Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett
The Lovers’ Chronicle
Dear Muse,
one of my favorite words
in regards to present company
“Oh thanks my dear”
went straight to the Kahn/Jones
song, because it had to be
“The theme of When Harry Met Sally”
yes, well done
“And if asked why, would you
the same answer give”
absolutely, simply
tu es toi
tu eres tu
© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved
we are what we are
we have what we have
we are, i know not how,
our dreams, our wishes
an ideogram, writ in waves
time, tick, tick, tick
weave no warped words
paint no draped desire
if asked why you
i would say
because you are you
if asked why
i came to you
i simply had to
© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved
we are
i know
not how
we believe
and cannot
rid ourselves
of how we got here
in this simple fashion
these feelin’s i portray
diverse and undulatin’
sense, discernin’ the difference
understandin’ what matters most
are the extraordinary experiences
© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
you then
at first sight
you bet
recall the clumsy
first attempts
the first moves
all filed away
different now, though
plaited with experience,
the weight of joy
and loss and sadness,
collected over years
the innocence
and simplicity
gone
but you
remain
© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
we are what we are
we have what we have
we are, i know not how,
our dreams, our wishes
an ideogram,
writ in waves
a train station
saddenin’ clouds
time, tick, tick, tick
weave no warped words
paint no draped desire
if asked why you
i would say
because you are you
if asked why
i came to you
i simply had to
© copyright 2017 Mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
| Michel de Montaigne | |
|---|---|
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Today is the birthday of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (Château de Montaigne, Guyenne; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592 Château de Montaigne, Guyenne); in my opinion, one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight. His Essais (translated literally as “Attempts” or “Trials”) contains some of the most influential essays ever written.
Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying the spirit of freely entertaining doubt. Perhaps most famously known for his skeptical remark, “Que sçay-je?” (“What do I know?”, in Middle French; now rendered as Que sais-je? in modern French).
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne’s attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
Quotes
Qui songe à oublier se souvient.
Un peu de chaque chose, et rien du tout, a la française.
- A little of all things, but nothing of everything, after the French manner.
Si on me presse, continue-t-il, de dire pourquoi je l’aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer qu’en répondant: parce que c’était lui; parce que c’était moi.
- L’homme d’entendement n’a rien perdu, s’il a soi-même.
- A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.
- Book I, Ch. 39
- La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi.
- The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
- Book I, Ch. 39
Ceux qui ont apparié notre vie à un songe ont eu de la raison… Nous veillons dormants et veillants dormons.
- Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… We are sleeping awake, and waking asleep.
- Book II, Ch. 12
Today is the birthday of John Tenniel ( 28 February 1820 – 25 February 1914); illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist prominent in the second half of the 19th century. An alumnus of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, he was knighted for artistic achievements in 1893, the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist.
Tenniel is remembered mainly as the principal political cartoonist for Punch magazine for over 50 years and for his illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Tenniel’s detailed black-and-white drawings remain the definitive depiction of the Alice characters, with comic book illustrator and writer Bryan Talbot stating, “Carroll never describes the Mad Hatter: our image of him is pure Tenniel.”
Gallery
Pygmalion
| Geraldine Farrar | |
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 |
|
Today is the birthday of Geraldine Farrar (Alice Geraldine Farrar, Melrose, Massachusetts, February 28, 1882 – March 11, 1967 Ridgefield, Connecticut); soprano opera singer and film actress, noted for her beauty, acting ability, and “the intimate timbre of her voice.” She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed “Gerry-flappers”.
Farrar had a seven-year love affair with the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Her ultimatum, that he leave his wife and children and marry her, resulted in Toscanini’s abrupt resignation as principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in 1915. Farrar was close friends with the star tenor Enrico Caruso and there has been speculation that they too had a love affair, but no conclusive evidence of this has surfaced. It is said that Caruso coined her motto: Farrar farà (“Farrar will do it”).
Her marriage to cinema actor Lou Tellegen on February 8, 1916 was the source of scandal. The marriage ended, as a result of her husband’s numerous affairs, in a very public divorce in 1923. The circumstances of the divorce were brought again to public recollection by Tellegen’s bizarre 1934 suicide in Hollywood. Farrar reportedly said “Why should that interest me?” when told of Tellegen’s death.
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Farrar as Marguerite in Faust
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Farrar in an evening gown
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Farrar on the set of Carmen
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Farrar and Enrico Carusoin Julien
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Farrar in costume as Nedda in Pagliacci
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Farrar in performance
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Farrar in public
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Farrar with Pedro de Cordoba in Carmen
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Portrait printed in Motion Picture Magazine, June 1920
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Farrar as Joan of Arc for Joan the Woman
Today is the birthday of Stephen Harold Spender (Kensington, London 28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995 Westminster, London); poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. He was appointed the seventeenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965.
Verse
Six feet and seventy years, to see
The light, and then resign it for the grave.
Drinker of horizon’s fluid line;
Ear that suspends on a chord
The spirit drinking timelessness;
Touch, love, all senses…
- “Not Palaces”(l. 12–16). . .
Ah, like a comet through flame she moves entranced
Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough
Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal.
- “The Express” (l. 25–27)
- What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening the will
Leaking the brightness away- “What I Expected Was” (l. 9–12)
- For I had expected always
Some brightness to hold in trust,
Some final innocence
To save from dust- “What I Expected Was” (l. 25–28). . .
- Across this dazzling
Mediterranean
August morning
The dolphins write such
Ideograms:
With power to wake
Me prisoned in
My human speech
They sign: ‘I AM!’- “Dolphins”
- In railway halls, on pavements near the traffic,
They beg, their eyes made big by empty staring
And only measuring Time, like the blank clock. - No, I shall weave no tracery of pen-ornament
To make them birds upon my singing tree:
Time merely drives these lives which do not live
As tides push rotten stuff along the shore.- “In Railway Halls, on Pavements Near the Traffic”
- Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds
Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity.
But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds
This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.- “In Railway Halls, on Pavements Near the Traffic”
- At dawn she lay with her profile at that angle
Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel.- “Daybreak”
- Then, in a flush of rose, she woke and her eyes that opened
Swam in blue through her rose flesh that dawned.
From her dew of lips, the drop of one word
Fell like the first of fountains: murmured
‘Darling’, upon my ears the song of the first bird.
‘My dream becomes my dream,’ she said, ‘come true.
I waken from you to my dream of you.’
Oh, my own wakened dream then dared assume
The audacity of her sleep. Our dreams
Poured into each other’s arms, like streams.- “Daybreak”
Mac Tag
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