"The imagination is a great disturber of theories..." John Cowper Powys Page entry #8

a selection from Obstinate Cymric by John Cowper Powys

"...the sensations of walking for the sake of the pleasure it gives us is a very different thing from noting the impressions left upon us by what we catch sight of on our way to work.  ...The imagination is a great disturber of theories and we must qualify all our conclusions where poetry is concerned by reminding ourselves that there come moments of inspiration when experience or lack of experience matter little.
 
     "Life at such moments is grasped in planetary perspective and with a peculiar kind of emphasis hard to define, an emphasis neither moral nor cynical, neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but so intimately concerned with the unchanging pathos of terrestrial fate that of necessity it appeals to the hand-worker equally with the brain-worker.

     "That is the mysterious emphasis for which the human race has no name but which all men born of women needs must feel."

Huw Menai, 1886-1961

Powys is writing about his admiration for the poetry of Huw Menai, a Welsh coal-miner who wrote poetry which spoke      "...indignantly and wonderfully of all those workers in mine and factory whose reserved, long-seasoned, experienced, and far-sighted revolutionary insight finds it as hard to conceal its contempt for mass-hypnosis and mob-frenzy as for the Machiavellian tricks of the privileged:
     'Once in his cups, he howled aloud
     His true opinion of the crowd.'"


[and from On Seeing Leaves Falling on the Clean-Way--]

"Our hearts are still inexorably weak
For all our conquests of the earth...and late
Tasting our impotence we sadly seek
Some larger scapegoat for the larger Fate;

For we who have the grace to be ashamed
Of our mean actions feel that life would meet
Our prayers half-way if only the nameless named
Had tithe of our pity for the blind and maimed
And the dumb lowlier things about our feet."

"Huw Menai's thoughts [writes Powys] resemble wind-whipt waves breaking one after another on a rocky shore, each particular wave following so hard on the one before it that we might almost say that its choice between breaking into foam and rolling foamlessly forward into the rock pools was conditioned, decided, and predestined by a revolt from, or an imitation of, the choice made by its predecessor.  ...A reader can never be quite certain whether it will be a pagan "Tarot card" or one from the other pack that will turn up next."

(The Simple Vision: Poems by Huw Menai, 1945)

  [The above selections are from Chapter 8: The Simple Vision, Obstinate Cymric, by John Cowper Powys, London: Village Press, 1974.  Chapter 8 ("The Simple Vision") was first published in  1946.]

Page 214: "Revenant found a bottle of homemade farigoule on the table. ...a bulwark of a wine, yet [he] drank it like it was champagne."

From page  214 of the book:

Between the wine and the delicious food prepared by Gerard's, my whole body became a receptacle for the noise, the conversation, the perfume and the after-shave, the rustle of bodily movements, and the living organism that the party had evolved into.   ...I was looking out for Revenant's best interests and if I could steer someone to him or away from him it could be done by my roving antennae.

  I was, however, unaware of how much he was drinking and that he'd been drinking before he arrived.  Once he'd greeted everyone, Revenant found a bottle of homemade farigoule on the table.  Farigoule is a bulwark of a wine, made with thyme leaves.  It was too strong for a social occasion, yet Revenant drank it like it was champagne.

Thyme, a central ingredient to Farigoule

  ...In another corner, Owen stood by the hors d'oeuvres table with Mr. Benoit and Mr. Cans.  They were listening to Mr. Perrein pontificate on recent actions in the Chamber of Deputies; this time in English, so that Mr. Cans was lost.  Owen turned and reached for a pitcher of water.  I stuck my hand out to stop him.
    "Remember Lot's wife?" I asked.
    "Yeah," he said.
    "Well, she drank that water," I said, and handed him a bottle of unopened mineral water.
    "Barbaric country," he said, unscrewing the top.

the chamber of deputies

  
  

There's my father. My father is that man. I used to know him. [Reading Richard Ford's new book, Canada.] or [You gotta love Richard Ford, part II]

Excerpts from Ford, Richard.  Canada, New York: Harper Collins, 2012.

   "...and since so much was about to change because of him, I've thought possibly that a long-suppressed potential in him had suddenly worked itself into visibility on his face.  He was becoming who and what he was always supposed to be.  He'd simply had to wear down through the other layers to who he really was.  I've seen this phenomenon in the faces of other men--homeless men, men sprawled on the pavement in front of bars or in public parks or bus depots, or lined up outside the doors of missions, waiting to get in out of a long winter.  In their faces--plenty of them were handsome, but ruined--I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.  It's a theory of destiny and character I don't like or want to believe in.  But it's there in me like a hard understory.  I don't, in fact, ever see such a ruined man without saying silently to myself: There's my father.  My father is that man.  I used to know him." [pp 75-76]

 

A view of Great Falls, MT

 

 

"I'm willing to say now that guilt has less to do with it than you might think.  Rather, the intolerable problem is of everything suddenly being so confused: the clear path back to the past being cluttered and unfollowable; how the person once felt being now completely changed from how he feels today.  And time itself: how the hours of the day and night advance so oddly--first fast, then hardly passing at all.  Then the future becoming as confused and impenetrable as the past itself.  What a person becomes in such a situation is paralyzed--caught in one long, sustained, intolerable present.
"Who wouldn't want to stop that--if he could?  Make the present give way to almost any future at all. Who wouldn't admit everything just to gain release from the terrible present?  I would.  Only a saint wouldn't."
[p.120]



 



A view of Great Falls, MT

Orhan Pamuk says #8: The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life.

"...Ipek laughed as if Ka had just told a very good joke, but before long her face turned deep red.  During the long silence that followed, he looked into Ipek's eyes and realized that she saw right through him.  So you couldn't even take the time to get to know me, her eyes told him.  You couldn't even spend a few minutes flirting with me.

