book;
Branded as traitors who, for love of gold,
Would sell their God, as once their king they sold,-Long have we borne this mighty weight of ill,
These vile injurious taunts, and bear them still.
But times of happier note are now at hand,
And the full promise of a better land:
There, like the sons of Israel, having trod,
For the fix'd term of years ordain'd by God,
A barren desert, we shall seize rich plains,
Where milk with honey flows, and plenty reigns:
With some few natives join'd, some pliant few,
Who worship Interest and our track pursue;
There shall we, though the wretched people grieve,
Ravage at large, nor ask the owners' leave.
For us, the earth shall bring forth her increase;
For us, the flocks shall wear a golden fleece;
Fat beeves shall yield us dainties not our own,
And the grape bleed a nectar yet unknown:
For our advantage shall their harvests grow,
And Scotsmen reap what they disdain'd to sow:
For us, the sun shall climb the eastern hill;
For us, the rain shall fall, the dew distil.
When to our wishes Nature cannot rise,
Art shall be task'd to grant us fresh supplies;
His brawny arm shall drudging Labour strain,
And for our pleasure suffer daily pain:
Trade shall for us exert her utmost powers,
Hers all the toil, and all the profit ours:
For us, the oak shall from his native steep
Descend, and fearless travel through the deep:
The sail of commerce, for our use unfurl'd,
255
Shall waft the treasures of each distant world:
For us, sublimer heights shall science reach;
For us, their statesman plot, their churchmen preach:
Their noblest limbs of council we'll disjoint,
And, mocking, new ones of our own appoint.
Devouring War, imprison'd in the North,
Shall, at our call, in horrid pomp break forth,
And when, his chariot-wheels with thunder hung,
Fell Discord braying with her brazen tongue,
Death in the van, with Anger, Hate, and Fear,
And Desolation stalking in the rear,
Revenge, by Justice guided, in his train,
He drives impetuous o'er the trembling plain,
Shall, at our bidding, quit his lawful prey,
And to meek, gentle, generous Peace give way.
Think not, my sons, that this so bless'd estate
Stands at a distance on the roll of fate;
Already big with hopes of future sway,
E'en from this cave I scent my destined prey.
Think not that this dominion o'er a race,
Whose former deeds shall time's last annals grace,
In the rough face of peril must be sought,
And with the lives of thousands dearly bought:
No--fool'd by cunning, by that happy art
Which laughs to scorn the blundering hero's heart,
Into the snare shall our kind neighbours fall
With open eyes, and fondly give us all.
When Rome, to prop her sinking empire, bore
Their choicest levies to a foreign shore,
What if we seized, like a destroying flood,
Their widow'd plains, and fill'd the realm with blood;
Gave an unbounded loose to manly rage,
And, scorning mercy, spared nor sex, nor age?
When, for our interest too mighty grown,
Monarchs of warlike bent possessed the throne,
What if we strove divisions to foment,
And spread the flames of civil discontent,
Assisted those who 'gainst their king made head,
And gave the traitors refuge when they fled?
When restless Glory bade her sons advance,
And pitch'd her standard in the fields of France,
What if, disdaining oaths,--an empty sound,
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By which our nation never shall be bound,-Bravely we taught unmuzzled War to roam,
Through the weak land, and brought cheap laurels home?
When the bold traitors, leagued for the defence
Of law, religion, liberty, and sense,
When they against their lawful monarch rose,
And dared the Lord's anointed to oppose,
What if we still revered the banish'd race,
And strove the royal vagrants to replace;
With fierce rebellions shook the unsettled state,
And greatly dared, though cross'd by partial fate?
These facts, which might, where wisdom held the sway,
Awake the very stones to bar our way,
There shall be nothing, nor one trace remain
In the dull region of an English brain;
Bless'd with that faith which mountains can remove,
First they shall dupes, next saints, last martyrs, prove.
Already is this game of Fate begun
Under the sanction of my darling son;
That son, of nature royal as his name,
Is destined to redeem our race from shame:
His boundless power, beyond example great,
Shall make the rough way smooth, the crooked straight;
Shall for our ease the raging floods restrain,
And sink the mountain level to the plain.
Discord, whom in a cavern under ground
With massy fetters their late patriot bound;
Where her own flesh the furious hag might tear,
And vent her curses to the vacant air;
Where, that she never might be heard of more,
He planted Loyalty to guard the door,
For better purpose shall our chief release,
Disguise her for a time, and call her Peace.
Lured by that name--fine engine of deceit!-Shall the weak English help themselves to cheat;
To gain our love, with honours shall they grace
The old adherents of the Stuart race,
Who, pointed out no matter by what name,
Tories or Jacobites, are still the same;
To soothe our rage the temporising brood
Shall break the ties of truth and gratitude,
Against their saviour venom'd falsehoods frame,
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And brand with calumny their William's name:
To win our grace, (rare argument of wit!)
To our untainted faith shall they commit
(Our faith, which, in extremest perils tried,
Disdain'd, and still disdains, to change her side)
That sacred Majesty they all approve,
Who most enjoys, and best deserves their love.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
687:The Bush
I wonder if the spell, the mystery,
That like a haze about your silence clings,
Moulding your void until we seem to see
Tangible Presences of Deathless Things,
Patterned but little to our spirits' woof,
Yet from our love or hate not all aloof,
Can. be the matrix where are forming slowly
Troy tales of Old Australia, to refine
Eras to come of ordered melancholy
'Neath lily-pale Perfection's anodyne.
For Troy hath ever been, and Homer sang
Its younger story for a lodging's fee,
While o'er Scamander settlers' axes rang
Amid the Bush where Ilium was to be.
For Cretan Art, dim centuries before,
Minoan Dream-times some Briseis bore.
Sumerian Phoebus by a willowed water
Song-built a Troy for far Chaldea, where
The sons of God, beholding Leda's daughter,
Bartered eternal thrones for love of her.
Across each terraced aeon Time hath sowed
With green tautology of vanished years,
Gaping aghast or webbed with shining lode,
Achilles' anger's earthquake-rift appears.
The towers that Phoebus builds can never fall:
Desire that Helen lights can never pall:
Yea, wounded Love hath still but gods to fly to,
When lust of war inflames Diomedes:
Must some Australian Hector vainly die, too?
Captives in ships? (0 change that omen, Trees!)
Yea, Mother Bush, in your deep dreams abide
Cupids alert for man and maid unborn,
Apprentice Pucks amid your saplings hide,
And wistful gorges wait a Roland horn:
Wallet of Sigurd shall this swag replace,
And centaurs curvet where those brumbies race.
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That drover's tale of love shall greaten duly
Through magic prisms of a myriad years,
Till bums Isolde to Tristram's fervour newly,
Or Launcelot to golden Guinevere's.
The miner cradling washdirt by the creek,
Or pulled through darkness dripping to the plat:
The navvy boring tunnels through the peak:
The farmer grubbing box-trees on the flat:
The hawker camping by the roadside spring:
The hodman on the giddy scaffolding:
Moths that around the fashion windows flutter:
The racecourse spider and the betting fly:
The children romping by the city gutter,
While baby crows to every passer-byFrom these rough blocks strewn o'er our ancient stream
Sculptors shall chisel brownie, fairy, faun,
Any myrmidons of some Homeric dream
From Melbourne mob and Sydney push be drawn.
The humdrum lives that now we tire of, then
Romance shall be, and 'we heroic men
Treading the vestibule of Golden Ages,
The Isthmus of the Land of Heart's Desire:
For lo! the Sybil's final volume's pages
Ope with our Advent, close when we expire.
Forgetful Change in one 'antiquity'
Boreal gleams shall drown, and southern glows;
Out of some singing woman's heart-break plea
Australia's dawn shall flush with Sappho's rose:
Strong Shirlow's hand shall trace Mantegna's line,
And Soma foam from Victor Daley's wine:
Scholars to be our prehistoric drama
From Esson's 'Woman Tamer' shall restore,
Or find in Gilbert's 'Lotus Stream and Lama'
An Austral Nile and Buddhas we adore.
The sunlit Satyrs follow Hugh McCrae,
Quinn spans the ocean with a Celtic ford,
And Williamson the Pan-pipe learns to play
From magpie-songs our schoolboy ears ignored:
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A sweeter woe no keen of Erin gave
Than Kendall sings o'er Araluen's grave:
Tasmanian Wordsworth to his chapel riding
The Burning Bush and Ardath mead shall pass,
Or, from the sea-coast of Bohemia gliding
On craft of dream, behold a shepherd lass.
Jessie Mackay on Southern Highlands sees
The elves deploy in kem and gallowglass:
Our Gilbert Murray writes 'Euripides':
Pirani merges in Pythagoras:
Marsyas plunges into Lethe, flayed,
From Rhadamanthine Stephens' steady blade:
While Benvenuto Morton, drunk with singing,
Sees salamanders in a bush-fire's bed,
And Spencer sails from Alcheringa bringing
Intaglios, totems and Books of the Dead.
On Southern fiords shall Brady's Long Snakes hiss,
Heavy with brides he wins to Viking troth:
O'Reilly's Sydney shall be Sybaris,
While Melbourne's Muses sup their Spartan broth:
Murdoch, Zenobia's counsellor, in time,
Redacts from Burke his book on The Sublime:
By Way was Homer into Greek translated:
And Shakespeare's self is Sophocles so plain
They know the kerb whereon the Furies waited
Outside the Mermaid Inn in Brogan's Lane.
Vane shall divide with Vern Eureka's fame;
Tillett and Mann are Tyler then and Cade:
Dowie's entwines with Cagliostro's name,
And in Tarpeia's, lo, those fair forms fade
Who drug the poor, for social bread and wine,
And lift the furtive latch to Catiline:
There, where the Longmore-featured Gracchi hurry,
And Greek-browed Higinbotham walks, anon,
The 'wealthy lower orders' leap the Murray
Before the stockwhip cracks of Jardine Don.
Cleons in 'Windsor dress at Syracuse
Their thin plebeians' promised meal delay;
41
And Archibald begets Australia's Muse
Upon an undine red of Chowder Bay:
Paterson's swan draws Amphitrite's car,
And Sidon learns from Young what purples are:
Rose Scott refutes dogmatic Cyril gaily,
Hypatia turns the anti-suffrage flank,
And Herod's daughter sools her 'morning daily'
On John the Baptist by the Yarra Bank.
Yon regal bustard, fading hence ere long,
Shall seem the guide we followed to the Grail;
This lyre-bird on his dancing-mound of song
Our mystagogue of some Bacchantic vale,
Where feathered Pan guffaws 'Evoe!' above,
And Maenad curlews shriek their midnight love:
That trailing flight of distant swans is bearing
Sarpedon's soul to its eternal joy:
This ibis, from the very Nile, despairing,
Memnon our own would warn from fatal Troy.
Primeval gnomes distilled the golden bribes
That have impregnated your musing waste with men;
But shall the spell of your pathetic tribes
Curl round, in time, our fairer limbs again?
Through that long tunnel of your gloom, I see
Gardens of a metropolis to be!
Out of the depths the mountain ash is soaring
To embryon gods of what unsounded space?
Out of the heights what influence is pouring
Thin desolation on your haunted face?
Many there are who see no higher lot
For all your writhing centuries of toil
Than that the avaricious plough should blot
Their wilding burgeon, and the red brand spoil
Your cyclopean garniture, to sow
The cheap parterres of Europe on your woe.
They weave all sorceries but yours, and borrow
The tinkling spells of alien winds and seas
To drown the chord of purifying sorrow,
Bom ere the world, that pulses through your trees.
42
For, save when we, in not o'er-subtle mood,
Hear magpies warbling soft November in,
Or, hand in hand with Love, a dreaming wood
Or bouldered crest of crisper April win,
Your harps, unblurred by glozing strings, intone
The dirges that behind Creation moan'Where, riding reinless billows, new lives dash on
The souring beach of yesterday's decay,
Where Love's chord leaps from mandrake shrieks of passion,
And groping gods mould man from quivering clay.
(Is Nature deaf and blind and dumb? A cruse
Unfilled of wine? Clay for an unbreathed soul?
Alien to man, till his desires transfuse
Their flames through wind and water, leaf and bole,
And each crude fane elaborately fit
With oracles that echo all his wit?
The living wilds of Greece saw death returning
When Pan that men had made fell from his throne:
Till through her sap our very blood is churning
The Bush her lonely alien woe shall moan!
Or is she reticent but to be kind?
Whispers she not beneath her mask of clods'Who asks he shall receive, who seeks shall find,
Who knocks shall open every door of God's?'
Dumb Faith's, blind Hope's eternal consort she,
Gravid with all that is on earth to be;
Corn, wine and oil in hungry granite hiding,
All Beauty under sober wings of clay,
All life beneath her dead heart long abiding,
Yea, all the gods her sons and she obey!)
What sin's wan expiation strewed your Vast
With mounded pillage of what conquering fire?
Slumbering throes of what prodigious Past
Exhale these lingering ghosts of its desire?
Sunshine that bleached corruption out, that glare?
Desolate blue of Purgatory, there?
Flagellant winds through guilty Eden scouring?
Sahara drowning Prester John's domain?
Satumian dam her progeny devouring?
Hath dawn-time Hun these footprints left? Hath Cain?
43
Even the human wave, that shall at length
To man's endurance key your strident surge,
Sings in your poignant tones and sombre strength,
And makes, as yet, its own your primal dirge:
A gun-shot startles dawn back from the sky,
And mourning tea-trees echo Gordon's sigh:
Nardoo with Burke's faint sweat is dank for ever:
Spectral a tribe round poisoned rations shrieks:
Till doomday Leichhardt walks die Never Never:
Pensive, of Boake, the circling stock-whip speaks.
The wraiths unseen of roadside crimes unnamed
About that old-time shanty's ruins roam:
This squatter's fenceless acres hide ashamed
The hearth and battered zinc of Naboth's home:
Deserted 'yam-holes' pit your harmonies
With sloughing pock-marks of the gold-disease:
The sludgy creek 'mid hungry rushes rambles,
Where teal once dived and lowan raised her mound:
That tree, with crows, o'erlooks the township shambles:
These paddocks, ordure-smeared, the city bound.
0 yield not all to factory and farm!
For we, who drew a milk no stranger knows
From her scant paps, yearn for the acrid charm
That gossamers the Bush Where No Tree Grows.
And we have ritual moments when we crave
For worship in some messmate-pillared nave,
Where contrite 'bears' for woodland sins are kneeling,
And, 'mid the censers of the mountain musk,
Acolyte bell-birds the Angelus are pealing,
And boobooks moan lone vespers in the dusk,
And you have Children of the Dreaming Star,
Who care but little for the crowded ways
Where meagre spirits' vapid prizes are,
Or for the paddocked ease of dreamless days
And hedges clipped of every sunny growth
That plights the soul to God in daily troth:
Their wayward love prefers your desolation,
Or (where the human trail hath seared its charm)
44
The briar-rose on some abandoned 'station',
To all the tilled obedience of the farm.
Vineyards that purblind thrift shall never glean
The weedy waste and thistly gully hold:
No mint shall melt to currency unclean
Yon river-rounded hillock's Cape-broom gold:
The onion-grass upon that dark green slope
Returns our gaze from eyes of heliotrope:
But more we seek your underflowered expanses
Of scrub monotonous, or, where, O Bush,
The craters of your fiery noon's romances,
Like great firm bosoms, through the bare plains push.
As many. Mother, are your moods and forms
As all the sons who love you. Here, you mow
Careering grounds for every brood of storms
The wild sea-mares to desert stallions throw;
Anon, up through a sea of sand you glance
With green ephemeral exuberance,
And then quick seeds dive deep to years of slumber
From hot-hoofed drought's precipitate return:
There, league on league, the snow's cold fingers number
The shrinking nerves of supple-jack and fern.
To other eyes and ears you are a great
Pillared cathedral tremulously green,
An odorous and hospitable gate
To genial mystery, the happy screen
Of truants or of lovers rambling there
'Neath sun-shot boughs o'er miles of maidenhair.
Wee rubies dot the leaflets of the cherries,
The wooing wagtails hop from log to bough,
The bronzewing comes from Queensland for the berries,
The bell-bird by the creek is calling now.
And you can ride, an Eastern queen, they say,
By living creatures sumptuously borne,
With all barbaric equipages gay,
Beneath the torrid blue of Capricorn.
That native lotus is the very womb
That was the Hindoo goddess' earthly tomb.
45
The gang-gang screams o'er cactus wildernesses,
Palm trees are there, and swampy widths of rice,
Unguents and odours ooze from green recesses,
The jungles blaze with birds of Paradise.
But I, in city exile, hear you sing
Of saplinged hill and box-tree dotted plain,
Or silver-grass that prays the North Wind's wing
Convey its sigh to the loitering rain:
And Spring is half distraught with wintry gusts,
Summer the daily spoil of tropic lusts
The sun and she too fiercely shared together
Lingering thro' voluptuous Hindoo woods,
But o'er my windless, soft autumnal weather
The peace that passes understanding broods.
When, now, they say 'The Bush!', I see the top
Delicate amber leanings of the gum
Flutter, or flocks of screaming green leeks drop
Silent, where in the shining morning hum
The gleaning bees for honey-scented hours
'Mid labyrinthine leaves and white gum flowers.
Cantering midnight hoofs are nearing, nearing,
The straining bullocks flick the harpy flies,
The 'hatter' weeds his melancholy clearing,
The distant cow-bell tinkles o'er the rise.
You are the brooding comrade of our way,
Whispering rumour of a new Unknown,
Moulding us white ideals to obey,
Steeping whate'er we learn in lore your own,
And freshening with unpolluted light
The squalid city's day and pallid night,
Till we become ourselves distinct, Australian,
(Your native lightning charging blood and nerve),
Stripped to the soul of borrowed garments, alien
To that approaching Shape of God you serve.
Brooding, brooding, your whispers murmur plain
That searching for the clue to mystery
In grottos of decrepitude is vain,
That never shall the eye of prophet see
46
In crooked Trade's tumultuous streets the plan
Of templed cities adequate to man.
Brooding, brooding, you make us Brahmins waiting
(While uninspired pass on the hurtling years),
Faithful to dreams your spirit is creating,
Till Great Australia, born of you, appears.
For Great Australia is not yet: She waits
(Where o'er the Bush prophetic auras play)
The passing of these temporary States,
Flaunting their tawdry flags of far decay.
