“Somewhere Over The Rainbow . . .” — Image by Phil Bentley
Empty spaces ain’t nothing new
Rainbows ain’t something that you hold on to
They move out as the storm moves through
And empty spaces ain’t nothing new
— from Empty Spaces, by Mary Gauthier
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Empty Spaces Ain’t Nothing New Leave a comment
The Writer’s In The Well Leave a comment
Until my brother, Tom, stop sending emails in 2010, many of the titles would read “The ‘blank’ is in the well,” and the message would include this cat image. We never talked about the image or the use of the phase, but he used them often as a preface to the message and a reflection of his condition.
In an October 16, 2009 email titled, “Cat’s In The Well” he wrote:
Your blog was splendidly poetic….(Visually and Verbally)!!!! Such a graceful turning inward and reflecting on two brothers and kindred spirits
…..
I love yah
Talk to you very soon
t.
Again, I would think about the phase and the why he would use it, e.g., “Photography is in the Well with the Cat.”
One can gather all kinds of meaning from the image and the phase, but it wasn’t till one day while running and listening to Bob Dylan on my iPad and I heard, “The cat’s in the well, the wolf is looking down.”
“That’s it!” I thought, maybe this was the connection, Dylan’s “Cat In The Well.”
The cat’s in the well, the wolf is looking down
The cat’s in the well, the wolf is looking down
He got his big bushy tail dragging all over the ground
The cat’s in the well, the gentle lady is asleep
Cat’s in the well, the gentle lady is asleep
She ain’t hearing a thing, the silence is a-stickin’ her deep
The cat’s in the well and grief is showing its face
The world’s being slaughtered and it’s such a bloody disgrace
The cat’s in the well, the horse is going bumpety bump
The cat’s in the well, and the horse is going bumpety bump
Back alley Sally is doing the American jump
The cat’s in the well, and Papa is reading the news
His hair’s falling out and all of his daughters need shoes
The cat’s in the well and the barn is full of bull
The cat’s in the well and the barn is full of bull
The night is so long and the table is oh, so full
The cat’s in the well and the servant is at the door
The drinks are ready and the dogs are going to war
The cat’s in the well, the leaves are starting to fall
The cat’s in the well, leaves are starting to fall
Goodnight, my love, may the Lord have mercy on us all
The theme of the song is apocalyptic — very mythological. The cat’s in the well and there’s just no escape.
Goodnight, Tom, may the Lord have mercy on you. Although broken and mangled, you were one “cool cat.”
kenne
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The gift is to the giver . . . 2 comments
Thanksgiving Still Life — Photo-Artistry by kenne
2.
Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.
Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the
past and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another–not one,
Not one can grow for another–not one.
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him–it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or
the indication of his own.
— from “A Song of the Rolling Earth” by Walt Whitman
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Invoking The Full Meaning Of Life 2 comments
Violet and Grandpa Tom — Computer Painting by kenne
Invoking the Full Meaning of Life
How best to express sharing new life,
when each moment deserves its own face.
What seems apropos for the moment,
when the next fosters a new experience.
Is it in a number:
. . . number of days
. . . number of thoughts
. . . number of heartbeats
. . . number of turns
. . . number of prayers?
You can count the ways,
only when it’s you who will know the score.
Is it in a word:
. . . loving
. . . caring
. . . sharing
. . . giving
. . . sheltering?
You communicate thoughts and feelings,
when manifested in knowledge and experience.
Or, is it in art:
. . . transforming thoughts
. . . expressing feeling
. . . experiencing emotions?
You desire to evoke life,
when distance can’t separate a lifelong bond.
kenne
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Father And Brother — Mercy Now 1 comment
Dedicated to Brother Tom (RIP) and Daughters, Vanessa and Lisa — Images by kenne
Marcy Now
My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won’t be long and he won’t be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now
My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom
He’s shackled to his fears and doubts
The pain that he lives in is
Almost more than living will allow
I love my bother, and he could use some mercy now
My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit
That’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful
Who follow them down
I love my church and country, and they could use some mercy now
Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They’ll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now
Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
— Mary Gauthier
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Tracing the space of our connectiveness Leave a comment
Computer Painting by kenne
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the turner boys — somewhere i have never travelled 3 comments
kenne and bobby — images by joy & kenne
kenne and bobby
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what is is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
— e.e. cummings
My brother first shared this poem October 14, 2005, which was E. E. Cummings birthday.
