Intransitive Verbs and Mozart

Have you ever been a victim of unrequited love? - that insatiable longing, that sucking inconsolable desire, all heart and all mind aimed toward one specific being. It's like being half mad, where everything in all of life ends up bending back towards that one person, like a glaring red arrow, a grasping hand.
This (oh soul, take heed) is different than an intransitive verb. I was grading student summaries of Stanley Milgram's "Perils of Obedience" essay, when I came across the word "inquired" used without being followed by a preposition or a prepositional phrase, and it didnt seem right. I think it might be an INTRANSITIVE (!) verb. Someone correct the government paid english professor if he is wrong. He wants to know.
Regardless, an intransitive verb takes no object. For example, you couldn't say: Justin sleeps bed. "Sleep" is an intransitive verb; it has a subject performing its action, but does not have an object upon which it is performed.
Which, of course, brings us to Mozart. It is the last day of Mozart Week, and boy howdy, it has been a good week. But Mozarts music has not taken me as a direct object - in fact, it takes no object at all. Music, in general, does not take an object - has no end it is trying to effect through its action. Or something. I swear it ties together in my head.
And somehow a bleary-eyed heart calms a little, with the music of verbs and violins pointing skyward, shooting brilliantly just for the sake of lovely sound.

Purple Finch

I have never seen one of these, but it is lovely, no? Apparently, they are a local species; another Californian I haven't met. I was trying to find a green-bellied bird I saw yesterday, but this wine-drenched gent will have to suffice for now. He suffices well.
(Click on our local purple friend to hear his song.)

(No such bird) III

This often happened. His pen
rendered the paper still
beneath it's thought thing:
a bird, in flight. Each sounding
stone pulled across the page made
the repetition of the extended wing,
and it's curve, a reality. He
was careful. He was in earnest.

And as often, one
would blink into existence
over his shoulder - no bird, but
a known face, speaking words
in a manner of speaking, chiding,
"What, this again? My God
friend, it's time to grow up."

Lark Sparrow

This is a good picture for the local Lark Sparrow: he is seated on a native So Cal plant. I saw these birds in downtown Los Angeles often, when I spent my time there. Out here in the desert, where things are certainly different, (more smells, wild and herbal), this little sparrow seems very much at home.
(Click on his russet stripes to hear him sing. )

Wolfgand Amadeus Mozart

I've decided to learn a bit of music history while I am here at UC Irvine. This isn't a new decision - I originally began wanting to try during undergrad - but never had the chance to follow through. Meaning: didn't. But now....!
So, out of the names milling around in my head tagged with the label "Classical Composer", I chose Mozart first.
He was a composer of the Classical era, which is a name given to the distinctive era in music history generally recognized as beginning in the early 1700's and ending in the early 1800's. It seems that this era in music corresponded nicely to the developments in philosophy at the time. It was the Age of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, in Europe, and philosphers were looking for clean logic-driven explanations of the world - new refined simplicity, order, science.
Mozart wrote lovely concerti, which were arrangements with the orchestra that highlighted one instrument, exploiting its individual characteristics and capabilities. I've been listening to the Violin Concerti numbers 3 and 5. Click on Mozart to hear the Adagio movement of Concerto #3.

(No such bird) II

They leaned in together, and
together clapped their hands
and he waited. They swung
their heads like strung balls,
prolonged pause on each outer edge,
and through this he waited.

He asked again, the same as he had
the first time: "Any such?"

and they launched back into it, balled
yolks rolling back and forth, together.

No such bird

A smudge of light, hole
in the leaf layers 50 feet away,
moved across the glass pane
as he pushed open the door.

Bells accompanied his coming
and the lady, bent over
at a mouse cage but alert,
leaned up and straightened
her shirt and smiled at him.

"Hello" she said, mouth pinched
into an arc.

"Hello" he replied, and shifted
his eyes around the busy room.
The smell he liked and so passed over
for the sound of crickets burrowing
into the sawdust.
Mice broke kernels apart.
Something licked its chops. A parrot
squawked obnoxiously, inches from his ear,

and he drew back, hesitated, then said "Do you have
a small-boned bird, chestnut-red,
with a bright golden beak?"

She paused long enough for the light
reflected from a passing car outside the glass to move
across her face.

"There is no such bird."

The People, Yes

This is an audio clip of Carl Sandburg reading an excerpt from his masterpiece, The People, Yes. (103 poems long).
Click on his photo to hear him reading.

Black Phoebe

I see these little gentlemen in my field. They perch on the chain-link fence that surrounds a garden on the northern end of the field.
(Click on the picture to hear his song.)

Yellow Warbler

Just too lovely. Now if I could find the local birds.

More Blog Changes

So, I'm trying to figure out how to make all of this work for all browsers. Apparently my banner wasn't showing on any browers other than Internet Explorer, which is a little pathetic. I am embarrased. Not that it looks much better now, but at least it looks like I intend it to look.

Ah, so, in order to refresh ourselves after that little bit of madness, lets consider the Swainson's Thrush. Click on the picture to here his song.

Another Sighting

I was walking through my field, attention turned inward to thoughts, syphoning then upward into the sky (it was a lovely day today), only vaguely aware of the crunch of cut wild grass stalks and the stirring of peripheral plantlife, when a commanding squawk exploded on my right. I turned, and there behind a chain-link fence a Roadrunner was proudly waiting for me to be aware of his presence.
He stayed motionless for a moment, pointed like a weapon. I found respect for him. His crest was smaller than his cartoon counterpart's, his body mostly mottled-brown, and his legs very much bird-legs, but thicker, stronger looking - somewhere between a chicken's fat taloned limbs and a songbird's delicate twig-legs.
He began to move - it was very quick, but all seemed graceful and purposeful. His movement was not reckless. Up and over the fence in a flash, then down onto the dust and mown grass floor, he started performing the famous run from which he earned half his name. It was entrancing. It was not wild; not two churning propellors whirring madly at his sides. It was like a slow-motion dance, that somehow happened to burn across the landscape. I see where they got the stopping-on-a-dime thing, and the sudden-cloud-of-smoke departure. Wile E., you have a worthy adversary.

Cafe Rant

Yes, Gather ye Suburbanites
round cafe' tables smartly
with your perfect cups of coffee
which ye, in all your wisdom,
shall toss into the heap
that is growing and becoming
and will soon wake from it's sleep.

Irvine Post-Wild Flowers

They are known as Firewheels.

Creatures

So, I was on the path that leads me through various fields, frat house mazes, and parking lots, to the heart of campus, to the grassy ring called Aldrich Park, to the Humanities building, where I will spend a great deal of time in the next few years; and I happened to be looking for a red flower I'd seen the day before, and intended to pick today; and suddenly I saw creature movement out the corner of my eye (top left corner). Before I continue, let me say that I love creature movement - that blurred black or brown swoosh as you round a corner, or pass beneath a branch. That crack and rustle in the tall grass.

These stayed for a moment, to my great pleasure. Two long-legged, ten inch tall birds, with blue-marked cheeks, mottled brown bodies, and little fan-crests on the tops of their heads. Male and female. Yes, they were Roadrunners.

How cool is that?! The creatures live here too. Rabbits and crickets and roadrunners and yellow warblers and lizards - even here in Irvine, my friends, the creatures live.

A Lesson taught to the Self

Soul, be awake. Break away
from pedantic landscape - stop
trying to say something soul.
You don't have a single particle
caught in your clasp
other than words.
Open your hand! Let the words
blow and scatter away.
From what inspired fountain
do they arise? Ah, yes,
the deep mind, the deep well
beneath the meticulous streets
that we know so well, that we
walk daily, leashed in necktie
language. Arise, deep words:
I will let you go. I will let you pluck
away from my pimpled hide,
I will let the wind gain force
and carry you high above
my pathetic reach. This is
of course a battle against the
Gods of Egypt, who sway on milky
coils, who say, "The Nile is mine.
I have made it for myself."
It is a battle against the philosopher
in me. Oh, don't worry,
he will melt in the levity of
unchained, unleashed words
barking gleefully down the street, yes,
like a pack of rubber-jowled bulldogs,
howling with rabid joy.

No Need To Rage

In the last days you will grow tired
and your eyes will close mid-day -
having had tasks removed
from your fumbling grip, you gasped
deep existential breaths, and then
gave up. Let go. Found a quiet table
on the patio. It's okay - whether you
have hope beyond this flesh or don't,
there's no need to rage, rage. All of it
will end in the same moment anyway:
soft stares into nowhere sky, and
wrinkled eyelids that slowly sigh, and close.

Bluegrass

Go on, old men,
playing around with wooden boxes
strung tight across with cat gut.
Dodge in and out of
cherry-lacquered fence-posts;
ramble and sing late into evening -
the coda will wrap you back eventually.
But now, crow on, gentlemen; tonight
a certain heart could use
a bit of bluegrass light.

Can you sense the limpness of my limbs?
Pry back these cedar slats,
and show me into what dark basement
my heart has slipped, like a cold and fleshy coin.
Do you see it Charlie? Shine
your violin right there.

Let Go You Soul

Let go, soul; you who would
have control over every situation.
Lose your pinch on the loose ends, here
in the spotlights red wash over
felt hats and dog-wag wrists;
where no one can keep his own mind
straight from the others.
Tumble along to the rag-tag beat; Let it creep,
tip-tap toe-shoe, up your widening
bloodstream; let it gleam in
that usually uninhabited left
corner of your eye. Don't
cross out lines as you tend to do,
hoping to keep them sober and sane;
dont try and keep them out
of the sugar cane. These lines are sheep
that you don't own. Scratch their hides
& feed them fat & let them
find their own way home.

Things to Think

by Robert Bly

Think in ways you've never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wonded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: to tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.