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“Nullus enim locus sine genio est.”

  Servius.

“La musique,” says Marmontel, in those “Contes
Moraux” which in all our translations we have insisted upon
calling “Moral Tales,” as if in mockery of their
spirit—”la musique est le seul des talens qui
jouisse de lui-meme: tous les autres veulent des
temoins.” He here confounds the pleasure derivable from
sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more
than any other talent, is that for music susceptible
of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to
appreciate its exercise; and it is only in common with other
talents that it produces effects which may be fully
enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has
either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its
expression to his national love of point, is
doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of
music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are
exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be
admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake
and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still
within the reach of fallen mortality, and perhaps only one,
which owes even more than does music to the accessory
sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in
the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who
would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in
solitude behold that glory. To me at least the presence, not
of human life only, but of life, in any other form than that
of the green things which grow upon the soil and are
voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape, is at war with the
genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark
valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently
smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the
proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,—I
love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members
of one vast animate and sentient whole—a whole whose
form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most
inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets;
whose meek handmaiden is the moon; whose mediate sovereign
is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of
a god; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are
lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin
with our own cognizance of the animalculae which
infest the brain, a being which we in consequence regard as
purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as
these animalculae must thus regard us.

Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us
on every hand, notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant
of the priesthood, that space, and therefore that bulk, is
an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The
cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for
the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible
number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately
such as within a given surface to include the greatest
possible amount of matter; while the surfaces themselves are
so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could
be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor
is it any argument against bulk being an object with God
that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity
of matter to fill it; and since we see clearly that the
endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—
indeed, as far as our judgments extend, the leading
principle in the operations of Deity, it is scarcely logical
to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where
we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august.
As we find cycle within cycle without end, yet all revolving
around one far-distant centre which is the Godhead, may we
not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within
life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit
Divine? In short, we are madly erring through self-esteem in
believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies,
to be of more moment in the universe than that vast “clod of
the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to which he
denies a soul, for no more profound reason than that he does
not behold it in operation.

These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my
meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the
rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the every-day world
would not fail to term the fantastic. My wanderings amid
such scenes have been many and far-searching, and often
solitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through
many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected heaven
of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened
by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone.
What flippant Frenchman was it who said, in allusion to the
well known work of Zimmermann, that “la solitude est une
belle chose; mais il faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la
solitude est une belle chose”? The epigram cannot be
gainsaid; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.

It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far
distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad
rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all,
that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came
upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon
the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub,
that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that
thus only should I look upon it, such was the character of
phantasm which it wore.

On all sides, save to the west where the sun was about
sinking, arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little
river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus
immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its
prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the
trees to the east; while in the opposite quarter (so it
appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there
poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley a
rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains
of the sky.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took
in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed
upon the ***** of the stream.

So blended bank and shadow there, That each seemed pendulous
in air—

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely
possible to say at what point upon the ***** of the emerald
turf its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to
include in a single view both the eastern and western
extremities of the islet, and I observed a singularly-marked
difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant
harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the
eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers.
The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-
interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, *****, bright,
slender, and graceful, of eastern figure and foliage, with
bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep
sense of life and joy about all, and although no airs blew
from out the heavens, yet everything had motion through the
gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that
might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.

The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the
blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom,
here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and
mournful in form and attitude— wreathing themselves
into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas
of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep
tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung
droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small
unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that
had the aspect of graves, but were not, although over and
all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The
shades of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed
to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the
element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the
sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly
from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed
by the stream, while other shadows issued momently from the
trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed.

This idea having once seized upon my fancy greatly excited
it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. “If ever island
were enchanted,” said I to myself, “this is it. This is the
haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of
the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they
yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In
dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering
unto God little by little their existence, as these trees
render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance
unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that
imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys
upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which
engulfs it?”

As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank
rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and
round the island, bearing upon their ***** large dazzling
white flakes of the bark of the sycamore, flakes which, in
their multiform positions upon the water, a quick
imagination might have converted into anything it pleased;
while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one
of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its
way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the
western end of the island. She stood ***** in a singularly
fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar.
While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her
attitude seemed indicative of joy, but sorrow deformed it as
she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at
length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light.
“The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,”
continued I musingly, “is the cycle of the brief year of her
life. She has floated through her winter and through her
summer. She is a year nearer unto death: for I did not fail
to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from
her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its
blackness more black.”

