11 July 2007

thought."O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." -Augustine

word. blarney

Flattery, or misleading talk.

[After the Blarney stone, a stone in Blarney Castle in Blarney village,
near Cork, Ireland which, according to legend, gives the gift of the gab
to anyone who kisses it.]

deed. write a real letter: a world of mailboxes is waiting. do it. do it now.

only the epic here
So, the Northernness got me. I yielded to elf horns.

Independence Day I spent with my whole family (a rare, golden experience) on the Mall in Washington. The party was raucous, preempted by four hours of wiffleball.

Then I got on a plane to Maine (in the rain.) My boys Will Kendall and Dave Barr are summering there as coast pirates. They pretty much board treasure ships and tote blunderbusses and daggers in their teeth and stuff.

In the spirit of this, we set off the very evening I arrived to conquer KATAHDIN, the grand finale of the Appalachian We were introduced to the mountain at five the next morning. It's brisk air and northern breezes and walls of mist, sheer cliffs and rocky cairns all the way up to where a green heather cloaks the top. It's the Alfeim of Maine, or the land of sorns if you recall your Perelandrian mythology.

THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. -Tennyson