TwentyOneClub

Tainted Love

2011-08-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away I've got to
Get away
From the pain you drive into the heart of me
The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night

Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly...
Oh...tainted love
Tainted love

Now I know I've got to
Run away I've got to
Get away
You don't really want anymore from me
To make things right
You need someone to hold you tight
And you think love is to pray
But I'm sorry I don't pray that way

Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
Oh...tainted love
Tainted love

Don't touch me please
I cannot stand the way you tease
I love you though you hurt me so
Now I'm gonna pack my things and go
Tainted love, tainted love (x2)
Touch me baby, tainted love (x2)
Tainted love (x3)

You Can't Go Back Home Again

2011-08-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

Never Again

Homage to Duane Michals

2011-08-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon, when things were still good between us, and she embraced me, and we were so happy. It did happen, she did love me. Look see for yourself!

Why Does This Make Me So Sad? Forever.

2011-08-15T18:51:00.001-07:00

Ellen at Sight Glass

2010-12-14T14:54:00.000-08:00

Niland and Ellen

2010-12-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

2010-11-18T23:07:00.000-08:00

2010-11-16T16:29:00.000-08:00

Here we are on a fine Sunday in November (11/13/2010) on Montara Beach between Half Moon Bay and Pacifica.

2010-06-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Niland & Ellen

June 2010

North Carolina
Publish Post

2010-06-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

From a fellow Dolphin Club member:

As a few of you may have already heard - while rowing in a heavy  wooden double on this most beautiful of mornings at The Gate, I  witnessed a suicide from the bridge.   At 9:10 this morning I was about 50 feet NE of the South Tower when I  noticed a body falling from the East side walkway approximately 100  feet from the same tower. The body hit the water within a hundred feet  of the boat. I did not see the individual climb the rail. Neither  did I see him hit the water as I was already reaching for my phone to  call 911. Coast Guard was on scene within 14 minutes of my call and  had called me twice while en route. Immediately after my call a smoke flare was dropped from the bridge to provide a visual track of tide to assist in rescue - although it stayed on the inside of The Gate for  the most part while the body was retrieved about 50 feet due West of  the tower. We constantly stayed within 10-20 feet of the body until:  thanked, called off and saluted by the Coast Guard.   

The jumper remained on his back the entire time with arms above his  head raising his t-shirt slightly. I never saw his head as it  remained below the water's surface. We departed before the body was  removed from the water.

As a native son I have grown up knowing of the reputation and 'lure'  of what I will always consider one of the most beautiful of  structures. I knew that as the tally of jumpers closed in on 1,000  the numbers were no longer publisized and that very rarely does one  survive. I learned today that: the number is now close to 1300 (500  in 1973); it takes about four seconds until impact; 75% of jumpers  choose the city side; and most go over as close to the center of the  bridge as possible.

It felt like a very long row back to the club.

Nikko Afternoon (homage to Wallace Stevens)

2009-11-11T23:08:00.001-08:00

After the leaves have fallen, we return

To a plain sense of things. It is as if

We had come to an end of the imagination,

Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective,

For this blank cold, this sadness without cause,

The great structure has become a minor house,

No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.

The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.

A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition

In its repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had

Itself to be imagined. The great pond,

The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,

Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence.

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,

The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this

Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,

Required, as a necessity requires.

17 Mile Drive, Pebble Beach

2009-10-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,

Over and under the ocean...

Divinely superfluous beauty

Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes trees grow

And hills tower, waves fall.

The incredible beauty of joy

Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our loves too

Be joined, there is not a maiden

Burns and thirsts for love

More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals while the

wings

Weave like a web in the air

Divinely superfluous beauty.

Robinson Jeffers

Sea Creature Fantasy/Monterey Bay Aquarium

2009-10-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

How can these creatures even be real, living their lovely lives deep under the waves, a marvel of Nature. Leafy Sea Dragons, native to Southern and Western Australia. Will our children be able to see them? Will their children? The rate at which the seas are warming spells disaster for these and countless other species. Can we as a world population change enough to meet the challenge? Can we go slower, preserve, find happiness with less, not reward growth at the expense of the environment, find importance over immediacy, cherish what we have, what's left?

The Metaphysics of Notation

2009-10-05T13:04:00.001-07:00

Mark Applebaum, associate professor of composition and theory in Stanford’s Department of Music,
has composed The Metaphysics of Notation specifically for installation at the Cantor Arts Center. This unique and unusual work winds its way around the Geballe Family Balcony before reaching its destination in the Rowland K. Rebele Gallery.

Applebaum’s score is a work of visual art teeming with evocative glyphs and densely arranged pictographs. The meaning of these visual figures is deliberately left undefined by the composer; each performer is invited to make a sonic realization of the score by articulating its signs according to a personal interpretation.

Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, October 1st Opening, Tenderloin, San Francisco

2009-10-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Taylor & Travis

Taylor & Niland

Time's Arrow

2009-09-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

With this knotted band I pledge the destiny of my soul, forever, so deeply and profoundly,

without measure, without end. Heart to heart, all the world conspires to make this love so perfect, so full of life. To infinity and beyond!

