Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
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T.S. Eliot, (Patrick Heron, 1949)
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always-
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
- T.S. Eliot, from "Burnt Norton"
In these early morning slivers of time—before my mind is cluttered by the day’s work—I often seek out words of comfort; and, for me, this sometimes entails reading a bit of familiar poetry. This morning my choice has been T.S. Eliot’s
Four Quartets, poems I find both enlightening and impenetrable: like listening to Gregorian Chants and being without Latin.
The quartets, written separately over a span of a half-dozen years and published together in about 1944, are Eliot’s meditations on time and man’s relationship to the divine. Like a medieval serf attending mass, this inspired work’s meanings are not fully apparent to me, but I do find solace in the rhythm and the words.
From lines about time and the spirit, my thoughts wander to today’s music selection. Last week, janis b pointed me in the direction of New Zealand and over this past week I have had a wonderful time discovering new rhythms and new words. In one sense we do, on occasion, take that path that leads us to where we started and know the place for the first time.
This latest journey is ongoing, but the first two selections below are a product of my evenings' rooting around in unfamiliar music; I hope you enjoy them.
Grab a cup of coffee and pull up a chair. What's on your mind this morning?