Her aureole above the alien mists
Beacons our filial eyes to mountain trysts:
'Mid homely trees with all ideals fruited,
She shelters us till Trade's Simoom goes by,
And slakes our thirst from cisterns unpolluted .
For ages cold in brooding deeps of sky.
We love our brothers, and to heal their woe
Pluck simples from the known old gardens still:
We love our kindred over seas, and grow
Their symbols tenderly o'er plain and hill;
We feel their blood rebounding in our hearts,
And speak as they would speak our daily parts:
But under all we know, we know that only
A virgin womb unsoiled by ancient fear
Can Saviours bear. So, we, your Brahmins, lonely,
Deaf to the barren tumult, wait your Year.
The Great Year's quivering dawn pencils the Night
To be the morning of our children's prime,
And weave from rays of yet ungathered Light
A richer noon than e'er apparelled Time.
If it must be, as Tuscan wisdom knew,
Babylon's seer, and wistful Egypt too,
That mellow afternoon shall pensive guide us
Down somnolent Decay's ravine to rest,
Then you, reborn, 0 Mother Bush, shall hide us
All the long night at your dream-laden breast.
Australian eyes that heed your lessons know
Another world than older pilgrims may:
47
Prometheus chained in Kosciusko's snow
Sees later gods than Zeus in turn decay:
Boundless plateaux expand the spirit's sight,
Resilient gales uphold her steeper flight:
And your close beating heart, 0 savage Mother,
Throbs secret words of joy and starker pain
Than reach the ears all old deceptions smother
In Lebanon, or e'en in Westermain.
We marvel not, who hear your undersong,
And catch a glimpse in rare exalted hours
Of something like a Being gleam along
Festooned arcades of flossie creeper flowers,
Or, toward the mirk, seem privileged to share
The silent rapture of the trees at prayerWe marvel not that seers in other ages,
With eyes unstrained by peering logic, saw
The desolation glow with Koran pages,
Or Sinai stones with Tables of the Law.
Homers are waiting in the gum trees now,
Far driven from the tarnished Cyclades:
More Druids to your green enchantment bow
Than 'neath unfaithful Mona's vanished trees:
A wind hath spirited from ageing France
To our fresh hills the carpet of Romance:
Heroes and maids of old with young blood tingling
In ampler gardens grow their roses new:
And races long apart their manas mingling
Prepare the cradle of an Advent due.
And those who dig the mounded eld for runes
To read Religion's tangled cipher, here,
Where all Illusion haunts the fainting noons
Of days hysteric with the tireless leer
Of ravenous enamoured suns, shall find
How May a flings her mantle o'er the mind,
Till sober sand to shining water changes,
Dodona whispers from the she-oak groves,
Afreets upon the tempest cross the ranges,
And Fafnir through the bunyip marshes roves.
48
Once, when Uranian Love appeared to glow
Through that abysmal Night that bounds our reignLove that a man may scarcely feel and know i
Quite the same world as other men againWith earthward-streaming frontier wraiths distraught,
Your oracles, 0 Mother Bush, I sought:
But found, dismayed, that eerie light revealing
Those wraiths already in your depths on sleuth,
Termagant Scorns along your hillsides stealing,
Remorse unbaring slow her barbed tooth.
My own thoughts first from far dispersion flew
Back to their sad creator, with the crops
Of woes in flower and all the harvests due
Till tiring Time the fearful seeding stops:
In pigmy forms of friends and foes, anon
In my own image, they came, stung, were gone:
And then I heard the voice of Him Who Questions,
Knowing the faltered answer ere it came,
Chilling the soul by hovering suggestions
Of wan damnation at a wince of blame.
And all your leaves in symbols were arranged,
Despairs long dead would leap from bough to bough,
A gum-tree buttress to a goblin changed
Grinning the warmth of some old broken vow:
Furtive desires for scarce-remembered maids
Glanced in a fearful bo-peep from your shades:
Till you became a purgatory cleansing
With rosy flakes in form of manikins,
To fiercer shame within my soul condensing,
The dim pollution of forgotten sins.
And She, the human symbol of that Love,
Would, as my cleansed eyes forgot their fear,
Comrade beside me. Comforter above,
With sunny smile ubiquitous appear:
Run on before me to the nooks we knew,
Walk hand in hand as glad young lovers do,
Gravely reprove me toying with temptation,
Show me the eyes and ears in roots and clods,
Bend with me o'er some blossom's revelation,
49
Or read from clouds the judgments of the gods.
My old ideals She would tune until
The grating note of self no longer rang:
She drove the birds of gloom and evil will
Out of the cote wherein my poems sang.
Time at Her wand annulled his calendar,
And Space his fallacy of Near and Far,
For through my Bush along with me She glided,
And crowded days of Beauty made more fair,
Though lagging weeks and ocean widths divided
Her mortal casing from Her Presence there.
Her wetted finger oped my shuttered eyes
To boyhood's scership of the Real again:
Upon the Bush descended from the skies
The rapt-up Eden of primordial men:
August Dominions through the vistas strode:
On white-maned clouds the smiling cherubs rode:
Maltreated Faith restored my jangled hearing
Till little seraphs sang from chip and clod:
And prayers were radiant children that, unfearing,
Floated as kisses to the lips of God.
It matters not that for some purpose wise
Myopic Reason censored long ago
The revelations of that Paradise,
When, back of all I feel or will or know,
Its silent angels beacon through the Dark
And point to harbours new my drifted ark.
Nor need we dread the fogs that round us thicken
Questing the Bush for Grails decreed for man,
When Powers our fathers saw unseen still quicken
Eyes that were ours before the world began.
'Twas then I saw the Vision of the Ways,
And 'mid their gloom and glory seemed to live,
Threaded the coverts of the Dark Road's maze,
Toiled up, with tears, the Track Retributive,
And, on the Path of Grace, beheld aglow
The love-lit Nave of all that wheeled below.
And She who flowered, my Mystic Rose, in Heaven,
50
And lit the Purging Mount, my Guiding Star,
Trudged o'er the marl, my mate, through Hell's wan levin,
Nor shrank, like lonely Dante's love, afar.
High towered a cloud over one leafy wild,
And to a bridged volcano grew. Above,
A great Greek group of father, mother, child,
Illumed a narrow round with radiant love.
Below, a smoke-pool thick with faces swirled,
The mutinous omen. of an Under-world,
Defeated, plundered, blackened, but preparing,
E'en though that calm, white dominance fell down,
To overflow the rim, and, sunward faring,
Shape myriad perfect groups from slave and clown.
Or thus I read the symbol, though 'twas sent
To hound compunction on my wincing pride,
That dreamed of raceless brotherhood, content
Though all old Charm dissolved and Glory died.
For often signs will yield their deeper signs,
Virginal Bush, in your untrodden shrines,
Than where the craven ages' human clamour
Distorts the boldest oracle with fear,
Or where dissolving wizards dew with glamour
Arden, Broceliande, or Windermere.
Once while my mother by a spreading tree
Our church's sober rubric bade me con,
My vagrant eyes among the boughs would see
Forbidden wings and •wizard aprons on
Father's 'wee people' from their Irish glades
Brighten and darken with your lights and shades.
And I would only read again those stern leaves
For whispered bribe that, when their tale I told,
We would go and look for fairies in the fern-leaves
And red-capped leprechauns with crocks of gold.
Anon, my boyhood saw how Sunbursts flamed
Or filmy hinds lured on a pale Oisin,
Where lithe indignant saplings crowding claimed
The digger's ravage for their plundered queen:
And heard within yon lichened 'mullock-heap'
51
Lord Edward's waiting horsemen moan in sleep:
Or flew the fragrant path of swans consoling
Lir's exiled daughter wandering with me,
And traced below the Wattle River rolling
Exuberant and golden toward the sea.
Here, would the •wavering wings of heat uplift
Some promontory till the tree-crowned pile
Above a phantom sea would swooning drift,
St. Brendan's vision of the Winged Isle:
Anon, the isle divides again, again,
Till archipelagos poise o'er the main.
There, lazy fingers of a breeze have scattered
The distant blur of factory chimney smoke
hi poignant groups of all the young lives shattered
To feed the ravin of a piston-stroke!
Or when I read the tale of what you were
Beyond these hungry eyes' home-keeping view,
I peopled petrel rocks with Sirens fair,
In Maid Mirage the Fairy Morgan knew,
Steered Quetzalcoatl's skiff to coral coasts,
On Chambers' Pillar throned the Olympian hosts,
Heard in white sulphur-crested parrots' screeches
Remorseful Peris vent their hopeless rage,
Atlantis' borders traced on sunken beaches,
m Alcheringa found the Golden Age.
Sibyl and Siren, with alternate breaths
You read our foetal nation's boon and bane,
And lure to trysts of orgiastic Deaths
Adventurous love that listens to your strain:
Pelsarts and Vanderdeckens of the world
Circle your charms or at your feet are hurled:
And, Southern witch, whose glamour drew De Quiros
O'er half the earth for one unyielded kiss,
Were yours the arms that healed the scalded Eros
When Psyche's curious lamp darkened their bliss?
Ye, who would challenge when we claim to see
The bush alive with Northern wealth of wings,
Forget that at a common mother's knee
52
We learned, with you, the lore of Silent Things.
There is no New that is not older far
Than swirling cradle of the first-born star:
Our youngest hearts prolong the far pulsation
And churn the brine of the primordial sea:
The foetus writes the précis of Creation:
Australia is the whole world's legatee.
Imagination built her throne in us
Before your present bodies saw the sky:
Your myths were counters of our abacus,
And in your brain developed long our eye:
We from the misty folk have also sprung
Who saw the gnomes and heard the Ever Young:
Do Southern skies the fancy disinherit
Of moly flower and Deva-laden breeze?
Do nerves attuned by old defect and merit
Their timbre lose by crossing tropic seas?
All mysteries ye claim as yours alone
Have wafted secrets over oceans here:
Our living soil Antiquity hath sown
With just the corn and tares ye love and fear:
Romance and song enthral us just as you,
Nor change of zenith changes spirit too:
Our necks as yours are sore with feudal halters:
To the Pole ye know our compasses are set;
And shivering years that huddled round your altars
Beneath our stars auspicious tremble yet.
Who fenced the nymphs in European vales?
Or Pan tabooed from all but Oxford dreams?
Warned Shakespeare off from foreign Plutarch's tales?
Or tethered Virgil to Italian themes?
And when the body sailed from your control
Think ye we left behind in bond the soul?
Whate'er was yours is ours in equal measure,
The Temple was not built for you alone,
Altho' 'tis ours to grace the common treasure
With Lares and Penates of our own!
Ye stole yourselves from gardens fragrant long
53
The sprouting seed-pods of your choicest blooms,
And wove the splendid garments of your song
From Viking foam on grave Hebraic looms:
'Twas Roman nerve and rich Hellenic lymph
Changed your pale pixie to a nubile nymph:
Yea, breathed at dawn around Atlantis' islands,
Wind-home o'er some Hesperidean road,
The morning clouds on dim Accadian highlands
Spring-fed the Nile that over Hellas flowed!
As large-eyed Greek amid Sicilian dews
Saw Dis, as ne'er before, pursue the Maid,
Or, safe 'neath screening billows, Arethuse
Alpheus' rugged sleuth unsoiled evade:
We shall complete the tale ye left half-told,
Under the ocean lead your fountains old,
To slake our sceptic thirst with haunted water,
And tame our torrents with a wedding kiss,
Shall loose, mayhap, the spell on Ceres' daughter,
And show, unclouded, God in very Dis.
(Yet, there are moods and mornings when I hear,
Above the music of the Bush's breath,
The rush of alien breezes far and near
Drowning her oracles to very death:
Exotic battle-cries the silence mar,
Seductive perfumes drive the gum-scent far;
And organ-tones august a moment show me
Miltonic billows and Homeric gales
Until I feel the older worlds below me,
And all her wonder trembles, thins and fails.)
Yea, you are all that we may be, and yet
In us is all you are to be for aye!
The Giver of the gifts that we shall get?
An empty womb that waits the wedding day?
Thus drifting sense by age-long habit buoyed
Plays round the thought that knows all nature void!
And so, my song alternate would believe her
Idiot Bush and Daughter of the Sun,
A worthless gift apart from the receiver,
An empty womb, but in a Deathless One.
54
To shapes we would of Freedom, Truth and Joy
Shall we your willing plasm mould for man:
Afresh rebuild the world, and thus destroy
What only Ragnarok in Europe can:
There is no Light but in your dark blendes sleeps,
Drops from your stars or through your ether leaps:
Yea, you are Nature, Chaos since Creation,
Waiting what human Word to chord in song?
Matrix inert of what auspicious nation?
For what far bees your nectar hiving long?
Exhausted manas of the conquering North
Shall rise refreshed to vivid life again
At your approach, and in your lap pour forth
Grateful the gleanings of his mighty reign:
As, when a tropic heat-king southward crawls,
Blistering the ranges, till he hears the calls
Of some cold high-browed bride, her streaming tresses,
Sprinkled with rose-buds, make his wild eyes thrill
To such desire for her superb caresses
He yields his fiery treasures to her will.
'Where is Australia, singer, do you know?
These sordid farms and joyless factories,
Mephitic mines and lanes of pallid woe?
Those ugly towns and cities such as these
With incense sick to all unworthy power,
And all old sin in full malignant flower?
No! to her bourn her children still are faring:
She is a Temple that we are to build:
For her the ages have been long preparing:
She is a prophecy to be fulfilled!
All that we love in olden lands and lore
Was signal of her coming long ago!
Bacon foresaw her, Campanella, More
And Plato's eyes were with her star aglow!
Who toiled for Truth, whate'er their countries were,
Who fought for Liberty, they yearned for her!
No corsair's gathering ground, or tryst for schemers,
55
No chapman Carthage to a huckster Tyre,
She is the Eldorado of old dreamers,
The Sleeping Beauty of the world's desire!
She is the scroll on which we are to write
Mythologies our own and epics new:
She is the port of our propitious flight
From Ur idolatrous and Pharaoh's crew.
She is our own, unstained, if worthy we,
By dream, or god, or star we would not see:
Her crystal beams all but the eagle dazzle;
Her wind-wide ways none but the strong-winged sail:
She is Eutopia, she is Hy-Brasil,
The watchers on the tower of morning hail I
Yet she shall be as we, the Potter, mould:
Altar or tomb, as we aspire, despair:
What wine we bring shall she, the chalice, hold:
What word we write shall she, the script, declare:
Bandage our eyes, she shall be Memphis, Spain:
Barter our souls, she shall be Tyre again:
And if we pour on her the red oblation
All o'er the world shall Asshur's buzzards throng:
Love-lit, her Chaos shall become Creation:
And dewed with dream, her silence flower in song.
~ Bernard O'Dowd,#NFDB
688:The Candidate
This poem was written in , on occasion of the contest between the
Earls of Hardwicke and Sandwich for the High-stewardship of the
University of Cambridge, vacant by the death of the Lord Chancellor
Hardwicke. The spirit of party ran high in the University, and no
means were left untried by either candidate to obtain a majority. The
election was fixed for the th of March, when, after much
altercation, the votes appearing equal, a scrutiny was demanded;
whereupon the Vice-Chancellor adjourned the senate _sine die_. On
appeal to the Lord High-Chancellor, he determined in favour of the
Earl of Hardwicke, and a mandamus issued accordingly.
Enough of Actors--let them play the player,
And, free from censure, fret, sweat, strut, and stare;
Garrick abroad, what motives can engage
To waste one couplet on a barren stage?
Ungrateful Garrick! when these tasty days,
In justice to themselves, allow'd thee praise;
When, at thy bidding, Sense, for twenty years,
Indulged in laughter, or dissolved in tears;
When in return for labour, time, and health,
The town had given some little share of wealth,
Couldst thou repine at being still a slave?
Darest thou presume to enjoy that wealth she gave?
Couldst thou repine at laws ordain'd by those
Whom nothing but thy merit made thy foes?
Whom, too refined for honesty and trade,
By need made tradesmen, Pride had bankrupts made;
Whom Fear made drunkards, and, by modern rules,
Whom Drink made wits, though Nature made them fools;
With such, beyond all pardon is thy crime,
In such a manner, and at such a time,
To quit the stage; but men of real sense,
Who neither lightly give, nor take offence,
Shall own thee clear, or pass an act of grace,
Since thou hast left a Powell in thy place.
Enough of Authors--why, when scribblers fail,
Must other scribblers spread the hateful tale?
Why must they pity, why contempt express,
And why insult a brother in distress?
108
Let those, who boast the uncommon gift of brains
The laurel pluck, and wear it for their pains;
Fresh on their brows for ages let it bloom,
And, ages past, still flourish round their tomb.
Let those who without genius write, and write,
Versemen or prosemen, all in Nature's spite,
The pen laid down, their course of folly run
In peace, unread, unmention'd, be undone.
Why should I tell, to cross the will of Fate,
That Francis once endeavour'd to translate?
Why, sweet oblivion winding round his head,
Should I recall poor Murphy from the dead?
Why may not Langhorne, simple in his lay,
Effusion on effusion pour away;
With friendship and with fancy trifle here,
Or sleep in pastoral at Belvidere?
Sleep let them all, with Dulness on her throne,
Secure from any malice but their own.
Enough of Critics--let them, if they please,
Fond of new pomp, each month pass new decrees;
Wide and extensive be their infant state,
Their subjects many, and those subjects great,
Whilst all their mandates as sound law succeed,
With fools who write, and greater fools who read.
What though they lay the realms of Genius waste,
Fetter the fancy and debauch the taste;
Though they, like doctors, to approve their skill,
Consult not how to cure, but how to kill;
Though by whim, envy, or resentment led,
They damn those authors whom they never read;
Though, other rules unknown, one rule they hold,
To deal out so much praise for so much gold:
Though Scot with Scot, in damned close intrigues,
Against the commonwealth of letters leagues;
Uncensured let them pilot at the helm,
And rule in letters, as they ruled the realm:
Ours be the curse, the mean tame coward's curse,
(Nor could ingenious Malice make a worse,
To do our sense and honour deep despite)
To credit what they say, read what they write.
Enough of Scotland--let her rest in peace;
The cause removed, effects of course should cease;
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Why should I tell, how Tweed, too mighty grown,
And proudly swell'd with waters not his own,
Burst o'er his banks, and, by Destruction led,
O'er our fair England desolation spread,
Whilst, riding on his waves, Ambition, plumed
In tenfold pride, the port of Bute assumed,
Now that the river god, convinced, though late,
And yielding, though reluctantly, to Fate,
Holds his fair course, and with more humble tides,
In tribute to the sea, as usual, glides?