Fort Funston Beach, Labor Day 2009

2009-09-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf

Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.

They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,

And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed

Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections

The sun beats lightning on the waves,

The waves fold thunder on the sand;

And could they hear me I would tell them:

O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,

Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached

By time and the elements; but there is a line

You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it

Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses

Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

--And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As her demeanors motion well or ill,
All but the pieties of lovers' hands.
And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,--
Hasten, while they are true,--sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

Ubuntu, Napa

2009-08-07T21:20:00.001-07:00

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu further explained Ubuntu as follows (2008):

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu - the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality - Ubuntu - you are known for your generosity.

We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

San Francisco Poetry Festival 2009 Opening

2009-07-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

we were a sight

in the Caffe Trieste

back in 1975 and the years

that followed, time

never guillotined us

and we remained

sure of

our beat

attitude

right up

until the doors

shut for the night

hand to

hand, eye

to finger, back

and ambition

conspiring

into a single

song

Lake Merritt, Oakland

2009-07-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

There was an ease of mind that was like being alone in a boat at sea,

A boat carried forward by waves resembling the bright backs of rowers,

Gripping their oars, as if they were sure of the way to their destination,

Bending over and pulling themselves erect on the wooden handles,

Wet with water and sparkling in the one-ness of their motion.

W.S. Prologues to What is Possible

Tassajara, July 2009

2009-07-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,

Over and under the ocean...

Divinely superfluous beauty

Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes tress grow

And hills tower, waves fall.

The incredible beauty of joy

Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our loves too

Be joined, there is not a maiden

Burns and thirsts for love

More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals while the wings

Weave like a web in the air

Divinely superfluous beauty.

Robinson Jeffers

Why We Love San Francisco

2009-06-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

Ellen learns stand up paddling from Kevin, Aquatic Park

2009-06-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

Swimming is Peace

2009-06-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

June Evening

2009-06-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

Is there something I should know?

That I love you; that you are beautiful and gorgeous and fabulous; that you are as soft and sweet as a summer meadow; and as strong and powerful as a wave. That you have brought joy and peace and lust and sheer animal magnetism into my life; have made me happy beyond words; have given me a million billion reasons to say YES and want LIFE; have made me proud to be a man among men again; have shown me lightness and strength, intelligence and womanliness; beauty and the graceful silence of sleep. You have made me whole; you have entered my life as a miracle would. I love you. XOXO

An Evening at Oxbow, Napa

2009-05-31T14:58:00.001-07:00

Sam's Visit, May 20-25, 2009

2009-05-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

May 17, 2009. A little bit of heaven at 550 Battery Street

2009-05-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

Let me fall

Let me climb

There's a moment when fear

and dream must collide.

Someone I am

Is waiting for courage

The one I want

The one I will become

Will catch me.

So let me fall

If I must fall

I won't heed your warnings

I won't hear them.

All I ask

All I need

Let me open whichever

door I might open.

Let me fall

If I fall

Though the phoenix may

or may not rise.

I will dance so freely

Holding on to no one

You can hold me only

If you too will fall

Away from these

Useless fears and chains.

Let me fall

If I fall

There's no reason

To miss this one chance

This perfect moment

Just let me fall.

May 16-17 Sonoma & Napa

2009-05-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

French Flea Market ,Chateau Sonoma, Somona

The French Laundry, Yountville, Napa

Roses at French Laundry

Yountville, Napa

Kenwood, Sonoma

Gordon's garden, Sonoma

Columbia County, New York- Weekend, May 9-11, 2009

2009-05-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Hudson River at Midwood

Farewell New York

Haiku, May 7, 2009

2009-05-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

the body recalls

a language not spoken, but

said with more than words

Chapters of Memory IV-Paris

2009-05-06T23:16:00.001-07:00

In homage to Mercedes Erra with heartfelt thanks

San Francisco Terrain

2009-05-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

This beautiful sculpture has been created by Conor Fennessy in homage to the sensational ups and downs unique to the City on the Bay. It's available at Conor Fennessy Antiques and Design, 801 Columbus Avenue, in the heart of North Beach, the heart of San Francisco, or online at

www. sanfranciscoterrain.com.

A Day in Early May

2009-05-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

Voyages - I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf

Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.

They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,

And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed

 Gaily digging and scattering.

 And in answer to their treble interjections

The sun beats lightning on the waves,

The waves fold thunder on the sand;

 And could they hear me I would tell them:

O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,

 Fondle your shells and sticks,

 bleached By time and the elements;

 but there is a line You must not cross

 nor ever trust beyond it

Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses

Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

 -- Hart Crane

To E. L. 05/03/09

2009-05-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

WHEN WE WITH SAPPHO

“. . . about the cool water
the wind sounds through sprays
of apple, and from the quivering leaves
slumber pours down . . .”

