Jul 27
Jul 26
Enigmas
by Pablo Neruda
You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving there
with his golden feet? I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for? I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the macrocystis algae hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the
harpoon in it dies.
You inquire about the kingfisher’s feathers, which tremble
in the pure springs of the southern tides? Or you’ve found
in the cards a new question touching on the crystal architecture
of a sea anemone, and you’ll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks? The hook of the
angler fish, the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread
in the water?
I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure, and among the
blood-colored grapes time has made the petal hard and shiny,
made the jellyfish full of light and untied its knot, letting its musical
threads fall from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.
I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human
eyes, dead in those darknesses, of fingers accustomed to the triangle,
longitudes on the timid globe of an orange.
I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked and
the only thing caught was a fish trapped inside the wind.
Jul 26
Jul 25
“Quite a few people in the world have seen my penis, so that’s kinda cool.”
– Spencer Elden, 17-year-old who was pictured naked on Nirvana’s Nevermind album in 1991 when he was an infant, from the this NPR story. Via Andraya.
Jul 24
Jul 23
Announcing the arrival Helen Margaret Johnston, weighing in at 7 pounds, 8 ounces, and measuring 19 and 3/4 inches. She looks great–mainly because she narrowly escaped getting Brice’s ears.
Jul 23
Ok, I confess. I’m a huge fan of commencement speeches. I always read them when my mom or the office manager forwards them to me, no matter who wrote them. I still remember what my college commencement speaker (it was the guy who brought the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta) said: “Never, never, never, never give up” –paraphrasing Churchill, of course. I was profoundly moved by the speech at the time and probably would be today if I heard it again. But then, I’m not 21 anymore.
Nonetheless, I’d love to edit a book of great commencement speeches. Thousands are given every year across the nation and rarely ever are they recorded and circulated widely (although the internet is changing this). Perhaps the majority of them shouldn’t be. But every once in a while someone really nails it, really drives one home. It’s extraordinarily hard to condense a lot of wisdom into a gracefully concise speech, and even harder to stay witty and concrete enough to keep a crowd engaged. Maybe its the atmosphere, the high hopes and untested potential of the moment that makes hearing a commencement speech so moving, but there are those speeches which defy the cheesiness and truly remain inspirational. These should be read regularly.
Here are three that I think qualify. Two are old and one is new. If you know of others that compare with these, let me know.
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