MINUTES of a MONDAY #136
A bit of this and that to get your week off to a flyer
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Slán - Niall☘️ **
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BRAIN FOOD: Seeking Solitude
“D.H. Lawrence, widely recognized for his novels, was also a poet deeply preoccupied with solitude, introspection, death, and humanity’s bond with nature. His time in northern New Mexico, particularly near Taos in the 1920s, intensified these themes as he sought refuge from industrial civilization and his own inner unrest.
Lawrence’s poetry lingers in the uneasy space between solitude as exile and solitude as revelation. It is both a burden and a liberation, a paradox sharpened by his drifting existence and the slow withering of his body.
Stricken with tuberculosis, he wandered, seeking a place where solitude would nourish rather than consume him.
In New Mexico, amid the austere vastness, he found a solitude not of despair, but of elemental force—a silence that did not suffocate, but stirred something raw and untamed. His poetry never bemoans isolation; it wrestles with it and distills life from it.
If you find yourself near Taos, the D.H. Lawrence Ranch stands as a forlorn testament to this tension—a vestige of the solitude that both tormented and sustained him.”
Lonely, Lonesome, Lonely—O
When I hear somebody complain of being lonely
or, in American, lonesome
I really wonder and wonder what they mean.
Do they mean they are a great deal alone?
But what is lovelier than to be alone?
escaping the petrol fumes of human conversation
and the exhaust-smell of people
and be alone!
Be alone, and feel the trees silently growing.
Be alone, and see the moonlight outside, white and busy and
silent.
Be quite alone, and feel the living cosmos softly rocking,
soothing and restoring and healing.
Soothed, restored and healed
when I am alone with the silent great cosmos
and there is no grating of people with their presences gnawing
at the stillness of the air.
SOUL FOOD:
“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
Benjamin Franklin
LOL:
Victor Patrascan meets a Russian, his date and her brother:
APPENDIX:
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment can feel like discrimination.”
Thomas Sowell
A.O.B.
That’s it for #136.
I hope there is something in there for you and I hope you find a shard of solitude this week.
Thank you, as always, for stopping by and mind how you go out there.
Slán agus beannacht - Niall