And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the
attitude of the latter there was more of care and
uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from
out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently),
and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and
became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she
made the circuit of the island (while the sun rushed down to
his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was
more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far
fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the
gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became
whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length, when the sun
had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her
former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the
region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all
I cannot say, for darkness fell over all things, and I
beheld her magical figure no more.
Ben Jones Jun 2013
Fleas as a breed are troublesome
And some much more than most
There’s a vegan flea that lives near me
By the title of Archibald Post
He has a peculiar aptitude
For the swift calculation of odds
So he hunts for his prey on the high street
Leaving peas sound asleep in their pods.

When he leapt up and nibbled the ankle
Of a bloke as he ambled on by
He parked his parasitic posterior
And gazed up at the open sky
The bitten man stopped and scratched an itch
And harassed his smitten limb
When a blind man with a Labrador
Careered straight into him

He fell over and dropped his hamburger
The dog lunged and caught it with speed
But leading his man into traffic
Was the price of this dastardly deed
A car swerved and walloped a lamppost
Which fell through the front of a florist
The bulb set alight an entire display
Like a fire in a miniature forest

A girl in the office above the street
Grabbed her phone to call out some help
When she dropped it in her anxiety
And it fractured her toe with a yelp
She lent on the windowsill urgently
And knocked off and apple she’d saved
Its descent to the street was in moments complete
And the apple was thoroughly paved

Archibald smiled, breakfast was served

**
L Meyer Oct 2013
When you first told me you loved me,
I didn’t believe you.
But you managed to convince me,
when every time I tried to fold myself away from you,
you were unwilling to let me go alone.

You careered into the depths of my bends,
and I believed that you did love me.
This poem might be proof that you loved me.

But darling, paper can only be folded so many times,
before it becomes too compact,
and sits defiant of your efforts.

And all that's left is to
use your hands to try and smooth it over.
But creases can never be removed.  
Which is okay,
because some stories are meant to be told.

I said some stories

Like the time you spent
rearranging the furniture to our bedroom,
while I was busy rearranging the space of my heart.  
It seemed impossible,
but you managed to find a place
for that worn, leather chair,
just like I found space, again, for you.
    
You pushed my white desk neatly into a corner;
like the bends of your knees
tuck perfectly into the crooks of mine while we sleep.  
The bed was shifted from one wall to another,
thus uncovering the window
that lets in the first sunlight of each dawn,
and I could finally see the differences between us in their entirety.

but differences  are not secrets, dear
and I have met enough hurtful people to know
that ignorance is rarely blissful.  

To rearrange may not be a virtue,  
but god should bless those
with the patience of perspective.

It wasn’t long after
that my heart ate its way out of you,
and started attacking strangers.
Its tirade quickly stifled
by an avalanche of lies
that no amount of light
could have ever revealed.
Sack Williams Jan 2010
Down
His
Throat
Her arm careered

Around
His
Larynx
Her fingers twirled

And
Ripped
Snatched
Yanked, pulled, vellicated

Down
the
Esophagus
went the voicebox
And into his gut, boiling over, bubbling with acid

Sarah
told
Bobby
That he overtalked

And she forced him to eat his words.
My name is Caspar Benson. I live in London, England and I have just turned fifteen. I am not here to relieve myself to you as one would a biography, I only invest a small portion of myself and the reason is so that I may get an answer to my own most unorthodox problems.

I am possessed with the uncanny tenure of seeing dead people. Even in the most tranquil of surroundings it seems that I play host to a whole plethora of ghostly incantation. They frequent my company at the most in-opurtune moments and can be overbearing and troublesome to say the least. I wonder if you might think of this as a gift from God? Could it be a holy career prospect, am I the gate keeper for representing those whom have passed a voice in the real world? Well, I hope not.

Is it by coincidence that I am named Caspar? Did my parents know something that I didn't or can I place the choice of this moniker down to simply bad taste. Caspar. That friendly ball of cotton wool that floats before unreal characters, the laughable entity that is the comical outlook of death.

Do you see a representation of a ghost as perhaps “Spielberg” might?

I see a very different picture. Not the allure of my friendly name-sake but a portrait of death in a more repugnant tone: Ghoulish, abhorrent and uncensored. They sport no cosmetic improvement or Hollywood make-up artist to embellish their looks. As they died, they stand before me.

I often heard voices and have learnt well not to mention these facts for fear of being presented (at regular intervals) to the psychiatrists office. Indeed this was more than enough to secure my silence.

Can you imagine, the small frightened child lying in bed at night listening to footsteps crossing my bedroom floor, uninvited whispers in the darkness or maybe just the shock of objects levitating around my room? It is perhaps more surprising that I am not shackled in a straight jacket or left to bound around a padded cell. The torture of having to bare this without being able to confide it for want of being treated like a nut case is far from God given.