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Life Is Not To Be Passed By In A Rush. Leave a comment
We WIll Keep The Lights On, Tom 1 comment
Still-life Image by kenne
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
— Wallace Stevens
In Memory of Thomas R. Turner
We shared a lot; poetry, philosophy, music and a lot of bullshit. Here’s one music example.
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Here Comes Your Ghost Again Leave a comment
In Memory of Brother Tom/Bob, One of His Favorite Poems.
Thomas Robert Turner (2000) Image by kenne
Diamonds and Rust
Well, I’ll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that’s not unusual
It’s just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I’d known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin’s eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the Midwest
Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well, you burst on the scene, already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes, the girl on the half-shell
Could keep you unharmed
Now I see you standing with brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you’re smiling out the window of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you’re telling me you’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
‘Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It’s all come back too clearly
Yes, I once loved you dearly
And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid
— Joan Baez
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Regarding the Pain of Others 1 comment
Mother (Agnes), with sons Kenne and Tom (Bobby), and Tom’s daughters Lisa and Vanessa
— Late 80’s image in Seattle by Joy
Susan Sontag — Regarding the Pain of Others
Photography obsessed Sontag and became the subject for two of her best books. Her preoccupation with photography is the single clearest example of her shifting a previously disregarded mass medium into the realm of acceptable highbrow discussion. The photograph, in her view, had changed the mechanics of memory. Our minds, she argued, no longer stored narrative; they stockpiled images. “The problem,” she wrote in Regarding the Pain of Others, “is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only photographs.” And in a way, that sentence anticipated her obituaries, which dwelled at length on the many photographs of Sontag.
— from a profile on Susan Sontag, Susan Superstar in the New York Magazine
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Ah You Foes That In Conflict Have Overcome Me 4 comments
Tom Turner (Seattle, June 12, 2000) — Image by kenne
Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
(For what is my life or any man’s life but a conflict with foes,
the old, the incessant war?)
You degredations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the
sharpest of all!)
You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of
any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d
ennuis!
Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come
forth,
It shall yet march forth o’ermastering, till all lies beneath me,
It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.
— Walt Whitman
Tom sent this Whitman poem to me the day before my 65th birthday — “I knew you would like it.”
He was correct!
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Thomas Robert Turner, RIP 17 comments
Thomas Robert Turner, May 23, 1942 – November 13, 2014
I love you, Bobby!
I, slave, chained to an oar of poem,
Inhabiting this faraway province where
Nothing happens, I wouldn’t want it to.
I have expressly deprived myself of much:
Conversation, sweets of friendship, love. . . .
The public women of the town don’t appeal.
I wouldn’t want them to. There are no others,
At least for an old, smelly, covetous bookman.
So may things might have fed this avocation,
But what’s the point? It’s too late.
— from the poem STOIC, by Lawrence Durrell
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Capturing The Moment — Children Pouring Water Leave a comment
Children Pouring Water Fountain — Image by kenne
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Dance With Me, Baby! 1 comment
“Dance with Me, Baby!” (March 2006) — Image by kenne
Dance with me, you watching me
I know you wanting me, baby dance with me
I want you dancing with me
Baby come and dance with me
Rock with me, no stoppin me with you here next to me
Baby dance with me
Dance with me, you watching me
I know you wanting me, baby dance with me
I want you dancing with me
Baby come and dance with me
— from “Dance With Me”, written by Schack, Carsten / Karlin, Kenneth / Knowles, Beyoncé.
Life is not to be passed by in a rush.
— Tom Turner
*****
Progress is measured
by richness and intensity of experience –
by a wider and deeper apprehension
of the significance and scope of human existence.
*****
Art is an indecent exposure of the consciousness.
— Herbert Read
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