#grapesofwrath

[teixeiradistribution]

More wines will be available soon, from the Lisbon region. D'autres vins seront bientôt disponibles, de la région de Lisbonne.#wine #winery #winetasting #winetour #winelover #winetime #winelovers #grapes #grapes🍇 #grapesofwrath #grapesfarm #grapevines #tinto #red #redwine (at Greater Montreal) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTcpFn3HU8Q/?utm_medium=tumblr

[studious-fhionnuisce]

The literature classics in a nutshell (via Gocomics)

[deebeeus]

I hardly ever do #lapsteel #guitars, but they intrigue me so much and they are the least expensive way to get into #vintageguitars! Here’s a 1950s #Rickenbacker #Model100 lap steel with original case, spotted at @capsulemusic. Swipe left to see the groovy logo plate and case. It’s celebrity owned too, by @kevinkanemusic of @thegrapesofwrath. I grew up listening to Kevin and The Grapes of Wrath and his songs Peace of Mind, Backward Town, All The Things I Wasn’t, Isn’t There, Paint You Blue, and Last To Know are amongst my favourite songs of all time. #kevinkane #grapesofwrath #canadianband #canadianmusic #80smusic #90smusic #guitar #lapsteelguitar #guitarra #chitarra #guitarre #electricguitar #vintageguitar #vintagerickenbacker #rickenbackerguitars #tone #guitargear #guitarsdaily #guitarsofinstagram #geartalk #vintagegear #guitarphotography (at Capsule Music) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuB5Uq9APC8/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1izmgv21sbr2u

[nateaz]

Not much left of old #Route66 - especially in #Arizona. Much of what’s left or the highway is gone around #Holbrook. Well, there’s a few scant places from the #GrapesofWrath era still clinging onto the past! . #ruraldecay #getyourkicksonroute66 #holbrookarizona #amarofilter #hopiland #NorthernArizona #summer2017🔥

[strandbooks]

Who else is crushing these banned books quizzes? ✨This one is tricky: Which one of these was banned for lies and libel? 🤣📚 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 Answer: The Grapes of Wrath. In 1939, by a vote of 4 to 1, the county board of supervisors in Kern County, CA (the county where the novel is set) approved a resolution banning this book from libraries and schools. They called the book "libel and a lie" for unfairly depicting the government's treatment of migrant workers. •• #ireadbannedbooks #bannedbook #bannedbooks #banned #censorship #bannedbooksweek #grapesofwrath #bookstagram #readstagram #quiz #bookstore (at Strand Book Store)

[frontporchlit]

FPJ Blog Post: “Change”

This summer I visited the northwest for two months, primarily to help my father build a house. My parents had left their beloved firstborn (me) in Texas whilst traversing the country during my first semester of undergrad, finally settling in Astoria, Oregon—home of Kindergarten Cop and The Goonies, both which are displayed proudly on an isolated shelf in the town’s very own VCR / DVD rental store. Having seen neither of these films, I was at a loss to understand the community’s prime hype.

So, without any peers in the area whatsoever, it was just me and my 34 pound suitcase of books. I set to work on such procrastinated novels as Catch-22, The Grapes of Wrath, and Dead Souls (from this list you might be able to infer that I felt desolately trapped in labor).

This geographical change rocked my mental equilibrium, to say the least. Replacing my morning novel with a hammer really nailed the point home that I wooden’t have much time nor energy for leisurely cogitations of philosophical type (but time enough for puns, always). Furthermore, in Oregon, remote and cut-off from the usual stimuli found in an adventurous young adult’s lifestyle (such as daring to buy groceries before checking bank balances and whatnot), my days blended into a blur of moderate temperature and sawdust—a stagnation subduing youthful frivolousness.

 And then, I noticed my poetry appeared a tad stale. Though metaphors and alliteration still rippled stanzas like the nearby Columbia River, the content was bereft of connection to life. Instead of drawing from happenings and feelings actually present, I was purely fabricating circumstances with only surface meaning. I was lying lyrically.

Any dedicated individual keen on their passion ardently practices and perfects it in order to accustom the art into muscle memory; I had grown used to the catharsis of having an inner turmoil expressed and quelled through the act of writing, but what happens when you have nothing to expel? Do you conclude your run of ‘being an artist’ with the current lack of production? Does an artist need the validation of output in order to say, “yes, I made this, now I am a justified in my niche?”

Remembering when a professor of mine once deftly pointed at a line in an Anne Sexton poem to declare, “that’s BS”—meaning that the acclaimed poet’s voice was noticeably incongruent in its integrity—I panicked. Would my insincerity of verse likewise be this transparent?