My first actual glimpse of these ethereal beings came on my tenth birthday. I was rather enjoying my party and as I was obliged to blow out the ten candles that adorned the top of my cake. This was witnessed by my parents, a few school friends and a whole host of paranormal gate-crashers. I also had the company of a rather newly departed couple who had apparently ended their days under the wheels of a drunk drivers vehicle. All in all though I think that I handled the task quite well considering. It wasn't actually a blowing out of the flames on the candles, it was more like a tsunami of ***** that extinguished them. This didn't go down very well with my parents or school chums, although I do believe their were a few spiritual sniggers in the background.

I have since learned to curb my initial reactions to these visitations to a more admirable and controlled response. Let us just say that the day was a problematic one and leave it at that. Although I did get to have a lovely chat with the impending nut doctor but thought better than to tell her the real story.

I have heard the most unusual and explicit conversations, stuff that would excite any budding writer of horror and gore but I had never actually conversed with any of my unearthly visitors. In the early days I was only privy to hearing them and I believe that I have felt them as they have careered past me and on many occasion through me but I have not had a proper dialogue. That is until now.

I had never heard of the term “Spirit Guide” until recently, I didn't actually know what one was but I do now. I have read (mainly from Google) about them and everyone one on the planet seems to be an expert except me, although now I know that they mostly all spinning a yarn for gullible persons to believe. I was never overwhelmed by a Navajo Indian nor a Swashbuckling Pirate guide and I definitely never swooned around in a spiralling stupor.

No! She just casually approached me and said hello. It took me some time to actually realise that she was dead and something I found very hard to digest. However this actuality was helped along enormously, when just to prove a point she disappeared in front of me and materialised instantly behind me. Without a doubt the most surreal confab I have ever experienced.

Her name is Gloria, she is seventeen, or perhaps I should say she was seventeen at the time of her death but apart from the fact that she is deceased, she is the most stunning girl I have ever met. No greyish ghostly apparition, just a fun and loving corpse to be around.

Over the past few months we have become very close in fact I would use the words love as a most positive account of the feelings we have for each other. When we touch, yes we can touch and we have on very consistent occasions. Our relationship has at time been one of an intimate nature. I am not afraid to say that I love a ***** and she is without a doubt my special spectre. The fact that no-one else can see her is a nothing to me but I have had to refrain from holding her hand or cuddling her in company. I do get some of the strangest looks from people, I suppose one can understand this. We have discussed this and at time it makes sense that I should pretend that she isn't there but it kills me to have to ignore her. It doesn't do to talk to an invisible being with your parents or friends present believe me.

The dilemma we had was where do we go from here? It isn't something one can really ask about is it? I do not know about any Agony Aunt column that would really be applicable in this instance. I wonder what the reply would be if I did confide in my mother or father. I do believe it would be an Institution for me and perhaps a Exorcist for her. Many young couples can have many troubles with loving someone within the wrong ethnicity or religious persuasion although I have never heard say of any difficulty that portrays the one we are suffering from.

The only option I have it seems for a happy life with my beloved is death, not a nasty death though I want to be in the same physical shape as I was when I lived. Blades leave scars so poison was the way to go. As my life ebbs away I know my folks will think that I died alone but my Gloria is with me every step of the way and it is in her arms that I lay, dead to the world but more alive in my demise than I ever was in my short lifetime.

While others get old and infirm and eventually laid to rest, we will still be young and in love.
July 2014
Nat Lipstadt Oct 15
What does baking require of us?
It requires patience, thoughtfulness, an eye to your surroundings, otherwise known as
simply paying attention and responding accordingly.


more gourmand than gourmet,
who believes like the firmament above
that the transportation of
the human soul is enlightened,
enlivened
by the aroma of scent of
an endless freshly baked loaf of bread

need to confess,
never held
a rolling pin,
nor had a mustache white
made of flour
upon my face,
and if ere the toaster oven
had not been
installed invested or even invented
in a kitchen,
the only thing
I would ever have
preheated is the body
of a woman who truly
was loved
complete and insane
daily for
sixteen
years

but the perfume of a
newly baked brioche
can bring me to
tears
just as a newly unearthed,
the child of a poem
writhing within me
emerging, even surging
from the soiled placenta
of my
souled~soiled mind&heart,
borne and born
yeah,
even
bre(a)d

so I read an article about
a baker from France,
reading the words above
and wonder
what did I miss,
forfeit,
after a lifetime liftoff of
a badly chosen careered life
that i did trust love
or so I thot!

wondering why bakers are the way
they are. There is a quietness, and a kindness, to their lives that veers into almost monastic behavior. Perhaps it is simply the ancientness of being a fire maker — tending a hearth really brings something out in a person.