We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
Orchard of a decayed New England farm,
Summer in our hair, and the smell
Of summer in our twined bodies,
Summer in our mouths, and summer
In the luminous, fragmentary words
Of this dead Greek woman.
Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
Your grace is as beautiful as sleep.
You move against me like a wave
That moves in sleep.
Your body spreads across my brain
Like a bird filled summer;
Not like a body, not like a separate thing,
But like a nimbus that hovers
Over every other thing in all the world.
Lean back. You are beautiful,
As beautiful as the folding
Of your hands in sleep.

We have grown old in the afternoon.
Here in our orchard we are as old
As she is now, wherever dissipate
In that distant sea her gleaming dust
Flashes in the wave crest
Or stains the murex shell.
All about us the old farm subsides
Into the honey bearing chaos of high summer.
In those far islands the temples
Have fallen away, and the marble
Is the color of wild honey.
There is nothing left of the gardens
That were once about them, of the fat
Turf marked with cloven hooves.
Only the sea grass struggles
Over the crumbled stone,
Over the splintered steps,
Only the blue and yellow
Of the sea, and the cliffs
Red in the distance across the bay.
Lean back.
Her memory has passed to our lips now.
Our kisses fall through summer’s chaos
In our own breasts and thighs.

Gold colossal domes of cumulus cloud
Lift over the undulant, sibilant forest.
The air presses against the earth.
Thunder breaks over the mountains.
Far off, over the Adirondacks,
Lightning quivers, almost invisible
In the bright sky, violet against
The grey, deep shadows of the bellied clouds.
The sweet virile hair of thunder storms
Brushes over the swelling horizon.
Take off your shoes and stockings.
I will kiss your sweet legs and feet
As they lie half buried in the tangle
Of rank scented midsummer flowers.
Take off your clothes. I will press
Your summer honeyed flesh into the hot
Soil, into the crushed, acrid herbage
Of midsummer. Let your body sink
Like honey through the hot
Granular fingers of summer.

Rest. Wait. We have enough for a while.
Kiss me with your mouth
Wet and ragged, your mouth that tastes
Of my own flesh. Read to me again
The twisting music of that language
That is of all others, itself a work of art.
Read again those isolate, poignant words
Saved by ancient grammarians
To illustrate the conjugations
And declensions of the more ancient dead.
Lean back in the curve of my body,
Press your bruised shoulders against
The damp hair of my body.
Kiss me again. Think, sweet linguist,
In this world the ablative is impossible.
No other one will help us here.
We must help ourselves to each other.
The wind walks slowly away from the storm;
Veers on the wooded crests; sounds
In the valleys. Here we are isolate,
One with the other; and beyond
This orchard lies isolation,
The isolation of all the world.
Never let anything intrude
On the isolation of this day,
These words, isolate on dead tongues,
This orchard, hidden from fact and history,
These shadows, blended in the summer light,
Together isolate beyond the world’s reciprocity.

Do not talk any more. Do not speak.
Do not break silence until
We are weary of each other.
Let our fingers run like steel
Carving the contours of our bodies’ gold.
Do not speak. My face sinks
In the clotted summer of your hair.
The sound of the bees stops.
Stillness falls like a cloud.
Be still. Let your body fall away
Into the awe filled silence
Of the fulfilled summer —
Back, back, infinitely away —
Our lips weak, faint with stillness.

See. The sun has fallen away.
Now there are amber
Long lights on the shattered
Boles of the ancient apple trees.
Our bodies move to each other
As bodies move in sleep;
At once filled and exhausted,
As the summer moves to autumn,
As we, with Sappho, move towards death.
My eyelids sink toward sleep in the hot
Autumn of your uncoiled hair.
Your body moves in my arms
On the verge of sleep;
And it is as though I held
In my arms the bird filled
Evening sky of summer.

Kenneth Rexroth [1944]

Blue Coast Records Special Event, May 2, 2009

2009-05-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Cookie Marenco, Blue Coast Records and to Conor Fennessy for inviting me. Wonderful, magical evening among great artists and lovely people.

Chapters of Memory III-Ireland

2009-05-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

Time can never relax like this again,

She in her phaeton looking for folklore,

He writing sermons in the library

Till lunch, then fishing all the afternoon.

Lever and Lover, Somerville and Ross

Have fed the same worm as Blackstone and Gibbon,

The mildew has spotted Clarissa's spine

And soiled the Despatches of Wellington.

Is What We See What's Really There?

2009-04-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc_LqIaO2b8

Margrethe And sooner or later there will come a time when all our children are laid to dust, and all our children's children.

Bohr When no more decisions, great or small, are ever made again. When there's no more uncertainty, because there's no more knowledge.

Margrethe And when all our eyes are closed, when even the ghosts have gone, what will be left of our beloved world? Our ruined and dishonoured and beloved world?

Heisenberg But in the meanwhile, in this most precious meanwhile, there it is. The trees in Faelled Park. Gammertingen and Biberach and Mindelheim. Our children and our children's children. Preserved, just possibly, by that one short moment in Copenhagen. By some event that will never quite be located or defined. By that final core of uncertainty at the heart of things.

from Michael Frayn's Copenhagen

Chapters of Memory II-Japan

2009-04-24T20:54:00.001-07:00

Chapters of Memory I--Lake Starnberg

2009-04-23T07:07:00.001-07:00

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Love & the Onward Journey

2009-04-22T18:46:00.001-07:00

I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack. But then, it might not have been a question of right and wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that, in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.