Enough of States, and such like trifling things;
Enough of kinglings, and enough of kings;
Henceforth, secure, let ambush'd statesmen lie,
Spread the court web, and catch the patriot fly;
Henceforth, unwhipt of Justice, uncontroll'd
By fear or shame, let Vice, secure and bold,
Lord it with all her sons, whilst Virtue's groan
Meets with compassion only from the throne.
Enough of Patriots--all I ask of man
Is only to be honest as he can:
Some have deceived, and some may still deceive;
'Tis the fool's curse at random to believe.
Would those, who, by opinion placed on high,
Stand fair and perfect in their country's eye,
Maintain that honour, let me in their ear
Hint this essential doctrine--Persevere.
Should they (which Heaven forbid) to win the grace
Of some proud courtier, or to gain a place,
Their king and country sell, with endless shame
The avenging Muse shall mark each traitorous name;
But if, to Honour true, they scorn to bend,
And, proudly honest, hold out to the end,
Their grateful country shall their fame record,
And I myself descend to praise a lord.
Enough of Wilkes--with good and honest men
His actions speak much stronger than my pen,
And future ages shall his name adore,
When he can act and I can write no more.
England may prove ungrateful and unjust,
But fostering France shall ne'er betray her trust:
'Tis a brave debt which gods on men impose,
To pay with praise the merit e'en of foes.
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When the great warrior of Amilcar's race
Made Rome's wide empire tremble to her base,
To prove her virtue, though it gall'd her pride,
Rome gave that fame which Carthage had denied.
Enough of Self--that darling luscious theme,
O'er which philosophers in raptures dream;
Of which with seeming disregard they write,
Then prizing most, when most they seem to slight;
Vain proof of folly tinctured strong with pride!
What man can from himself, himself divide?
For me,(nor dare I lie) my leading aim
(Conscience first satisfied) is love of fame;
Some little fame derived from some brave few,
Who, prizing Honour, prize her votaries too.
Let all (nor shall resentment flush my cheek)
Who know me well, what they know, freely speak,
So those (the greatest curse I meet below)
Who know me not, may not pretend to know.
Let none of those whom, bless'd with parts above
My feeble genius, still I dare to love,
Doing more mischief than a thousand foes,
Posthumous nonsense to the world expose,
And call it mine; for mine though never known,
Or which, if mine, I living blush'd to own.
Know all the world, no greedy heir shall find,
Die when I will, one couplet left behind.
Let none of those, whom I despise, though great,
Pretending friendship to give malice weight,
Publish my life; let no false sneaking peer,
(Some such there are) to win the public ear,
Hand me to shame with some vile anecdote.
Nor soul-gall'd bishop damn me with a note.
Let one poor sprig of bay around my head
Bloom whilst I live, and point me out when dead;
Let it (may Heaven, indulgent, grant that prayer!)
Be planted on my grave, nor wither there;
And when, on travel bound, some rhyming guest
Roams through the churchyard, whilst his dinner's dress'd,
Let it hold up this comment to his eyes-'Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies;'
Whilst (oh, what joy that pleasing flattery gives!)
Reading my works, he cries--'Here Churchill lives.'
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Enough of Satire--in less harden'd times
Great was her force, and mighty were her rhymes.
I've read of men, beyond man's daring brave,
Who yet have trembled at the strokes she gave;
Whose souls have felt more terrible alarms
From her one line, than from a world in arms.
When in her faithful and immortal page
They saw transmitted down from age to age
Recorded villains, and each spotted name
Branded with marks of everlasting shame,
Succeeding villains sought her as a friend,
And, if not really mended, feign'd to mend;
But in an age, when actions are allow'd
Which strike all honour dead, and crimes avow'd
Too terrible to suffer the report,
Avow'd and praised by men who stain a court,
Propp'd by the arm of Power; when Vice, high born,
High-bred, high-station'd, holds rebuke in scorn;
When she is lost to every thought of fame,
And, to all virtue dead, is dead to shame;
When Prudence a much easier task must hold
To make a new world, than reform the old,
Satire throws by her arrows on the ground,
And if she cannot cure, she will not wound.
Come, Panegyric--though the Muse disdains,
Founded on truth, to prostitute her strains
At the base instance of those men, who hold
No argument but power, no god but gold,
Yet, mindful that from Heaven she drew her birth,
She scorns the narrow maxims of this earth;
Virtuous herself, brings Virtue forth to view,
And loves to praise, where praise is justly due.
Come, Panegyric--in a former hour,
My soul with pleasure yielding to thy power,
Thy shrine I sought, I pray'd--but wanton air,
Before it reach'd thy ears, dispersed my prayer;
E'en at thy altars whilst I took my stand,
The pen of Truth and Honour in my hand,
Fate, meditating wrath 'gainst me and mine,
Chid my fond zeal, and thwarted my design,
Whilst, Hayter brought too quickly to his end,
I lost a subject and mankind a friend.
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Come, Panegyric--bending at thy throne,
Thee and thy power my soul is proud to own
Be thou my kind protector, thou my guide,
And lead me safe through passes yet untried.
Broad is the road, nor difficult to find,
Which to the house of Satire leads mankind;
Narrow and unfrequented are the ways,
Scarce found out in an age, which lead to praise.
What though no theme I choose of vulgar note,
Nor wish to write as brother bards have wrote,
So mild, so meek in praising, that they seem
Afraid to wake their patrons from a dream;
What though a theme I choose, which might demand
The nicest touches of a master's hand;
Yet, if the inward workings of my soul
Deceive me not, I shall attain the goal,
And Envy shall behold, in triumph raised,
The poet praising, and the patron praised.
What patron shall I choose? Shall public voice,
Or private knowledge, influence my choice?
Shall I prefer the grand retreat of Stowe,
Or, seeking patriots, to friend Wildman's go?
'To Wildman's!' cried Discretion, (who had heard,
Close standing at my elbow, every word)
'To Wildman's! Art thou mad? Canst thou be sure
One moment there to have thy head secure?
Are they not all, (let observation tell)
All mark'd in characters as black as Hell,
In Doomsday book, by ministers set down,
Who style their pride the honour of the crown?
Make no reply--let Reason stand aloof-Presumptions here must pass as solemn proof.
That settled faith, that love which ever springs
In the best subjects, for the best of kings,
Must not be measured now by what men think,
Or say, or do;--by what they eat and drink,
Where, and with whom, that question's to be tried,
And statesmen are the judges to decide;
No juries call'd, or, if call'd, kept in awe;
They, facts confess'd, in themselves vest the law.
Each dish at Wildman's of sedition smacks;
Blasphemy may be gospel at Almacks.'
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Peace, good Discretion! peace--thy fears are vain;
Ne'er will I herd with Wildman's factious train;
Never the vengeance of the great incur,
Nor, without might, against the mighty stir.
If, from long proof, my temper you distrust,
Weigh my profession, to my gown be just;
Dost thou one parson know so void of grace
To pay his court to patrons out of place?
If still you doubt (though scarce a doubt remains)
Search through my alter'd heart, and try my reins;
There, searching, find, nor deem me now in sport,
A convert made by Sandwich to the court.
Let madmen follow error to the end,
I, of mistakes convinced, and proud to mend,
Strive to act better, being better taught,
Nor blush to own that change which Reason wrought:
For such a change as this, must Justice speak;
My heart was honest, but my head was weak.
Bigot to no one man, or set of men,
Without one selfish view, I drew my pen;
My country ask'd, or seem'd to ask, my aid,
Obedient to that call, I left off trade;
A side I chose, and on that side was strong,
Till time hath fairly proved me in the wrong:
Convinced, I change, (can any man do more?)
And have not greater patriots changed before?
Changed, I at once, (can any man do less?)
Without a single blush, that change confess;
Confess it with a manly kind of pride,
And quit the losing for the winning side,
Granting, whilst virtuous Sandwich holds the rein,
What Bute for ages might have sought in vain.
Hail, Sandwich!--nor shall Wilkes resentment show,
Hearing the praises of so brave a foe-Hail, Sandwich!--nor, through pride, shalt thou refuse
The grateful tribute of so mean a Muse-Sandwich, all hail!--when Bute with foreign hand,
Grown wanton with ambition, scourged the land;
When Scots, or slaves to Scotsmen, steer'd the helm;
When peace, inglorious peace, disgraced the realm,
Distrust, and general discontent prevail'd;
But when, (he best knows why) his spirits fail'd;
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When, with a sudden panic struck, he fled,
Sneak'd out of power, and hid his recreant head;
When, like a Mars, (Fear order'd to retreat)
We saw thee nimbly vault into his seat,
Into the seat of power, at one bold leap,
A perfect connoisseur in statesmanship;
When, like another Machiavel, we saw
Thy fingers twisting, and untwisting law,
Straining, where godlike Reason bade, and where
She warranted thy mercy, pleased to spare;
Saw thee resolved, and fix'd (come what, come might)
To do thy God, thy king, thy country right;
All things were changed, suspense remain'd no more,
Certainty reign'd where Doubt had reign'd before:
All felt thy virtues, and all knew their use,
What virtues such as thine must needs produce.
Thy foes (for Honour ever meets with foes)
Too mean to praise, too fearful to oppose,
In sullen silence sit; thy friends (some few,
Who, friends to thee, are friends to Honour too)
Plaud thy brave bearing, and the Commonweal
Expects her safety from thy stubborn zeal.
A place amongst the rest the Muses claim,
And bring this freewill-offering to thy fame;
To prove their virtue, make thy virtues known,
And, holding up thy fame, secure their own.
From his youth upwards to the present day,
When vices, more than years, have mark'd him gray;
When riotous Excess, with wasteful hand,
Shakes life's frail glass, and hastes each ebbing sand,
Unmindful from what stock he drew his birth,
Untainted with one deed of real worth,
Lothario, holding honour at no price,
Folly to folly added, vice to vice,
Wrought sin with greediness, and sought for shame
With greater zeal than good men seek for fame.
Where (Reason left without the least defence)
Laughter was mirth, obscenity was sense:
Where Impudence made Decency submit;
Where noise was humour, and where whim was wit;
Where rude, untemper'd license had the merit
Of liberty, and lunacy was spirit;
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Where the best things were ever held the worst,
Lothario was, with justice, always first.
To whip a top, to knuckle down at taw,
To swing upon a gate, to ride a straw,
To play at push-pin with dull brother peers,
To belch out catches in a porter's ears,
To reign the monarch of a midnight cell,
To be the gaping chairman's oracle;
Whilst, in most blessed union, rogue and whore
Clap hands, huzza, and hiccup out, 'Encore;'
Whilst gray Authority, who slumbers there
In robes of watchman's fur, gives up his chair;
With midnight howl to bay the affrighted moon,
To walk with torches through the streets at noon;
To force plain Nature from her usual way,
Each night a vigil, and a blank each day;
To match for speed one feather 'gainst another,
To make one leg run races with his brother;
'Gainst all the rest to take the northern wind,
Bute to ride first, and he to ride behind;
To coin newfangled wagers, and to lay 'em,
Laying to lose, and losing not to pay 'em;
Lothario, on that stock which Nature gives,
Without a rival stands, though March yet lives.
When Folly, (at that name, in duty bound,
Let subject myriads kneel, and kiss the ground,
Whilst they who, in the presence, upright stand,
Are held as rebels through the loyal land)
Queen every where, but most a queen in courts,
Sent forth her heralds, and proclaim'd her sports;
Bade fool with fool on her behalf engage,
And prove her right to reign from age to age,
Lothario, great above the common size,
With all engaged, and won from all the prize;
Her cap he wears, which from his youth he wore,
And every day deserves it more and more.
Nor in such limits rests his soul confined;
Folly may share but can't engross his mind;
Vice, bold substantial Vice, puts in her claim,
And stamps him perfect in the books of Shame.
Observe his follies well, and you would swear
Folly had been his first, his only care;
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Observe his vices, you'll that oath disown,
And swear that he was born for vice alone.
Is the soft nature of some hapless maid,
Fond, easy, full of faith, to be betray'd?
Must she, to virtue lost, be lost to fame,
And he who wrought her guilt declare her shame?
Is some brave friend, who, men but little known,
Deems every heart as honest as his own,
And, free himself, in others fears no guile,
To be ensnared, and ruin'd with a smile?
Is Law to be perverted from her course?
Is abject fraud to league with brutal force?
Is Freedom to be crush'd, and every son
Who dares maintain her cause, to be undone?
Is base Corruption, creeping through the land,
To plan, and work her ruin, underhand,
With regular approaches, sure, though slow?
Or must she perish by a single blow?
Are kings, who trust to servants, and depend
In servants (fond, vain thought!) to find a friend,
To be abused, and made to draw their breath
In darkness thicker than the shades of death?
Is God's most holy name to be profaned,
His word rejected, and his laws arraign'd,
His servants scorn'd, as men who idly dream'd,
His service laugh'd at, and his Son blasphemed?
Are debauchees in morals to preside?
Is Faith to take an Atheist for her guide?
Is Science by a blockhead to be led?
Are States to totter on a drunkard's head?
To answer all these purposes, and more,
More black than ever villain plann'd before,
Search earth, search hell, the Devil cannot find
An agent like Lothario to his mind.
Is this nobility, which, sprung from kings,
Was meant to swell the power from whence it springs;
Is this the glorious produce, this the fruit,
Which Nature hoped for from so rich a root?
Were there but two, (search all the world around)
Were there but two such nobles to be found,
The very name would sink into a term
Of scorn, and man would rather be a worm
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Than be a lord: but Nature, full of grace,
Nor meaning birth and titles to be base,
Made only one, and having made him, swore,
In mercy to mankind, to make no more:
Nor stopp'd she there, but, like a generous friend,
The ills which Error caused, she strove to mend,
And having brought Lothario forth to view,
To save her credit, brought forth Sandwich too.
Gods! with what joy, what honest joy of heart,
Blunt as I am, and void of every art,
Of every art which great ones in the state
Practise on knaves they fear, and fools they hate,
To titles with reluctance taught to bend,
Nor prone to think that virtues can descend,
Do I behold (a sight, alas! more rare
Than Honesty could wish) the noble wear
His father's honours, when his life makes known
They're his by virtue, not by birth alone;
When he recalls his father from the grave,
And pays with interest back that fame he gave:
Cured of her splenetic and sullen fits,
To such a peer my willing soul submits,
And to such virtue is more proud to yield
Than 'gainst ten titled rogues to keep the field.
Such, (for that truth e'en Envy shall allow)
Such Wyndham was, and such is Sandwich now.
O gentle Montague! in blessed hour
Didst thou start up, and climb the stairs of power;
England of all her fears at once was eased,
Nor, 'mongst her many foes, was one displeased:
France heard the news, and told it cousin Spain;
Spain heard, and told it cousin France again;
The Hollander relinquished his design
Of adding spice to spice, and mine to mine;
Of Indian villanies he thought no more,
Content to rob us on our native shore:
Awed by thy fame, (which winds with open mouth
Shall blow from east to west, from north to south)
The western world shall yield us her increase,
And her wild sons be soften'd into peace;
Rich eastern monarchs shall exhaust their stores,
And pour unbounded wealth on Albion's shores;
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Unbounded wealth, which from those golden scenes,
And all acquired by honourable means,
Some honourable chief shall hither steer,
To pay our debts, and set the nation clear.
Nabobs themselves, allured by thy renown,
Shall pay due homage to the English crown;
Shall freely as their king our king receive-Provided the Directors give them leave.
Union at home shall mark each rising year,
Nor taxes be complain'd of, though severe;
Envy her own destroyer shall become,
And Faction with her thousand mouths be dumb:
With the meek man thy meekness shall prevail,
Nor with the spirited thy spirit fail:
Some to thy force of reason shall submit,
And some be converts to thy princely wit:
Reverence for thee shall still a nation's cries,
A grand concurrence crown a grand excise;
And unbelievers of the first degree,
Who have no faith in God, have faith in thee.
When a strange jumble, whimsical and vain,
Possess'd the region of each heated brain;
When some were fools to censure, some to praise,
And all were mad, but mad in different ways;
When commonwealthsmen, starting at the shade
Which in their own wild fancy had been made,
Of tyrants dream'd, who wore a thorny crown,
And with state bloodhounds hunted Freedom down;
When others, struck with fancies not less vain,
Saw mighty kings by their own subjects slain,
And, in each friend of Liberty and Law,
With horror big, a future Cromwell saw,
Thy manly zeal stept forth, bade discord cease,
And sung each jarring atom into peace;
Liberty, cheer'd by thy all-cheering eye,
Shall, waking from her trance, live and not die;
And, patronised by thee, Prerogative
Shall, striding forth at large, not die, but live;
Whilst Privilege, hung betwixt earth and sky,
Shall not well know whether to live or die.
When on a rock which overhung the flood,
And seem'd to totter, Commerce shivering stood;
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When Credit, building on a sandy shore,
Saw the sea swell, and heard the tempest roar,
Heard death in every blast, and in each wave
Or saw, or fancied that she saw her grave;
When Property, transferr'd from hand to band,
Weaken'd by change, crawl'd sickly through the land;
When mutual confidence was at an end,
And man no longer could on man depend;
Oppress'd with debts of more than common weight,
When all men fear'd a bankruptcy of state;
When, certain death to honour, and to trade,
A sponge was talk'd of as our only aid;
That to be saved we must be more undone,
And pay off all our debts, by paying none;
Like England's better genius, born to bless,
And snatch his sinking country from distress,
Didst thou step forth, and, without sail or oar,
Pilot the shatter'd vessel safe to shore:
Nor shalt thou quit, till, anchor'd firm and fast,
She rides secure, and mocks the threatening blast!
Born in thy house, and in thy service bred,
Nursed in thy arms, and at thy table fed,
By thy sage counsels to reflection brought,
Yet more by pattern than by precept taught,
Economy her needful aid shall join
To forward and complete thy grand design,
And, warm to save, but yet with spirit warm,
Shall her own conduct from thy conduct form.
Let friends of prodigals say what they will,
Spendthrifts at home, abroad are spendthrifts still.
