new markdowns

 

Earthseed

 

Lolita

 ❤“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”

― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

❤❤Memorial Day BY MICHAEL ANANIA

 

It is easily forgotten, year to

year, exactly where the plot is,

though the place is entirely familiar—

a willow tree by a curving roadway

sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,

canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies

circling in draped black crepe family stones,

fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored

nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down

on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair

brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,

birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,

a stream opening at its foot.

We know the stories that are told,

by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy

regarding the precise enactments of their own

gesturing. And among the women there will be

a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

The morning may be brilliant; the season

is one of brilliances—sunlight through

the fountained willow behind us, its splayed

shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,

irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,

moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,

bluebells and zebragrass toward that place

between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way

is lost, that we have no practiced step there,

and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

A modern tract

   💀I know! This is a treaty! I'm sorry I gave it to you!" I'm such a whiney baby, and I force my faith in others to ease my own inner torment of having to have them!  I should take care of my own pain and realize that the world shouldn't be the way I want it to be! You have your thoughts! I have mine! I should just leave you alone! Can it ever be moral to say what you believe in? Isn't that imperialism? You have your own pains to deal with! Life hurts!!   It won't get any better! I know there are a lot of bad people who use their beliefs to hurt you, and I'm sorry these people are there! Sorry to read this treatise!!   Look! I look like a baby crying again! You're mad at me! Just know! I'm so sorry to give you this flyer! We don't want to hurt you! We are not imperialists. We do not seek to enslave you what we want! We believe that women are human. And we're sorry we used that word women there! You saw him as hateful! !   You have every right on earth to grieve! I'm sorry to tell you my beliefs! This is very imperialistic! Please throw 🙏 this system in the Trash!

What tracts sound like

 This is a tract! You have to read this, because ... Of course! You have no right to have a culture, because I said so! I want to preach you out of your opinion! Our sky daddy is good! Your thoughts are garbage! You have to be interested in only the gender we say you can! We adore ourselves! I am me! You are you! Thus I am good, and you are evil! Read this tract, blasphemous fool! I told you to! And give up on reason and science!

Dolphin

 

Adolphin Hitler

 

inventions of world war 2

 

Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade

This poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Battle of Balaclava (Ukraine) in the Crimean War (1854-56). 247 men of the 637 in the charge were killed or wounded. The date of the Battle was October 25, 1854 and Tennyson wrote this famous poem in the same year. 

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
`Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
`Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

THE VILLAGE CHOIR Anon.

 Half a bar, half a bar,

Half a bar onward!

Into an awful ditch

Choir and precentor hitch,

Into a mess of pitch,

They led the Old Hundred.

Trebles to right of them,

Tenors to left of them,

Basses in front of them,

Bellowed and thundered.

Oh, that precentor’s look,

When the sopranos took

Their own time and hook

From the Old Hundred!

 

Screeched all the trebles here,

Boggled the tenors there,

Raising the parson’s hair,

While his mind wandered;

Theirs not to reason why

This psalm was pitched too high:

Theirs but to gasp and cry

Out the Old Hundred.

Trebles to right of them,

Tenros to left of them,

Basses in front of them,

Bellowed and thundered.

Stormed they with shout and yell,

Not wise they sang nor well,

Drowning the sexton’s bell,

While all the Church wondered.

 

Dire the precentor’s glare,

Flashed his pitchfork in the air

Sounding fresh keys to bear

Out the Old Hundred.

Swiftly he turned his back,

Reached he his hat from rack,

Then from the screaming pack,

Himself he sundered.

Tenors to right of him,

Tenors to left of him,

Discords behind him,

Bellowed and thundered.

Oh, the wild howls they wrought:

Right to the end they fought!

Some tune they sang, but not

Not the Old Hundred.