Onward

2009-04-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

  Now the day is over,

  Night is drawing nigh;

  Shadows of the evening

  Steal across the sky.

Happiness

2009-04-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil

.O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Michael Rosenthal Gallery

2009-04-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

Tiny Painting Exhibition

Three works by NM.

The First Show

April 18, 2009

Walking on Air April 18, 2009

2009-04-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

Today everything's lighter, brighter, happier.

Walking on air and don't want to come down.

Life can be grand.

Yes!

Too Far

2009-04-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

"I'd like to see the Protestant Cemetery," Tom said. "Keats is buried there. And Shelley's heart."

"People don't come to Rome to see a Protestant cemetery," Sarah said. "It's a waste of time when there's so much else to see. It's an indulgence."

Tom and Sarah sat in the small green room, the room the Dutch nuns gave them, in the

pensione on the Piazza Navona. They couldn't see the Bernini fountains from their room.

Out their one window all they could see were the many angles of the roof tops at the back of the cathedral. Still, it was a Roman view and the room was cool in the late afternoon light.

"But I'd like to see it anyway. It's just as historical as anything else. These people came to Italy to experience life, to write, to love, and then they died. We could visit the room above the Spanish Steps where Keats died of TB."

"Who would want to see that? You're morbid. It's just an act, too, to make me feel less sensitive than you," Sarah said. "I don't care."

"But I think you are sensitive, Sarah," Tom said.

"Please don't start this. I don't want to go to the Protestant Cemetery. Not today."

"We could walk there," Tom said. "It's too far aw

ay," Sarah said. "How do you know?" Tom said.

"I know you didn't look at a map," Sarah said. "You just think we could walk there to get me to go. I don't want to go."

"If we could walk there right now, would you go?

The guidebook says it's beautiful. We could walk there before dinner," Tom said.

"You think anything that's sad is beautiful.

That's your problem. Sad isn't beautiful. It's nothing."

"I think it would take less than an hour to walk

there," Tom said. 'It's next to the Aurelian Wall. I see it on the map."

"You won't shut up unless we go, will you," Sar

ah said. She looked out the window at the terracotta roof tiles and sighed. She hated Tom when he got all dreamy over something like a cemetery.

"You might like it," Tom said.

"There's nothing to like. It's a cemetery. I'll go if you just keep your thoughts to yourself once

we get there. I don't want to hear anything about Keats or Shelley or anyone else who was foolish enough to leave home and die in Italy."

The late afternoon sun was still warm. "Look how cloudy the sky is," Sarah said. "It's going to rain."

"I don't think so. Not yet. Not until later this evening. We'll be back at the pensione by the time it might rain."

Tom and Sarah walked in silence. Tom set the pace, which was faster than Sarah liked.

Tom was afraid they might not make it in time.

"I don't want to go if we have to run to get there," Sarah said. "I don't want to go at all. I don't think you know where it is."

I do know. I checked the map. We just keep going

in this direction until we get to the pyramid, the one built by Caius Cestius. It's his tomb."

"Oh God," Sarah said. "I don't want to see a tomb, then a cemetery. This is too much."

"We've been walking for nearly an hour. Where is it? You're lost."

"I'm not lost. It's farther than I thought."

"Everything is farther than you thought," Sarah said. "It's raining, too. I hate you. You're an idiot."

"It's just a little further. Please don't say you hate me. I want to see this with you."

"You're entire life is like this. I should have known. I did know. But to stop the whining I agreed to come, thinking maybe for once in your sorry life you knew what you were talking about. Of course you didn't. I should have known. I never should have married you. It was a mistake. I knew it. Walking to this cemetery is a mistake."

"Get that taxi. I'm not walking another step in this rain. You're hopeless. I don't know why I married you."

"Don't say that, Sarah. I love you."

"No you don't or you wouldn't be dragging me to a cemetery in the rain. It' too

far away. You can't even read a map. Tell me the truth, you didn't even look at a map,

did you?"

" I did look at the map. It didn't seem so far away. I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry. That's your problem. You shouldn't be reading Romantic poets anyway. They cloud your mind, what little there is. I bet you don't understand Shelley anyway."

"Yes I do. I love Shelley. He drowned in the Gulf of Spezia and his friends burned his body on the beach. They brought his heart back to Rome and buried it in the Protestant Cemetery."

"You would know something like that," Sarah said. "Please get that taxi. I'm not walking in the rain."

Tom flagged the taxi and managed to ask to be taken to the Protestant Cemetery. They drove in silence. "See, it's much further away than you tho

ught," Sarah said. Tom looked out the windows of the taxi, looked at the streets passing in the light rain. The afternoon light was fading. I have no idea where I am, Tom thought. Why am I even alive. Then he saw the pyramid.

"Look, there's the pryamind, the tomb of Caius Cestius," Tom said. "The cemetery is just ahead."

