8/1/25

It is a willow when summer is over,
a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
swing and grow paler
over the swirling waters of the river
as if loath to let go,
they are so cool, so drunk with
the swirl of the wind and of the river—
oblivious to winter,
the last to let go and fall
into the water and on the ground.

“Willow Poem” by William Carlos Williams

7/31/25

Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;

You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,

And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.

Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,

Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot

And not to be trapped by withering laurels.

And in you I have found aloneness

And the joy of being shunned and scorned.

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,

In your eyes I have read

That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,

And to be understood is to be leveled down,

And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness

And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,

You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,

And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings,

And urging of seas,

And of mountains that burn in the night,

And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,

You and I shall laugh together with the storm,

And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,

And we shall stand in the sun with a will,

And we shall be dangerous.

“Defeat” by Khalil Gibran

7/30/25

Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, St George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

7/29/25

"I understood this man was a saint," he said.



"Something even rarer," said Dr. Urbino. "An atheistic saint. But those are matters for God to decide.''


Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

7/28/25

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.


Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

7/27/25

There was, to be sure, a rumour in the last century that wolves would gradually become extinct by some natural process; but this seems to have been an exaggeration.

“The Necessity of Chivalry” (1940) in Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis

7/26/25

Twelve o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,

The street lamp sputtered,

The street lamp muttered,

The street lamp said, 'Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

Is torn and stained with sand,

And you see the corner of her eye

Twists like a crooked pin.'

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things;

A twisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left

Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,

The street lamp said,

'Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,

Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter.'

So the hand of a child, automatic,

Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

Trying to peer through lighted shutters,

And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

An old crab with barnacles on his back,

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:

'Regard the moon,

La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

Her hand twists a paper rose,

That smells of dust and old Cologne,

She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain.'

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms,

And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,

'Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

Mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.'

The last twist of the knife.

“Rhapsody on a Windy Night” by T.S. Eliot

7/25/25

[Chivalry] taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior…[and] It demanded valor of the urbane and modest man.

“The Necessity of Chivalry” in Present Concerns by C.S Lewis

7/24/25

Be still, and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10

7/23/25

We may confidently hope, indeed, that English scholarship will survive abroad, notably in America and Germany.

“Is English Doomed?” in Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis

7/22/25

Great changes in the life of a nation often pass unnoticed.

“Is English Doomed?” in Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis

7/21/25

“Thou wert the meekest man", says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot. "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.”

“The Necessity of Chivalry” in Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis

7/20/25

The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest, of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority.

“Democratic Education” in Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis

7/19/25

At the end of my freshman year of college, back in 1936, I flunked five out of five subjects. Flunking three out of five would have made me eligible to report for an invitation to attend some other college in the fall. But men in this three- out-of-five category sometimes had to wait outside the Dean’s office as long as two hours. Men in my group — some of whom had big dates in New York that same night — weren’t kept waiting a minute. It went one, two, three, the way most men in my group like things to go.

“A Girl I Knew” by J.D. Salinger

7/18/25

“Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?” she asked, looking at her profile again…“I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel,” she said. “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.”

“Yeah?” George said from the bed.

“And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.”

“Oh, shut up and get something to read.,” George said. He was reading again.

"Cat in the Rain” by Ernest Hemingway

7/17/25

What characters don’t say can be most important.

Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell

7/16/25

Democracy demands that little men should not take big men too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.

“Democratic Education” in Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis

7/15/25

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

7/14/25

While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

7/13/25

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer.

You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away.

What other answer would suffice?

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis