Henry Miller, a 20th-century American writer, became well known in both Europe and the United States for his autobiographical and sexually explicit novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, published in the 1930s and banned in the United States until the 1960s. Between the 1940s and 1960s, he lived in Big Sur, California where he also became well known for his watercolors. It has been said that if he had not become one of the most important writers in 20th-century American literature, Miller would have become even more famous as an artist, having painted over 2000 watercolors over a sixty-year period.
Henry Miller is also a very quotable writer, as evidenced by some of these quotes:
1. An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. 2. Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself. 3. Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
4. Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. 5. If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. 6. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
7. In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance. 8. In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other. 9. It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
10. Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature. 11. One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one. 12. The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
13. The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks. 14. There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. 15. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
16. “Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
17. A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things.... What we dread most, in the face of the impending débâcle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable.... We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.
18. “Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world besides the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?”
Do you have any comments about any of these quotes? Do any of the quotes inspire you?
Video 1. Magnus Toren of the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California discusses Henry Miller
Video 2. Henry Miller reads from the Tropic of Cancer.
My wife and I were treated to a special Father’s Day evening attending a stage play at the Lyceum Theater in San Diego. Our daughter drove us and two of our grandchildren downtown to see “The Listener,” a sci-fi drama based on an event taking place about 600 years in the future. By that time most of humanity had moved from an earth made almost uninhabitable by global warming and other assaults on the environment to new colonies on the moon, called Nerth (New Earth). Humans had developed the technology needed to make the moon inhabitable. (This calls for suspended belief, because one might ask why, if the humans could make the moon inhabitable, they could not also use the same technology to make the earth more inhabitable).
Some earthlings, however, refused to leave the earth, remaining behind in an area called Junk City. It was built on top of a sanitation fill, and the inhabitants survived by finding and using items that had been discarded generations before. The Junk City citizens, over the hundreds of years, had developed new roles to play in a fragile, cobbled-together culture. Some citizens, called Finders, were sent out to find and bring back usable junk. The Jimmies were those assigned to make the junk into usable items, and a powerful leader, called the Namer, gave names to the new creations.
The inhabitants of earth had developed a new religion. The god of their universe was called Sam, and when a woman named Eve ate of the fruit of the Sacred Tree of Life, their god had driven humans out of the paradise called the Mall. In addition, they had some goddesses they worshiped - Oprah, Madonna, and Britney, who was depicted carrying a spear.
One person had the honor of being selected as the Listener, whose sole role was to make periodic radio broadcasts over a sacred radio, calling out to hoped-for fellow survivors and harboring a vision for the future of Earth. For generations, the attempts to contact fellow humans on earth failed.
One day, the inhabitants of Junk City found their culture threatened by the arrival of John, an emissary from Nerth who talked of rescue but who was received as an alien demon. He tried to explain that he was part of a faction on Nerth who wanted to rescue the inhabitants of Junk City and take them back to the moon colony. There was another faction on Nerth that wanted to destroy the residents of Junk City, fearing that someday they might again develop an advanced civilization with a technology that could threaten Nerth.
Gradually, the Listener, a beautiful young woman, fell in love with John and planned to free him. The Namer, however, had his own designs on the Listener and when spurned by her, in the tradition of Greek tragedy, stabbed her to death. As John leaned over her dying body, he heard a response on the radio from other humans on Earth trying to make contact.
It was a powerful drama with excellent acting on the set of a giant junk heap, which the Finders crawled over. On the left side of the stage was the room with radio equipment, in which the Listener lived. On the right side of the stage was the room in which the Namer lived, with scores of CDs containing all of their wisdom displayed on the walls.
All in all, it was an enjoyable evening at the theater shared with family.
Rudyard Kipling in his day was noted for his simplistic, jingoistic, racist, and anti-feminist poems. Many of his poems became popular because they spoke the language of the common people, and they were easy to memorize. Among those poems was the “Gentlemen Rankers”, which told about the experience of a certain class of British soldiers in a foreign land in Victorian days.
In the first three stanzas of the poem, a gentleman ranker laments his lot in army life. The person speaking in the poem is the eldest son, born into a privileged class in Victorian England, but for some reason he was the “black sheep” disinherited by his father (like Reuben in the Bible) and was serving as one of the troops in the ranks. In the Victorian army, class was very important. Officers were gentlemen, and gentlemen were officers. So if a person of privilege served as a soldier in the ranks, it must have been because of some unforgivable sin against his family. So the gentleman ranker is bewailing his role in the army.
Now, the last stanza. My reason for this post is to concentrate on the last stanza of the poem, which I think has greater relevance to our predicament at the moment.
We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young! Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence, Our pride it is to know no spur of pride, And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us And we die, and none can tell Them where we died. We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa--aa--aa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!
What about it? What inspiration and meaning do you get from the last stanza of the poem that might apply to many different aspects of our lives in the 21st century? Let us hear from you.
Several years ago, when I became aware that many of the common names of wildflowers are also the names of women, I thought it would be a challenging exercise to see if I could incorporate several of the common names into a poem that would have a double meaning.
This poem may be read on two different levels. The first level simply refers to flowers. If you allow your imagination to take over, however, the second level has an entirely different aspect. See if you can discover what it is.
Many Flowers Wild Could I Have Gathered
-- by Whit's Whittlings
Many flowers wild could I have gathered The Blue-eyed Mary The Black-eyed Susan And the Cherokee Rose
The Spanish Daisy The Wild Rosemary The unforgettable Ginger And even the pale Touch-me-not.
But the flower I desired most Was not a flower wild It was a bloom with fragrance sweet As the innocence of a child.
From this field could I have plucked many a bloom To brighten the corner of any room But chose I instead this flower so fair That lent its sweetness to the air.
Video. Wildflowers of Texas at Dawn. Let me take you on a short nature retreat to the famous wildflowers of Texas.
