Kiseger's blog

A secret turning in us
makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet,
and feet head. Neither cares.
They keep turning.

Rumi - The Secret Turning

"That's the sort of nonsense I loathe!" cried Irma, suddenly becoming passionate.  "Are we going to talk about the party, or are we going to listen to your silly souffles?  Answer me, Alfred.  Answer me at once!"
"I will talk like bread and water.  What shall I say?"
He descended from the chairback and sat on the seat.  Then he leant forward a little and, with his hands folded between his knees, he gazed expectantly at Irma through the magnifying lenses of his spectacles.

.............Am I a coward?

Who calls me “villain”? Breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' th' throat

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?   Ha!

Shakespeare, Hamlet II,2.

Broken Nose Bread

And so it came to pass that I was having a quiet morning at the office when I got a call from The Husband.  "I've just come out of A&E" says he.  "That's nice," say I.  Possibly not the right answer.

A song of the good green grass!

A song no more of the city streets;

A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch fork;

A song tasting of new wheat and of fresh husk'd maize.

A Carol of Harvest, for 1867.  Walt Whitman (1819-1898)

If he shows talent as an artist, give him pencils or modeling wax in his playroom, but do not let him bite his slice of bread into the silhouette of an animal, or model figures in soft bread at the table. And do not allow him to construct a tent out of two forks, or an automobile chassis out of tumblers and knives. Food and table implements are not playthings, nor is the dining-room a playground.

Table tricks that must be corrected from Etiquette (1922) by Emily Post.

When on the breath of autumn breeze,

From pastures dry and brown,

Goes floating like an idle thought

The fair white thistle-down,

Oh then what joy to walk at will

Upon the golden harvest hill!

What joy in dreamy ease to lie

Amid a field new shorn,

And see all round on sun-lit slopes

The pil’d-up stacks of corn;

And send the fancy wandering o’er

All pleasant harvest-fields of yore.

"I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs?

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,            

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro' the field the road runs by

             To many-tower'd Camelot;

.....

Only reapers, reaping early   

In among the bearded barley,

Hear a song that echoes cheerly          

The heart is like grain, we are the mill.

How does the mill know why it turns?

The body is the mill stone, the water its thoughts.

The stone says "The water knows its course."

The water says "Ask the miller, he is the one,

Who sends this water cascading down."

The miller says "If there is no turning,

O bread-eater, there will be no dough."

A Centaur has a man-stomach and a horse-stomach. And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omelette and cold ham and toast and marmalade and coffee and beer. And after that he tends to the horse part of himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some oats, and a bag of sugar. That's why it's such a serious thing to ask a Centaur to stay for the weekend. A very serious thing indeed.     C.S. Lewis.  The Silver Chair