In vain have sly and subtle sophists tried
Private from public justice to divide;
For credit on each other they rely,
They live together, and together die,
'Gainst all experience 'tis a rank offence,
High treason in the eye of Common-sense,
To think a statesman ever can be known
To pay our debts, who will not pay his own:
But now, though late, now may we hope to see
Our debts discharged, our credit fair and free,
Since rigid Honesty (fair fall that hour!)
Sits at the helm, and Sandwich is in power.
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With what delight I view thee, wondrous man,
With what delight survey thy sterling plan,
That plan which all with wonder must behold,
And stamp thy age the only age of Gold.
Nor rest thy triumphs here--that Discord fled,
And sought with grief the hell where she was bred;
That Faction, 'gainst her nature forced to yield,
Saw her rude rabble scatter'd o'er the field,
Saw her best friends a standing jest become,
Her fools turn'd speakers, and her wits struck dumb;
That our most bitter foes (so much depends
On men of name) are turn'd to cordial friends;
That our offended friends (such terror flows
From men of name) dare not appear our foes;
That Credit, gasping in the jaws of Death,
And ready to expire with every breath,
Grows stronger from disease; that thou hast saved
Thy drooping country; that thy name, engraved
On plates of brass, defies the rage of Time;
Than plates of brass more firm, that sacred rhyme
Embalms thy memory, bids thy glories live,
And gives thee what the Muse alone can give:-These heights of Virtue, these rewards of Fame,
With thee in common other patriots claim.
But, that poor sickly Science, who had laid
And droop'd for years beneath Neglect's cold shade,
By those who knew her purposely forgot,
And made the jest of those who knew her not:
Whilst Ignorance in power, and pamper'd pride,
'Clad like a priest, pass'd by on t'other side,'
Recover'd from her wretched state, at length
Puts on new health, and clothes herself with strength,
To thee we owe, and to thy friendly hand
Which raised, and gave her to possess the land:
This praise, though in a court, and near a throne,
This praise is thine, and thine, alas! alone.
With what fond rapture did the goddess smile,
What blessings did she promise to this isle,
What honour to herself, and length of reign,
Soon as she heard that thou didst not disdain
To be her steward; but what grief, what shame,
What rage, what disappointment, shook her frame,
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When her proud children dared her will dispute,
When Youth was insolent, and Age was mute!
That young men should be fools, and some wild few,
To Wisdom deaf, be deaf to Interest too,
Moved not her wonder; but that men, grown gray
In search of wisdom; men who own'd the sway
Of Reason; men who stubbornly kept down
Each rising passion; men who wore the gown;
That they should cross her will, that they should dare
Against the cause of Interest to declare;
That they should be so abject and unwise,
Having no fear of loss before their eyes,
Nor hopes of gain; scorning the ready means
Of being vicars, rectors, canons, deans,
With all those honours which on mitres wait,
And mark the virtuous favourites of state;
That they should dare a Hardwicke to support,
And talk, within the hearing of a court,
Of that vile beggar, Conscience, who, undone,
And starved herself, starves every wretched son;
This turn'd her blood to gall, this made her swear
No more to throw away her time and care
On wayward sons who scorn'd her love, no more
To hold her courts on Cam's ungrateful shore.
Rather than bear such insults, which disgrace
Her royalty of nature, birth, and place,
Though Dulness there unrivall'd state doth keep,
Would she at Winchester with Burton sleep;
Or, to exchange the mortifying scene
For something still more dull, and still more mean,
Rather than bear such insults, she would fly
Far, far beyond the search of English eye,
And reign amongst the Scots: to be a queen
Is worth ambition, though in Aberdeen.
Oh, stay thy flight, fair Science! what though some,
Some base-born children, rebels are become?
All are not rebels; some are duteous still,
Attend thy precepts, and obey thy will;
Thy interest is opposed by those alone
Who either know not, or oppose their own.
Of stubborn virtue, marching to thy aid,
Behold in black, the livery of their trade,
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Marshall'd by Form, and by Discretion led,
A grave, grave troop, and Smith is at their head,
Black Smith of Trinity; on Christian ground
For faith in mysteries none more renown'd.
Next, (for the best of causes now and then
Must beg assistance from the worst of men)
Next (if old story lies not) sprung from Greece,
Comes Pandarus, but comes without his niece:
Her, wretched maid! committed to his trust,
To a rank letcher's coarse and bloated lust
The arch, old, hoary hypocrite had sold,
And thought himself and her well damn'd for gold.
But (to wipe off such traces from the mind,
And make us in good humour with mankind)
Leading on men, who, in a college bred,
No woman knew, but those which made their bed;
Who, planted virgins on Cam's virtuous shore,
Continued still male virgins at threescore,
Comes Sumner, wise, and chaste as chaste can be,
With Long, as wise, and not less chaste than he.
Are there not friends, too, enter'd in thy cause
Who, for thy sake, defying penal laws,
Were, to support thy honourable plan,
Smuggled from Jersey, and the Isle of Man?
Are there not Philomaths of high degree
Who, always dumb before, shall speak for thee?
Are there not Proctors, faithful to thy will,
One of full growth, others in embryo still,
Who may, perhaps, in some ten years, or more,
Be ascertain'd that two and two make four,
Or may a still more happy method find,
And, taking one from two, leave none behind?
With such a mighty power on foot, to yield
Were death to manhood; better in the field
To leave our carcases, and die with fame,
Than fly, and purchase life on terms of shame.
Sackvilles alone anticipate defeat,
And ere they dare the battle, sound retreat.
But if persuasions ineffectual prove,
If arguments are vain, nor prayers can move,
Yet in thy bitterness of frantic woe
Why talk of Burton? why to Scotland go?
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Is there not Oxford? she, with open arms,
Shall meet thy wish, and yield up all her charms:
Shall for thy love her former loves resign,
And jilt the banish'd Stuarts to be thine.
Bow'd to the yoke, and, soon as she could read,
Tutor'd to get by heart the despot's creed,
She, of subjection proud, shall knee thy throne,
And have no principles but thine alone;
She shall thy will implicitly receive,
Nor act, nor speak, nor think, without thy leave.
Where is the glory of imperial sway
If subjects none but just commands obey?
Then, and then only, is obedience seen,
When by command they dare do all that's mean:
Hither, then, wing thy flight, here fix thy stand,
Nor fail to bring thy Sandwich in thy hand.
Gods! with what joy, (for Fancy now supplies,
And lays the future open to my eyes)
Gods! with what joy I see the worthies meet,
And Brother Litchfield Brother Sandwich greet!
Blest be your greetings, blest each dear embrace;
Blest to yourselves, and to the human race.
Sickening at virtues, which she cannot reach,
Which seem her baser nature to impeach,
Let Envy, in a whirlwind's bosom hurl'd,
Outrageous, search the corners of the world,
Ransack the present times, look back to past,
Rip up the future, and confess at last,
No times, past, present, or to come, could e'er
Produce, and bless the world with such a pair.
Phillips, the good old Phillips, out of breath,
Escaped from Monmouth, and escaped from death,
Shall hail his Sandwich with that virtuous zeal,
That glorious ardour for the commonweal,
Which warm'd his loyal heart and bless'd his tongue,
When on his lips the cause of rebels hung;
Whilst Womanhood, in habit of a nun,
At Medenham lies, by backward monks undone;
A nation's reckoning, like an alehouse score,
Whilst Paul, the aged, chalks behind a door,
Compell'd to hire a foe to cast it up,
Dashwood shall pour, from a communion cup,
124
Libations to the goddess without eyes,
And hob or nob in cider and excise.
From those deep shades, where Vanity, unknown,
Doth penance for her pride, and pines alone,
Cursed in herself, by her own thoughts undone,
Where she sees all, but can be seen by none;
Where she, no longer mistress of the schools,
Hears praise loud pealing from the mouths of fools,
Or hears it at a distance, in despair
To join the crowd, and put in for a share,
Twisting each thought a thousand different ways,
For his new friends new-modelling old praise;
Where frugal sense so very fine is spun,
It serves twelve hours, though not enough for one,
King shall arise, and, bursting from the dead,
Shall hurl his piebald Latin at thy head.
Burton (whilst awkward affectation hung
In quaint and labour'd accents on his tongue,
Who 'gainst their will makes junior blockheads speak,
Ignorant of both, new Latin and new Greek,
Not such as was in Greece and Latium known,
But of a modern cut, and all his own;
Who threads, like beads, loose thoughts on such a string,
They're praise and censure; nothing, every thing;
Pantomime thoughts, and style so full of trick,
They even make a Merry Andrew sick;
Thoughts all so dull, so pliant in their growth,
They're verse, they're prose, they're neither, and they're both)
Shall (though by nature ever both to praise)
Thy curious worth set forth in curious phrase;
Obscurely stiff, shall press poor Sense to death,
Or in long periods run her out of breath;
Shall make a babe, for which, with all his fame,
Adam could not have found a proper name,
Whilst, beating out his features to a smile,
He hugs the bastard brat, and calls it Style.
Hush'd be all Nature as the land of Death;
Let each stream sleep, and each wind hold his breath;
Be the bells muffled, nor one sound of Care,
Pressing for audience, wake the slumbering air;
Browne comes--behold how cautiously he creeps-How slow he walks, and yet how fast he sleeps--
125
But to thy praise in sleep he shall agree;
He cannot wake, but he shall dream of thee.
Physic, her head with opiate poppies crown'd,
Her loins by the chaste matron Camphire bound;
Physic, obtaining succour from the pen
Of her soft son, her gentle Heberden,
If there are men who can thy virtue know,
Yet spite of virtue treat thee as a foe,
Shall, like a scholar, stop their rebel breath,
And in each recipe send classic death.
So deep in knowledge, that few lines can sound
And plumb the bottom of that vast profound,
Few grave ones with such gravity can think,
Or follow half so fast as he can sink;
With nice distinctions glossing o'er the text,
Obscure with meaning, and in words perplex'd,
With subtleties on subtleties refined,
Meant to divide and subdivide the mind,
Keeping the forwardness of youth in awe,
The scowling Blackstone bears the train of law.
Divinity, enrobed in college fur,
In her right hand a new Court Calendar,
Bound like a book of prayer, thy coming waits
With all her pack, to hymn thee in the gates.
Loyalty, fix'd on Isis' alter'd shore,
A stranger long, but stranger now no more,
Shall pitch her tabernacle, and, with eyes
Brimful of rapture, view her new allies;
Shall, with much pleasure and more wonder, view
Men great at court, and great at Oxford too.
O sacred Loyalty! accursed be those
Who, seeming friends, turn out thy deadliest foes,
Who prostitute to kings thy honour'd name,
And soothe their passions to betray their fame;
Nor praised be those, to whose proud nature clings
Contempt of government, and hate of kings,
Who, willing to be free, not knowing how,
A strange intemperance of zeal avow,
And start at Loyalty, as at a word
Which without danger Freedom never heard.
Vain errors of vain men--wild both extremes,
And to the state not wholesome, like the dreams,
126
Children of night, of Indigestion bred,
Which, Reason clouded, seize and turn the head;
Loyalty without Freedom is a chain
Which men of liberal notice can't sustain;
And Freedom without Loyalty, a name
Which nothing means, or means licentious shame.
Thine be the art, my Sandwich, thine the toil,
In Oxford's stubborn and untoward soil
To rear this plant of union, till at length,
Rooted by time, and foster'd into strength,
Shooting aloft, all danger it defies,
And proudly lifts its branches to the skies;
Whilst, Wisdom's happy son but not her slave,
Gay with the gay, and with the grave ones grave,
Free from the dull impertinence of thought,
Beneath that shade, which thy own labours wrought
And fashion'd into strength, shalt thou repose,
Secure of liberal praise, since Isis flows,
True to her Tame, as duty hath decreed,
Nor longer, like a harlot, lust for Tweed,
And those old wreaths, which Oxford once dared twine
To grace a Stuart brow, she plants on thine.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
689:I.
You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!
II.
Ours is a great wild country:
If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open-chase,
And open-chase to the very base
Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the pine-trees go,
So, like black priests up, and so
Down the other side again
To another greater, wilder country,
That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain,
Branched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt;
Look right, look left, look straight before,-
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,
Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
-And the whole is our Duke's country.
III.
I was born the day this present Duke was-
(And O, says the song, ere I was old!)
In the castle where the other Duke was-
(When I was happy and young, not old!)
I in the kennel, he in the bower:
We are of like age to an hour.
My father was huntsman in that day;
Who has not heard my father say
That, when a boar was brought to bay,
Three times, four times out of five,
With his huntspear he'd contrive
To get the killing-place transfixed,
And pin him true, both eyes betwixt?
And that's why the old Duke would rather
He lost a salt-pit than my father,
And loved to have him ever in call;
That's why my father stood in the hall
When the old Duke brought his infant out
To show the people, and while they passed
The wondrous bantling round about,
Was first to start at the outside blast
As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn
Just a month after the babe was born.
``And,'' quoth the Kaiser's courier, ``since
``The Duke has got an heir, our Prince
``Needs the Duke's self at his side: ''
The Duke looked down and seemed to wince,
But he thought of wars o'er the world wide,
Castles a-fire, men on their march,
The toppling tower, the crashing arch;
And up he looked, and awhile he eyed
The row of crests and shields and banners
Of all achievements after all manners,
And ``ay,'' said the Duke with a surly pride.
The more was his comfort when he died
At next year's end, in a velvet suit,
With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot
In a silken shoe for a leather boot,
Petticoated like a herald,
In a chamher next to an ante-room,
Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
What he called stink, and they, perfume:
-They should have set him on red Berold
Mad with pride, like fire to manage!
They should have got his cheek fresh tannage
Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!
Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!
(Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game!
Oh for a noble falcon-lanner
To flap each broad wing like a banner,
And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!)
Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin
-Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine
Put to his lips, when they saw him pine,
A cup of our own Moldavia fine,
Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel
And ropy with sweet,-we shall not quarrel.
IV.
So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess
Was left with the infant in her clutches,
She being the daughter of God knows who:
And now was the time to revisit her tribe.
Abroad and afar they went, the two,
And let our people rail and gibe
At the empty hall and extinguished fire,
As loud as we liked, but ever in vain,
Till after long years we had our desire,
And back came the Duke and his mother again.
V.
And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
-Not he! For in Paris they told the elf
Our rough North land was the Land of Lays,
The one good thing left in evil days;
Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time,
And only in wild nooks like ours
Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
And see true castles, with proper towers,
Young-hearted women, old-minded men,
And manners now as manners were then.
So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it;
'Twas not for the joy's self, but the joy of his showing it,
Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out,
The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out:
And chief in the chase his neck he perilled
On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
With blood for bone, all speed, no strength;
-They should have set him on red Berold
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey-spire!
VI.
Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady, in time of spring.
-Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling!
That day, I know, with a dozen oaths
I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes
Fit for the chase of urochs or buffle
In winter-time when you need to muffle.
But the Duke had a mind we should cut a figure,
And so we saw the lady arrive:
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her, as some hive
Out of the bears' reach on the high trees
Is crowded with its safe merry bees:
In truth, she was not hard to please!
Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls:
As for us, styled the ``serfs and thralls,''
She as much thanked me as if she had said it,
(With her eyes, do you understand?)
Because I patted her horse while I led it;
And Max, who rode on her other hand,
Said, no bird flew past but she inquired
What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired-
If that was an eagle she saw hover,
And the green and grey bird on the field was the plover.
When suddenly appeared the Duke:
And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed
On to my hand,-as with a rebuke,
And as if his backbone were not jointed,
The Duke stepped rather aside than forward,
And welcomed her with his grandest smile;
And, mind you, his mother all the while
Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward;
And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies
Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;
And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies,
The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey;
For such things must begin some one day.
VII.
In a day or two she was well again;
As who should say, ``You labour in vain!
``This is all a jest against God, who meant
``I should ever be, as I am, content
`` And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be.''
So, smiling as at first went she.
VIII.
She was active, stirring, all fire-
Could not rest, could not tire-
To a stone she might have given life!
(I myself loved once, in my day)
-For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife,
(I had a wife, I know what I say)
Never in all the world such an one!
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all.
There was already this man in his post,
This in his station, and that in his office,
And the Duke's plan admitted a wife, at most,
To meet his eye, with the other trophies,
Now outside the hall, now in it,
To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen,
At the proper place in the proper minute,
And die away the life between.
And it was amusing enough, each infraction
Of rule-(but for after-sadness that came)
To hear the consummate self-satisfaction
With which the young Duke and the old dame
Would let her advise, and criticise,
And, being a fool, instruct the wise,
And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame:
They bore it all in complacent guise,
As though an artificer, after contriving
A wheel-work image as if it were living,
Should find with delight it could motion to strike him!
So found the Duke, and his mother like him:
The lady hardly got a rebuff-
That had not been contemptuous enough,
With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause,
And kept off the old mother-cat's claws.
IX.
So, the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling and ever paling,
As the way is with a hid chagrin;
And the Duke perceived that she was ailing,
And said in his heart, ``'Tis done to spite me,
``But I shall find in my power to right me!''
Don't swear, friend! The old one, many a year,
Is in hell, and the Duke's self . . . you shall hear.
X.
Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice,
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold,
And another and another, and faster and faster,
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled:
Then it so chanced that the Duke our master
Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the Middle Age no treason
In resolving on a hunting-party.
Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions:
Here was food for our various ambitions,
As on each case, exactly stated-
To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup,
Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup-
We of the house hold took thought and debated.
Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin
His sire was wont to do forest-work in;
Blesseder he who nobly sunk ``ohs''
And ``ahs'' while he tugged on his grand-sire's trunk-hose;
What signified hats if they had no rims on,
Each slouching before and behind like the scallop,
And able to serve at sea for a shallop,
Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson?
So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't,
What with our Venerers, Prickers and Yerderers,
Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers,
And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!
XI.
Now you must know that when the first dizziness
Of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots subsided,
The Duke put this question, ``The Duke's part provided,
``Had not the Duchess some share in the business?''
For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses
Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses:
And, after much laying of heads together,
Somebody's cap got a notable feather
By the announcement with proper unction
That he had discovered the lady's function;
Since ancient authors gave this tenet,
``When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
``Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
``And, with water to wash the hands of her liege
``In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
`` Let her preside at the disemboweling.''
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
And if day by day and week by week
You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,
And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If, when you decided to give her an airing,
You found she needed a little preparing?
-I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,
Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate,-
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,
As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate,
And duly acknowledged the Duke's forethought,
But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
And much wrong now that used to be right,
So, thanking him, declined the hunting,-
Was conduct ever more affronting?
