ON READING MONTAIGNE

   STEFAN ZWEIG ON READING MONTAIGNE’S ESSAYS

 “There is a select group of writers who are accessible to anyone, at whatever age or stage of life – Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, Tolstoy – and then there are those whose significance is not properly revealed until a particular moment. Montaigne is one of these. In order to recognize his true worth, you should not be too young, too deprived of experience and life’s deceptions, and it is precisely a generation like ours, cast by fate into the cataract of the world’s turmoil, to whom the freedom and consistency of his thought coveys the most precious aid. Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual and the most precious substance of that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in the time of the herd’s rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one’s intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world’s pandemonium.”

A TROPE FOR OUR TIME

ON LOVE LUST YOUTH AND AGE

Marvell

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Apt line in the time of La Peste

COLLINS COVE - NEW HOME

Sunset at Collins Cove - Salem

     Our New Home

AMERICA'S BIRTHDAY

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Walt Whitman

SALEM

SALEM IS MY DWELLING PLACE

REFLECTION ON COLLINS COVE

The cove on most days, except for hot summer days when the regular beach goers congregate, is a solitary place where we can touch the sea's pulse, feel its immutable power and contemplate our place in nature. Such notions call to mind the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne in his, "Foot-Prints on the Sea-Shore" where he wrote, "When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a necessity within me, I am drawn to the sea-shore, which extends its line of rude rocks and seldom-trodden sands, for leagues around our bay." Living not far from Collins Cove, it is likely this native son walked this cove's shores contemplating the life of Salem found in his writings. 

Musings from the Cloister - 14-06-2020

"The greatest misfortune is loneliness. So true is this that the highest form of consolation - religion - lies in finding a friend who will never let you down - God. Prayer is giving vent to one's thoughts as with a friend..."
Pavese - Diaries - 15 May 1939

REPUBLICAN CHANT Heard in the Cloister

We are the hollow men...

Our dried voiced, when

We whisper together 

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

or rat's feet over broken glass...

T.S. Eliot

Oh Mitch, Lindsay, Rubio, Scott, Paul 

How phoney - how senless