Why I Choose Red -- Hugh MacDiarmid

I fight in red for the same reasons
That Garibaldi chose the red shirt

      -- Because a few men in a field wearing red

Look like many men  -- if there are ten you will think
There are a hundred; if a hundred
You will believe them a thousand.
And the colour of red dances in the enemy's rifle sights
And his aim will be bad – But, best reason of all,
A man in a red shirt can neither hide nor retreat.

Mood 2 (Feeling This Way)

  


There's not a lot to say
When you're feeling this way
And you don't listen Anyway
You've got your own problems.

Listen to me Just this time
It's something yours & It's something mine
We must be close to the end of the line:
Let's try and get there together.

She said you have to learn 
(She said, she said)
To find somewhere outside of your head
I said that would be fine (I said)
But I'd rather be with You instead.

'Cause when you're up, they'll love you to death
& when you're down, they'll steal your last breath
They say goodbye, You say hello:
Ask how you're doing
You just don't know.

There's not a lot to say
When you're feeling this way
And you don't listen Anyway
You've got your own problems.


Kevin Ayers: Feeling This Way (link)

NOTE:  Feeling This Way, the first song on Still Life With Guitar, is a little masterpiece, not a word or note out of time or place (although the song's protagonist is clearly a man excised from both dimensions). 

Mornings I torture myself watching segments of “Limousine Liberal Joe” (aka "Lord Haw-Haw's Return") featuring the most important person ever to serve in the United States Congress, his  brassy ball & chain, and their replicant/revenant brood of liars, sneaks, cheats, bores and boors.  I think I do this to remind myself that for so long as the cliché catechism repeats and recycles ad nauseum, on schedule, it proves I Still Exist.  I wonder what non-New Yorkers make of the broadcast.  I know what the broadcasters make of non-New Yorkers.

I’m about to miss the Zbigniew Brzezinski/Al Sharpton cooking segment.  I think you'll like the song. Excuse me.

Mood 1 (link)

 

Rothko Sunday (Paracelsus 3)

           Of such were the secrets known by Paracelsus, and it was in the application of these hidden natural forces to purposes of medicine that he made at once so many admirers and enemies.  For the rest, he was by no means a simple personality like Postel;  he was naturally aggressive and of the mountebank type; so did he affirm that his familiar spirit was hidden in the pommel of his great sword, and never left his side.  His life was an unceasing struggle; he travelled, debated, wrote, taught.  He was more eager about physical results than moral conquests, and while first among practical magicians he was last among adepts of wisdom.  

           His philosophy was one of sagacity and, on his own part, he termed it philosophia sagax. [1]   He divined more than anyone without knowing anything completely.  There is nothing to equal his intuitions, unless it  be the rashness of his commentaries.   He was a man of intrepid experiences, intoxicated with his own opinions, his own talk, intoxicated otherwise on occasion, if we may believe some of his biographers.  The works which he has left are precious for science, but they must be read with caution.  He may be called the divine Paracelsus, understood in the sense of diviner; he is an oracle, but not a true master.  He is great above all as a physician, for he had found the Universal Medicine.   

          This notwithstanding, he could not prolong his own life, and he died, while still young, worn out by work and by excesses. [2]   He left behind him a name shining with fantastic and ambiguous glory, due to discoveries by which his contemporaries failed to profit.  He had not uttered his last word, and is one of those mysterious beings of whom it may be said, as of Enoch and St. John:  He is not dead, and he will come again upon earth before his last day.

[1]  This is really the title of a particular treatise, but it is exceedingly long and may be said to be de omnibus rebus, it may be not taken unjustly to represent his philosophy at large.

[2]  The latest and most successful apologist of Paracelsus says that the charge of intemperance was invented by his enemies.  See the Life of Paracelsus, by Miss Anna M. Stoddart, 1911.

Eliphas Levi, The History of Magic (Including A Clear And Precise Exposition Of Its Procedure, Its Rites And Its Mysteries), 1860 (translated by A.E. Waite, 1913). Float.  Serene.  Occupy.