The Wasteland @jongleurdedieu - Tumblr Blog

You go to School to Learn

You go to school to learn to read and add, to someday make some money. It—money—makes sense: you need a better tractor, an addition to the gameroom, you prefer to buy your beancurd by the barrel. There's no other way to get the goods you need. Besides, it keeps people busy working—for it. It's sensible and, therefore, you go to school to learn (and the teacher, having learned, gets paid to teach you) how to get it. Fine. But: you're taught away from poetry or, say, dancing (That's nice, dear, but there's no dough in it). No poem ever bought a hamburger, or not too many. It's true, and so, every morning—it's still dark!— you see them, the children, like angels being marched off to execution, or banks. Their bodies luminous in headlights. Going to school.

-Thomas Lux

#you fo to school to learn #thomas lux #poetry

So I've been gone a while. It's been almost 2 months of back to back traveling. Iceland, England, Paris, Canada and the East Coast. But of all of these places, Iceland was the single most breath taking place I have seen.

To borrow words from Peter Schjeldal, Iceland will "make your soul sit up straight". The gray skies and constant threat of rain only add to its charm. It is absolutely sublime. Everywhere you look is lava fields, mountains, and glaciers. The glaciers are beautiful, like a monochrome landscape. I wish I had pictures, but its hard to climb a glacier and take pics at the same time. You can stand in between continents and be in North America and Europe at the same time. Mountains where everywhere, but no trees. If you ever get lost in an Icelandic forrest, just stand up. All the tress are short enough to see over. It won me over in just a few short days.

Sublime, thats all it is.

#iceland #travel #in love #beautiful #reyjavik

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it. I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts, and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing, and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor, in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught so often laughing at funerals, that was because I knew the dead were already slipping away, preparing a comeback, and can I help it? And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me, and I stood still, and while they stood quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced. ‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan. When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’ I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me ‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’ When they asked me would I like to contribute I said no, and when they had collected more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had. When they asked me to join them I wouldn't, and then went off by myself and did more than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said ‘go and organize the International Brotherhood of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing everybody who was against peace?’ So be it. Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest way to come to the truth. It is one way.

-Wendell Berry

#the contrariness of the mad farmer #wendell berry #poetry

The Furthest Distance

The furthest distance in the world

Is not between life and death

But when I stand in front of you

Yet you don't know that

I love you.

The furthest distance in the world

Is not when I stand in front of you

Yet you can't see my love

But when undoubtly knowing the love from both

Yet cannot be together.

The furthest distance in the world

Is not being apart while being in love

But when I plainly cannot resist the yearning

Yet pretending you have never been in my heart.

The furthest distance in the world

Is not struggling against the tides

But using one's indifferent heart

To dig an uncrossable river

For the one who loves you.

-Rabindranath Tagore

My sweet friend and pen-pal Susan sent this to me today. It is her favorite.

#the furthest distance #rabindranath tagore #poetry

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

#ts eliot #the love song of j. alfred prufrock #poetry #mermaids

Rediscovering Parachute.

#parachute #under control

A Casual Poem on a Spring Day:

The clouds are thin the wind is light the sun is nearly overhead past the flowers through the willows down along the stream people don’t see the joy in my heart they think I’m wasting time or acting like a child.

- Cheng Hao

#a casual poem on a spring day #cheng hao #poetry

Florence and The Machine's 'Over the Love'. Beautiful.

#florence and the machine #over the love #The Great Gatsby

O snail Climb Mount Fuji But slowly, slowly!

- Kobayashi Issa

#haiku #poetry #Kobayashi Issa

The world of dew is the world of dew. And yet, and yet--

-Kobayashi Issa

#haiku #poetry #kobayashi issa

The thief left it behind: the moon at my window.

-Ryokan

#haiki #poetry #ryokan

Spring and Fall

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

#spring and fall #Gerard Manley Hopkins #poems

This is only live version of Sem Pressa I could find. The video quality isn't that great, but 2ois is amazing. and General Sih sounds lovely as always.

#sem pressa #2ois #general sih

I Think You're Wonderful

I think you’re wonderful. I’m driving my car and your name is on every mailbox. I’m kissing you and my shoes crawl away in darkness, sweet gadgets sing in my wrists, the life I dumped into the river years ago is reported found in the Philippines…. Why do I tell you this? Because your lingerie is burning, because a lone drop of rain is falling somewhere above the Sahara, because I think you’re wonderful.

-Thomas Lux

#thomas lux #i think youre wonderful #the blind swimmer #poetry

So we had to write a speech. This is what I came up with. Its vaguely worth reading, if you're into that sort of thing.

#chrysostom #speech #holy fools #st simeon salus

"You can strip a house bare, right down to the wallpaper, even burn it to the ground, but the cosmos remains."

-Jim Forest

#the way of the holy fools #cosmos #jim forest #thomas merton

Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem

Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage might work: Because you wear pink but write poems about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell at your keys when you lose them, and laugh, loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol, gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming. You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents of what you packed were written inside the boxes. Because you think swans are overrated. Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence. Because you underline everything you read, and circle the things you think are important, and put stars next to the things you think I should think are important, and write notes in the margins about all the people you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there. Because you make that pork recipe you found in the Frida Khalo Cookbook. Because when you read that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed over the windows, you still believe someone outside can see you. And one day five summers ago, when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments— there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew, which you paid for with your last damn dime because you once overheard me say that I liked it

-Matthew Olzmann

#mt dew commercial disguised as a love poem #matthew olzmann

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