Louis Armstrong ~ Ezekiel Saw The Wheel
Posted on 10/05/2006 8:13:09 PM PDT by Soaring Feather
We had a chance of reaching 60 today, but clouds came in and it's only 55. Not as dark as it has been, but still disappointing for all the sunshine we've missed.
We have been fortunate all weekend, yesterday was good weather, too.
Looks like the sun's trying to come out again. The gripe I have about persistent clouds is even if there's pleny to do indoors, I have to turn on the lights in the daytime. Daylight is too nice not to have once in a while.
Since you put it that way, I should be thankful I can't see the dust. It's a good reason not to wash the windows, too!
Hi Kathy, thanks for the music today. Are you having a restful day?
PUN INTENDED
1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.
2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."
3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.
4. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."
6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"
7. "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'" "That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?" Well, "It's Not Unusual."
8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," says Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaims Daisy.
9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.
10. DejaMoo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.
12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I know you can't - I've cut off your arms!"
13. I went to a seafood disco last week... and pulled a mussel.
14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!"
16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.
17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why," they asked, as they moved off. "Because", he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."
18. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Year's later; Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."
19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (this is so bad, it's good)..... A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
20. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
Oh great picture!
A Happy Monday to you, Lady.
Gorgeous day today, I have some errands to run so I am happy about that.
I should open some windows. Today is the warmest we'll have for a while to come. It's barely 60 in the "sun" (it's cloudy AGAIN!) and 58 in the shade.
Hello, everyone. Happy Monday. If I may, I'd like to share a couple new poems and some wisdom my priest passed to me recently.
Wisdom (Paraphrased respectfully): "As a teenager, I was friends with a Jewish boy who was in my math class. He was decidedly better at math than I was, and so I often asked him to help me with my assignments. He graciously helped me every single time, despite the fact that almost every problem I cam to him with was one of the simpler, more tedious ones to his eyes. But the friendship I had with him did not sprout of our mathematical studies. Every time I worked with him, he told me stories about his synagogue and his family. I was curious about his experiences, and so I listened almost more attentively than I listened to his math lessons. One of the more moving stories I heard from him was this:
"A small group of young children in hebrew school was having a conversation with the rabbi. Most of the children were about five or six, which meant they were barely starting to learn Hebrew. The rabbi, who was about to open the ark for them (for, mostly, the first time) and reveal to them what was behind it. But first he decided to let them guess. He went around in a circle, asking the children what they thought was behind the curtain. The more sensible of the kindergarteners said, "The Torah, of course." Some of the more pious insisted that God dwelt there. But one, after looking at the closed curtain for a moment, said, "There is a mirror there that lets us see our lives through the eyes of God."
"I (the priest) was touched and impressed. The story led into an intricate conversation about the presence of God inside the human soul and the human world. Interestingly, our different beliefs did not come between us. Quite the contrary; we were mutually enlightened because of our differences. After all these years, I have decided that much of spiritual life is made up of mirrors, and people only have to know how to find them."
Poems:
The Bell Ringer
The bell ringer paces the corridors dreary,
His steps like a lion grown ancient and weary,
No longer the gold that its ancestors bore,
Nor youthful and bright like the lion before:
But still he goes on, in the windowless drafts
Like arrowheads scattered and bare of their shafts,
He walks ‘till it’s time for his work at the church
Ringing the bells at his bell tower perch.
Come time by the water-clock’s telling, he goes
Though time needs not tick to alert him: he knows
When he should walk up that shuddering stair
Winding in spirals, in need of repair,
The path to the bells, those great heavenly voices
At whose solemn sound all of nature rejoices,
He knows when their song is in need to be played,
As farmers can tell when the cow’s milk is made,
So into the dust sent by cracking wood floors,
The sound of the churchbells’ necessity soars,
They want to be played, and they want to be rung
They want every song that they know to be sung—
And whose wrinkled hands shall be pulling their rope?
The bell ringer, with his obedient lope.
He loves them insanely: they’re close to his heart,
Like children, they cannot survive when apart;
The ringer is loved, for each trek that he makes,
For every perfection, for all his mistakes:
Who ever imagined this blest adoration
That comes in between every monk and salvation?
He pulls on the rope, and releases the sound:
A hideous noise, such a clash, so profound!
Alas, what a racket the bells had in store
Behind all the majesty in their décor:
A sound like the wars of the black ages past,
A sound none predicted, no seer forecast
To ring in the bells of the future, as chimes
To call men to prayer at such dignified times,
Where tribes made no battles against pagan gods,
Where no one was murdered, and none were at odds—
What evil had come to pollute this ripe song
Come down from the bells, out of tune for so long!
And still pulled the bell ringer, harder this time
So the sound may be louder, exalted, sublime
In mania dragging those shrieks from the bells
As monks came in order, to prayer, from their cells.
The bells are off key in this city of prayer,
And yet, it would seem that no one is aware,
For the people come crowding, and always respond
To the call of the Greater, the Far, the Beyond—
The bells do not ring with the Greatest Divine
But the capital letters still ring, and still shine.
Perhaps we are all ringing bells out of tune,
From dead, shrouded midnight to sun-splattered noon,
Some of us know it, and some never will
But the bells are forever, no matter how shrill.
Untitled
(On Winter)
The glassy surface of a frozen lake
Reflects the gently clouded skies, as if
A bird had flown up to the highest height
And draped a gentle white across the heavens,
As if it dipped a brush into the stars,
Diluted that unearthly light, and dropped
A cold cascade upon the silent forest,
Typical to canvases, to songs:
What lies beneath this peace, what turbulence
Makes it so eternally appealing?
To drop my weight beneath the barest tree,
And lie with eyes cast up towards its branches,
Spread like crooked, peeling rays of sun
Imperfect. Behind the silhouette, a gentle dawn
Crawls childlike, on all fours, about the sky
Her shining handprints on the cloudy soil
Left as our beacon and our morning light:
Her smile, and her abundant curls all present:
They can just be glimpsed above the tree.
The daytime snow—in flurries coming down,
Almost as if a giant cloth is trembling
Side to side, instead of wind and air,
And drawing in the heavy atmosphere
A path for snow’s lithe dancers to come forth,
Along the sunbeams sent like lighted spears
To penetrate the fog and mist of winter,
Many, many paths the snowflakes know
And memorize by heart each coming year,
Until their grand performance, three months long.
If all the world was made to be a stage,
Then winter is the curtain of the world:
When drawn, the Autumn crouches, anxious, waiting,
As dark anticipation drowns the lands,
And then, the final chime, the final leaf
Of dying conversation falls to dust:
And now the theater gathers close together,
Warm, and ready for the coming show,
No whispers are allowed; the lights grow dim:
The great white curtain moves into its place.
The winter folds and morphs its velvet body,
Sweet vitality. It falls on treetops,
Clothing them in dancing gowns, so that
All nature and the earth can join the song,
A grumbling, heavy harmony, but bright:
Uplifting to the heart and soul, its colors
Shining brilliantly beneath the white.
Here I remain, beneath this ancient tree,
That morphed so many times throughout its age,
And still, with every winter, joins the dance.
No somber meditation stalks this place,
Of frailty and joylessness: such thoughts
Are trapped behind the curtain. Now, the dance,
The great performance plays on heaven’s brow,
The lives of man are small in all this greatness,
But not as small as outcasts on their icebergs,
Drifting in the anguished, violent sea,
But rather as this curtain’s tapestry
Where every thread is put there for a reason.
Good morning,
Ms Feather!
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