Don't try to pretend you came here because you always loved me and couldn't get me out of your mind. You came here because you found out I was divorced and remembered how beautiful I was and thought I might be easier to approach now that I was stranded in Kars.

By now Ka was so ashamed of his wish for happiness, and so determined to punish himself for his insolence, that he imagined Ipek uttering the cruelest truth of all: The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life."

[from Pamuk, Orhan. Snow, New York:  Vintage International, 2004, p. 38.]

Page 352: "Nothing to worry about," Shanzenbach commanded. "Did I tell you I've bought on consignment ten cases of Bellett wine? Château de Crémat."

[From page 352 of the book]

"Nothing to worry about," Shanzenbach commanded. "Did I tell you I've bought on consignment ten cases of Bellett wine? Château de Crémat." He put his arm through Félix's as they walked toward the wreck. "It goes splendidly with your wife's monkfish soup I've heard so much about. It'll remind you of damp rocks. I'll have Covarelli bring a case by your house tomorrow."

"round and herby" says Elizabeth Gabay, with delicate
notes of lilac, peach, & rose

Félix knew from the looks on the faces of those three old men that a change, outside of regulation and good reason, had come over them. He decided to let it pass with the reassurance Shanzenbach gave him, and because of the close affinity he felt toward Owen and Georges. If he asked for a breathalizer test on any of them, they would've failed and then the atmosphere would've degenerated into one of embarrassment.

 

 

Baron G is a flinty, dry white of considerable complexity
made entirely from the Rolle grape.

This time I sat in the driver's seat. Revenant was next to me, and Ebert, Shanzenbach, and Owen sat in the back. I looked anxiously at the priest.
    "You don't know how to drive stick, do you?" he asked.
    I shook my head.
    "Where's that cop?" Revenant said, twisting around to the rear. "Hah! He's pulled up in back of us; the curious pain in the ass."
 

[Oenology note: the Bellett (or Bellet) vineyards were originally cultivated by the ancient Phoenician Greeks around 500 BCE.  The wine from Chateau Cremat is "the very best" (says Robert Parker), of "extremely high quality."  The whites can be made from a wide variety of grapes but the most popular variety is Rolle.  Rolle is a grape that is native to the area around Nice and is used in the production of these white wines. It's similar to Chardonnay. According to my hyperlinked references, "Bellet wines were highly appreciated by Louis XIV, and also by Thomas Jefferson."]

 

 



She tried to keep her father behind her until she could meet the commitments of her face. (from Grace Paley's "Faith In the Afternoon")

Grace Paley

I'm reading two collections of short stories by Grace Paley, who's been around the scene for a while, I know, but I never went down her street.  All I can say is, I love her.  Here are some snippets from Enormous Changes At the Last Minute:

He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber's snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart.  He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. [ from "Wants"]

I know you Kitty.  You're one of that crowd.  You're the kind thinks the world is round.  Not like my sister, he said.  Not Anna Marie.  She knows the real shape.  She lived, Anna Marie.  What did she have, when she was a kid, what'd my father give her, a little factory to begin with, embroidery, junk, but she's shrewd and crooked and she understands.  My two brothers are crooked.  Crooked, crooked, crooked.  They have crooked wives.  The only one is not crooked, the one who is straight and dumb like you Kitty, he said, dragging her to him for a minute's kiss, is her husband, Anna Marie's.  He was always dumb and straight, but they have got him now, all knotted up, you wouldn't unravel him if you started in August. [ from "Come On, Ye Sons of Art"]

There is a family nearly everybody knows.  The children of this family are named Bobo, Bibi, Doody, Dodo, Neddy, Yoyo, Butch, Put Put, and Beep.  Some are girls and some are boys.  The girls are mean babysitters for mothers.  The boys plan to join the army.  They are very narrow-minded.  They never have an idea.  But they like to be right.  They never listen to anyone else's ideas. [from "Gloomy Tune"]

I have to tease a little to grapple any sort of a reply out of her.  But mostly it doesn't work. It is something like I am a crazy construction worker in conversation with fresh cement.  Can there be more in the world like her?  Don't answer.  Time will pass in spite of her slow wits. [from "Distance"]

Paley, Grace.  Enormous Changes At the Last Minute, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1999.

Page 248: We were in the Middle Ages, drinking wine from the salty marshes of the Camargue...in the company of two atheists and a collection of sculpted granite saints.

From page 248 of the book--

I laughed and ate more of the cheese and some of the sausages from Arles.


Sausages in Arles market

Shanzenbach moved us along, carrying a couple bottles of Listel wine made in the Camargue, on the Mediterranean shore, and steered us into a 14th-century church.   



Interior, Church of St. Trophime, Arles

There we were afforded absolute silence and near refrigerator coolness in the midst of a town full of parties and singing and dancing.   We sat in the back. Shanzenbach opened the wine, dispensing it in tiny paper cups stolen from Mr. Fourbiere of Arles. We were in the Middle Ages, drinking wine from the salty marshes of the Camargue, celebrating a Papal ritual in support of the Great Schism, in the company of two atheists and a collection of sculpted granite saints.



the salty marshes of the Camargue

The Great Schism of 1378–1417.  Rival popes had seats in Rome and in Avignon.
The election of Pope Martin V during the Council of Constance 1414–17 put an end to it.

 

 

Photo Credits:
1. Sausages in open air market, courtesy of Dimitrios Dalagiorgos.
2. Listel wine, courtesy of Vranken-Pommery Monopole, Berlin.
3. St Trophime, courtesy of Wikipedia.
4. The Camargue, courtesy of Alamy/PCL, Manchester Guardian.