13 February 2008

If a picture is worth a thousand words…

well, what else can I say . . .

Greetings from Anna Maria Island, FL. More blog updates/pics soon, maybe tonight when I get back from trolleying around the island . . .

14 February 2008

A valentine to my friends…been reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet . . .

“You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all–ask yourself in the stillest hours of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it . . .

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other. Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside . . .

Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life: in understanding as in creating.

There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide.”

16 February 2008

Beach reading…more Rilke…

From Letters to a Young Poet:

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

**

You characterized him [Richard Dehmel] very well with the term: “living and writing in heat.”—And in fact artistic experience lies so incredibly close to that of sex, to its pains and its ecstasy, that the two manifestations are indeed but different forms of one and the same yearning and delight. And if instead of heat one might say—sex, sex in the great, broad, clean sense, free of any insinuation of ecclesiastical error, then his art would be very grand and infinitely important. His poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out of him as out of mountains.

**

Almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious.

**

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as a distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.

**

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it with sublimity and exhalation. And those who come together in the night and are entwined in rocking delight do an earnest work and gather sweetness, gather depth and strength for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to speak of ecstasies beyond telling.

**

And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand.

**

Your solitude will be a hold and home for you even amid very unfamiliar conditions and from there you will find all your ways. All my wishes are ready to accompany you, and my confidence is with you.

17 February 2008

Seafood festival…

So I was in one of the many gift shops in Bradenton Beach, buying more shit for my niecelings and nephlings which I now have no idea how I’m going to get home, when I overheard someone ask something about the location of some festival. Hmm. Ears perked, I asked the nice lady at the counter which festival that might be. ‘Oh, the seafood festival. In Cortez, just across the bridge. Can’t miss it.’

Mmmm. Seafood festival. I was still kinda full from the heavenly sweet & savory crepes I had just devoured at the legitimately French creperie just off the pier, but I felt pretty confident that I could work up an appetite.

I had, after all, just that morning, walked along the shallows of the Gulf of Mexico, which was like walking through a seafood platter . . . sea urchins and oysters and crabs, oh my! One fella had managed to scoop up a baby octopus, which he was generously showing around to not only his own kids, but all the kids on the beach. Nothing is more delightful, by the way, than small children discovering sea creatures. (I include myself in the “small children” category, in spirit.)

So I dropped off my loot in my hotel room (I relocated on Friday from the Tradewinds Resort to two doors down to their sister resort, the Tortuga Inn, after deciding, nope, I was not ready to go home yet. I have a lovely room with a garden view, not one but two rocking chairs, and a bidet in the bathroom, yehaw!). An aside . . . I’ve never quite understood the mechanics or purpose of the bidet, so I have just Wickipediaed it, and found some rather fascinating information . . .

Bidets are primarily used to wash and clean the external vulva and the anus, as well as the skin near these areas, including the perineum. They may also be used to clean any other part of the body; they are very convenient for cleaning the feet, for example. Despite appearing similar to a toilet, it would be more accurate to compare it to the washbasin or bathtub. In fact, the bidet is used by some for a baby bath, though there are some who recommend against this.

Users who are unfamiliar with bidets often confuse a bidet with a urinal, toilet, or even a drinking fountain. The user should use the toilet before using the bidet; its purpose is to wash afterwards. It is generally understood that the user should sit on a bidet facing the tap and nozzle to clean the genitalia, or with their back to the tap and wall to clean the anus.

Well geewillickers, who knew all that?!?

Anywho, enough about genitalia bathing. Off to the seafood festival!!! Crossed over the bridge to Cortez, which is a really really really old fishing town & still chock full o locals. In theory there were manatees in that there water under that there bridge to Cortez, but once again, I didn’t spot any sea cows. 😦

Wow. Seafood festival. Not hard to find, as it seemed everyone on the island of Anna Maria was there, or headed there, so I just followed the crowd until I got to the $2 entry fee booth & got my “grouper” hand stamp.

Now, most people I’ve run into here on the island are either 80 or 8, but here, drinkin $2 cups of Bud Light while slurpin down oysters on the half shell, sucking the meat out of spicy crawfish, and picking ’round the bones of smoked mullet (the fish, not the hairstyle), were the 18-30 crowd.

Naturally, this made me want to leave. But then I found my way to the sound stage, got myself a 1/2 dozen oysters, and plopped down on a bench. Besides, I knew I wasn’t leaving until I had a whole lotta seafood in my belly, so that was that.

After enjoying the local band, and I wish I could post the video here but I apparently do not have the right format or something to upload it, I wandered into the beer-drinkin fray and found my way to the animal tent. (Again, another very amusing video was taken with my phone, featuring some apathetic turtles, funky chickens, a thirsty goose, and some other animal tent inhabitants.) But here I will share the pictures I did manage to take . . .

And yes, if you are wondering, that pig is in fact scratching his ass on a turtle.

More wandering. Lots of crafty tents. Spent most of my time & effort trying really hard not to buy any more sea turtle paraphernalia, as I had already used up my sea turtle luggage space allotment. Enjoyed the funny lookin blowfish in the mini-aquarium (too mini for manatees, sigh). And then, and then good people, I did not find Jesus, but I did find the Jesus Tent, complete with some tall fellow, one of the brothers in the quartet, belting out the lowest bass notes I’ve ever heard; glory hallelujahing aplenty; sunlight streaming down in godlike fashion upon my heathen head; and a crib, which I can only assume was for the sweet baby Jesus himself, cuz weren’t no earthling babes occupyin it.

Well, I mean really. What’s left after the Jesus Tent? I knew it was almost time to scoot on home, partly because I figured nothing could top the Jesus Tent, but mostly because I kinda had to pee and didn’t want to use the port a potty.

So I headed back into seafood land. Was sorely tempted by the smoked mullet (whatever the hell kinda fish mullet is). Got sidetracked by some disappointing etufe, and finally decided to get myself one o them $2 Bud Lights, find a shady spot to sit in (for it had blossomed from “pleasantly warm” to “jesus hell it’s hot out” over the course of the past 24 hours), listen to some tunes for a spell, then grab me a mess o crawfish for the road.

And once again, good people, little chickens, dear friends, I am saddened that I cannot figure out how to post videos here, for it means I can only tell you about the Sunshine Express Cloggers, and email it to you at your request. The Cloggers are a very earnest, though very badly costumed group, of which the youngest member is probably in her late 40s or early 50s, the oldest, I dare not guess at, and not a one of ’em should have been wearing those highly unflattering short white flouncy skirts, but there you are. (Note to Carmy: I think I saw Gradma Lila in the back row. Does she lead a secret double life as a Sunshine Express Clogger? I’d believe it.)

Sated with beer and clogging, I decided I was done with the seafood festival. I handed over my last 8 food tickets for a gigundous container full of spicy crawfish, headed back over the bridge, dropped of my gigundous container full of spicy crawfish, and scooted across the street just in time to enjoy my final Floridian sun set . . . (for now) . . .

The End.