The aforementioned professor had also once articulated a guide for eliciting more authenticity during writing processes: notice the contrast between what you may have to say (i.e., what pretty words may be stored in that visionary brain of yours) and what you HAVE to say (i.e., what must be let loose of its storage to be recognized, felt, made tangible).

 Accordingly, I began to filter my thoughts before they materialized on the page. But I realized there was not anything that I did HAVE to say. And so, as I believe an emotional and bona fide fervor should be the undercurrent and movement of any writing which is expected to have a lasted influence on author and audience alike, I said nothing.

Thus, my decision to take a sabbatical from my daily writing was, effectually, a chance to breathe and experience moments without the bedeviling voice which nags how do I transcribe this? Though transition included side-effects of tingling extremities and tumultuous thoughts, I felt more at ease to merely read and absorb my surroundings, rather than rushing to put-out works and contributions of my own.

Meanwhile, in my hands was Jack Kerouac’s Lonesome Traveller, opened to chapter six: “Alone on a Mountaintop.” Already enamored with the Beat Generation of the 50’s and 60’s, I knew much comfort in this prolific author whose unsettled, dazzling unconsciousness, laid bare in his prose and poetry, inevitably sparks my latent juices into creativity time and again. And, like magic, I stumbled upon this:

“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.”

Well, needless to note, I unhesitatingly stepped outside into the blooming breeze of foxglove and pine. Inhaled. Exhaled.

Closed off senses.

Unbeknownst to me before the spontaneous exploration of our overgrown backyard, there is a labyrinth of long trails covering miles of moist moss, fierce forest, and lush leafage. Taking the above excerpt to heart, I wandered about my “paths of solitude” for hours, practicing mindfulness for an erased mental slate. My attempt at being a lonesome traveller subsequently resulted in knotted-green hair and an unknotted, zen-like spirit.

Unfortunately, though penetrating deep enough to become so severely lost that law enforcement had to be notified on one outing, my trip ended before I was able to traverse the extent of all the routes. Currently back in San Marcos just weeks before the start of my Masters in Poetry program, I have been gradually reintroducing the art of composition into my daily habit—the difference being, now, that I acutely feel weight and import of what I record, having not recorded in so long.

 Inertia, or the property of an object to stay in motion / rest until an external force coerces change, has both aided my abundant output before and stifled the beginnings of such. Learning how to take agency against the natural tendency to continue a uniform life is what will distinguish a person’s art by showcasing that intrinsic power. It is a deep power, to say, “no, I will commence, or cease, when I alone please.”

That being said, appreciating the exact moment being lived, instead of constantly waiting for future happenings, heightens one’s sense of self, being thus fully involved in the physical form of now and not in the ethereal shimmer of “sometime.”

I close with another Kerouac quote from the same passage:

“Yes, so to try to attain to Nirvana when you're already there, to attain to the top of a mountain when you're already there and only have to stay - thus, to stay in the Nirvana Bliss, is all I have to do, you have to do, no effort, no path really, no discipline but just to know that all is empty and awake, a Vision and a Movie in God's Universal Mind (Alaya-Vijnana) and to stay more or less wisely in that.- Because silence itself is the sound of diamonds which can cut through anything, the sound of Holy Emptiness, the sound of extinction and bliss, that graveyard silence which is like the silence of an infant's smile, the sound of eternity, of the blessedness surely to be believed, the sound of nothing-ever-happened-except-God.”

Do not worry, then, about change, for the mind and body have their ways of equalizing the chaos of natural occurrences. Some days have slots for your impact and voice, as a harmony awaiting your counterpart and choral idiosyncrasies. Some days are charged with a current which drags its suspect along a tremendous path, so that the latter may absorb and be humbled by a wildness that might be inadvertently shunned when we are inwardly centralized. Whatever the ebb or flow, learn how to feel where movement is naturally occurring, and, by stepping into that spring, bathe.

Emily Ellison is a MFA Creative Writing Candidate at Texas State University. As a poet, she revels in the art of word play, though her friends would rather her puns and double entendres not interrupt their dinner parties. Emily, currently working on several collections of verse, aspires to be a professor of English so that her years of bookish isolation will finally have paid off.  

[sora2522]

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Because I like promoting my friends and also because I like bath bombs and taking videos of them (especially now that our tub is back in commission lolol) Check out @glimmerbatstudio for their great products! This one's the Grapes of Wrath mulled wine bomb~ #glimmerbat #bathbomb #grapesofwrath #mulledwine

[lifeissewwhat]

Hasn't even been a week, and I made a thing #stitcher @operatheatrestl #GrapesOfWrath #pintucks #mockup #1930s #opera (at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis)