Lynn Pelham, “A public machine vends customers’ blood pressure for 25¢” (LIFE, 1960)
I get high blood pressure ’cause I’m your man
Tag: relationships
She has the answer when I don’t know what to ask
Educational Screen Magazine, 1954
Sometimes she tries to hide it from me
But when she starts talking over my head
It makes me dizzy…
Bright Star
cf. Underwood & Underwood, “Bluff Island…” (ca. 1900)
I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days — three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
— letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne, July 1, 1819
To His Coy Mistress
cf. LIFE, 1967
“I was in love once — would you believe that?”
Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1978-79
“I, uh, I was in love once — would you believe that? But I possessed neither the courage nor the optimism — perhaps the depth of feeling — that you two have.”
— A Christmas Carol (1984)
love’s labors lost
cf. Edgar Allan Poe, “To One in Paradise”
it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken
cf. LIFE, 1967
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
— Sonnet CXVI
Amo te Solo
Viscountess Jocelyn, “Interior of Room” (ca. 1862)
“What has all my Existence been since then but an Amo te Solo…”
— Coleridge, Notebooks, III
God Give Me Strength by Elvis Costello
Well, it’s all over now but the cryin’
You’re still the one
Left: Nationaal Archief, “Youngsters having a good time” (1961)
Right: Joseph B. Bergstresser, “Unidentified group playing cards” (ca. 1860-1900)
Say I’m growing old, but add…
John Collier, Jr., “Washington Hot Shoppe restaurant” (detail) (1941)
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
— Leigh Hunt
Nobody left in this world to kiss goodnight
I was only something to fall back on
tempus fugit, sed amor reliquias
The Saint and the Singer (1914)
“What are you going to do?” Hans Castorp asked, flabbergasted.
“I am leaving,” she repeated, smiling in apparent amazement at the frozen look on his face.
“It’s not possible,” he said. “You’re joking.”
“Most certainly not. I am perfectly serious. I am leaving…”
A whole world was collapsing inside him.
— The Magic Mountain
If Ever You’re In My Arms Again
I can be myself, how ’bout you?
Just Mother (1914)
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
— Robert Browning, Two in the Campagna (excerpt)
Memories of love above the city lights
cf. TV commercial, ca. 1970’s (edited)
I went in — after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove — but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
— The Great Gatsby
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring
cf. TV commercial (edited)
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
Memory
Business Screen magazine, 1973
The evening, blue, voluptuous, of June
Settled slowly on the beach with pulsating wings,
Like a sea-gull come to rest: far, far-off twinkled
Gold lights from the towers of a city and a passing ship.
The dark sea rolled its body at the end of the beach,
The warm soft beach which it was too tired to climb,
And we two walked together there
Arm in arm, having nothing in our souls but love.
— John Gould Fletcher, Memory: The Walk on the Beach (excerpt)
Julie, Do Ya Love Me by Bobby Sherman
Orval
Nationaal Archief, “Clients in a record shop” (1979)
Who can undo what time hath done?
Beckon lost music from a broken lute?
— Owen Meredith, “Orval or The Fool Of Time” (excerpt)
Modern Love
Ladies’ Home Journal, 1948
And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long…
— Keats, Modern Love (excerpt)
Oedipus at Colonus
Business Screen magazine, 1971
Scan the shape of this dim shadow, once a man
And Oedipus . . . but I was different then.
— Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus (Tr. Murray)
Late Night Thoughts On Listening To Bob Mould
cf. film via Prelinger Archives
I would forget her, but a fever she
Reigns in my blood and will remember’d be.
— Love’s Labour’s Lost
That summer
cf. American Scenery publishing company, “Top Corridor of Palace Hotel” (ca. 1850s–1910s)
April 15. Met her today point blank in Grafton Street. The crowd brought us together. We both stopped. She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gain time. Asked me was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. Talked rapidly of myself and my plans. In the midst of it unluckily I made a sudden gesture of a revolutionary nature. I must have looked like a fellow throwing a handful of peas into the air. People began to look at us. She shook hands a moment after and, in going away, said she hoped I would do what I said.
Now I call that friendly, don’t you?
Yes, I liked her today. A little or much? Don’t know. I liked her and it seems a new feeling to me. Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before now, in fact… O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!
— Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I’ll be around you because I’m crazy about you
cf. G. W. Thorne/London Stereoscopic Company, “The Bashful Lover” (hand-colored) (ca. 1860-1870)
Enough; no more. ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,
Make thy self flutt’ring wings of thy fast flying
Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be:
Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else
Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else
Playing alone careless on her heavenly virginals.
If in bed, tell her, that my eyes can take no rest:
If at board, tell her, that my mouth can eat no meat:
If at her virginals, tell her, I can hear no mirth.
Asked why? say: waking love suffereth no sleep:
Say that raging love doth appal the weak stomach:
Say, that lamenting love marreth the musical.
— Edmund Spenser, Iambicum Trimetrum (excerpt)
I slumbered with your poems
Paris, August, 1984
Nothing should remain unsaid between us
— Robert Frost, To E. T. (excerpt)
The Blue Distance by Mary Chapin Carpenter
He thought he kept the universe alone
Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1975-76
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried…
— Robert Frost, The Most Of It (excerpt)
Love And A Question
cf. Home Movie
He was standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face, fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he called out to the man at the furnace:
“Is the fire hot, sir?”
But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just as well. He might have answered rudely.
— Joyce, The Dead
“I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner
Flat Tire (The Truth)
cf. LIFE, 1972
“…For you to wait like that was stupid and quite impermissible. But you aren’t angry with me, are you, because you waited in vain?”
“Well, it was rather hard, Clavdia, even for a man with detached passions — hard on me and hard-hearted of you to come back with him, because of course you knew from Behrens that I was still here, waiting for you. But I’ve told you that I think of that night simply as a dream, our dream…”
— Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Flat Tire (The Truth) by Athenaeum
Technicolor
Carol M. Highsmith, “The character Dorothy models her sparkling ruby slippers at the Land of Oz…” (2017)
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
— Whitman, Song Of The Open Road
Cuts Both Ways
One Art
cf. Gustave Caillebotte, “Interior, Woman at the Window” (detail) (1880) and photograph via unsplash (edit)
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster…
— Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
“Life Goes On Without You” — Jill Sobule
We gotta get right back to where we started from
Zeno In Love
Astrophil and Stella 71: Bad Time
LIFE, 1970
Who will in fairest book of nature know
How virtue may best lodg’d in beauty be,
Let him but learn of love to read in thee,
Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.
There shall he find all vices’ overthrow,
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty
Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly;
That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.
And, not content to be perfection’s heir
Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move,
Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.
So while thy beauty draws thy heart to love,
As fast thy virtue bends that love to good:
But “Ah,” Desire still cries, “Give me some food!”
— Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 71: “Who will in fairest book of nature know”
“I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.”
“Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the table!” she said, and, laying down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.
“What! shall I be left alone—without her?” he thought with horror, and he took the chalk. “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting down to the table. “I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.”
He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.
“Please, ask it.”
“Here,” he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w. y. t. m. i. c. n. b. d. t. m. n. o. t.?
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Part IV, Chapter 13) (Tr. Constance Garnett)
Vanessa Williams – “Save The Best For Last”
Say Yeah
Ernst Halberstadt, “Ice Skating in the Public Garden” (detail) (1973)
“Are you going to stay in town long?” asked Kitty.
“I don’t know,” he answered, not thinking of what he was saying.
The thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything came into his mind, and he resolved to rebel against it.
“How is it you don’t know?”
“I don’t know why. It depends on you,” he said, and instantly he was horrified at his own words.
She either did not understand his words, or did not want to understand them, for, seeming to stumble once or twice, catching her foot, she hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went towards the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.
— Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Utopia – “Say Yeah”
Ulysses
David Falconer, “One Family of Four Moved Into the Attic of Their Home…” (1973)
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?
Twentyeight I was. She twentythree.
When we left Lombard street west something changed.
Could never like it again after Rudy.
Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.
Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?
—James Joyce, Ulysses
Meanwhile across town…
cf. Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (detail) (1942) and Paul Gauguin, “The Siesta” (detail) (ca. 1892–94)
Poor Wisdom’s chance
Against a glance
Is now as weak as ever.
— Thomas Moore, “The Time Iʼve Lost in Wooing” (excerpt)
impressionism
cf. Jane Reece, “Interior” (edit) (ca. 1922)
but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” (excerpt)
“Only A Memory” – The Smithereens
“winter”
cf. Harry C. Phibbs, “The Woodchopper’s Woman” (ca. 1922) and video by WolfBlur via Pixabay
winter
is it still
yes i think
snowing
did you
there is something
my letter
i have to
what time
tell you
—J.S.
reverie
cf. “Reflections”, after Bayard Jones (edit) (ca. 1903)
I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: “’T will keep.”I woke and chid my honest fingers,—
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.
—Emily Dickinson
“I’m Turning Around” – Gentle Giant
storm
cf. “Waterproof”, After C. Clyde Squires (ca. 1907) and video by tmeier1964 via Pixabay
O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate that let thy folly in,
And thy dear judgment out!
-6℉ of Separation
cf. image (flow chart) by geralt via Pixabay and photographs via Unsplash
“Since You Been Gone” – Rainbow
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
LIFE, 1972
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
—T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
A Game of Chess
CHAPTER 2
cf. video by Coverr-Free-Footage via Pixabay
The remote power of that voice, those old eyes full of tears, that noble and ruined face, had affected her extraordinarily she said. But perhaps what affected her was the shadow, the still living shadow of a great passion in the man’s heart.
Allegre remarked to her calmly: “He has been a little mad all his life.”
—Joseph Conrad, The Arrow of Gold
“simultaneity”
cf. photograph by Tim Gouw via Unsplash and Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1980-82
simultaneity
kaleidoscope,
I see you
through
two
eyes
one
now
one
then
—J.S.
Hyperion Summer
cf. Thomas A. Morgan, “After The Dip” (edit) (ca. 1904)
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.—I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr’d, and lorn of light;
Space region’d with life-air; and barren void;
Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.—
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest
A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile…
—John Keats, Hyperion
“Missing” by Everything But The Girl
Into The Fire
Billy Rose Theatre Division, “Harvest” (1913)
Newman uttered one of the least attenuated imprecations that had ever passed his lips…
—Henry James, The American
Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad
cf. Sonnet 87 and photograph by Timo Stern via Unsplash (detail)
“Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” – Meat Loaf
Give All To Love
LIFE, 1965
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,—
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Give All to Love (excerpt)
“Change Of Heart” – Eric Carmen
ACT I, SCENE II: A café near the Duke’s palace.
The Finnish Museum of Photography, “The counter of a café at the new Centrum department store of Voima cooperative.” (detail) (1961)
What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?
I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference.
O poor Orlando! Thou art overthrown.
—As You Like It
“Magnet and Steel” – Walter Egan
Renaissance
Tom Hubbard, “…Troupes Dancing in the Square Are Joined by Young-In-Heart Spectator” (1973)
Thou shalt find
That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think
I have cast off forever…
—King Lear
Mirage
April is the cruellest month
The Finnish Museum of Photography, “At Hotel Aulanko’s Cafe Terrace” (ca. 1950’s)
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe…
—The Waste Land
Read my palm and tell me why do lovers come and go…
“fluorescence”
cf. Finnish Museum of Photography, “Osuusliike Mäki-Matin uuden liikekeskuksen ravintolasali.” (1958)
fluorescence
a long time ago
someone told me
reflected light waves travel out into space
eternally
if you turn around
from someplace far away
you will see
the past
again
eternally
now
I understand
—J.S.
“Sweet Baby” – George Duke / Stanley Clarke
“Once Again To Zelda”
Missouri Historical Society, “Capturing the City: Photographs from the Streets of St. Louis, 1900–1930 — Strand Motion Picture Theater entrance at 419 North Sixth Street featuring advertisement for the movie “Bootles’ Baby,” 1915. The large colorful poster catches the attention of the woman passing at far right.” (detail)
Darling, I’ve nearly sat it off in the Strand to-day and all because W.E. Lawrence of the Movies is your physical counter-part. So I was informed by half a dozen girls before I could slam on a hat and see for myself—He made me so homesick…
—letter from Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald, March, 1919
“errata”
cf. UL Digital Library, “Interior of Foundation Building”
errata
so much milk spilled
so much bridged water
so much greener grass
so much silver lining
so much unglittered gold—
so much unsaid
so much unsaid,
even now
–J.S.
The Voice
cf. photographs via Unsplash and video (rain) by Vimeo-Free-Videos via Pixabay
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thomas Hardy, The Voice (excerpt)
“There’s the thrush again…”
LIFE, 1965
…as he lay trying desperately to put poetry, ambition, and Fanny Brawne out of his mind, suddenly an early thrush had appeared…
Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats
“More Than a Feeling” – Boston
I’m with you
Russell Lee, “Visitors’ hour at the Cairns General Hospital at the FSA (Farm Security Administration) farmworkers’ community” (1942)
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” (excerpt)
“Box of Rain” by Grateful Dead
After you go I’ll have a lot more room in my closet
Love For Sale
cf. Advertiser-News, 1977 and John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
The Beggar’s Opera: “My heart was so free”
“ricorro al tempo ch’ i’ vi vidi prima…”
Marc St. Gil, “Den behind a Store Which Caters to the Teenage Group…” (1973)
I think about the first time I beheld you…
Petrarch, Canzoniere XX
“Whenever You’re On My Mind” – Marshall Crenshaw
Chapter 56: In which our hero falls into a nostalgic reverie…
cf. Glucksman Library, “Students in Block D main building” (ca. 1990)
“Attention Shoppers…”
The Finnish Museum of Photography, “A customer ascending to the fabrics department of Kyminlaakso cooperative’s new department store.” (1961)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang…
—Sonnet LXXIII
Astrophil and Stella
Finnish Museum of Photography, “Autoja ylittämässä salmea lossilla…” (1959)
I on my horse, and Love on me, doth try
Our horsemanships…
—Sir Philip Sidney, “Astrophil and Stella 49”
Chapter 18: In which our hero walks aimlessly around town on a rainy summer evening with a heart full of despondency and ennui…
cf. Curt Lang, “Granville Theatres” (1972)
Crazy Over You
cf. Picture Story Magazine, 1962
Higher Education
cf. unidentified photographer, “Head-and-shoulders profile portrait of young woman…” (ca. 1900)
“Don’t Know Much” (with Aaron Neville) by Linda Ronstadt
Starry Night
cf. Vincent van Gogh, “Starry Night” (1888)
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
—Hamlet
You Got Me Workin’ Day And Night
Esther Bubley, “Jitterbugs…” (detail) (1943)
Hold the line! Love isn’t always on time.
Frances Benjamin Johnston, “2 scenes from Pastoral Plays: Strephon casts off Chloe” (1906)
ACT I, SCENE I: Verona. A public place.
cf. LIFE, 1969
Chapter 6: Changes
Michael Philip Manheim, “Constitution Beach, on Boston Harbor…” (1973)
What is time? A secret — insubstantial and omnipotent…
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
The Way You Look Tonight
cf. Nina Leen, “Teen-Age Girls” (LIFE, 1944)
Here in the bar the piano man’s found another nail for my heart
cf. Harry Wayne McMahan, “The Television Commercial” (1954)
Dream Sequence
U.S. National Archives, “St. Valentine’s Day Hop…” (detail) (1975)
“You’re wearing a new dress,” he said, as an excuse for gazing at her. And now he heard her answer.
“New? You are conversant with my wardrobe?”
“I am right, am I not?”
“Yes. I recently had it made here, by Lukaek, the tailor in the village. He does work for many of the ladies up here. Do you like it?”
“Very much,” he said, letting his gaze pass over her again before casting his eyes down. “Do you want to dance?” he added.
“Would you like to?” she asked, her brows raised in surprise, but still with a smile…
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
“Do You Want To Dance” by Bette Midler
Through The Fire
I go on my way to-night, If I can; if not, to-morrow; emigrant train ten to fourteen days’ journey; warranted extreme discomfort…
I have been steadily drenched for twenty-four hours; water-proof wet through; immortal spirit fitfully blinking up in spite…
I am not beaten yet, though disappointed. If I am, it’s for good this time; you know what “for good” means in my vocabulary— something inside of 12 months perhaps; but who knows? At least, if I fail in my great purpose, I shall see some wild life in the West and visit both Florida and Labrador ere I return. But I don’t yet know if I have the courage to stick to life without it. Man, I was sick, sick, sick of this last year.
—Letter from Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin (on board s.s. “Devonia,” an hour or two out of New York, August, 1879)
“Through The Fire” by Chaka Khan
In France They Kiss On Main Street
Toni Frissell, “A couple walking along the Seine River in Paris” (detail) (between 1940 and 1969)
Charlotte’s Web
Wil Blanche, “In Battery Park, on the Lower Tip of Manhattan Island” (1973)
Wilbur blushed. “But I’m not terrific, Charlotte.
I’m just about average for a pig.”“You’re terrific as far as I’m concerned,” replied
Charlotte, sweetly, “and that’s what counts. You’re my
best friend, and I think you’re sensational. Now stop
arguing and go get some sleep!”
—E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web
I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song
Left: Underwood & Underwood, “…a country farm-yard in Ireland” (ca. 1903)
Right: L.M. Melander & Bro., “Another button off” (ca. 1875)
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“Summer in Style” exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 17, 1960
“…her daughter senior is I think beautiful and elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable and strange…”
—First mention of Fanny Brawne by John Keats (letter to George Keats, December 16, 1818)
“How would it be…if you were to pack your things tonight and be on your way with one of the scheduled express trains tomorrow morning?”
Cincinnati Magazine, 1977
“…In your twenty-fourth year, you say? Hmm … please permit me one more question, or if you will, a modest suggestion. Since your stay here appears not to be good for you — neither physically nor, if I am not mistaken, mentally — how would it be, if you were to forgo the pleasure of growing older here, in short, if you were to pack your things tonight and be on your way with one of the scheduled express trains tomorrow morning?”
“You mean I should leave?” Hans Castorp asked. “When I’ve only just arrived? But no, how can I possibly decide about that after only one day?”
And as he said it, quite by chance he caught a glimpse of Frau Chauchat in the next room…
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
The White Carnelian
cf. piano photograph by Free-Photos via Pixabay (edited)
Frequently he held in his hand a little present that Fanny Brawne had given him — a small, oval, white carnelian. It was the only tangible thing left to remind him of their engagement; for he would still not have her letters opened. Words struck home to him too powerfully.
—Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats
Elton John – “Love Lies Bleeding”
“King Of August”
cf. photograph by StockSnap via Pixabay
king of august
driving home from my first date
a symphony of street lights
and a million stars in the sky
an incandescent spark
flying through a dark street
midnight holds no secret
only my triumphant heart
—J.S.
Everyday I Write The Book
I know I need a small vacation but it don’t look like rain.
David Falconer, “Reading and Studying by Kerosene Lamps…” (1973)
The gaslight shone yellow through the frosted transom above the door of Number 31. Gordon took out his key and fished about in the keyhole — in that kind of house the key never quite fits the lock. The darkish little hallway — in reality it was only a passage — smelt of dishwater, cabbage, rag mats, and bedroom slops. Gordon glanced at the japanned tray on the hall-stand. No letters, of course. He had told himself not to hope for a letter, and nevertheless had continued to hope. A stale feeling, not quite a pain, settled upon his breast. Rosemary might have written! It was four days now since she had written…
—George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
The Cocktail Party
cf. LIFE, 1964
UNIDENTIFIED GUEST: Your wife has left you?
EDWARD: Without warning, of course;
Just when she’d arranged a cocktail party.
She’d gone when I came in, this afternoon.
She left a note to say that she was leaving me;
But I don’t know where she’s gone…
—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
“My wearied fancy turns for ease to thee…”
cf. video by Coverr-Free-Footage via Pixabay
And now, my Marian, from its shackles free,
My wearied fancy turns for ease to thee;
To thee, my compass through life’s varied stream,
My constant object, and unfailing theme…
—Warren Hastings, “Ode to his Wife” (Written in Patna, 1784)
Washington Square
cf. Corson Hirschfeld, “Sporting Life” (Cincinnati Magazine, 1977)
Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. “Well, I was in hopes that we might still have been friends.”
“I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message — if you had waited for an answer — that it was unnecessary for you to come in that hope.”
—Henry James, Washington Square
Chapter 9
cf. Art Hanson, “Student at Work at Senior High School…” (ca. 1975)
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 4
cf. photograph by Josh Felise via Unsplash
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues; pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.”
cf. David Vinckboons, “A Young Man Pursuing His Beloved into the Woods” (ca. 1621)
The Box Tops – “Cry Like a Baby” Utopia – “Crybaby”
Chapter 6 (Continued)
cf. photograph by Peter Mason via Unsplash
What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Because The Night” – Patti Smith
Chapter 6
cf. photograph by Skye Studios via Unsplash
Daisy and Gatsby danced…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 5
The Great Gatsby (1974)
“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 8 (Continued)
“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”
“How could it have mattered then?”
Silence for a moment. Then:
“However — I want to see you.”
“I want to see you, too.”
“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?”
“No — I don’t think this afternoon.”
“Very well.”
“It’s impossible this afternoon. Various ——”
We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“You are a silly philosopher, Hans Castorp,” she said…
Photograph by Tom Eversley via Unsplash
After all, I did not really wait in vain, because you are here again, we are sitting next to one another just as then, I can hear the wonderful edge to your voice, so familiar to my ear for a very long time; and under that billowing silk are arms that I know well…
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”
cf. J. Craig Annan, “Au Jardin” (ca. 1899)
A crowd will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
—Yeats, Fallen Majesty (excerpt)
She’s a cloud
That hangs above my world…
I will be your umbrella man
“Tarry, delight, so seldom met”
cf. LIFE, 1971 (edited)
Tarry, delight, so seldom met,
So sure to perish, tarry still;
Forbear to cease or languish yet,
Though soon you must and will.By Sestos town, in Hero’s tower,
On Hero’s heart Leander lies;
The signal torch has burned its hour
And sputters as it dies.Beneath him, in the nighted firth,
Between two continents complain
The seas he swam from earth to earth
And he must swim again.
—A. E. Housman
I Pretend
“The View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles” exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/11/1956
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging,
I may remember him!
—Emily Dickinson
Save It For A Rainy Day
cf. “Stencil” (Japan, 19th century)
“It’s stopped raining.”
“Has it?” When he realized what I was talking about, that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to Daisy. “What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining.”
“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“And still they were the same bright, patient stars…”
Tookapic, “Woman Wearing Jacket Sitting On Concrete During Night Time” (via pexels.com)
Hyperion arose, and on the stars
Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide
Until it ceas’d; and still he kept them wide:
And still they were the same bright, patient stars.
Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Forward he stoop’d over the airy shore,
And plung’d all noiseless into the deep night.
—Keats, Hyperion (excerpt)
Elton John – “Love Lies Bleeding”
I Feel The Earth Move
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be…”
LIFE, 1972
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be…
—Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra
The Whispers – “And The Beat Goes On”
“Transit Of Venus”
Trevor T. White, “The Alley” (ca. 1938)
Transit Of Venus
half in sun
half in shadow
you smiled
the last time I saw you
turning away
eppur sim
u
o
v
e
—J.S.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad
cf. Cincinnati Magazine, 1973
“Did you ever think of me?”
Solaris (1972)
“Summer for thee grant I may be when summer days are flown!”
LIFE, 1967
Summer for thee grant I may be
When summer days are flown!
Thy music still when whippoorwill
And oriole are done!
—Emily Dickinson
Ain’t Too Proud To Beg
“Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.”
Taizo Kato, “Sunlight And Shadow” (ca. 1921)
“Maria” From “West Side Story” by Quadrivium String Quartet
Big black car, long cigar — he’s twice your age
Distant roads are calling me
John Collier, “Young man boarding train for New York state…” (1942)
Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
—Robert Frost, Wind and Window Flower
Tell me why then, why should it be that we go on hurting each other?
cf. LIFE, 1972
Switchin’ To Glide
LIFE, 1972
“Ho-Ho! my valiant page!
Bring hither Pegasus, and let me ride;
Smooth the winged-charger’s ruffled mane,
Tighten the curb, and let the loosen’d rein
Hang loose no more!
Bring hither Pegasus, and I will soar,
With my proud courser well in hand,
Into the presence of that fairyland
Wherein the far hills brood in the still mist
And the laughter-ripple of the mere is kissed
By the bright-eyed orb of day:
Now make good speed, my page…”
—William Wilson, “Pegasus in Lakeland”
“Switchin’ To Glide” by The Kings
“Sure he thinks the sun shines out of your face, ma’am.”
“In the Suburbs” – On Film, Inc. (1957)
BRIGID:
(Comes towards her and leans over the back of a chair.)
Are you fretting yourself, ma’am, about anything?BERTHA:
No, Brigid.BRIGID:
Don’t be. He was always like that, meandering off by himself somewhere. He is a curious bird, Master Richard, and always was. Sure there isn’t a turn in him I don’t know. Are you fretting now maybe because he does be in there (pointing to the study) half the night at his books? Leave him alone. He’ll come back to you again. Sure he thinks the sun shines out of your face, ma’am.
—James Joyce, Exiles
You got that radioaction
Brighter than a sunny day…
Think Of Laura
cf. Photograph by Annie Spratt via Unsplash
“Laura, illustrious by her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, I beheld for the first time, in my early youth, on the 6th of April, 1327, about the first hour of the day, in the church of Saint Claire in Avignon: and in the same city, in the same month of April, the same day and hour, in the year 1348, this light of my life was withdrawn from the world while I was at Verona, ignorant, alas! of what had befallen me.”
—Petrarch’s inscription in his copy of Virgil
“Think Of Laura” by Christopher Cross
“And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus?”
cf. Cincinnati Magazine, 1971
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay, for shame,
To save thee from the blame
Of all my grief and grame;
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay!And wilt thou leave me thus,
That hath loved thee so long
In wealth and woe among?
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay!And wilt thou leave me thus,
That hath given thee my heart
Never for to depart,
Nother for pain nor smart;
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay!And wilt thou leave me thus
And have no more pity
Of him that loveth thee?
Hélas, thy cruelty!
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay!
—Sir Thomas Wyatt
“The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson…”
Esther Bubley, “…talking with some friends near her locker…” (1943)
Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath the wind screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song, as though to lull her to sleep. The lines were unrhymed, such as a deaf person can make.
“Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart.
The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed.
There are hearts in which love does not keep.
Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter…”One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled with flowers. One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked vase of glass. It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson…
—Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
“That was the end of Zoya. She couldn’t forgive the hiccups.”
Madeleine Jeanne Lemaire, “A Gallant Suitor And His Beautiful Lady”
“Why don’t you drink some water,” Zoya counseled.
I walked up and down beside the sofa. I pressed my finger to my throat. Again, I hiccuped. Ma Chère, I was in a terrible bind! Zoya got up and went to the box. I followed. I opened the door to the box for her, hiccuped, and ran to the bar. I drank five glasses of water. The hiccups seemed to have settled down. I smoked a cigarette and headed for the box. Zoya’s brother stood and offered me his seat, a seat beside my Zoya. I sat down and immediately I hiccuped. Five minutes passed, but then I hiccuped again—a strange wheezy hiccup. I got up and went to stand by the door of the box. It is better, ma chère, to hiccup by the door rather than into the ear of a woman one loves! I hiccuped. The schoolboy in the neighboring box looked at me and laughed loudly…Cursing the impertinent schoolboy, I hiccuped again. Laughter came from the neighboring boxes.
“Encore!” hissed the schoolboy.
“What the hell is going on!” Colonel Pepsinov muttered in my ear. “You could have stayed home to hiccup, sir!”
Zoya blushed. Once again I hiccuped, and then I ran out of the box, my fists fiercely clenched. I paced up and down the hallway. I paced, and paced, and paced—and I hiccuped. The things I ate and drank to make the hiccups go away! At the beginning of the fourth act, I called it quits. I went home…
The next evening, I went to dine with the Pepsinovs, as was my habit. Zoya didn’t come down to dinner. She sent a message that she couldn’t see me. She was ill. Colonel Pepsinov gave a long speech about how certain young men do not know how to behave in public…
“Would you have given your daughter, if you had one,” Pepsinov said to me after dinner, “to a man who permits himself to engage in public belching? Well, sir?”
“I would,” I muttered.
“Then you’d be making a mistake, sir!”
That was the end of Zoya. She couldn’t forgive the hiccups. I was done for.
—Anton Chekhov, “A Confession Or, Olya, Zhenya, Zoya (A Letter)”
I’m not feelin’ too good myself…
“Feelin’ Alright” (Live At The Fillmore East/1970) by Joe Cocker
My Baby Loves Lovin’
Tell me why I never seem to make you happy though heaven knows I try
cf. Childe Hassam in Joseph Pennell, “Modern Illustration” (1895)
“How like a winter hath my absence been from thee”
Dave Thomas, “Girl With The Fishbowl” (LIFE, 1970)
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
–Shakespeare, Sonnet 97: “How like a winter hath my absence been from thee”
Propertius
Tom Hubbard, “…Tyler Davidson Fountain” (1973)
You ask me, from what source so oft I draw my songs of love and whence comes my book that sounds so soft upon the tongue. ‘Tis not Calliope nor Apollo that singeth these things; ’tis my mistress’ self that makes my wit. If thou wilt have her walk radiant in silks of Cos, of Coan raiment all this my book shall tell; or have I seen her tresses stray dishevelled o’er her brow, I praise her locks and she walks abroad in pride and gladness; or struck she forth music from the lyre with ivory fingers, I marvel with what easy skill she sweeps her hands along the strings; or when she droops those eyes that call for sleep I find a thousand new themes for song; or if, flinging away her robe, she enter naked with me in the lists, then, then I write whole Iliads long. Whate’er she does, whate’er she says, from a mere nothing springs a mighty tale…
—Propertius, The Elegies
‘Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone…
cf. Photograph by Arnel Hasanovic via Unsplash
‘Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone…
—Romeo and Juliet
Dance you into daylight…
“Rock With You” • The Reflex Re√ision by The Reflex
“Thus oft the hour of parting seems more vivid than a sweet reunion”
Ernst Halberstadt, “Commonwealth Avenue between Arlington and Berkeley Streets” (1973)
The season’s final blossoms bring
More dear delight than buds of spring.
They stir in us a live communion
Of sorrowfully poignant dreams.
Thus oft the hour of parting seems
More vivid than a sweet reunion.
—Aleksandr Pushkin
Don’t know quite what to say, haven’t seen you in seven ages
cf. LIFE, 1964
Something’s burning and I think it’s love
cf. William Gropper, “Wake up alone and like it!” (1936)
I Saw The Light
And all through my coffee break time…
LIFE, 1955
Alter? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew:
Even as herself, O friend!
I will of you!
–Emily Dickinson
Still The One
Call out the volunteers ’cause my heart’s a flambé
Harry Wayne McMahan, “The Television Commercial” (1954)
I gotta time it right so it’s warm when you get it
Turn up the heat just a little bit higher
It was a good idea but I think I overdid it
I can’t reach the oven and the kitchen’s on fire…
“Is it not Tennyson who has said: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost…”
Lejaren à Hiller, Fatima Cigarettes advertisement (ca. 1922)
…is it not Tennyson who has said: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all?
—Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
1-2-3-4 come on baby say you love me
Bell Telephone Magazine, 1973
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
Woodbury’s Facial Soap Advertisement (ca. 1922)
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Into the same river you could not step twice, for other waters are flowing.”
—Heraclitus
I remember the night the Green–Schwarz mechanism was discovered…
Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1984-85
String Theory
I remember the night the Green–Schwarz mechanism was discovered —
It was a stormy summer night in 1984.
The lightning that flashed across the equations on the blackboard
also flashed across my curtains,
two oranges on the dining room table,
a Pat Metheny album on the blue shag carpet.
I, too, thought I had solved something.
I, too, thought I was free of anomalies.
But the next day I still couldn’t figure it out.
–J.S.
I get these suspicions…
State Library of New South Wales, “Snapshot at fern tree near Hobart prior to departure south” (1911)
“While our hero lies comfortably in his bed at home…”
Illustration by H. J. Ford from “The Book Of Romance” (1902)
Thus they drive on the day with such doings while our hero lies comfortably in his bed at home in clothes full rich of hue. The lady did not forget; she came to greet him; full early she was by him to change his mind. She comes to the curtain and peeps at the knight. Sir Gawain at once welcomes her worthily, and she returns his greeting right promptly, seats herself softly by his side, laughs openly, and with a lovely look addresses these words to him: “Sir, if ye be Gawain, it seems to me a very strange thing that a man of such quality should not follow the conventions of good society; and should after making acquaintance with a person cast him utterly from his mind. Thou hast already forgotten what I taught you yesterday in the best language that I knew.” “What is that?” quoth the hero. “Forsooth I know not. If what ye say be true, I am to blame.” “Yet I taught you about kissing,” replied the fair lady; “wherever a countenance is known, quickly to claim a kiss; that becomes every knight who practices courtesy…”
—Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
She’s turnin’ on the heat
And it’s a little too much
She’s turnin’ on the heat
And it’s a hundred above, yeah…
Satin Doll
“Some woman, who knows what that self was, in whom it still lives a little.”
cf. photograph by Yoann Boyer via Unsplash
“…the situation of the man of genius who, in some accursed hour of his youth, has bartered away the fondest vision of that youth and lives ever afterwards in the shadow of the bitterness of the regret…the fancy of his recovering a little of the lost joy, of the Dead Self, in his intercourse with some person, some woman, who knows what that self was, in whom it still lives a little.”
—The Notebooks of Henry James
“A hand-bag?”
And I said “No thanks baby, tonight there ain’t no help for me”
Casablanca (1942)
Took a sleeping pill and I tried to watch TV
But you know baby, the leading lady
Looked too much like you for the likes of me…
