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Post by peggs on Apr 23, 2016 12:38:28 GMT
It's William Shakespeare's day! . I've never read a Shakespeare play (shame on me!) but I have read some poetry. Here's a snippet from a favorite Jorge Luis Borges poem titled, Everything and Nothing. Read the entire piece here. Then one morning he was overcome by the tedium and horror of being all those kings who died by the sword and all those thwarted lovers who came together and broke apart and melodiously suffered. That very day he decided to sell his troupe. Before the week was out he had returned to his hometown: there he reclaimed the trees and the river of his youth without tying them to the other selves that his muse had sung, decked out in mythological allusion and latinate words. He had to be somebody, and so he became a retired impresario who dabbled in money-lending, lawsuits, and petty usury. It was as this character that he wrote the rather dry last will and testament with which we are familiar, having purposefully expunged from it every trace of emotion and every literary flourish. When friends visited him from London, he went back to playing the role of poet for their benefit. The story goes that shortly before or after his death, when he found himself in the presence of God, he said: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one man only, myself." The voice of God answered him out of a whirlwind: "Neither am I what I am. I dreamed the world the way you dreamt your plays, dear Shakespeare. You are one of the shapes of my dreams: like me, you are everything and nothing."
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Post by donavan on Apr 23, 2016 13:57:46 GMT
You are one of the shapes of my dreams: like me, you are everything and nothing.
Man, that's great. My sort of dude. Go Bill!
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Post by chrisb on Apr 23, 2016 18:37:27 GMT
Winter landscaping project over, back to the vineyard and moving house next week.
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Post by donavan on Apr 23, 2016 19:47:08 GMT
Winter landscaping project over, back to the vineyard and moving house next week. And more time on the forum for you hopefully.
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Post by chrisb on Apr 23, 2016 22:59:57 GMT
I'll try Don, but it seems awfully quiet around here most days and with no significant releases on the horizon (barring the 5.1 re-masters) is likely to remain so.
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Post by peggs on Apr 24, 2016 5:13:20 GMT
I'll try Don, but it seems awfully quiet around here most days and with no significant releases on the horizon (barring the 5.1 re-masters) is likely to remain so. I'm not picking on you, chrisb, but your sentiment seems to be more the rule than the exception. The band stopped being a going concern many years ago and while it's natural that a portion of the fan base would and did drift away over time, I would hope that those of us that have made it this far along in the forum incarnations would've formed some sort of connection that transcends AP's increasingly limited interactions and output. (damn, that's a long sentence!) Someone once made a comment to the affect that they would post more if there were interesting topics or conversations happening. Well, a more interesting and participatory forum begins with people actually posting; asking questions, challenging assumptions, starting topics (and starting others when the first one fails to generate interest) and generally being present more than once in a blue moon. Then again, as someone else commented a while back, the forum platform itself is a dinosaur in the ever-changing tech world. The other avenues available for online communication are quicker and easier to use and (imo) require little to no effort or thought. end of rant. Hi chrisb, it is nice to see you. May your house move go smoothly and the season's wine be sweet (or not, depending on the kind you make).
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Post by chrisb on Apr 24, 2016 19:09:50 GMT
I'll try Don, but it seems awfully quiet around here most days and with no significant releases on the horizon (barring the 5.1 re-masters) is likely to remain so. I'm not picking on you, chrisb, but your sentiment seems to be more the rule than the exception. The band stopped being a going concern many years ago and while it's natural that a portion of the fan base would and did drift away over time, I would hope that those of us that have made it this far along in the forum incarnations would've formed some sort of connection that transcends AP's increasingly limited interactions and output. (damn, that's a long sentence!) Someone once made a comment to the affect that they would post more if there were interesting topics or conversations happening. Well, a more interesting and participatory forum begins with people actually posting; asking questions, challenging assumptions, starting topics (and starting others when the first one fails to generate interest) and generally being present more than once in a blue moon. Then again, as someone else commented a while back, the forum platform itself is a dinosaur in the ever-changing tech world. The other avenues available for online communication are quicker and easier to use and (imo) require little to no effort or thought. end of rant. Hi chrisb, it is nice to see you. May your house move go smoothly and the season's wine be sweet (or not, depending on the kind you make). No I take your point. I suppose I'm unfairly comparing this to the IDEA forum which seemed pretty lively in the early 2000s, when Andy and Colin weren't as estranged as they now seem to be. Andy P seems to be more and more active on Twitter though. I know what you mean about the forum platform being antiquated. I think the site could do with more sub-rooms though. Thank you for your generous words Peggs, I'll raise a glass to you at the end of harvest time! (of cider mind, I'm not really a wine drinker)
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Post by Finntrovertigo on Apr 26, 2016 23:41:30 GMT
We've had recent visits from Truzzi, chrisb, suzi, and cicadashell. This forum is about to explode, I tell you. Sadly, as an introvert, I shall have to crawl into my shell until all of this traffic has passed.
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Post by peggs on Apr 27, 2016 22:20:28 GMT
Don't be shy, Introvertigo. We're a small, dysfunctional family that can deal with the eccentricities of each other (most of the time).
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Post by peggs on May 1, 2016 23:52:21 GMT
Took a lovely day trip and visited a regional art museum. It was a much needed immersion into the world of fine art, something that has been sorely lacking in my life for far too long. One of the paintings on permanent display is, Washington Crossing the Delaware. It is an image and story every American kid saw and learned about in elementary school. It was a special moment to actually come face to face with the painting and to learn about its interesting history. And I discovered something heretofore unnoticed: all the men in the foreground boat have the same nose! HA!
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Post by cicadashell on May 2, 2016 12:40:26 GMT
Took a lovely day trip and visited a regional art museum. It was a much needed immersion into the world of fine art, something that has been sorely lacking in my life for far too long. One of the paintings on permanent display is, Washington Crossing the Delaware. It is an image and story every American kid saw and learned about in elementary school. It was a special moment to actually come face to face with the painting and to learn about its interesting history. And I discovered something heretofore unnoticed: all the men in the foreground boat have the same nose! HA! a fine use of your time, peggs. i'm in st. louis (mo) today for a work thing. i just got back from a morning stroll out onto the eads bridge, where i took a good long look at the mississippi river. that's a lot of mighty water there, and older than the blood in human veins as the man said. i never get tired of watching rivers flow.
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Post by Nonsuch Ned on May 2, 2016 16:28:46 GMT
My friend Saara got a "wicked" little poem into a poetry web bi-monthly, DiagramIt not like she hasn't been published before, but this one took me back a bit. The best poets make you reread the poem a few times and still leave you with the impression there's more to dig into. Saara's one of those. thediagram.com/16_2/raappana.html
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Post by peggs on May 2, 2016 18:04:15 GMT
That is a good and interesting poem, Ned. Thought-provoking to be sure. I read a few other poems as well and was intrigued. Thanks for the link. ----------- Cicadashell, starting any day by watching a river flow is a good day. I have the good fortune of living just a few blocks away from the Mississippi River but do take it for granted on a regular basis. However, sometimes all it takes to be reminded of the wonder and awe of the natural world we live in is to view it from a different perspective. Here's a photograph from a recent trip up the river; a view of Lake Pepin from the Minnesota side of the Mississippi, looking northeast.
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Post by cicadashell on May 3, 2016 19:28:15 GMT
beautiful! a number of years ago we had a project involving a portion of the upper mississippi river, including lake pepin. we were doing 20-year model simulations of sediment transport and nutrient dynamics, and i became intimately familiar with the weather patterns, inflows and wind wave generation there (and in spring lake), but i never did get a chance to visit. i will someday, though, thanks for the reminder!
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Post by donavan on May 9, 2016 13:07:13 GMT
What a lovely day to throw a sickie. Garden Centre, pub lunch and some garden time. Wonderful.
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