KID ICARUS

           

           

        

May foliage over the traintracks in Adams, Tennessee; an invitation happening to contain my birthdate (did you know May 13th was the original Roman date of All Souls' Day? Called Lemuria, festivities included eating a "soul cake", clanging brass pots, and tossing black beans over your shoulder at midnight while reciting an incantation);good shoes and socks and floor from god knows where; a lovely painting gleaned from Emersonmerrick; Ysabel's feet beneath a bush as she picked Moonflowers this past July on a roadtrip we took.

I thought of a poem today by W.H. Auden. The second half of it is a theme in the film/book The Man Who Fell to Earth, and it's called "Musée des Beaux Arts":

"In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may

Have heard the splash, the foresaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something extraordinary, a boy falling out the the sky,

Had somewhere to go to and sailed calmly on."

Last night I was reading an anthology of Shakespeare's works and came across the following plate, with the best caption. I am going to get it framed:

                                   

"He stripped himself naked and chose to live with the wild beasts."