Feast

For the body and for the soul.

Whisky Friday II

Idiomatic

Glenmorangie, a Scottish word for giving-thanks, I think.

Kelpy

Highland Park is a rather kelpy whisky.

Distilled in the Orkney Islands--a place I long to visit--so the kelpiness makes sense.

Curious Yellow

Shift the horizon out of true and there's a different sort of truth available, I think.

Here: paddling past Monterey harbor and breakwater with the town in the background as well--though a bit of swell makes that view slightly kiltered.

Shift from one horizon to another, and you'll make another sort of truth available too.

--I'm the kiltered one with this shot, though that is the true view while paddling, the horizon at a slight slant.  If you are lucky, kayaking (and swimming) will leave you feeling that rocking-swaying-surging in your soul and bones, proprioceptively, long after the sea-session ends, even unto bedtime.  If you are really lucky, you'll wake with such sea-legs.

Get kiltered: not a bad motto these days . . . .

No Irish in Castle Lumley

I tried to order Irish in the Library Bar of Lumley Castle, Chester-le-Street, Durham, but they only had whisky. No Bushmills. Glenfiddach (with a terminal /k/, I learned) became the drink of choice. Medicinal, by the way. That sore throat from York.

Are You Hungry?

Prepping for a lecture:
"The Hungry Reader at the Feast"
Nov. 18, 2011.

"A Jar of Pain": Lyrics By Jackie Leven

CLASSIC NORTHERN DIVERSIONS

I took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

I saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

I'm in huddersfield drinking in the slubber's arms

and i walked through slush by broken farms

where huddling sheep are turning grey

in the cold light of a nothing day

it took me fifty long years just to work out

that because i was angry didn't mean i was right

now i'm sitting in a bar alone

with the jukebox playing a terrible song

the bartender says I see it's you again

I been drinking deep from a jar of pain

Ch -- i remember once i went home like this

i had my mother in tears as i felt her kiss

now my mother is heavenbound

and her body lies in unmarked ground

in every heart in every home

there's a dying man who lives alone

he close the door and he turn away

and the tide rushes in on a fatal shore

i can never get too close to coal

with a glass in my hand and the ember's crack

but the fire's gone out and the chimney's closed

and there's a round jeer sticking on my back

ch --

I took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

i saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

and with chimneys leaning to the sea

i got the salt of sunderland creasing me

i took a jar of pain to the soaking field

and to the lonely seawall inn south shields

if i was a man which i am not

standing in the last of the rotten snow

i'd fall on my knees and cry out loud

to the snowy river and the icy flow

i took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

i saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

--Jackie Leven

from his CD Shining Brother Shining Sister

Bowmore

Me: Scotch On The Rocks. You?

Thinking about Macbeth and Macbeth.

Byron: "Cunning In Mine Overthrow"

   If my inheritance of storms hath been
   In other elements, and on the rocks
   Of perils, overlook’d or unforeseen,
   I have sustain’d my share of worldly shocks,
   The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
   My errors with defensive paradox;
   I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe

   Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
   My whole life was a contest, since the day
   That gave me being, gave me that which marr’d
   The gift—a fate, or will, that walk’d astray;
   And I at times have found the struggle hard,
   And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
   But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

   Kingdoms and empires in my little day
   I have outliv’d, and yet I am not old;
   And when I look on this, the petty spray
   Of my own years of trouble, which have roll’d 
   Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
   Something—I know not what—does still uphold
   A spirit of slight patience; not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

--Lord Byron, 

from the "Epistle [To Augusta],

composed in 1816 

(in exile, as it were)

Byron: "A Small Drop Of Ink"

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
       Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
      'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
      Of ages.  To what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper, even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his.

--Lord Byron,
Don Juan: 
stanza 88 of Canto III.

Outtakes

Monstrous: just out of the kiln.

Don't forget the coffee.  Strawberry Creek-side.

A really clean window.  And a great view.

Norah Jones, that Frog, and Glenlivet: yes.

 Water, charm.

 Self-portrait, with Boat, #51.

 Breathing.

Pig in a race.

Checking for more flaws.  Happily.

The suspects.

Alma / Precipice.

"The Armor of Your Virtue"

THE ARMOR OF YOUR VIRTUE

Coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The rushing fool who hesitates
Lately finds that his angel is lost.

Should you ever address such divinity
With this litany of virtuous sinning?
Do you dare press this unsuitable case
In the bare face of a model affinity
On the strength of such illusory
And unsubstantiated winning?

Not proven, not proven, not proven--
Do you rue the imprudent fiction,
The innocent, illicit diction?
You ration out your conquests in respect
To consequence, conscience, and blundering.
To a Scotch verdict, no contest you've pled
To govern such botched, besotted hungering.
Never guilty quite, you oddly-kiltered martyr,
With the armor of your virtue left
Virtually without a dent.

Back to the coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The stammering fool fails to prevaricate;
Another angel-- oh, hesitate--is lost.

How do you ever qualify for happiness?
How do you ever quantify your joy?
Where's the form for furthering matters
Or the pattern to know and avoid?
Chipped glass, stalled payment,
Standing traffic, walking the pavement--
Till the pang of passing passion's freshly frosted
In an ashen hour of friendly fashioning.

Coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The fearful fool bravely hesitates,
Though fortune favors a state of grace,
And finds his angel is lost.

Finally, you fear shyly she will be offended.
If only she could condescend to be flattered
By the curtained confession still to be amended,
Still to be shuttered and shattered.

Coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The brazen fool still hesitates,
For fortune favors a state of grace,
As he finds his angel is lost.

--Matt Duckworth


(I wrote this poem back in 1996 on my 35th birthday.  Lightly edited recently.)

Message In A Bottle

The Glenlivet bottle is empty.

(Am I hearing Captain Jack Sparrow with a Caledonian accent now?)

Plotting The Course

Or, After The Sunset.

Banks' "Raw Spirit": Making a Splash

I've been reading celebrated Scottish author Iain Banks' non-fiction Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram. I felt I needed a bit of background and further knowledge of my current favorite beverage--Scotch--and this book seemed a lively entry-point and initial tour. So far, it more than suits. (And, I'll be looking for the novels by Banks that I haven't yet read.)

Today, I want to share a passage that has nothing to do with alcohol, though it does involve high spirits. Enjoy.

At Glenaladale, despite the fact I am 49 and Les very nearly is--Les rarely allows an opportunity to pass when he can remind me I am a whole three months older than he is--we spend a significant amount of time and effort skipping stones, trying to hit large stones with small ones while the former are in flight, throwing stones at logs, using thin or circular stones--spun--in our attempts to produce duck's farts, and sweatily heaving the largest rocks we can manage up to the tops of small cliffs so we can throw them into the water and so produce Really Big Splashes.

(Look, growing up is about this sort of stuff no longer being the only way you're allowed to have fun, not about having to give it up altogether.)

I've always thought so, and it's good to find my own sentiments in a book. Wouldn't you agree?

Make some splashes of your own.

Cheers!

Just Saying

Looking at the empty Glenlivet bottle (a lovely green) and imagining the red Molotov trajectory, you know: "It's a good thing I don't drink vodka."

The Hungry Reader at the Feast