With all the ceremony settled-
With the towel ready, and the sewer
Polishing up his oldest ewer,
And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,
Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled,-
No wonder if the Duke was nettled
And when she persisted nevertheless,-
Well, I suppose here's the time to confess
That there ran half round our lady's chamber
A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,
Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?
And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;
And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,
How could I keep at any vast distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct.
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What meant she?Who was she?-Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
Its decent regard and its fitting relation-
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her,-making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase-oh such a solemn
Unbending of the vertebral column!
XII.
However, at sunrise our company mustered;
And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
You might have cut as an axe chops a log-
Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;
And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,
And a sinking at the lower abdomen
Begins the day with indifferent omen.
And lo, as he looked around uneasily,
The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
This way and that from the valley under;
And, looking through the court-yard arch,
Down in the valley, what should meet him
But a troop of Gipsies on their march?
No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.
XIII.
Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only
After reaching all lands beside;
North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely,
And still, as they travel far and wide,
Catch they and keep now a trace here, trace there,
That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.
But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,
And nowhere else, I take it, are found
With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:
Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on
The very fruit they are meant to feed on.
For the earth-not a use to which they don't turn it,
The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,
They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it-
Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle
With side-bars never a brute can baffle;
Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards;
Or, if your colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,
Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel
And won't allow the hoof to shrivel.
Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
But the sand-they pinch and pound it like otters;
Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry;
And that other sort, their crowning pride,
With long white threads distinct inside,
Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle
Loose such a length and never tangle,
Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,
And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters:
Such are the works they put their hand to,
The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.
And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally
Toward his castle from out of the valley,
Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,
Come out with the morning to greet our riders.
And up they wound till they reached the ditch,
Whereat all stopped save one, a witch
That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,
By her gait directly and her stoop,
I, whom Jacynth was used to importune
To let that same witch tell us our fortune.
The oldest Gipsy then above ground;
And, sure as the autumn season came round,
She paid us a visit for profit or pastime,
And every time, as she swore, for the last time.
And presently she was seen to sidle
Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle,
So that the horse of a sudden reared up
As under its nose the old witch peered up
With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes
Of no use now but to gather brine,
And began a kind of level whine
Such as they used to sing to their viols
When their ditties they go grinding
Up and down with nobody minding:
And then, as of old, at the end of the humming
Her usual presents were forthcoming
-A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,
(Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,)
Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe-end,-
And so she awaited her annual stipend.
But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe
A word in reply; and in vain she felt
With twitching fingers at her belt
For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,
Ready to ptlt what he gave in her pouch safe,-
Till, either to quicken his apprehension,
Or possibly with an after-intention,
She was come, she said, to pay her duty
To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.
No sooner had she named his lady,
Than a shine lit up the face so shady,
And its smirk returned with a novel meaning-
For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;
If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,
She, foolish to-day, would be wiser tomorrow;
And who so fit a teacher of trouble
As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double?
So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture,
(If such it was, for they grow so hirsute
That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit)
He was contrasting, 'twas plain from his gesture,
The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate
With the loathsome squalor of this helicat.
I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned
From out of the throng, and while I drew near
He told the crone-as I since have reckoned
By the way he bent and spoke into her ear
With circumspection and mystery-
The main of the lady's history,
Her frowardness and ingratitude:
And for all the crone's submissive attitude
I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,
And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening,
As though she engaged with hearty good-will
Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,
And promised the lady a thorough frightening.
And so, just giving her a glimpse
Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps
The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,
He bade me take the Gipsy mother
And set her telling some story or other
Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fernshaw,
To wile away a weary hour
For the lady left alone in her bower,
Whose mind and body craved exertion
And yet shrank from all better diversion.
XIV.
Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curveter,
Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo
Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor,
And back I turned and bade the crone follow.
And what makes me confident what's to be told you
Had all along been of this crone's devising,
Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,
There was a novelty quick as surprising:
For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,
And her step kept pace with mine nor faltered,
As if age had foregone its usurpature,
And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,
And the face looked quite of another nature,
And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,
Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak's arrangement:
For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,
Gold coins were glittering on the edges,
Like the band-roll strung with tomans
Which proves the veil a Persian woman's.
And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly
Come out as after the rain he paces,
Two unmistakeable eye-points duly
Live and aware looked out of their places.
So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry
Of the lady's chamber standing sentry;
I told the command and produced my companion,
And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,
For since last night, by the same token,
Not a single word had the lady spoken:
They went in both to the presence together,
While I in the balcony watched the weather.
XV.
And now, what took place at the very first of all,
I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:
Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall
On that little head of hers and burn it
If she knew how she came to drop so soundly
Asleep of a sudden and there continue
The whole time sleeping as profoundly
As one of the boars my father would pin you
'Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,
-Jacynth forgive me the comparison!
But where I begin asy own narration
Is a little after I took my station
To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,
And, having in those days a falcon eye,
To follow the hunt thro' the open country,
From where the bushes thinlier crested
The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree.
When, in a moment, my ear was arrested
By-was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing
In the chamber?-and to be certain
I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,
And there lay Jacynth asleep,
Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,
In a rosy sleep along the floor
With her head against the door;
While in the midst, on the seat of state,
Was a queen-the Gipsy woman late,
With head and face downbent
On the lady's head and face intent:
For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,
The lady sat between her knees
And o'er them the lady's clasped hands met,
And on those hands her chin was set,
And her upturned face met the face of the crone
Wherein the eyes had grown and grown
As if she could double and quadruple
At pleasure the play of either pupil
-Very like, by her hands' slow fanning,
As up and down like a gor-crow's flappers
They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.
I said ``Is it blessing, is it banning,
``Do they applaud you or burlesque you-
``Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?''
But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,
At once I was stopped by the lady's expression:
For it was life her eyes were drinking
From the crone's wide pair above unwinking,
-Life's pure fire received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving,
-Life, that filling her, passed redundant
Into her very hair, back swerving
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded.
I stopped short, more and more confounded,
As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
As she listened and she listened:
When all at once a hand detained me,
The selfsame contagion gained me,
And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped,
And left them midway in the world:
Word took word as hand takes hand,
I could hear at last, and understand,
And when I held the unbroken thread,
The Gipsy said:-
``And so at last we find my tribe.
``And so I set thee in the midst,
``And to one and all of them describe
``What thou saidst and what thou didst,
``Our long and terrible journey through,
``And all thou art ready to say and do
``In the trials that remain:
``I trace them the vein and the other vein
``That meet on thy brow and part again,
``Making our rapid mystic mark;
``And I bid my people prove and probe
``Each eye's profound and glorious globe
``Till they detect the kindred spark
``In those depths so dear and dark,
``Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,
``Circling over the midnight sea.
``And on that round young cheek of thine
``I make them recognize the tinge,
``As when of the costly scarlet wine
``They drip so much as will impinge
``And spread in a thinnest scale afloat
``One thick gold drop from the olive's coat
``Over a silver plate whose sheen
``Still thro' the mixture shall be seen.
``For so I prove thee, to one and all,
``Fit, when my people ope their breast,
``To see the sign, and hear the call,
``And take the vow, and stand the test
``Which adds one more child to the rest-
``When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
``And the world is left outside.
``For there is probation to decree,
``And many and long must the trials be
``Thou shalt victoriously endure,
``If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;
``Like a jewel-finder's fierce assay
``Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb-
``Let once the vindicating ray
``Leap out amid the anxious gloom,
``And steel and fire have done their part
``And the prize falls on its finder's heart;
`'So, trial after trial past,
``Wilt thou fall at the very last
``Breathless, half in trance
``With the thrill of the great deliverance,
``Into our arms for evermore;
``And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
``About thee, what we knew before,
``How love is the only good in the world.
``Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
``Or brain devise, or hand approve!
``Stand up, look below,
``It is our life at thy feet we throw
``To step with into light and joy;
``Not a power of life but we employ
``To satisfy thy nature's want;
``Art thou the tree that props the plant,
``Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree-
``Canst thou help us, must we help thee?
``If any two creatures grew into one,
``They would do more than the world has done.
``Though each apart were never so weak,
``Ye vainly through the world should seek
``For the knowledge and the might
``Which in such union grew their right:
``So, to approach at least that end,
``And blend,-as much as may be, blend
``Thee with us or us with thee,-
``As climbing plant or propping tree,
``Shall some one deck thee, over and down,
``Up and about, with blossoms and leaves?
``Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland crown,
``Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves,
``Die on thy boughs and disappear
``While not a leaf of thine is sere?
``Or is the other fate in store,
``And art thou fitted to adore,
``To give thy wondrous self away,
``And take a stronger nature's sway?
``I foresee and could foretell
``Thy future portion, sure and well:
``But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
``Let them say what thou shalt do!
``Only be sure thy daily life,
``In its peace or in its strife,
``Never shall be unobserved:
``We pursue thy whole career,
``And hope for it, or doubt, or fear,-
``Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved,
``We are beside thee in all thy ways,
``With our blame, with our praise,
``Our shame to feel, our pride to show,
``Glad, angry-but indifferent, no!
``Whether it be thy lot to go,
``For the good of us all, where the haters meet
``In the crowded city's horrible street;
``Or thou step alone through the morass
``Where never sound yet was
``Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill,
``For the air is still, and the water still,
``When the blue breast of the dipping coot
``Dives under, and all is mute.
``So, at the last shall come old age,
``Decrepit as befits that stage;
``How else wouldst thou retire apart
``With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
``And gather all to the very least
``Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
``Let fall through eagerness to find
``The crowning dainties yet behind?
``Ponder on the entire past
``Laid together thus at last,
``When the twilight helps to fuse
``The first fresh with the faded hues,
``And the outline of the whole,
``As round eve's shades their framework roll,
``Grandly fronts for once thy soul.
``And then as, 'mid the dark, a glean
``Of yet another morning breaks,
``And like the hand which ends a dream,
``Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
``Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,
``Then''
Ay, then indeed something would happen!
But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's;
There grew more of the music and less of the words;
Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen
To paper and put you down every syllable
With those clever clerkly fingers,
All I've forgotten as well as what lingers
In this old brain of mine that's but ill able
To give you even this poor version
Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering
-More fault of those who had the hammering
Of prosody into me and syntax,
And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!
But to return from this excursion,-
Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,
The peace most deep and the charm completest,
There came, shall I say, a snap-
And the charm vanished!
And my sense returned, so strangely banished,
And, starting as from a nap,
I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,
With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I
Down from the casement, round to the portal,
Another minute and I had entered,-
When the door opened, and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.
She was so different, happy and beautiful,
I felt at once that all was best,
And that I had nothing to do, for the rest,
But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.
Not that, in fact, there was any commanding;
I saw the glory of her eye,
And the brow's height and the breast's expanding,
And I was hers to live or to die.
As for finding what she wanted,
You know God Almighty granted
Such little signs should serve wild creatures
To tell one another all their desires,
So that each knows what his friend requires,
And does its bidding without teachers.
I preceded her; the crone
Followed silent and alone;
I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered
In the old style; both her eyes had slunk
Back to their pits; her stature shrunk;
In short, the soul in its body sunk
Like a blade sent home to its scabbard.
We descended, I preceding;
Crossed the court with nobody heeding,
All the world was at the chase,
The courtyard like a desert-place,
The stable emptied of its small fry;
I saddled myself the very palfrey
I remember patting while it carried her,
The day she arrived and the Duke married her.
And, do you know, though it's easy deceiving
Oneself in such matters, I can't help believing
The lady had not forgotten it either,
And knew the poor devil so much beneath her
Would have been only too glad for her service
To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise,
But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it,
Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it:
For though the moment I began setting
His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting,
(Not that I meant to be obtrusive)
She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,
By a single rapid finger's lifting,
And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,
And a little shake of the head, refused me,-
I say, although she never used me,
Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her,
And I ventured to remind her,
I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
-Something to the effect that I was in readiness
Whenever God should please she needed me,-
Then, do you know, her face looked down on me
With a look that placed a crown on me,
And she felt in her bosom,-mark, her bosom-
And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,
Dropped me . . . ah, had it been a purse
Of silver, my friend, or gold that's worse,
Why, you see, as soon as I found myself
So understood,-that a true heart so may gain
Such a reward,-I should have gone home again,
Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!
It was a little plait of hair
Such as friends in a convent make
To wear, each for the other's sake,-
This, see, which at my breast I wear,
Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment),
And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
And then,-and then,-to cut short,-this is idle,
These are feelings it is not good to foster,-
I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
And the palfrey bounded,-and so we lost her.
XVI.
When the liquor's out why clink the cannikin?
I did think to describe you the panic in
The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin,
And what was the pitch of his mother's yellowness,
How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib
Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,
When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness
-But it seems such child's play,
What they said and did with the lady away!
And to dance on, when we've lost the music,
Always made me-and no doubt makes you-sick.
Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so stern
As that sweet form disappeared through the postern,
She that kept it in constant good humour,
It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more.
But the world thought otherwise and went on,
And my head's one that its spite was spent on:
Thirty years are fled since that morning,
And with them all my head's adorning.
Nor did the old Duchess die outright,
As you expect, of suppressed spite,
The natural end of every adder
Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder:
But she and her son agreed, I take it,
That no one should touch on the story to wake it,
For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery,
So, they made no search and small inquiry-
And when fresh Gipsies have paid us a visit, I've
Noticed the couple were never inquisitive,
But told them they're folks the Duke don't want here,
And bade them make haste and cross the frontier.
Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,
And the old one was in the young one's stead,
And took, in her place, the household's head,
And a blessed time the household had of it!
And were I not, as a man may say, cautious
How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,
I could favour you with sundry touches
Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess
Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yellowness
(To get on faster) until at last her
Cheek grew to be one master-plaster
Of mucus and focus from mere use of ceruse:
In short, she grew from scalp to udder
Just the object to make you shudder.
XVII.
You're my friend-
What a thing friendship is, world without end!
How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up
As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,
And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,
Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,
Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids-
Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids;
Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs,
Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts
Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees
Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease.
I have seen my little lady once more,
Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it,
For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;
I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:
And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,
Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,
Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,
And genially floats me about the giblets.
I'll tell you what I intend to do:
I must see this fellow his sad life through-
He is our Duke, after all,
And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.
My father was born here, and I inherit
His fame, a chain he bound his son with;
Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,
But there's no mine to blow up and get done with:
So, I must stay till the end of the chapter.
For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,
Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,
Some day or other, his head in a morion
And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up,
Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.
And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,
And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust,
Then I shall scrape together my earnings;
For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes,
And our children all went the way of the roses:
It's a long lane that knows no turnings.
One needs but little tackle to travel in;
So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:
And for a stall, what beats the javelin
With which his boars my father pinned you?
And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,
I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.
What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
When we mind labour, then only, we're too old-
What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,
(Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil)
I hope to get safely out of the turmoil
And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies,
And find my lady, or hear the last news of her
From some old thief and son of Lucifer,
His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
Sunburned all over like an thiop.
And when my Cotnar begins to operate
And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,
And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,
I shall drop in with-as if by accident-
``You never knew, then, how it all ended,
``What fortune good or bad attended
``The little lady your Queen befriended?''
-And when that's told me, what's remaining?
This world's too hard for my explaining.
The same wise judge of matters equine
Who still preferred some slim four-year-old
To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold,
And, fur strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine,
He also umst be such a lady's scorner!
Smooth Jacob still rubs homely Esau:
Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw.
-So, I shall find out some snug corner
Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight,
Turn myself round and bid the world good night;
And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet's blowing
Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)
To a world where will be no furtiner throwing
Pearls befare swine that Can't value them. Amen!
~ Robert Browning, The Flight Of The Duchess
,#NFDB
16 Integral Yoga
11 Poetry
10 Fiction
8 Occultism
3 Philsophy
3 Mysticism
2 Yoga
2 Christianity
1 Sufism
1 Psychology
1 Philosophy
9 The Mother
9 H P Lovecraft
8 James George Frazer
7 Satprem
5 Sri Aurobindo
3 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 William Wordsworth
2 Kabir
9 Lovecraft - Poems
8 The Golden Bough
5 The Secret Doctrine
3 Emerson - Poems
3 Agenda Vol 05
2 Wordsworth - Poems
2 The Bible
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
From 1922 to 1926, No. 9, Rue de la Marine, where he and the Mother had shifted, was the place where the sittings were held. There, also upstairs, was a less broad verandah than at the Guest House, a little bigger table in front of the central door out of three, and a broad Japanese chair, the table covered with a better cloth than the one in the Guest House, a small flower vase, an ash-tray, a block Calendar indicating the date and an ordinary time-piece, and a number of chairs in front in a line. The evening sittings used to be after meditation at 4 or 4.30 p.m. After 24 November 1926, the sittings began to get later and later, till the limit of 1 o'clock at night was reached. Then the curtain fell. Sri Aurobindo retired completely after December 1926, and the evening sittings came to a close.
On 8 February 1927, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 28, Rue Franois Martin, a house on the north-east of the same block as No. 9, Rue de la Marine.
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
away. The old Calendars, for example; we have a thick
pile of them.
--
If you are speaking of Calendars with photographs, it is preferable to cut out the photos, and if you do not want to keep them,
give them to X who makes good use of them.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A date is fixed in the Calendar of the Unknown,
An anniversary of the Birth sublime:
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
On the 6th, everyone will finally be gone. But tomorrow is going to be dreadful; I have to sit there for at least two hours distributing Calendars. And on top of that, there are all these controversies over the music they play at the library each week. Some say that its very good, others that its very bad (the usual things). And each party has pleaded his case. They told me that theyll give me a concert at Prosperity4 so that I may judge for myself. Its all recorded. Im afraid it will be rather noisy For myself, I know quite well how to get out of it I think of something else! But its going to I can see it already. Didnt I tell you were in a chaos? Well, I have the feeling that this is going to beat all.
How do you mean a chaos?
0 1963-12-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My eyes fell on this sentence of Sri Aurobindo [on the Calendar]
Ah, exactly! Thats it. Thats it! Every day, I look at it. In the evening the date and the quotation are changed I dont know what tomorrows text will be, we have to change the Calendar and start January. Would you like us to do it? Bring the Calendar here.
All this will go now!
--
(Mother sets the Calendar to January 1, 1964, and reads Sri Aurobindos quotation)
All can be done if Gods touch is there2
--
I like this Calendar a lot because of its quotations. I change it every evening.
Tomorrow, I see here (Mother looks at her notebook) four, five, six, seven, eight people, and two over there, which makes tentomorrow morning between 10 and 11 A.M. (Laughing) All can be done if Gods touch is there!
