ATARAXIA....a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquility.

And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!

But you were living before that,
And you are living after,
And the memory I started at—
My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather—
Well, I forget the rest.

***

Watching my little girl play with her conkers and marbles in a way different to her cousin( she always called him her `'brother" 'cos she always wanted one so she just made him one with words.

Conkers of course would be "buckeyes" in America. As kids we were bonkers about conkers even if all we did was collect them and have as stash of them. Put a fresh conker behind furniture or near windows to keep the spider population low!

Around Worcestershire it was known as ‘oblionker’ (****. obly-onker) and play was accompanied by such rhymes as ‘Obli, obli, onker, my first conker (conquer)’. The word oblionker apparently being a meaningless invention to rhyme with the word conquer, which has by degrees become applied to the nut itself.

"M'APPARI TUTT' AMOR..."Lionel's aria from from Flotow's Martha

M'appari tutt' amor; She appeared to me, full of love,
il mio sguardo l'incontró my eyes caught sight of her;
bella si che il mio cor so beautiful that my heart
ansioso a lei voló; flew to her with longing;
mi feri, mi rapi was wounded and inflamed
quell'angelica belta by her angelic beauty
sculta in cor dall'amor, which love has engraved in my heart,
cancellarsi non potra, and which cannot be erased,
il pesier di poter         and the mere thought
palpitar con lei d'amor; of her responding to my passion
puó soprir ji martir is able to appease the suffering
che m'affanna e strazia il cor! which distresses me and breaks my heart!

Marta. Marta, tu sparisti Martha, Martha, you have vanished,
e ji mio cor con tuo ne andó! and my heart went with you!
Tu la pace mi rapisti, You have stolen my peace of mind,
di dolor jo moriró ah! I shall die of grief,
di dolor morró, al, morró! ah! I shall die, shall die of grief!

You can see this sung as a charmin serenade in the film BREAKING AWAY ! and in the soapuds episode from ***** WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY and used here and there in Hitchcock's  REAR WINDOW.There are also two swing versions.

My Da didn't know any of this and it was just a passing air on the radio that got stuck in his head and he would hum or la la la it every now and then as he hammered or sawed without knowing anything about it! It was only years later when he was 90 that I was able to tell him what it was and get him a recording of Domingo singing it.
Of course it features highly in a certain Mr. Joyce book as well. Caruso had made it popular and Joyce always a big Caruso fan( he had hoped to do an interview with the great man when he came to Dublin but that came to nothing.)


‘Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. ***** I saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Delores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring.

—Martha! Ah, Martha!

Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere.

—Co-ome, thous lost one!
Co-ome, thou dear one!

Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote, return!

—Come …!

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial *****, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness …….

—To me!

Siopold!
Consumed.’

We were just after looking at Chinese Watercolours at MoMA and then we actually became one....painting...real world and our selves all become one in a split second.

votre cœur
le seul autel
Je peux à s'agenouiller

*******

SKIN & BLISTER is Cockney rhyming slang for sister. We were so close we could have worn each other fingerprints and as a little boy I was delighted to do so. I was her and me was she. This I guess is something we did to amuse ourselves before...telly arrived.

Carl Jung - Liber Primus "My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding these words. I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the word from the depths..."

The title is from Chaucer's  The Miller's Tale which I was reading at the time. I was making an apple pie at the time and listening to a song he liked and watching the birds in the garden. Just the ordinary minutia of a  day that had no particular place to go until that phone call and the world just seemed to seep away. The apple pie just burnt.

Today I baked my first apple pie since then and watched a hoard of magpies playing in the garden...seven for a secret never to be told.

DAPHNAÏDA

V
‘Hencefoorth I hate what ever Nature made,
And in her workmanship no pleasure finde:
For they be all but vaine, and quickly fade,         395
So soone as on them blowes the northern winde;
They tarrie not, but flit and fall away,
Leaving behind them nought but griefe of minde,
And mocking such as thinke they long will stay.

‘I hate the heaven, because it doth withhold         400
Me from my love, and eke my love from me;
I hate the earth, because it is the mold
Of fleshly slime and fraile mortalitie;
I hate the fire, because to nought it flyes,
I hate the ayre, because sighes of it be,         405
I hate the sea, because it teares supplyes.

‘I hate the day, because it lendeth light
To see all things, and not my love to see;
I hate the darknesse and the drery night,
Because they breed sad balefulnesse in mee;         410
I hate all times, because all times doo fly
So fast away, and may not stayed bee,
But as a speedie post that passeth by.

‘I hate to speake, my voyce is spent with crying:
I hate to heare, lowd plaints have duld mine eares:         415
I hate to tast, for food withholds my dying:
I hate to see, mine eyes are dimd with teares:
I hate to smell, no sweet on earth is left:
I hate to feele, my flesh is numbd with feares:
So all my senses from me are bereft.         420

‘I hate all men, and shun all womankinde;
The one, because as I they wretched are,
The other, for because I doo not finde
My love with them, that wont to be their starre:
And life I hate, because it will not last,         425
And death I hate, because it life doth marre,
And all I hate, that is to come or past.

‘So all the world, and all in it I hate,
Because it changeth ever too and fro,
And never standeth in one certaine state,         430
But still unstedfast round about doth goe,
Like a mill wheele, in midst of miserie,
Driven with streames of wretchednesse and woe,
That dying lives, and living still does dye.

‘So doo I live, so doo I daylie die,         435
And pine away in selfe-consuming paine:
Sith she that did my vitall powres supplie,
And feeble spirits in their force maintaine,
Is fetcht fro me, why seeke I to prolong
My wearie daies in dolor and disdaine?         440
Weep, shepheard, weep, to make my undersong.

Edmund Spenser