The taxi stopped near the entrance. Tall pines and Cyprus enclosed the cemetery beneath the high ancient walls. The gates were shut and locked. "The cemetery is closed," Sarah said. Tom looked through the gates. He couldn't speak. The tombs and gravestones stood in silence in the misty rain. No one was there. "We should leave," Sarah said. "

Tell the driver to take us back to the Piazza Navona."

Tom explained as best he could in bad Italian where they wanted to go. They didn't speak. The air was cool and moist in the taxi as they pulled away from the cemetery. Tom watched the gates of the cemetery recede into the mist until he couldn't see them at all.

Tom started to cry. He couldn't stop the tears from flowing. The world closed its arms around him. Tears ran down his face, blurring his vision. His heart hurt, as cut from his body as Shelley's had been.

"It's okay," Sarah said. "We'll come another time."

Still the tears streamed down Tom's face. He couldn't stop crying. He couldn't speak. The taxi drove on and on through the wet Roman streets. Tom heard nothing. He couldn't look at Sarah. They arrived and he paid the fare and silently they climbed the stairs to their room. Tom sat down on the edge of the bed, still crying.

"Please don't cry," Sarah said. "It was too far away. We could never have made it."

Tom continued to cry. The tears had no meaning to him beyond the despair in his heart.

He knew everything was wrong. His life, his marriage, his hopes...all wrong.

"Tom, please. Let's go have dinner. " Tom nodded. He tried to stop crying. He knew his life was over, the past was past and there would be no future.

"Let's go," he said.

April 12, 2009

2009-04-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.

No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave

Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.

He moved among us, as a muttering king,

Magnificent, would move among his hinds,

Until our blood, commingling, virginal,

With heaven, brought such requital to desire

The very hinds discerned it in a star.

Shall our blood fail? Or shall the earth

Seem all of paradise that we shall know?

The sky will be much friendlier then than now,

A part of labor and a part of pain,

And next in glory to enduring love,

Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

YES

2009-04-10T22:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life moves us in the direction of Yes. The answer has to be Yes. Yes to everything we see; Yes to the world around us. Today I am in the movement of Yes. My lovely friend Ellen shared this video in the spirit of Yes. Yes to being alive. Today. Yes to a future. The video makes Ellen cry. Can we always be young and dancing? Can we always join hands and say Yes?

Can Yes include love? Am I falling in love? Yes. Is the world Yes?

Yes

Where's Matt

42 countries

14 months in the making

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Yes

please view in HD, button under video.

If the World was a Village of 100 People

2009-04-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

There would be:

57 Asians

21 Europeans

14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North & South America

8 Africans

52 would be female

48 would be male

70 would be non-white

30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian

30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual

11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all six would be from the United States

80 would live in substandard housing

70 would be unable to read

50 would suffer from malnutrition

1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth

1 (yes only one) would have a college education

1 would own a computer

Winston Smith at FivePoints Arthouse

2009-04-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

50th Anniversary of Nineteen Eighty-Four

Conor & Bozie Reinvent the Shop

2009-04-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

John frames.

Bertrand observes.

2009-04-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

You can hold back from the suffering of the world. You have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided. Kafka

Eternity

2009-03-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

William Blake

2009-03-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Niland Mortimer <nbmortimer@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Yesterday I had a two minute call from my boss in NY to say that given the tough times, the fact that our holding company WPP did not win the HP business, and little growth in San Francisco over the past six months, I was being terminated as President of Wunderman, San Francisco. In many ways I feel unfettered from a dead-in-the-water situation and free now to absolutely pursue what I want to do. I don't know what that is--but more of the same isn't it.

This is a gift from Wunderman, not one I anticipated, but one I accept with gratitude. I wish them well. For the past year I feel my life has been going through a old-fashioned hand crank meat grinder--moving out of my house, my divorce, the move to San Francisco, the new job and now the job gone. I don't know yet what's being created but sure as shooting it will be Very Different from before.

The gift I have received is one of expansion, exploration and re-commitment to the foundations in my life that are true, important and give meaning to being alive.
It's a gift of shattering rebirth. It's up to me to realize the benefits of this gift.

If you're willing to support me in this journey I will surely appreciate it.
Thank you all for being here.

Onward and upward!

Niland

Dumb Memory

2009-03-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

The last entry in my Great-Uncle Adelwarth's little agenda book was written on the Feast of Stephen. Cosmo, it reads, had had a bad fever after their return from Jerusalem but was already on the way to recovery again. My great-uncle also noted that late the previous afternoon it had begun to snow and that, looking out of the hotel window at the city, white in the falling dusk, it made him think of times long gone. Memory, he added in a postscript, often strikes me as a kind of dumbness. It makes one's head heavy and giddy, as if one were not looking back down the receding perspectives of time but rather down on the earth from a great height, from one of those towers whose tops are lost to view in the clouds. W. G. Sebald