--
Did I give you everything? Did I give you the second Calendar [with a photograph of Mother, printed in Calcutta]? The other one, he [Satprem] didnt like it.
(Sujata:) Youre too stern, little Mother!
--
(On the second Calendar, the photograph shows Mother engaged in her translation work)
Its the last part of the Synthesis.3 We were supposed to revise it together, but it doesnt work. (To Sujata:) You know what he does? He takes the English and starts translating again! (laughing) So theres no work left for me!
0 1964-05-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This month of May is interminable, in-ter-mi-na-ble, it is surely elastic. If June is as long, Ill tear the Calendar to pieces. But I havent yet spoken to my mother about returning sooner than planned; I would like to know if Mother approves, it would give me more inner strength to convince my mother. In the meantime, I count the hours (they are also elastic, expandable and sticky; my watch was so weary of those rubber hours that it broke down for good). Is time shorter in India? It seems to have shortened Nehrus life, at any ratethere must be great confusion over there; now all the mud will be free to spread out into the open? Here the newspapers are full of Nehrus deathone would think a god had disappeared.
S.
0 1964-11-21, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, I had the answer. I have a Calendar with quotations from Sri Aurobindo, and I had the answer in the evening. I dont remember the exact words, but he said, The Spirit will change this human body too into a divine reality. That was the answer; he said, THE SPIRIT. I said to myself, Obviously, but how can THIS be transformed?
Thats the problem.
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that they are printing two Calendars, one here and one in Calcutta. In the Calcutta Calendar, I look happy and I greet with folded hands; so I wrote underneath, Salut Toi, Vrit [Salute to you, O Truth]. In English (theyre a bit slow, you know!), they wanted something more explicit, so I wrote, Salute to the advent of the Truth. I am going to give the subject to Sunil: Make some music on this.
But still, its a pity for you to give up music.
0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, a very precise perception. You know, once (years ago) I was asked, What is purity? I answered, Purity is to be exclusively under the influence of the Supreme Lord and to receive nothing but from him. Then, a year or two later, while reading Sri Aurobindo, I found a sentence in English which said exactly the same thing in other words1 (a sentence I had never read and didnt know). I saw that same sentence yesterday evening (I have a Calendar with quotations from Sri Aurobindo). They [the cells] are growing purer and purer, and the extent to which they arent is pointed out very clearly, in an absolutely precise, distinct way, as if with the point of a needle, on the spot that isnt pure. And it hurts! It always corresponds to a painwhile the same physical condition goes on. Take an exposed nerve in a tooth: normally, it should hurt constantly; at times, in an almost general way, it doesnt exist, but just when the purity isnt total, whew! It hurts excruciatingly! And in a few seconds it may pass. So it all exclusively depends on Thateverything. Its a proof, the most concrete proof!
"Purity is to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine."
0 1970-10-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother gives Satprem a Calendar notepad, then a felt pen.)
What color is it?
08.37 - The Significance of Dates, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The way of framing a Calendar is a convention. If the convention is made general, as there is an attempt now to do, it can become a very powerful formation. But in order to become significant for many, many must first accept it. I mean by a formation an image infused with a force that makes it something living, an image which can be used as a symbol. There are people who may form images and use them as symbols, but all is done only for themselves, as in the case of dream-symbols. These are purely subjective and valid in so far as those people are personally concerned.
But if your Calendar is adopted by almost the whole of mankind, then the symbol is capable of acting upon a very wide field. You can act upon the major bulk population through this formation. As it is purely conventional, I repeat, it is fruitful only in the measure in which it has been accepted. If instead of millions of people who are now following the European Calendar there were only three or four persons, then it would be symbolic only for these few. The thing itself has no value, its value depends upon the use you make of it.
The conventions are useful as symbols, I said,that is, they are a means to put you in contact with what is more subtle, to put what is material in contact with the more subtle. That is their use.
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the Calendar.
And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
hardly doubt that the Saint Hippolytus of the Roman Calendar, who
was dragged by horses to death on the thirteenth of August, Diana's
1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The Calendar stood at November 1938, the month of the Darshan. A few weeks more and we would meet the Master after a long wait of three months. After every Darshan we start counting the days for the next one, for each occasion brings the Eternal and his Shakti closer to us and is therefore a significant landmark in our lives. As the date comes nearer, our days too take on a brighter hue and the day before the Darshan, all faces glow with sweet smiles. Friends meeting on the road greet each other with one word, "Tomorrow!" or with a silent look of happy expectation. The Dining Room hums with the same theme. Wherever you go, whomsoever you meet, no other talk except the Guru's Darshan for one or two minutes, an eternal moment.
As for myself, my feelings are more complex. I have broken verbal lances with him, challenged his views, poked fun at his Yoga. I know all these will be forgotten at the moment when I shall meet his august Presence. He will be as affable as in his letters and bestow his gracious smile from his transcendental height while my heart will beat in joy and wonder. Still, the mind cannot be entirely free from a conventional fear.
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Count Calendar will end on that day.
A New Age interpretation of this presumed event tells
--
the Mayan Calendars, as a given. This date will, according to
him, mark a total breakdown of all life-systems on the planet
1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the revolutionary Calendar, which began with September 22,
1792, and had a distinctly antichristian character. 9 What had
1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
determined the early Greek Calendar. The difficulty of reconciling
lunar with solar time is one of the standing puzzles which has taxed
--
the first to furnish a base for a Calendar which shall bring lunar
and solar times into tolerable, though not exact, harmony. But in
early days the proper adjustment of the Calendar is a matter of
religious concern, since on it depends a knowledge of the right
1.28 - The Killing of the Tree-Spirit, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
always falls before the other in the Calendar.
At Frosinone, in Latium, about half-way between Rome and Naples, the
1.32 - The Ritual of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
much weight on evidence drawn from the Calendar of flowers, and in
particular to press an argument so fragile as the bloom of the rose.
1.37 - Oriential Religions in the West, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
directly from its hea then rival. In the Julian Calendar the
twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it
1.39 - The Ritual of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
of a Calendar year which neither corresponded exactly to the solar
year nor was periodically corrected by intercalation.
--
at the rarest intervals, from the official or sacerdotal Calendar,
he must have been compelled to observe for himself those natural
--
priests continued to shift, with the shifting Calendar, from summer
through spring to winter, and so backward through autumn to summer.
--
severed, by the error of the Calendar, from their roots in the
natural cycle of the seasons.
--
SUCH, then, were the principal events of the farmer's Calendar in
ancient Egypt, and such the simple religious rites by which he
--
of the official Calendar, so far as these are described by Greek
writers or recorded on the monuments. In examining them it is
--
old Egyptian Calendar the true or astronomical dates of the official
festivals must have varied from year to year, at least until the
--
the new Calendar, and so ceased to rotate throughout the length of
the solar year. At all events Plutarch, writing about the end of the
--
though he does not mention the Alexandrian Calendar, he clearly
dates the festivals by it. Moreover, the long festal Calendar of
Esne, an important document of the Imperial age, is obviously based
--
seventeenth of Athyr. Now in the Alexandrian Calendar, which
Plutarch used, these four days corresponded to the thirteenth,
1.47 - Lityerses, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Macedonian Calendar, since he dedicated his history to Antiochus
Soter; and in his day the Macedonian month Lous appears to have
1.62 - The Fire-Festivals of Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
particularly remarkable, because the Mohammedan Calendar, being
purely lunar and uncorrected by intercalation, necessarily takes no
--
regulated their festal Calendar to some extent by astronomical
considerations.
1956-03-14 - Dynamic meditation - Do all as an offering to the Divine - Significance of 23.4.56. - If twelve men of goodwill call the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can reply with a joke, if you like. Theres talk now about changing the Calendar; if it is changed, the numbers will be changed, and then the whole of History will have gone, flown away!
It is a convention, you see.
Obviously, if the convention is generalised, as is the case with the Calendar, it can become a very powerful formation. But it must be very widely adopted to become a powerful formation. What I call formations are images which can be animated by a force and taken as symbols. Some people create images for themselves and use them as their own symbols; and for them they may be very useful and valid, as, for instance, the symbols of dreams. But these are valid only for them, they are purely subjective. While, if you take the Calendar which has been adopted by almost all human beings, your symbol can act on a much wider field; but the origin is the same, it is a convention. Naturally, these are things we are used to, for they were like that when we were small children; but it depends on the country of ones birth and the community in which one is born.
There are communities which count differently. And so, for them, other numbers at other times have a symbolic significance. Only, if our formation the one in which you are born, which you have adoptedif this formation is adopted by the vast majority of men, you will be able to act on this majority by acting through this formation. You can act through a formation only to the extent to which it is adopted by a certain number of people. It is purely conventional. We began counting from a certain datewhich, besides, was chosen quite arbitrarily and so the numbers came to be what they are today. But, for instance, one has only to visit a Muslim community, where they started counting from I dont know whether it is the birth or the death of Mohammed and their numbers are quite different. So, if you go and tell them: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they will say, What does your number mean, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? Nothing at all.
--
But if, instead of the millions of people who use the present Calendar, there were only three or four, it would be pointless to say that these numbers are symbolic. They would be symbolic only for these three or four people. Therefore, it is not the thing in itself which counts, it is the extent of its usage. Thats whats important.
People make the same mistake with the stars and horoscopes. It is quite simply a language and a convention, and if this convention is adopted, it may be utilised to do a certain work. But it has only a relative value in proportion to the number of people who have adopted it.
1f.lovecraft - Azathoth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
window; and for days not counted in mens Calendars the tides of far
spheres bare him gently to join the dreams for which he longed; the
1f.lovecraft - Discarded Draft of, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I saw a good many booklets and catalogues and advertising Calendars of
the Marsh Refining Company in the business department of the library,
1f.lovecraft - In the Walls of Eryx, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
of the planets Calendar. Being put in the main group under Miller, I
received my equipmentwatch tuned to Venuss slightly quicker
1f.lovecraft - The Disinterment, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
the window, had told me of the changing season; for no Calendar was
ever in sight upon the dingy walls. With the gentle help of Simes I was
1f.lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
it several bills of antiquated issue, a celluloid advertising Calendar
for 1893, some cards with the name Edwin M. Lillibridge, and a paper
1f.lovecraft - The Mound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Another function of religion was the regulation of the Calendar, born
of a period when time and speed were regarded as prime fetiches in
--
this Calendar very well when he wrote his manuscript, whence the
confidently given date of 1545; but the document failed to suggest that
1f.lovecraft - The Temple, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Calendar, and our apparent drift as judged by any objects we might spy
through the portholes or from the conning tower. Fortunately we had
1f.lovecraft - The Whisperer in Darkness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
turning the Calendar back a century.
The train kept close to the river, and across in New Hampshire I could
1f.lovecraft - The White Ship, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
saw on the wall a Calendar which still remained as when I had left it
at the hour I sailed away. With the dawn I descended the tower and
1.kbr - When The Day Came, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
The Day that is not in any Calendar -
Clouds heavy with love
1.kbr - When the Day Came, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
English version by Andrew Harvey Original Language Hindi When the Day came -- The Day I had lived and died for -- The Day that is not in any Calendar -- Clouds heavy with love Showered me with wild abundance. Inside me, my soul was drenched. Around me, even the desert grew green. [1722.jpg] -- from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom, by Andrew Harvey / Eryk Hanut <
1.pbs - The Cenci - A Tragedy In Five Acts, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
The day a feast upon their Calendars.
It was the twenty-seventh of December:
1.rb - The Flight Of The Duchess, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
And found, since the Calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the Middle Age no treason
1.rt - A Hundred Years Hence, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
It was written on the 2nd of Falgun (first month of spring), 1302 (1895-96), of the Bengali Calendar. Translated by Kumud Biswas.
Translated by Kumud Biswas
1.rwe - May-Day, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Ah! well I mind the Calendar,
Faithful through a thousand years,
1.rwe - Monadnoc, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Their Calendar and dial,
Barometer, and chemic phial,
1.rwe - Uriel, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Into Calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel,
1.wby - Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
With all those Calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
1.ww - The Excursion- VII- Book Sixth- The Churchyard Among the Mountains, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
'A Calendar of flowers, plucked as they blow
'Where health abides, and cheerfulness, and peace.'
1.ww - To My Sister, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Our living Calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
2.05 - Habit 3 Put First Things First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
The second generation could be characterized by Calendars and appointment books. This wave reflects an attempt to look ahead, to schedule events and activities in the future.
The third generation reflects the current time-management field. It adds to those preceding generations the important idea of prioritization, of clarifying values, and of comparing the relative worth of activities based on their relationship to those values. In addition, it focuses on setting goals -specific long-, intermediate-, and short-term targets toward which time and energy would be directed in harmony with values. It also includes the concept of daily planning, of making a specific plan to accomplish those goals and activities determined to be of greatest worth.
--
The first-generation note pads and "to do" lists give us no more than a place to capture those things that penetrate our awareness so we won't forget them. The second-generation appointment books and Calendars merely provide a place to record our future commitments so that we can be where we have agreed to be at the appropriate time.
Even the third generation, with its vast array of planners and materials, focuses primarily on helping people prioritize and plan their Quadrant I and III activities. Though many trainers and consultants recognize the value of Quadrant II activities, the actual planning tools of the third generation do not facilitate organizing and executing around them.
--
Having identified roles and set goals, you can translate each goal to a specific day of the week, either as a priority item or, even better, as a specific appointment. You can also check your annual or monthly Calendar for any appointments you may have previously made and evaluate their importance in the context of your goals, transferring those you decide to keep to your schedule and making plans to
reschedule or cancel others.
2.07 - I Also Try to Tell My Tale, #The Castle of Crossed Destinies, #Italo Calvino, #Fiction
Even in the painters' pictures, Saint George always has an impersonal face, not unlike the Knight of Swords of the cards, and his battle with the dragon is a scene on a coat of arms, fixed outside of time, whether you see him galloping with his lance at rest, as in Carpaccio, charging from his half of the canvas at the dragon who rushes from the other half, and attacking with a concentrated expression, his head down, like a cyclist (around, in the details, there is a Calendar of corpses whose stages of decomposition reconstruct the temporal development of the story), or whether horse and dragon are superimposed, monogram-like, as in the Louvre Raphael, where Saint George is using his lance from above, driving it down into the monster's throat, operating with angelic surgery (here the rest of the story is condensed in a broken lance on the ground and a blandly amazed virgin); or in the sequence: princess, dragon, Saint George, the animal (a dinosaur!) is presented as the central element (Paolo Uccello, in London and Paris); or whether Saint George comes between the dragon in the rear and the princess in the foreground (Tintoretto, London).
In any case, Saint George performs his feat before our eyes, always closed in his breastplate, revealing nothing of himself: psychology is no use to the man of action. If anything, we could say psychology is all on the dragon's side, with his angry writhings: the enemy, the monster, the defeated have a pathos that the victorious hero never dreams of possessing (or takes care not to show). It is a short step from this to saying that the dragon is psychology: indeed, he is the psyche, he is the dark background of himself that Saint George confronts, an enemy who has already massacred many youths and maidens, an internal enemy who becomes an object of loathsome alien-ness. Is it the story of an energy projected into the world, or is it the diary of an introversion?
5.4.01 - Notes on Root-Sounds, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
From , bloom; honey; sweetness, fragrance; an impure secretion; foulness, fault, defect + thief, robber, remover. Originally, a bee, thief of honey; then generally 1. a robber, thief; 2. a demon (fiend, enemy); 3. gnat, mosquito; 4. air or wind (stealer of fragrance); 5. a Brahmana neglecting the Yajnas, but still enjoying Brahmin privileges. 6. Fire, the remover of impurities. 7. An intercalary month, (removing the defect of the Calendar). 8. Frost or snow, remover of sweetness or pleasure.
A woman in her course. Superlative from in the same sense as .
9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Aswin: The sixth month in the Hindu Calendar, falling in the autumn season.
Atma: Self, same as Atman.
--
Chaitra: The last month in the Hindu Calendar, falling in the spring season.
chakka: A vegetable curry.
--
Vaisakh: The first month of the Hindu Calendar, falling in the summer season.
Vaiseshika: One of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy, founded by Kanada.
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
When the Accadian Calendar was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-3-04.htm (3 von 19) [06.05.2003 03:37:40]
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
said Calendar does not prove that the Hindus knew anything of astronomy at that date, and assure their
readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian pundits may have acquired their knowledge of the
lunar mansions headed by Krittika from the Phoenicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
just 18,618,727 years, as the Brahmanical teachings and even some Hindu Calendars declare.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 151 NATURE CAN NEVER CEASE.
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
religious Calendars, and point to the Zodiac as their prime origin -- if not identical with the Zodiac
known to us now, then something very analogous to it. He feels certain that the Zodiac and its mystic
--
our era. This and similar observations collected in Ptolemy's Calendars, though he does not give their
authors, these observations, which are older than those of the Chaldeans, may well be the work of the
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
days each, or 10 lunar months of 28 days each, or of 9 Calendar months of 31 days each,
counting on the royal arch of heavens for the measure of the period of traverse from the
--
mode with the Hebrews, for even to-day they calculate the Calendar by means of the 354
and 355 of the lunar year, and we possess a special evidence that it was the mode with
--
manifestly lay at the base of the formation of the Calendar forms of the Mayas of
Yucatan, the Hindus, the Assyrians, and the ancient Babylonians, as well as the
Book of Genesis, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The fall of Adam and Eve led to a geometric progression of sin. Noah is introduced (Chapters 6-9) as the one righteous man. The history of Noah is marked by the Hebrew lunar Calendar, for the word for new moon, month - - odesh - is recorded in Genesis 7:11. God finally brought judgement through the Flood, but saved Noah and made a Covenant (9:8) with Noah, his family, and all living creatures. Eber - - (an eponym for Hebrew) was a descendant of Shem (10:21, 11:16). In spite of man's disobedience, God remains faithful to his creation, the human race. The consistent pattern of covenant, fall, judgement, and redemption that is evident in Genesis persists throughout Hebrew Scripture.
