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”
“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”
“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”
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”
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”
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”
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”
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”
John Lennon in his Pickwick glasses is like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, or much like Dickens himself in his concern for social justice and his endless sympathy for the literal, and figurative, orphan, outsider, and underdog. Lennon can also fruitfully be compared to perhaps the only other English writer of the nineteenth century who rivals Dickens in staying power and popularity. Like Lewis Carroll and his beloved, living Alice, Lennon’s life was all about expanding the mind, and through the mind, the heart.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – John the Revelator by Dale Williams Barrigar”
This piece is a bit different and as we have come to expect from Dale it is fascinating and well informed. I had never heard of this piece of music but my instant reaction after reading this was to find it on Youtube and I can see exactly what the writer was saying. So here we have:
Moanin’ at Midnight Dale Williams Barrigar
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Moanin’ at Midnight Dale Williams Barrigar”
literally stories 