I understand this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea…
Seattle Photo-Railroad Blue
Month: February 2024
Sunday Poem-Midnight News
A pigeon coos,
bowing to the East,
words true and untrue.
Two soaked sheets,
dripping slowly to the street,
turn blue
from looking too long.
All along the avenue,
air brakes compress
into song.
After the shock, disbelief and surprise
last night, headlights launched through my eyes.
Grief is long.
Seattle Photo-Stripes & Train
Do you guys remember the old Amtrak baggage car/American Airlines logos?
Engage your sense-memory. No one will find you here. No one.
***Except for the good folks at DataCorp Inc, specifically the Eye Tracking training-unit (shout out to Teddy). Also, I should advise that engagement metrics could be used to curate responsible citizenship through train-travel at Amtrak and the DOT, too (efficient and caring).
****Michael’s cousin Peter knows a guy, and some ‘Colombians?‘ are running terabytes of data in old Dell hard-drives (yes, really) around Cape Horn. Your data could be in there, too.
Thanks for looking.
Two Quotations
“Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.”
-Montesquieu, from ‘The Spirit Of The Laws‘
“That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
From the ‘Declaration Of Independence’
A Link To ‘Night Shadows’ By Edward Hopper, A Poem By Robert Frost & Some Images
Night Shadows by Edward Hopper.
The black and white was made in 1924, and is probably most evocative of noir.
I think Raymond Chandler’s High Window is the best of the detective novel.
Here are some quotations of his, if you’re interested.
“Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but good-hearted and peaceful. It had the climate they yap about now. People used to sleep out on porches. Little groups who thought they were intellectual used to call it the Athens of America.”
Here is the link. It’s been a long time since they just reviewed the book and not the author.
The poem that most came to mind:
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
—
As posted:
‘Detroit Nocturne‘ found here. Via Mick Hartley.
I’m partial to ‘Joey’s Meatcutter Inn, Bar & Grill 2017‘:
The lonely cityscape at night or the familiar glow of gas station lights cast into the American wilderness. The eye might want to linger among the colors, shapes and clouds even though the mind knows this is pretty much an empty street in a ‘post-industrial’ zone.
Seattle Photo-Bathing In Winter
Luna Girls is a new installation in West Seattle, looking East towards the city. There used to be ‘Luna Park‘ on the tip of Alki Point.
Seattle Photos-Winter Mood
Sometimes you put ’em in pairs, because neither is good enough on its own. Thanks for looking.
—
For A Friend-A Scene From The Color Of Money
Movie Title: The Color Of Money (Director-Martin Scorsese). 1986.
What’s good and what’s genuine in characters who hustle for a living? Can the American pulp novella/novel be a source of both popular and high entertainment?
Visual Storytelling (end-scene pool showdown): The wiser and more experienced mentor, perhaps washed-up, is being pushed out of the business during his comeback, but he’s not going quietly (we need some dramatic tension). His lady waits for him near the edge of frame, while both of them only take about 1/5 of the frame (all four characters are on the diagonal).
Does he still have it?
—
Brash, untempered (arrogant), less experienced rising talent and his lady take about 1/3 of the frame, closer to the audience. They’ve been hustled; learning the art of the con pretty well.
Should he accept the challenge? Is this it?
Possible conclusions: Maybe that’s what we get in life, a view every now and again. At the height of our powers (or past our powers), we get a moment when the conception of the game and the game become one. In a tacky hall of mirrors, no less. I hope it’s not all a hall of mirrors.
Generations stuck in a stand-off…
My point: A good visual storyteller takes his craft seriously, associating the story and the images to push the story forward. He has an appreciation for beauty. I appreciate Scorsese for working hard because the harder he works, the more my intelligence is respected.
To be honest, the movie dragged on for me and is very much of its time (this is pool for Christ’s Sake, how much can you glamorize pool?). Mythos is tough to achieve.
That said, I appreciate a director practicing his craft and trying to provide some continuity in American life through the visual arts. I appreciate someone who understands that developed characters invite us to see something of ourselves in frame.
Thanks for that.
Seattle Photo-Winter Morning Walk
Open shutters and wet windows…thanks for looking. Most experiments don’t quite work out.
Repost-Seattle Photo-Another Way Of Looking At A Crow
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
Seattle Photo-I Hear You
Thanks for looking.
Tuesday Quotation-Mark Twain
‘A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way’
Some Twain on cats quotes.
Some from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats.‘
Seattle Photo-The Letter B
Friday Poem-W.H. Auden
On The Circuit
Among pelagian travelers,
Lost on their lewd conceited way
To Massachusetts, Michigan,
Miami or L.A.,
An airborne instrument I sit,
Predestined nightly to fulfill
Columbia-Giesen-Management’s
Unfathomable will,
By whose election justified,
I bring my gospel of the Muse
To fundamentalists, to nuns,
to Gentiles and to Jews,
And daily, seven days a week,
Before a local sense has jelled,
From talking-site to talking-site
Am jet-or-prop-propelled.
Though warm my welcome everywhere,
I shift so frequently, so fast,
I cannot now say where I was
The evening before last,
Unless some singular event
Should intervene to save the place,
A truly asinine remark,
A soul-bewitching face,
Or blessed encounter, full of joy,
Unscheduled on the Giesen Plan,
With, here, an addict of Tolkien,
There, a Charles Williams fan.
Since Merit but a dunghill is,
I mount the rostrum unafraid:
Indeed, ‘twere damnable to ask
If I am overpaid.
Spirit is willing to repeat
Without a qualm the same old talk,
But Flesh is homesick for our snug
Apartment in New York.
A sulky fifty-six, he finds
A change of mealtime utter hell,
Grown far too crotchety to like
A luxury hotel.
The Bible is a goodly book
I always can peruse with zest,
But really cannot say the same
For Hilton’s Be My Guest.
Nor bear with equanimity
The radio in students’ cars,
Muzak at breakfast, or–dear God!–
Girl-organists in bars.
Then, worst of all, the anxious thought,
Each time my plane begins to sink
And the No Smoking sign comes on:
What will there be to drink?
Is this a milieu where I must
How grahamgreeneish! How infra dig!
Snatch from the bottle in my bag
An analeptic swig?
Another morning comes: I see,
Dwindling below me on the plane,
The roofs of one more audience
I shall not see again.
God bless the lot of them, although
I don’t remember which was which:
God bless the U.S.A., so large,
So friendly, and so rich.