The Patriarchal History of Israel began with Abraham in Chapter 12:1-2, when God urged Abram to "Go forth from this land of your kinsfolk (Haran) and from your father's house to a land (Canaan) I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you." Abram is identified as "the Hebrew" - - in 14:13. In Chapter 14:18-20, we read of Melchizedek, the King and Priest of Salem, who brought out bread and wine, and who typified Christ (Hebrews 7). The institution of slavery is recorded in Genesis, for the vanquished became slaves to the victors. God warns Abram - "Know for certain that your descendants shall be strangers in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years" (Genesis 15:13). The Lord God made his Covenant with Abraham first in 15:18 and changed his name to Abraham in 17:5. Abraham was called a "friend of God" throughout Scripture (2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23). Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for the sin of sodomy (19). Abraham had two sons, Ishmael by Hagar and Isaac by his wife Sarah. Chapter 21 describes the birth of Isaac and the plight of Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham is tested through Isaac (22). Abraham bought land in Hebron (23) as a burial plot for Sarah. Isaac and Rebecca had Esau and Jacob (25). God first refers to his Commandments in Genesis 26:5. Jacob returned to Haran and had twelve sons by his wives Leah and Rachel and their maidservants. God renamed Jacob "Israel" (35:10), the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Chapters 37 to 50 primarily cover the saga of the virtuous Joseph, who is sold into slavery by his own brothers (Genesis 37:28)!
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
northern Wales, and in certain old Calendars took her place
as a saint under the name Murgen. Another, in , slipped
Book of Psalms, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The Psalms have had a profound influence on both Eastern and Western culture. The most famous Psalm is King David's Psalm 23. Christ repeats verse five of Psalm 31 on the Cross, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." Psalm 91 offers evidence of Guardian Angels. Psalm 95 (verse 1) contains the words Laus Deo, the Latin for Praise be to God, which is inscribed on top of the Washington Monument. Psalm 103 supports that Angels carry out the will of God. Psalm 104 (verse 19) confirms the Hebrew lunar Calendar, for the moon - - yare - marks the appointed times and sacred seasons. Psalm 118 (verse 24) was the inspiration for the World War I liberation song of Jerusalem, the world-famous Hava Nagila. Psalm 119 is an alphabetical psalm that expresses love for the Word of God, each eight-verse stanza beginning with one of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 139 speaks of life in the womb!
The Psalms are notable for Prophecies of the Messiah, such as Psalm 2, fulfilled in Matthew 3:17, Psalm 22, fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and Psalm 110. In fact, the greatest number of Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament are from the Book of Psalms, Psalm 110 being the most quoted by New Testament writers. For example, God declared his son Jesus Christ high priest according to the order of Melchizedek in Hebrews 5:10, which fulfilled Psalm 110, a Psalm of David, in which David announced to his royal successor - "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 110:4). Melchizedek, whose name is found only twice in Hebrew Scripture, was the king of Salem and a priest of God Most High, who brought out bread and wine and blessed Abram (Genesis 14:18). Psalm 76:2 locates Salem of Genesis 14:18 to Jerusalem.
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
"Thelema Lodge Calendar" for March 1989 e.v. A translation of the the
actual Grimoire will be found in Idries Shahs "The Secret Lore of
r1916 03 07, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
[7] - MS 6 From this point until the entry for "Monday. 19 March" the days of the week do not agree with the days of the month in the Calendar for 1916. The days of the week appear to be correct, as many of the days of the month were added afterwards in a different ink.Ed.
[note] - textual situation requiring brief explanation. Longer explanations are provided in editorial footnotes, which are printed in italics followed by "Ed." (Sri Aurobindo's footnotes are printed in roman type.)
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
NIRODBARAN (after a lull): In the message on our New Year Calendar the
Mother says that this is a year of silence and expectation. We are wondering:
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
the rain-making Shamans and the Calendar-making Priest-Astronomers
of Babylon. At the dawn of Greek science we find him assuming the
--
dance and the song, the mystery plays of the Achaens, the Calendars of
294
--
of astronomy: Calendar-making. Nevertheless, his surnming up of the
motives which drove the Greek men of science seems to be by and
The Poems of Cold Mountain, #Cold Mountain, #Han-shan, #Zen
6. In addition to their Calendar of lunar months, the Chinese divide the year into twentyfour solar periods of fifteen days each. Mang-chung (Grain Ears) fifteen days before the summer solstice, and Li-ch'iu (Autumn Begins) forty-five days after the solstice. In the last line, the sky's absence prevents the traveler from establishing his bearings.
Looking for a refuge
--- Overview of noun calendar
The noun calendar has 3 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (1) calendar ::: (a system of timekeeping that defines the beginning and length and divisions of the year)
2. (1) calendar ::: (a list or register of events (appointments or social events or court cases etc); "I have you on my calendar for next Monday")
3. calendar ::: (a tabular array of the days (usually for one year))
--- Overview of verb calendar
The verb calendar has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. calendar ::: (enter into a calendar)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun calendar
3 senses of calendar
Sense 1
calendar
=> arrangement, organization, organisation, system
=> structure
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
calendar
=> list, listing
=> database
=> information, info
=> message, content, subject matter, substance
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
calendar
=> table, tabular array
=> array
=> arrangement
=> group, grouping
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun calendar
3 senses of calendar
Sense 1
calendar
=> lunar calendar
=> lunisolar calendar
=> solar calendar
Sense 2
calendar
=> docket
Sense 3
calendar
=> perpetual calendar
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun calendar
3 senses of calendar
Sense 1
calendar
=> arrangement, organization, organisation, system
Sense 2
calendar
=> list, listing
Sense 3
calendar
=> table, tabular array
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun calendar
3 senses of calendar
Sense 1
calendar
-> arrangement, organization, organisation, system
=> classification system
=> contrivance
=> coordinate system, frame of reference, reference system, reference frame
=> data structure
=> design, plan
=> distribution, statistical distribution
=> genetic map
=> kinship system
=> lattice
=> living arrangement
=> ontology
=> calendar
Sense 2
calendar
-> list, listing
=> agenda, agendum, order of business
=> A-list
=> bibliography
=> bill
=> blacklist, black book, shitlist
=> calendar
=> calorie chart
=> canon
=> catalog, catalogue
=> character set
=> checklist
=> class list, honours list
=> codex
=> contents, table of contents
=> corrigenda
=> credits
=> criminal record, record
=> directory
=> distribution list
=> enumeration, numbering
=> FAQ
=> free list
=> grocery list, shopping list
=> hit list
=> hit parade
=> index
=> key
=> key
=> inventory, stock list
=> mailing list
=> masthead, flag
=> menu, computer menu
=> necrology
=> playlist, play list
=> portfolio
=> posting
=> price list
=> push-down list, push-down stack, stack
=> queue
=> roll, roster
=> schedule
=> shopping list
=> short list, shortlist
=> sick list
=> slate, ticket
=> standing
=> wish list
Sense 3
calendar
-> table, tabular array
=> correlation table
=> contents, table of contents
=> actuarial table, statistical table
=> calendar
=> file allocation table
=> periodic table
--- Grep of noun calendar
appointment calendar
calendar
calendar day
calendar method
calendar method of birth control
calendar month
calendar week
calendar year
church calendar
ecclesiastical calendar
farmer's calendar
gregorian calendar
gregorian calendar month
hebrew calendar
hindu calendar
hindu calendar month
islamic calendar
islamic calendar month
jewish calendar
jewish calendar month
julian calendar
lunar calendar
lunisolar calendar
mohammedan calendar
moslem calendar
muhammadan calendar
muslim calendar
new style calendar
old style calendar
perpetual calendar
revolutionary calendar
revolutionary calendar month
roman calendar
solar calendar
Wikipedia - 1010 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 1219 -- The year 1219 in the Gregorian calendar.
Wikipedia - 1462 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 1770s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1800s (decade) -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1810s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1820s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1826 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 1840s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1850s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1860s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1870s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1880s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1890s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 1900s (decade) -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1900-1909)
Wikipedia - 1910s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1910-1919)
Wikipedia - 1920s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1920-1929)
Wikipedia - 1930s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1930-1939)
Wikipedia - 1940s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1940-1949)
Wikipedia - 1950s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1950-1959)
Wikipedia - 1960s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1960-1969)
Wikipedia - 1970s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1970-1979)
Wikipedia - 1980s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1980-1989)
Wikipedia - 1990s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1990-1999)
Wikipedia - 2000s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (2000-2009)
Wikipedia - 2004 -- Year of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - 2010s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (2010-2019)
Wikipedia - 2019 PDC Calendar -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - 2020s -- Decade of the Gregorian calendar (2020-2029)
Wikipedia - 2021 national electoral calendar
Wikipedia - 30 Boxes -- Calendar website
Wikipedia - 502 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 503 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 508 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 555 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 556 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 573 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 574 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 577 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 579 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 586 BC -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 586 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 587 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 608 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 609 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 614 BC -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 617 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 622 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 634 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 636 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 637 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 644 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 680 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 718 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 740 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 741 -- Calendar year
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Wikipedia - 744 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 766 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 768 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 778 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 782 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 788 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 791 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 804 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 806 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 822 -- Calendar year
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Wikipedia - 851 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 852 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 853 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 855 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 856 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 857 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 859 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 860 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 863 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 864 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 872 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 873 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 876 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 877 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 879 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 884 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 885 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 891 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 892 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 893 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 905 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 906 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 913 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 916 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - 942 -- Calendar year
Wikipedia - Adoption of the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - Advent calendar -- Special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas
Wikipedia - After the Development of Agriculture -- Calendar era, according to which 2000 CE is 10000 A.D.A. (M-bM-^@M-^fter the development of agricultureM-bM-^@M-^])
Wikipedia - Akan calendar
Wikipedia - Ancient Greek calendars -- Chronometry
Wikipedia - Ancient Macedonian calendar -- Lunisolar calendar
Wikipedia - Anglican calendar of saints
Wikipedia - Anno Domini -- Western calendar era
Wikipedia - Anno Mundi -- Calendar era
Wikipedia - Ante Christum natum -- Term that denotes the years before the supposed birth of Jesus Christ in the Christian calendar
Wikipedia - April 11 -- Date in Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - April 7 -- Date in Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - April -- Fourth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Armenian calendar
Wikipedia - Ash Wednesday -- First day of Lent on the Western Christian calendar
Wikipedia - Assamese calendar -- Luni-solar calendar
Wikipedia - Assyrian calendar
Wikipedia - Attic calendar -- Lunisolar calendar
Wikipedia - August -- Eighth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Av -- Month of the Hebrew calendar
Wikipedia - Ayyam-i-Ha -- Intercalary days in the BahaM-JM-
Wikipedia - Aztec calendar -- Calendar system that was used by the Aztecs
Wikipedia - Babylonian calendar
Wikipedia - BahaM-JM- -- Calendar of the BahaM-JM-
Wikipedia - BahaM-JM- -- Holy days in the BahaM-JM-
Wikipedia - BahaM-JM- -- First day of the Baha'i calendar year; one of nine holy days of the Baha'i Faith; occurs on the vernal equinox as seen in Tehran
Wikipedia - Balinese saka calendar
Wikipedia - Bangladeshi calendar -- Civil calendar used in Bangladesh
Wikipedia - Before Present -- Calendar based on 1950 CE (around when radiocarbon dating was developed and nuclear weapons testing artificially altered the proportion of carbon isotopes)
Wikipedia - Bengali calendars
Wikipedia - Bengali calendar
Wikipedia - Berber calendar
Wikipedia - Borana calendar -- Calendar supposed to be used by Borena people who live in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya
Wikipedia - Buddhist calendar
Wikipedia - Bulgar calendar
Wikipedia - Burmese calendar
Wikipedia - Byzantine Calendar
Wikipedia - Byzantine calendar -- The calendar used by the Eastern Orthodox Church from c. 691 to 1728
Wikipedia - Calendar (Apple) -- Personal calendar application for macOS and iOS by Apple Inc.
Wikipedia - Calendar-based contraceptive methods -- Methods of estimating a woman's fertility
Wikipedia - Calendar date
Wikipedia - Calendar effect -- A difference in the market or economy behavior related to calendar cycles.
Wikipedia - Calendar era
Wikipedia - Calendar Girls (2015 film) -- 2015 film by Madhur Bhandarkar
Wikipedia - Calendaring software
Wikipedia - Calendar Man
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Australia)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Canada)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Korea) -- List of Calendar of saints for Anglican Church of Korea
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Southern Africa)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Anglican)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Armenian Apostolic Church)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Church of England)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Church of the Province of Melanesia)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church in the United States of America)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church) -- Calendar of saints in the Episcopal Church
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui)
Wikipedia - Calendar of Saints (Lutheran)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Lutheran)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Roman Catholic)
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints (Scottish Episcopal Church)
Wikipedia - Calendar of Saints
Wikipedia - Calendar of saints -- Christian liturgical calendar celebrating saints
Wikipedia - Calendar of the saints
Wikipedia - Calendar reform -- Significant revision of a calendar system
Wikipedia - Calendar round
Wikipedia - Calendar (stationery)
Wikipedia - Calendar -- A system for organizing the days of year.
Wikipedia - Calendar (Windows)
Wikipedia - Cappadocian calendar
Wikipedia - Category:Anglican calendars of saints
Wikipedia - Category:Calendar eras
Wikipedia - Category:Calendars
Wikipedia - Category:Coptic calendar
Wikipedia - Category:Egyptian calendar
Wikipedia - Category:Leap years in the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - Category:Liturgical calendars of the Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Category:Liturgical calendars
Wikipedia - Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - Category:Pre-Reformation saints of the Lutheran liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - Category:Specific calendars
Wikipedia - Celtic calendar -- Compilation of pre-Christian Celtic systems of timekeeping
Wikipedia - Cham calendar
Wikipedia - Cherokee calendar -- Lunar calendar marked by 13 moon cycles of 28 days
Wikipedia - Chinese calendar -- Lunisolar calendar from China
Wikipedia - Chushu -- Solar term used in East Asian calendars to signify the end of summer
Wikipedia - Coligny calendar
Wikipedia - Common Era -- Western calendar era
Wikipedia - Common year starting on Friday -- Type of year C on a solar calendar according to its starting and ending days in the week
Wikipedia - Common year starting on Sunday -- Type of year A on a solar calendar according to its starting and ending days in the week
Wikipedia - Coptic Calendar
Wikipedia - Coptic calendar -- Egyptian liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - Cosmic Calendar
Wikipedia - Darian calendar -- System of time-keeping for future human settlers on Mars
Wikipedia - December 3 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) -- Day in Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - December solstice -- Astronomical phenomenon; solstice that occurs each December, typically between the 20th and the 22nd day of the month according to the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - December -- Twelfth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Dhu al-Hijjah -- Twelfth month of the Islamic calendar, includes the Hajj
Wikipedia - Dhu al-Qadah -- Eleventh month of the Islamic calendar
Wikipedia - Discordian calendar -- Calendar
Wikipedia - Draft:EteSync -- Open source end-to-end encrypted contacts, calendar, and tasks syncing software and service.