how I glowed and flowed
with recognition of the
esprit de corps
(borrowed identically
from French to our
Anglais lexicon)
in all acts of creation,
a fabulous trade,
a new conception
eye spied on the streets of
My Manhattan

understood the mesmerizing
heat of a crackling fire
for children of all ages
and the why~when
the birth canal opens,
I must be alone with
the quietude that
tries and fails
to hold the raging
heated hot juices inside,
kept nope, not in check,
so formatting them into
a disc shape,
lest they spill unseeded floored,
a pour of ooze,
crisping the lost flesh
of flames eradicating
from
the plenitude distractions of
short term, this modern life

<>

Sunday,
in my America is a holy day,
a sabbatical
marked by rituals sacred,
brunch, football games
or maschostically
even two on a
Josephian
coat of
many colored  channels

all this followed by
with a desert tray of
patisserie,
PBS (1) ****** mystery tv shows
of British origin
for a somewhat lessened
yet still violent contested cultural
amuse bouche

In between,
the ladies squeeze in
a Great British Baking Show,
which says when suggested
you’ve been bested
and
‘Yo Boy,
time to ****, Nat
them deserts make you fatter,
by mere visual osmosis’
and contemptible contemplation

and that contested kitchened
atmosphere
antithetical to introspective
inspection
which life ingested in you
overly oveyly
aplenty
in placed,

so now I wonder
if this,
a career chosen
by youthful me,
the maledom masculine shouting of the
traditional trading room,
where ego was nourished
within a veneer of analytics,
rationed rationales reasoned,
was down to the nearest $ sign,
was it
the right place for me,
and how it sponsored within me,
a need ultimately
to sit
in ancien worn
by fig & vine
in uncomfortable Adirondack thrones,

a bright need
to sit by  the
saluting salutation waves of
a constant lapping bay,
and the conversation of
a current thrusting empowered
tidal basin rivers
waters both
lightly salted fresh water
in piety poetic
combination,
all fed by genteel
small mountain streams,
all flowing, by gravity sent,
to assemble ingredients
of
verbs, noun words in
an adjectival temple,
unkempt kept simple,

in different voices
well  hid **** deep
beneath his skin, his bone,
for to simply order up;
a bake off up,
a meringue of
poems

and to better understand what
our well definable,
oh so human
l i f e

requires,
even demands
without surcease,
of us
?
all the while
we
twogether
areexpelling the rap we
breathe
and the scented heaven
of holy wine and
unlimited
loaves of
yup,
b r e a d


nmlipstadt
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/magazine/best-brioche-recipe.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
tweaked to pass inspection broadcast on the double
(alternately titled snafu: ma bell heave hubble
vehicular repairs (prohibitive)
finds me bleary eyed stupefied
and countenance grizzled with prickly stubble
collapsed amidst virtual rubble).

Best sung courtesy rotten dull liver:red worst
after words which, I gotta quench mine thirst
whereby think Botox lips zipped and pursed
hence impossible linkedin mission Mary Jane
and Buster Brown kisser **** it result socked
hermetically resigned, resealed and cursed.

Atheistic credo fuels (fossil)
jeremiad ordaining undevout
finds me cybersurfing phishing
for poetic effort to tout
March seventeenth tooth house sand twenty two
presents reasonable rhyming lit writ scout
herewith risk averse longfellow
on his figurative er... route
criss crossing along backroads or superhighway.

Netizen (generic and garden variety) Cain
not, nor able to don virtualtourist Lausanne
guise, nor Kiev hen twitter among Ukraine
literati earlier today (aforementioned date)
afflicting me courtesy GMO webbed strain
iambic phantom metered node hissing drain
analogous to evaporating Lake Pontchartrain.

Cuz unwitting faulty mechanism
to stop and/or sustain acceleration of car,
I suspect complicit with accessory ghost
haunts micro electronic components machine most
culpable, feasible, n invisible Internet Protocol host
laryngeal mucous phlegm wreaks (think) burnt toast
esophageal acid reflux analogous metaphor, I post
downplaying feeling any reason to rhyme or boast
spun words masterly sharecropped along east coast.

Now, I gotta cure dem rascally misbehavin
scored rotors (front) automotive woes,
cuz thousand plus dollar repair cost
fixation finds me seeking to locked haven
to remedy necessary functioning automobile iz craven
lobbying scattershot spewing colorful hell raisin
lingo (awk curse) strung expletive epithets
extraordinary Luddite across cyberspace will lose.

Hence yours truly careered into funk courtesy astute
keen reality regarding necessity
to fork over outrageous loot
while he/she whistles Mozart's The Magic Flute
or visit nearest zoo to hire nasty, and shortish brute
critical electronic hardware, cuz aye got absolute
zero ability and even less legal tender slangy loot
thus Internet loper feel handicapped as deaf mute
unable to hear auld Donald trumpeting slo vac toot.

Unlikely yukon rectify, remedy, and/or resolve war
tis necessary within these backwoods to own car,
nonetheless please pardon rambling,
and exhale relief ja live afar.

— The End —