Tag: Essay

All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever -Kris – An Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014
Kris by Dale Williams Barrigar

In 2006 and 2009, at the ages of 70 and 73, Kris Kristofferson released two classic American folk albums that remain virtually invisible to the population at large, the mainstream media, and the general American culture, much like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, who’s THERE but largely un-talked of, or Herman Melville, who half-invisibly spent the last decades of his life haunting the New York streets as a striking, but “unknown,” individual who looked half like a bearded mystic in a rumpled suit, half wandering minstrel just in from the sea. How strange it is to think that he was also probably passing bearded, informally dressed Walt Whitman on the street many times during those days, as writer Harold Bloom has pointed out. One wonders if they nodded to each other.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever -Kris – An Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – Seven Dogs or A Dog is My Walden – An essay by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014

                             For Extremely Intelligent Children at Any Age

“Everything is poetic that confesses.” – Jorge Luis Borges

“Delia, oh Delia / I can’t believe / you wanted all them
 rounders / never had time for me. / All the friends
                              I ever had / are gone.” – Dylan, “Delia,” World Gone Wrong                            

“Let us go then, you and I…” – T.S. Eliot

An old Zen saying rightly opines, “Do not seek comfort from others. Light the lantern within yourself.”

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Seven Dogs or A Dog is My Walden – An essay by Dale Williams Barrigar” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: The Poisonous Fog of War by Michael Bloor

literallystories2014

It’s been said that Britain is a country overburdened by history. I’m not very sure what ‘overburdened’ means in that context. But my guess is that, for my generation born seventy-odd years ago, it refers to the enduring damage wreaked by The First World War.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: The Poisonous Fog of War by Michael Bloor” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever:  Eliot Behind the Mask – An Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014

 “Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” – The First Letter of John

T.S. Eliot was not who we think of him as.

Far from dying his hair green, instead he sometimes wore green face powder (very faintly) to dinner parties in order to shock, discomfit, and confound his cultured, highfalutin, aristocratic hosts and their hoity-toity guests.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever:  Eliot Behind the Mask – An Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: Eleonora and Poe by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014

“ERNEST. From the soul?

GILBERT. Yes, from the soul. That is what the highest          criticism really is, the record of one’s own soul.”

Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist”

“Under the preservation of a specific form, my soul is safe.”
Raymond Llull

Edgar Allan Poe was the kind of individual who could fall in love with a woman after seeing her for a mere few moments, or less, on the street. Dante had this feeling when he first saw Beatrice, and her later early demise compelled him to take twelve years out to compose the greatest single literary work of the Western World, a poem that still helps to define what the afterlife is (in our imaginations) eight centuries after he finished it. (And he died almost immediately after finishing it.) 

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: Eleonora and Poe by Dale Williams Barrigar” →
All Stories, Writers Reading

Writers Read. A Most Unfortunate Incident by Geraint Jonathan

literallystories2014

Apparently, in the Russian original, Dostoevsky is a very funny writer, his novels rich in comic turns, witty wordplay and, not infrequently, downright farce. That this may be lost in translation is often all too evident from the many English translations to date. (For some reason, as David Foster Wallace somewhere points out, Dostoevsky’s characters are still made to say things like “The devil take it!”, rather than, say, “To hell with it!”; such archaic expressions abound, lending a stiffnecked quality to even the most anarchic of situations described.) That said, however, there’s barely an English translation of Dostoevsky’s 1862 novella, A Most Unfortunate Incident, that does not carry at least some of the tale’s comic heft; other translations are titled, variously, An Unpleasant Predicament, A Sordid Story, A Nasty Anecdote, A Disgraceful Affair;  but for my money, it’s Ivy Litvinoff’s translation from 1971 carries the day.

Continue reading “Writers Read. A Most Unfortunate Incident by Geraint Jonathan” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: Fame; or The Queen of Crucifixion by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014

Prologue

Hello. The target audience for this humanly-written, essayistic mind, heart and soul exploration is: poets; creative writers; writers; artists and “creatives” of all stripes; spiritual people; people interested in history, and the future; anyone interested in any or all of the above.

If you can’t jive with that, this writing isn’t for you.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: Fame; or The Queen of Crucifixion by Dale Williams Barrigar” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – “M” T-shirts No Longer Fit Me to a T by Elliot Wilner

literallystories2014

Two of the drawers in my bedroom dresser are packed full with colorful T-shirts,  about fifty T-shirts in total, and I cherish them all.  Each shirt tells a story: the date and the distance of a particular road race – an 8k, a 10k or a 10 miler – that I had once run, together with the names and logos of the race sponsors.  Of the fifty shirts, about forty have found eternal repose in my dresser drawers, never removed from the drawer, never worn.  Those are the ones labeled with a “M.”  The other ten, those labeled with an “L,” I do wear on occasion.     

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – “M” T-shirts No Longer Fit Me to a T by Elliot Wilner” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – Leila and the Mimeo Revolution  by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014

I’m standing in Euclid Square Park as I write this with an orange pen on repurposed paper (probably an angry, unpaid bill). (Later it will be typed).

I’m standing next to a small tree.

Tied to the tree are three dogs who I helped rescue, and who rescued me: Bandit, Boo and Colonel.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Leila and the Mimeo Revolution  by Dale Williams Barrigar” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: Roughing It by Dale Williams Barrigar

literallystories2014

Roughing It Dale Williams Barrigar

From the ages of twelve until sixteen, I was raised on the banks of the Mississippi River.

I first got truly intoxicated via alcohol on the banks of the river. (Alcohol would later become a major passion, until I had to give it up.)

I first tasted cigarettes on the banks of the river. (Same.)

I first tasted the sacred ganja (weed), too, on the banks of the Mississippi River. (Also a major passion, not given up so far as of this writing, except in the smoking form; medical edibles are stronger and more long-lasting anyway…)

I first held the hand of a girl on the banks of the river.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: Roughing It by Dale Williams Barrigar” →