The Dominion of the Dead

2009-03-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

Whether one shares Dante's belief that the dead all finally belong to God's jurisdiction, the fact remains that in such moments, when all possible paths seem blocked off, it is the dead, if they are well disposed, who come forward to show a way. At times such aid is not forthcoming from them, to be sure; at other times it is rejected, polemically and angrily; sometimes it is passed over by its intended beneficiaries, unrecognized for what it is; at yet other times, the help offered calls for a reciprocative rejoiner. Yet one way or another, we cannot do with it. The primary reason the dead have an afterlife in so many human cultures is because it falls upon them--the dead--to come to the rescue and provide counsel when that debilitating darkness falls. Why this special authority? Because the dead possess a nocturnal vision that the living cannot acquire. The light in which we carry on our secular lives blinds us to certain insights. Some truths are glimpsed only in the dark. That is why in moments of extreme need one must turn to those who can see through the gloom. Robert Pogue Harrison

Niland's Favorite Travel Literature

2009-03-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

A Short Review of Niland's Favorite Travel Literature (strictly personal taste!)

I have been reading travel literature for the past twenty-five years. Many of my favorite authors feel like old friends, people whose tastes and styles have come to form the basis on which I think about the experience of traveling and the world. These writers are more than guides, although their insights serve that function, too. Their writing is as much about themselves as it is about the traveling. Countries or cities are just the backdrops—the excuse—for writing about their experiences. Some delve broadly into history; others into people.; and others into vivid descriptions of landscape and geography. All leave the reader with a deep impression of time and place and circumstance and the passion each author feels for his destination. The greatest of these books are far more than travel logs or memoirs of traveling or catalogues of taste. They are about coming of age, whether in the first excitement of youth or in the passing of years or even the end of traveling.

Some of the books I describe here are classics of the genre, recognizable to anyone with a passing interest in the literature of travel. I apologize for their obviousness. Some are out of print and therefore hard to find. Coupled with my love of reading travel writing is the excitement of finding old favorites and new discoveries in old and second hand bookstores. I head first for the travel section in any bookstore I come across.

More often than not my favorite travel writers tend to be English and male. Others have noted this predilection in the genre. Maybe it is the combination of the English having a long and storied heritage of exploration coupled with the relative safety of the lone male traveler. There are, in fact, great women travelers—Freya Stark and Jan Morris to name two.

My list is in somewhat my order of preference and focuses primarily on 20th century writing. By and large I have favorite authors, all of whose books are favorites and therefore recommended. In a few cases I list one-offs, either because the author only wrote one travel book or, more likely, I just haven't read his other work. There is so much yet to discover!

My list has to begin with the English writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor, because not only is he one of my very favorite travel writers—elevating travel writing to lush, language rich, literature—but he has written my favorite book of any genre, A Time of Gifts.

Just before the breakout of WWII, and still a teenager, Patrick Leigh-Fermor set out on a walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. The record of this stupendous adventure is set out in three volumes, two of which have been published, the third his fans around the world still await. The first volume is A Time of Gifts; the second is Through the Woods and Water. (Both are available in Penguin and NYRB paperbacks.) His story records not just the people and places he encountered, all fantastic, but the passing of Old Europe under the shadow of war and a changed world as then unglimpsed. It’s the story of his own growing up, too, the beginning of his life-long passion for travel and foreign places.

Patrick Leigh-Fermor’s second great experience was during WWII while hiding out in Greece as an English officer on the side of the partisans during the Nazi occupation. This led to his two wonderful books about Greece, Mani and Roumeli. He lives in Greece to this day. All of his other books are good, too, but these are my favorites. Anthony Lane wrote a wonderful Profile of Patrick Leigh-Fermor in The New Yorker, well worth finding.

Before I talk about three more favorite authors I want to mention two single books that rank highly in my pantheon. The first is The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (the greatest piece of travel writing according to Paul Fussell) and The Way of the World (L’Usage de Monde) by the French travel writer Nicolas Bouvier. Both are literary masterpieces and completely one with the personalities of their authors. I love both of these books and would take them on my own desert island. Both are set in the near east, The Road to Oxiana in Afghanistan and The Way of the World, beginning in Macedonia and Thrace, then mostly in Iran and the other”–stans”-though long before the present troubles.

The Road to Oxiana is not hard to find, but I rarely ever see The Way of the World in bookstores, although it is available in paperback from The Marlboro Press. Nicolas Bouvier is a noted travel writer but The Way of the World is the one of his few translated into English.

The travel writer whose overall body of work I cherish, and feel closest to as a real companion, is H. V. Morton. Morton was born in 1982 in Birmingham, England and died in 1979 in South Africa, where he lived at the end of his long and prolific life. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and his first books, on London, began appearing in 1925. He is, almost without equal, one of the great travelers of the 20th century. His books are incredibly rich in history and detail and even his loyal adherence to the traditions of God, Queen and Country is charming, never cloying.

His work falls into sets. First there are the many volumes about London (In Search of London—written just after WWII and filled with both the sadness of what was lost and the joy of how the spirit of the English people prevailed). Then, there are the other “In Search of” titles: In Search of England, In Search of Ireland, In Search of Wales, In Search of Scotland, In Search of South Africa.

He wrote three classic ooks about Italy: A Traveler in Italy, A Traveler in Southern Italy, and A Traveler in Rome. All are wonderful and indispensable on any trip.

In similar vein is his A Traveler in Spain, possibly my favorite book on that country.

Last are his books based on travels in the Middle East, with a religious background:
In the Steps of the Master, Through Lands of the Bible, and In the Steps of Saint Paul.
No one has ever brought to life the history, landscape and people of these Biblical lands better than H. V. Morton.

For many years all of H. V. Morton was out-of-print, but recently some of the titles have been re-issued in paperback and are generally stocked in the Border’s of the world. I collect H. V. Morton and have over thirty volumes to date, but am still looking! I read the recent biography of Morton and it turns out he wasn't an especially nice man.

Next are two more well-known English travel writers, Colin Thubron and Jan Morris. Thubron’s titles include In Siberia (his most recent), The Lost Heart of Asia, Journey into Cyprus, The Hills of Adonis (about Lebanon), Mirror to Damascus, among others. All excellent.

Jan Morris is, of course, one of the most famous of the group, not just because she is a wonderful travel writer, but also because she began her writing career as James Morris and later underwent a sex change. (I remember seeing her interviewed on the old Dick Cavet show. Apparently one of the ground rules had been not to discuss the operation, but DC did and she stormed off the set in a fury.)

One of her (his) first and most charming books is Coronation Everest. James Morris was sent by the London Times to Nepal to report on the ascent of Mt. Everest by Edmund Hillary. This was, I think, 1952. At the time there was both a fierce national competition among the mountain climbing nations to reach the top and a fierce competition among newspapers to be the first to break the story. Morris’s tale is full of drama and suspense and sweet nationalism, capped by the fact his story broke on the morning of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in London.

Many books have followed. One favorite is Venice—more information about the serene city than you could imagine. Her most recent book, which she says is her last, is Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. Jan Morris’s essays are also excellent, most of which are collected in various volumes such as Journeys and Destinations. Her work is easy to find in decent bookstores.

Talking about Jan Morris leads me to another group of travel books of recent times published by National Geographic until the general imprint of National Geographic Directions. Jan Morris wrote one of the first in the series, entitled A Writer’s House in Wales. Others in the series that I have read (and there are many I have yet to read) include Barry Unsworth’s Crete, W. S. Merwin’s The Mays of Ventador, and Oliver Sacks’ Oaxaca Journal—his wonderful account of collecting ferns with the New York Fern Society in Mexico.

Bloomsbury is also publishing travel books by famous authors—their series is called The Writer and the City—and, again, the writing is very high caliber and the cities interesting.
So far I have read Edmund White’s The Flaneur on Paris, Peter Carey’s Thirst Days in Sydney, and John Banville’s Prague Pictures. Sitting next to me right now is Ruy Castro's Rion de Janeiro.

I mentioned the poet W. S. Merwin above. He also wrote another classic account of life in France called The Lost Upland.

And speaking of France, among my favorite books on that country are three by Freda White, organized around the major river systems. They are Ways of Aquitaine, West of the Rhone and Three Rivers of France. These are not travelogues, per se, but lyrical descriptions of rural France not often visited by foreigners.

And who could love France and not also love the books by M.F.K.Fisher set there? Two Towns in Provence or Long Ago in France, among others.

Or A. J.Leibling's wonderful account of over eating in Parisian restaurants before the war, Between Meals. Or Waverly Root’s classic The Foods of France (to be read after his even more classic account The Foods of Italy.) Or Roy Andries de Groot’s The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth—the story of a country inn in the French Alps run by two sisters who cook meals of such perfection that de Groot has been long accused by passing fiction off as fact.

Another contemporary writer well worth your reading time is Pico Iyer. Start with his earliest Video Nights in Kathmandu and then move on to more recent Falling Off the Map, Sun After Dark, or The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto.

There are, surprisingly, not a lot of travel books on Japan. There are the classics of the late 19th century by Lafcadio Hearne. More current classics include two by Oliver Statler, Japanese Inn and Japanese Pilgrimage. Both are beautiful descriptions of the essence of traditional Japanese values and life. From 1986, there is Alan Booth's tale of a 2000 mile walk through Japan entitled The Roads to Sata.

Some other favorites that I don’t mean to be relegating nearer the end of my list because they are great books, top examples of their genre and of the countries they describe:

Italian Days by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West .

Fabled Shore by Rose Macaulay.

Peter Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli.

D. H. Lawrence's Twilight in Italy.

Gerald Brenan's The Face of Spain or South from Granada.

Everything by Bruce Chatwin, especially In Patagonia or Songlines.

A River in Time by Jon Swain—a bittersweet and nostalgic memoir of Viet Nam and Cambodia during and just after the war.

Robert Hughes’ great account of Australia The Fatal Shore.

For something closer to home—and my home county—Alex Shoumatoff’s book about Westchester County, NY entitled just Westchester.

Triste Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strauss.

Old Calabria by Norman Douglas.

Reflections on Blue Water by Alan Ross.

All of Lawrence Durrell’s work on Greece, but in particular Bitter Lemons, Prospero’s Cell, and Reflections on a Marine Venue. Henry Miller's The Colossus of Marousi.

