Of the assassins Shakespeare had little use except to push them around on the stage. It’s a smooth irony that a Shakespearean actor killed Abraham Lincoln. Poor Lincoln died while watching a farce. This is how I’ve awakened today—lugubrious and itchy.
**
Why write a blog and share morsel thoughts? I was a lonely child. I couldn’t see and I’d go outside and shout “Is anybody out here?” Sometimes other kids wouldn’t answer. Why play with the blind kid—he just ruins the baseball game?
Is anybody out here?
**
Once when I was in graduate school in Iowa City I was so lonesome I turned the lights on and off repeatedly in my apartment. Maybe space aliens would come?
**
On the campus of Syracuse University there’s a wonderful statue of Abraham Lincoln riding a horse and reading a book at the same time. His horse knows where to go. I love that statue more than I can say.
**
CW/he’s getting grumpy now…
The poetry will heal you school thinks that the body is a thing to be overcome. It views the head as a lifeboat from disablement. Poetry is supposed to fix you up, and damn, here comes one of those crippled poets to mess it all up!
**
Without David Hume, no Thomas Jefferson. Without Jefferson, no Lincoln.
Early this morning a crow asked me his untranslatable question.
I think the crow is a fast learner and I’m a slow one.
Of slow learning vs. fast the disabled know much. I still remember with considerable pain the professor who told me that because I’m blind I shouldn’t be in his class. Why? Because I needed extra time to read. What is that?
Davie Hume:
“When it is asked, whether a quick or a slow apprehension be most valuable? Whether one, that, at first view, penetrates far into a subject, but can perform nothing upon study; or a contrary character, which must work out everything by dint of application? Whether a clear head or a copious invention? Whether a profound genius or a sure judgement? In short, what character, or peculiar turn of understanding, is more excellent than another? It is evident, that we can answer none of these questions, without considering which of those qualities capacitates a man best for the world, and carries him farthest in any undertaking.”
Excerpt From: “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.”
And that should be the question: “what will carry us the farthest?”
I know that’s what the crow was talking about.
Don’t you just love natural philosophy?
**
Yes, Chopin, piano, but it’s his violin I’m interested in. Such softness. And hope. Did I give up on hope? The violin says I was in danger of it.
I’ve had poor training in hope. Oh I’ve had lots of ideas. I studied poetry writing and ideas were all about. For instance I used to think if you just got in touch with the unconscious everything would be set right. That was New Age utopianism and I didn’t question it. I thought surrealism would save us. It never occurred to me that this wasn’t necessarily a hopeful idea.
The only untrue thing Emily Dickinson ever wrote was that hope is the thing with feathers. It is the violin. Birds or angels are no match for the violin.
**
Last night I prayed as I lay down. I asked to be made kinder and stronger. I am aware this isn’t hip.
Strictly speaking I’m not hip. When I was very young I thought the postman was the coolest person alive. Wanting to be like him I walked up and down our rural street ringing doorbells and handout out old copies of the New York Times.
Planet of the Blind 