Wikipedia - Earth Overshoot Day -- Calculated calendar date when humanity's yearly consumption exceeds Earth's replenishment
Wikipedia - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - Egyptian calendar -- calendar used in ancient Egypt before 22 BC
Wikipedia - Eight-day week -- "Week" in certain historical calendars that consisted of eight days
Wikipedia - Enkutatash -- public holiday of Ethiopia in coincidence of New Year of Ethiopian calendar
Wikipedia - Enoch calendar
Wikipedia - Ethiopian calendar -- Principal calendar used in Ethiopia and Eritrea
Wikipedia - Farbror Pekkas handelsbod -- Sveriges Radio-TV's 1965 Christmas calendar
Wikipedia - Fasli calendar
Wikipedia - Februarius -- Second month of the revised ancient Roman calendar
Wikipedia - February -- Second month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Florentine calendar
Wikipedia - Four-Calendar Cafe -- 1993 album by the Cocteau Twins
Wikipedia - French Republican Calendar
Wikipedia - French Republican calendar -- Calendar used in France from 1793 to 1805
Wikipedia - Fructidor -- Month in the French Republican calendar, from mid-August to mid-September
Wikipedia - Gaelic calendar
Wikipedia - General Roman Calendar as in 1954
Wikipedia - General Roman Calendar of 1954
Wikipedia - General Roman Calendar of 1960
Wikipedia - General Roman Calendar of 1969
Wikipedia - General Roman Calendar of Pope Pius XII
Wikipedia - General Roman Calendar
Wikipedia - General Roman calendar
Wikipedia - Geologic Calendar
Wikipedia - Georgian calendar
Wikipedia - Germanic calendar
Wikipedia - Google Calendar -- Time-management and scheduling calendar service
Wikipedia - Greek Old Calendarists
Wikipedia - Gregorian Calendar
Wikipedia - Gregorian calendar -- Internationally the most widely accepted civil calendar
Wikipedia - Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar -- Proposal for calendar reform
Wikipedia - Hash calendar
Wikipedia - HCalendar
Wikipedia - Hebrew calendar -- Lunisolar calendar used for Jewish religious observances
Wikipedia - Hijri calendar
Wikipedia - Hijri year -- Era in the Islamic calendar
Wikipedia - Hindu calendar -- calendars used by Hindus worldwide
Wikipedia - Holocene calendar -- Calendar era such that 2000 CE is 12000 HE (M-bM-^@M-^\Holocene eraM-bM-^@M-^])
Wikipedia - Holy Week -- Calendar date
Wikipedia - Ianuarius -- First month of the revised ancient Roman calendar
Wikipedia - Ides of March -- Day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to 15 March
Wikipedia - Igbo calendar -- Traditional calendar of the Igbo
Wikipedia - Inca calendar
Wikipedia - Indian national calendar
Wikipedia - Inter gravissimas -- papal document that established the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - International Date Line -- Imaginary line that demarcates the change of one calendar day to the next
Wikipedia - International Fixed Calendar
Wikipedia - Iranian calendars -- Calendars used in Iran
Wikipedia - Iranian calendar
Wikipedia - Islamic Calendar
Wikipedia - Islamic calendar -- lunar calendar used by Muslims to determine religious observances
Wikipedia - ISO week date -- Leap week calendar system
Wikipedia - Jalali calendar
Wikipedia - January 13 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) -- Day in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - January 1 -- First day of the year in the Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - January -- First month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Japanese calendar -- calendars used in Japan past and present
Wikipedia - Javanese calendar
Wikipedia - Jewish Talmudic Calendar -- Lunisolar calendar using Tishri-years, observed by the Jewish people since Late Antiquity
Wikipedia - JM-EM-^MkyM-EM-^M calendar -- Japanese lunisolar calendar
Wikipedia - Julian Calendar
Wikipedia - Julian calendar -- Calendar introduced by Julius Caesar
Wikipedia - Julian day -- Continuous count of days since the beginning of the Julian Period, on 1 Jan. 4713 BCE in the proleptic Julian calendar
Wikipedia - July 22 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) -- Day in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - July -- Seventh month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - June -- Sixth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Kerala New Year -- Former new year on the Malayalam Calendar
Wikipedia - Koiak -- Fourth month of the Coptic calendar
Wikipedia - Korean calendar
Wikipedia - Kurdish calendar
Wikipedia - Kurt Olssons julkalender -- SVT's 1990 Christmas Calendar
Wikipedia - Lapland Calendar -- 1957 film
Wikipedia - Layue -- Month of the Chinese calendar
Wikipedia - Leap year starting on Sunday -- Type of year AG on a solar calendar according to its starting and ending days in the week
Wikipedia - Leap year starting on Tuesday -- Calendar for any leap year starting on Tuesday
Wikipedia - Leap year -- Calendar year containing an additional day
Wikipedia - List of Anglican Church calendars -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of applications with iCalendar support -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of calendars -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of non-standard dates -- Description of non-standard dates used in calendars for various reasons
Wikipedia - List of observances set by the BahaM-JM- -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of observances set by the Chinese calendar -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of observances set by the Hebrew calendar -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of observances set by the Islamic calendar -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of observances set by the Solar Hijri calendar -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of tornadoes by calendar day -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Lithuanian calendar
Wikipedia - Liturgical calendar (Lutheran)
Wikipedia - Liturgical calendar of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - Lunar calendar -- Type of calendar
Wikipedia - Lunisolar calendar -- Lunar calendar
Wikipedia - Malayalam calendar
Wikipedia - Maya calendar -- calendar used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica
Wikipedia - May -- Fifth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Meitei calendar
Wikipedia - Melanau calendar
Wikipedia - MeM-aM-9M-#a -- Solar month in Indian solar calendar
Wikipedia - Mesoamerican calendars
Wikipedia - Mesoamerican Long Count calendar -- Calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures
Wikipedia - Microsoft Exchange Server -- Calendaring and mail server
Wikipedia - Microsoft Outlook -- Email client, task and calendar management software developed by Microsoft
Wikipedia - Middle-earth calendar
Wikipedia - Minguo calendar
Wikipedia - Mongolian calendar
Wikipedia - Mozilla Calendar Project
Wikipedia - Mozilla Sunbird -- Free software calendar application
Wikipedia - Muisca calendar
Wikipedia - Muslim calendar
Wikipedia - Nanakshahi calendar -- Calendar used in Sikhism
Wikipedia - New Year -- First day of a calendar year, in particular, January 1 in the Julian and Gregorian calendar
Wikipedia - Nisan -- Month of the Hebrew calendar
Wikipedia - Nisan-years -- Ancient calendar system used around Mesopotamia
Wikipedia - Nordic Christmas calendar -- Television genre
Wikipedia - North Korean calendar
Wikipedia - November -- Eleventh month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Nowruz -- Day of new year in the Persian and Zoroastrian calendars
Wikipedia - October -- Tenth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Odia calendar
Wikipedia - Old Calendar Bulgarian Orthodox Church
Wikipedia - Old Calendarists
Wikipedia - Old Calendar Romanian Orthodox Church
Wikipedia - Old Calendar
Wikipedia - Old Style and New Style dates -- Changes in calendar conventions from Julian to Gregorian and also (in some places) to date of start of year
Wikipedia - Orthodox Church of Greece (Holy Synod in Resistance) -- Traditionalist Greek Orthodox jurisdiction following the (Julian or Old) church calendar
Wikipedia - Pawukon calendar
Wikipedia - Pax Calendar
Wikipedia - Pentecontad calendar -- Ancient western Mesopotamian calendar using 7 periods of 50 days
Wikipedia - Perpetual calendar
Wikipedia - Persian calendar
Wikipedia - Pirelli Calendar -- Trade calendar
Wikipedia - Pisan calendar
Wikipedia - Pitri Paksha -- 16-lunar day period in Hindu calendar for ancestral worship
Wikipedia - Pollen calendar
Wikipedia - Portal:Current events/Calendars
Wikipedia - Positivist calendar
Wikipedia - Pradosha -- Bimonthly occasion in the Hindu calendar
Wikipedia - Pre-Islamic Arabian calendar
Wikipedia - Proleptic Gregorian calendar -- Extension of the Gregorian calendar before its introduction
Wikipedia - Proleptic Julian calendar
Wikipedia - Punjabi calendar
Wikipedia - Puthandu -- First day of the Tamil calendar
Wikipedia - Ramadan -- Ninth month in the Islamic calendar, and the month of fasting for Muslims
Wikipedia - Rapa Nui calendar
Wikipedia - Republic of China calendar
Wikipedia - Revised Julian Calendar
Wikipedia - Revised Julian calendar -- calendar used by some Eastern Orthodox churches
Wikipedia - Roman Calendar
Wikipedia - Roman calendar -- Calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic
Wikipedia - Roman Catholic liturgical calendar
Wikipedia - Rumi calendar
Wikipedia - Runic calendar -- Perpetual calendar based on the 19-year-long Metonic cycle of the Moon
Wikipedia - Safar -- Second month of the Islamic calendar
Wikipedia - September (Roman month) -- Seventh of ten months on the ancient Roman calendar
Wikipedia - September -- Ninth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
Wikipedia - Sextilis -- Original sixth month in the Roman calendar
Wikipedia - Sivan -- Month of the Hebrew calendar
Wikipedia - Slavic calendar
Wikipedia - Slavic Native Faith's calendars and holidays
Wikipedia - Solar calendar
Wikipedia - Solar Hijri calendar -- Official calendar of Iran and Afghanistan
Wikipedia - Somali calendar
Wikipedia - Sotho calendar
Wikipedia - Soviet calendar
Wikipedia - Spanish era -- Calendar era used in medieval Spain.
Wikipedia - Sunrise Calendar
Wikipedia - Swedish calendar
Wikipedia - Symmetry454 -- Proposal for calendar reform
Wikipedia - Tabular Islamic calendar
Wikipedia - Tamil calendar
Wikipedia - Tammuz (Hebrew month) -- Month of the Hebrew calendar
Wikipedia - Template talk:Calendars of saints
Wikipedia - Template talk:Calendars
Wikipedia - Template talk:Zoroastrian calendar
Wikipedia - Template:Year nav -- Calendar year|2=noreplace
Wikipedia - Thai calendar
Wikipedia - Thai lunar calendar
Wikipedia - Thai solar calendar
Wikipedia - The Calendar (1931 film) -- 1931 film
Wikipedia - Thirteenth salary -- A legal requirement to pay workers an additional salary at the end of the calendar year
Wikipedia - Tibetan calendar
Wikipedia - Tishri-years -- Ancient calendar system used in Israel/Judea, and the Jewish people in Diaspora
Wikipedia - TM-EM-^MnalpM-EM-^Mhualli -- Aztec calendar
Wikipedia - Tridentine Calendar
Wikipedia - Tripuri calendar
Wikipedia - True Orthodoxy -- Movement within Orthodox Christianity that has been separated from the mainstream Eastern Orthodox Church over issues of ecumenism and calendar reform since the 1920s
Wikipedia - Tsagaan Sar -- First day of the year according to the Mongolian lunar calendar
Wikipedia - Tulu calendar
Wikipedia - Undecimber -- Name for a thirteenth month in a calendar that normally has twelve months
Wikipedia - Upcoming -- Social event calendar website
Wikipedia - Vaisakha -- A month in Hindu calendar
Wikipedia - Valluvar year -- Calendar system used in Tamil Nadu
Wikipedia - VendM-CM-)miaire -- Month in the French Republican calendar
Wikipedia - Vietnamese calendar
Wikipedia - Waso -- Fourth month of the Burmese calendar
Wikipedia - World Calendar
Wikipedia - Xhosa calendar
Wikipedia - Year zero -- Year that does not exist in any past and/or present year-numbering calendar system
Wikipedia - Yoruba calendar
Wikipedia - Zoroastrian calendar
Wikipedia - Zulu calendar
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43609496-catana-comics-little-moments-of-love-2020-deluxe-day-to-day-calendar
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43700234-the-untethered-soul-2020-day-to-day-calendar
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43704534-calendarul-meu-prietenii-momente-i-atitudini-literare
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44021391-esther-the-wonder-pig-2019-12-x-12-inch-monthly-square-wall-calendar-by
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44090906-life-hacks-2020-day-to-day-calendar
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44169828-1-000-books-to-read-before-you-die-page-a-day-calendar-2020
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44415882-sarah-s-scribbles-2019-2020-16-month-monthly-weekly-planner-calendar
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4502659-jaguar-nights-2009-mayan-aztec-calendar
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567397.Calendar_Girl
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6238686-calendar-club
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7042132-the-8-calendars-of-the-maya
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7069603-christ-and-the-maya-calendar
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/710729.The_Shepherd_s_Calendar
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/794699.A_Calendar_of_Saints_for_Unbelievers
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9336187-calendar-of-regrets
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9479495-the-perpetual-calendar-of-inspiration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9568927-the-perpetual-calendar-of-inspiration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9810696-skinny-bitch-calendar
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https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/Calendar_Wiki:Guidelines_for_contributors
https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/Calendrical_software
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https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/Historical_Calendars_No_Longer_in_Use
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https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/User:Arivumani1
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https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/User_blog:Loco123456/Thomas_and_the_Magic_Railroad_-_The_Lost_Edition_Petitoin:_Please_Sign
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Julian_Calendar#Naming_of_the_months
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Julian_Calendar#Sources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Julian_Calendar#Year_numbering
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Liturgical_Calendar_of_the_Syro-Malabar_Catholic_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Lutheran_Calendar_of_Saints
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Maya_calendar
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mikveh_Calendar
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Nephite#Calendar_base_year
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/New_calendarists
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Old_Calendarists
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Anglican_Church_Calendars
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Calendar_of_Saints
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https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2011/01/supermind-and-calendar-any-connection.html
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2011/02/tibet-india-and-chinese-and-calendars.html
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2013/03/nirayana-calendar-committing-whole.html
Dharmapedia - Category:Observances_set_by_the_Indian_National_Calendar
Dharmapedia - Hindu_calendar
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/CalendarGirls
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/CalendarMysteries
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitSoHardTheCalendarFeltIt
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Calendar_of_Wisdom
Blake's 7 (1978 - 1981) - Loosely based on the Robin Hood legend, the show followed the exploits of a group of outlaw revolutionaries, led by a patriot-hero named Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas), who fought the fascist interstellar Terran Federation in the third century of the second calendar.
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed (2002 - 2003) - Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is an anime series developed by Sunrise and directed by Mitsuo Fukuda. The ninth incarnation to the Gundam franchise, Gundam SEED takes place in a future calendar era, in this case the Cosmic Era, the first to do so. The discovery of an advanced model of combat mecha on their...
Yattodetaman () (1981 - 1982) - Also known as "Calendar Men".
Calendar Girl(1993) - A trio of high school pals take off for the bright lights of Hollywood in hopes of meeting their object of desire, Marilyn Monroe, in 1962(4 days before sh
Calendar Girls(2003) - A Women's Institute chapter's fundraising effort for a local hospital by posing nude for a calendar becomes a media sensation.
Earth(2007) - The very first documentary film to be released by Disneynature Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Pictures. Over the course of a calendar year, Earth takes the viewer on a journey from the North Pole in January to the South in December, revealing how plants and animals respond to the power of the...
Campus Man(1987) - Todd Barrett is an aspiring businessman. He's got what it takes, but what he doesn't have is enough money to stay in college. So he cooks up a plan to make the first ever all male sports calendar. He eventually convinces Cactus Jack, a very shadowy and tough loan shark, to give him enough money to m...
https://myanimelist.net/anime/10823/Ranma___1994_Music_Calendar --
https://myanimelist.net/manga/43759/Love_Calendar
Calendar Girls (2003) ::: 6.9/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 48min | Comedy, Drama | 1 January 2004 (USA) -- A Women's Institute chapter's fundraising effort for a local hospital by posing nude for a calendar becomes a media sensation. Director: Nigel Cole Writers: Juliette Towhidi, Tim Firth
https://alienresearch.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Research:Calendar
https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/Alternative_Calendar
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Alexandrian_calendar_(God_Amongst_Men)
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Calendars_(Superpowers)
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Celtic_Calendar_(Celtic_Rules)
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Heraclian_Calendar_(Imperium_Islamica)
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Italian_Republican_Calendar_(Principia_Moderni_IV_Map_Game)
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Modern_Era_Calendar_(Day_of_Glory)
https://andalu.fandom.com/wiki/Archivo:Office-calendar.png
https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/Anglish_Daybook_(Calendar)
https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_Girl
https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_Man
https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_Man_(Arkhamverse)
https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Release_date_calendar
https://campaigns.fandom.com/wiki/Electoral_calendar
https://candycrushsoda.fandom.com/wiki/Candy_Crush_Soda_Wiki:Birthday_Calendar
https://chobits.fandom.com/wiki/Calendars
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_Man
https://discordia.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
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https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Jetania/2017-2018_school_calendar
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https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraftia/2018-2019_school_calendar
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraftia/2019-2020_school_calendar
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/The_Alternative_Calendar
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https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lunar_calendar
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Wa_Calendar
https://gex.fandom.com/wiki/Calendars
https://glee.fandom.com/wiki/Birthday_Calendar
https://grimm.fandom.com/wiki/Grimm_Wiki:Calendar
https://hockeyarena.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
https://howtotrainyourdragon.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_Train_Your_Dragon_Wiki:Birthday_Calendar
https://kubera.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
https://legendofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Zemuria/Septian_Calendar
https://lifestyle.fandom.com/wiki/Calendars
https://list.fandom.com/wiki/Sports_calendar_March_2007
https://littlehouse.fandom.com/wiki/Little_House_Wiki/Calendar
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_(iOS)
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_(macOS)
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_(Microsoft_service)
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Google_Calendar
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/ITV_News_Calendar
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Sunrise_(Calendar)
https://magicarena.fandom.com/wiki/Events/Calendar
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Calendars
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_50th_Anniversary_Official_Calendar
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Bubbles_Electronic_Calendar
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Cats_Calendar_(2021)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Cats_Calendar_(2022)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Cats_calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Daily_Calendar_(2013)
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Calendar_(2019)
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Calendar_(2021)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Calendar_(2022)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2014)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2015)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2016)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2017)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2018)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2019)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendar_(2020)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Engagement_Calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Into_Darkness_Calendar_(2014)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard_Calendar_(2021)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard_Calendar_(2022)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard_calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Poster_Calendar_(2017)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Poster_Calendar_(2018)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Poster_Calendar_(2019)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Poster_Calendar_(2020)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Poster_Calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Stardate_Calendar_(2007)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Calendar_(2022)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_calendars
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(1980)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(1986)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2007)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2009)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2010)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2011)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2012)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2013)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Calendar_(2014)
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https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_2001_Calendar
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_2002_Calendar
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Vomnin_calendar
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_calendar
https://mixels.fandom.com/wiki/Mixels:_2015_Wall_Calendar
https://mixels.fandom.com/wiki/Mixels:_2016_Wall_Calendar
https://mu.fandom.com/wiki/Event_Calendar
https://neopets.fandom.com/wiki/Advent_Calendar
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Countdown_Calendar
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_DSi_Calendar
https://ogrebattlesaga.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
https://ogres.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar_of_Events
https://onedirection.fandom.com/wiki/One_Direction_Wiki:Calendar
https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/BFBS_Calendar_1982
https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar
https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/On_This_Day_Calendar
https://plantsvszombies.fandom.com/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies_Wiki:Birthday_calendar
https://potcoplayers.fandom.com/wiki/POTCO_Players_Wiki:Calendar
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https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/API_CalendarGetMonthNames
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Chihayafuru 2: Waga Miyo ni Furu Nagame Shima ni -- -- Madhouse -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy Josei School Slice of Life -- Chihayafuru 2: Waga Miyo ni Furu Nagame Shima ni Chihayafuru 2: Waga Miyo ni Furu Nagame Shima ni -- The cultural festival is one of the most important events on the academic calendar. Just like all other clubs, Mizusawa's Karuta Club is preparing to participate as well. Due to previous circumstances, Team Captain Chihaya Ayase is temporarily absent during the team planning. First year student Sumire Hanano is intent on taking advantage of this occasion to fulfill her dream and finally make her teammate, Taichi Mashima, fall in love with her. A play based on Genji Monogatari might be just the thing she needs to enact her plan. -- -- OVA - Sep 13, 2013 -- 36,378 7.03
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE -- -- Sunrise -- 49 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Sci-Fi Space -- Mobile Suit Gundam AGE Mobile Suit Gundam AGE -- In A.G. 101 (the 101st year of the Advanced Generation calendar) a mysterious entity known only as "UE", or "unknown enemy", attacks and destroys the space colony Angel. This brutal attack becomes infamous as the "The Day the Angel Fell", and marks the beginning of humanity's war for survival. -- -- The series begins in A.G. 108 when the UE attack the space colony Ovan, where Flit Asuno lives with his mother. Flit's mother is killed by the UE, and in her belongings (in an object called a "AGE Device") he discovers the blueprints for a powerful weapon from the past - the ancient messiah named "Gundam." -- -- From these blueprints, Flit spends the next several years studying engineering at an Earth Federation base on the Nora space colony and designing the AGE-1 Gundam. Seven years later, in A.G. 115, Flit completes the Gundam, just as the UE attack Nora. Flit and his lineage's battle piloting the AGE-1 to protect mankind is about to begin. -- -- (Source: GoodAnime.net) -- TV - Oct 9, 2011 -- 26,963 6.49
Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo -- -- Sunrise -- 26 eps -- Original -- Adventure Comedy Sci-Fi Space -- Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo -- The story is set in the year 311 of the Orbital Calendar, when humanity has migrated to countless colony clusters in space. A space colony girl named Akiha Shishidou encounters a malevolent artificial intelligence named Leopard that has been installed on a colony. -- -- Akiha is joined by an Inter-Colony Police officer named Itsuki Kannagi, a taciturn young girl named Honoka Kawai, and a robot named Imoko "Imo-chan" Shishidou. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Jan 6, 2009 -- 22,830 7.00
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_Event_Calendar
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