Jonathan Keats’s book on Italy-- Italian Journey.

V. S. Naipaul’s two books on India, An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilisation or his book on the American South, A Turn in the South; or, his book on the lands of Islam Among the Believers.

Recently I just read Simon Winchester’s account of traveling to all the remote, remaining outposts of the British Empire, entitled appropriately, Outposts, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I never before longed to go to the Falkalnd Island or St. Helena, but I do now. Winchester's books on Korea and China are equally fine.

Lists are both self-serving and self-limiting. By writing down these books I remember an equal number I am leaving out. Some that I left out, but love, are not quite travel books, such as Kinta Beevor’s A Tuscan Childhood. These are books of place more than books of travel. V. S. Pritchett’s work on Spain is another example. Or, Iris Origo's poignant account of her life in Italy during WWII, War in Val D'Orcia.

And, I just remembered, I forgot all of Bill Bryson! A Walk in the Woods is one of the funniest travel accounts in print. And, having lived in Australia for three years, Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country captured the country with droll perfection. Funnily enough, once when we lived there and were driving from Melbourne in the far south to a beach resort in northern New South Wales, we read Bryson’s The Lost Continent out loud and were rolling with laughter.

And then there are Freya Stark and Norman Lewis and Eric Newby... three all time greats, each deserving a tribute of their own.

So, with the time to read all of these and with luck in finding some of them, you will be well on your way to being a connoisseur of travel literature. Have fun!

Mindful Expression of Freedom

2009-03-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

Tony Serra, the great trial lawyer and staunch defender of freedom, who has always seen poetry in the law, provided a warm and nourishing site for a poetry reading the other evening.

Neeli Cherkovski read from his own work

" ON THE DRIVE SOUTH, I WAS THINKING" :

...... all of this falls away

as I race

inside, is this how it was

in the caves? did the animal painters

give a damn about deep wisdom?

I suspect

mindfulness was a constant, like

Autumn and its leaves ......

Speak, memory

2009-03-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

In the urban societies of the late twentieth century, on the other hand, where everyone is instantly replaceable and really superfluous from birth, we have to keep throwing ballast overboard, forgetting everything that we might otherwise remember: youth, childhood, our origins, our forebears and ancestors. For a while the site called Memorial Grove recently set up on the internet may endure; here you can lay those particularly close to you to rest electronically and visit them. But this virtual cemetery, too, will dissolve into the ether, and the whole past will flow into a formless, indistinct, silent mass. And leaving a present without memory, in the face of a future that no individual mind can now envisage, in the end we shall ourselves relinquish life without feeling any need to linger at least for a while, nor shall we be impelled to pay return visits from time to time. W. G. Sebald Campo Santo

2009-03-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC1WbUQT4WE

Our friend Bruno Mauro, of Ampersand International Arts here in San Francisco, sent this video, with the words " these images blow my mind in so many directions: hope , despair, ugliness, beauty, absurd, precision, sadness, joy and on and on."

Why these three?

2009-03-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

“What I love to do is put people in front of art and make them feel it, make them stop everything else they are doing and experience it, deeply. That's how I make art expensive. And that's my job.”…

St. Patrick's Day 2009

2009-03-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

Stone Circle, Athgreany, County Wicklow, Ireland, 1966

Paul Caponigro

Richter landscapes

2009-03-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

2009-03-16T23:08:00.000-07:00

Of course, my landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all `untruthful' (even if I did not always find a way of showing it); and by `untruthful' I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature Nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless; the total antithesis of ourselves, absolutely inhuman. Every beauty that we see in landscape every enchanting colour effect, or tranquil scene, or powerful atmosphere, every gentle linearity or magnificent spatial depth or whatever is a our projection; and we can switch it off at a moment's notice, to reveal only the appalling horror and ugliness. Nature is so inhuman that it is not even criminal. It is everything that we must basically overcome and reject because, for all our own superabundant horrendousness, cruelty and vileness, we are still capable of producing a spark of hope which we can also call love. Nature has none of this. Its stupidity is absolute."

2009-03-15T09:45:00.001-07:00

Which is art more?

Gerhard Richter , 3. 1. 88

2009-03-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

Art is the pure realization of religiousness, of capacity for belief, of longing for "God." All other realizations of these most essential attributes of man are misuse in the sense that they exploit these attributes by putting them at the service of an ideology. Even art becomes 'applied art' when it renounces its lack of purpose, when it wants to express something: for only by absolutely refusing to say anything is it human. Our capacity for belief is our most considerable attribute and only finds its adequate realization in art. If, on the other hand, we satisfy our desire to believe in an ideology, we only wreak havoc.

2009-03-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

Here's Niland in Zermatt, Switzerland on a sunny day in February.

2009-03-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

Here's Conor at Conor Fennessy Antiques and Design, 801 Columbus Street in San Francisco.

Gerhard Richter

2009-02-26T17:54:00.000-08:00

How could one be in this world without feeling dismayed by it? Even if one paints flowers and gingerbread.