That video is from one of our longtime favorite commenters, rhhardin, who says:
Approaching Turkey in the Straw diagnosed and awaited, video from Monday bike commute.That's from last night's "café" post — the one with the orange flower — where another favorite commenter, Lem, transports us into a long car ride with his wonderful father:
The business model is doubtful, with the kids safely indoors in modern times.
Anyway.. I had a good time driving my dad.. for about seven hours.. he drove the rest.The conversation was, I think, in Spanish.
I caught a sign in PA that said "where is the birth certificate?"..
We both happen to see it and when I finally did a half hearted ha ha (because I didn't get it right away) my father asked me what do you think?
..he eventually told me about what he calls the "American Concupiscence of Obama".
and of course he told me ther is a price to pay for that kind of thing.
He told me that "codicia" (lust) is not only a material, nor only a sexual mater the way people like to pretend.
He said that [like] any object of desire that is able to overcome fears, it is a (for lack of a better explanation) godlike.
According to my father.. the seemingly "impossibility" of Obama becoming president played right into his theme of "hope and change".. So that when it did happened (he became president) people assigned to it a divine like experience/intervention.. and now with the spill he is (unlike Bush) "uniquely qualified" to stop it.. or everything they believed is in jeopardy.
I wish I could put it to you all in the poetic way my father does.
When he spoke.. it was as if I already knew it.. It felt good.
For people to blame themselves for the spill is a stretch.. it is the only thing keeping Obamas hopes alive.
If people blame Obama.. in their minds (says my father) they might as well blame themselves.. specially if they voted for him (i said) ... and my father said after a pause that seemed jarring dislocated.. my father voted for Obama.
I didn't react to that.. (thank God) It would have been disrespectful to him.. the fact that he told me it was not so as to give me an opportunity to call it into question. I think it it was more to brace waht he had been telling me about.. "The American Concupiscence of Obama" had been real enough to carry him away like a Hoover Dam Relief.Concupiscence.
I wish Lem could capture that poetry on video. I picture Lem's father as a YouTube wise man.
Some commenters told me that the flower photograph looks like a painting. I've been a painter in my time, and the truth is: It doesn't look like a painting at all. I said:
The reason this flower looks like a painting is because it lacks something that — ironically — I would put in if I were doing a painting of it. There are no black/gray shadowy areas demarcating the depths of the folds. It's just more orange. It's not what the brain thinks will be there, but it's what the camera sees.You could look at that photograph and paint without thinking so much and thereby produce a painting that looks like a photograph. Artists have done that, creating the illusion that some photographs look like paintings. But it is, most assuredly, the other way around.
Time passes slowly up here in the daylight
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right
Like the [orange] rose of [late spring] that blooms in the day
Time passes slowly and fades away...
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23 comments:
My brother called from Savanah, Georgia, yesterday to say he was going to drive non-stop here to central Texas. He wussed out in Baton Rouge.
I'm glad he did.
We live across the street from a city park that's full of kids when the weather's nice. It's also part of a favorite route for the local ice cream truck. And, as God is my witness, time does NOT pass slowly when he stops here. Time. Stands. Still.
Nice Doppler effect on the video as the truck passes.
Our former house was near the Ice Cream Truck route, but it only very rarely passed by -- but it was close enough that my daughter -- then 4 or 5 -- would hear it. But it never passed our house, turning instead a block away. We always said that we'd get her something if the truck passed the house. But of course it never did.
One day, she was at a birthday party across the street. They had just been served cake and ice cream, and that's when the truck finally decided to pass by our house. My daughter did not appreciate the irony of that, but I did.
Time passes slowly when you're in the moment (read Charlton Ogburn's description of being under fire in 'The Marauders') - sometimes it can appear to stand still, as k*thy noted, but, in retrospect, it seems to fly past, particularly as we grow older. I read the Catholic Encyclopedia link on concupiscence and was transported back to theology classes at Villanova. Reflection about all that has transpired since creates that illusion of the seeming instantaneous passage of time.
Lem's father's idea about concupiscence concerning Barry is probably the best description of how it came about: a wishful thinking for something good repressing all the warnings that life doesn't work that way.
I think Ann's right, Lem, your dad is a very wise, and very literate, man.
But you know that.
"Time passes slowly." That would be nice. The older I get faster it passes. I would like a 50 hour day. No matter what my plan for the day, the day always runs out before the plan and I need time after the plan.
The ice cream truck video made me very sad.
I felt sad for the person driving the truck because there were no children stopping him. Nostalgic because I remember the excitement and anticipation of the ice cream truck arrival when I was a child.
Sad because children today are deprived of that and many other experiences that I had as a child that were thrilling, enjoyable, and yes, even dangerous.
Deprived of a chance to be children by a Nanny State gone out of control and parents who are afraid to let their children be childish.
Using hope alone as a strategy is un-American. Those people still live in Europe.
Time stops altogether when an unwatched teevee is showing a C-Span call-in program in another room.
DBQ, come to my neighborhood, you will see children swarming to the Ice Cream Truck.
When i was a young'un we would drop anything we were doing if we even thought we heard the ice cream man. We'd sprint home to scrounge up $1.25 and then go and sit on the curb for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.
Lord, I miss that....
wv - mister: "mister can I have the double swirl with sprinkles?"
The only way for time to pass more slowly is to be listening to a Red Sox game.
But I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Yeah, Lem, what a beautiful conversation with your dad. Thanks for sharing that. I read it this morning on the original thread and found it charming.
rhhardin wrote The business model is doubtful, with the kids safely indoors in modern times.
Maybe they could switch to selling pot. It'd be nice to see some of the grown-up kids out here in CA help make capitalism work again.
I got some ice cream, I got some ice cream and you can't have none cause you're mama's on da welllllllfare. And your daddy's an alllllllllcoholic.
I still laugh uncontrollably when I see that Eddie Murphy routine.
Ok sorry but I had to throw some water on this love fest here. Christ it's like wading through unicorn poo.
"Within one flower, two contraries remaine,
For proofe behoulde, the spider, and the bee,
One poison suckes, the bee doth honie draine:
The Scripture soe, hath two effectes we see:
Unto the bad, it is a sworde that slaies,
Unto the good, a shielde in ghostlie fraies."
The birth certificate is needed only to verify what the Usurper has already admitted. If Obama Sr. is indeed his father then Obama 2 is certainly not qualified, as Obama 2 was born a British subject. Natural Born Citizens are born solely American citizens, because their parents are US Citizens, and the child is born on US soil. There is no competing jurisdiction. A pic on a website is proof of nothing. Lem's father's flowery description of the reason the Usurper got elected is nonsense. He was elected by people who were willfully ignorant of what was right before their eyes, an unholy trinity of blacks, the young, and educated idiots refused to see the danger to America that the Usurper represented. Some of those educated idiots are law professors that continue to turn a blind eye to the Constitutional crisis of a Non Natural Born President. It is the basis of everything, as the Usurper has clearly shown that he has no attachment or allegiance to this country or it's principles.
The Usurper is not stupid or incompetent. He means to destroy the framework of this country by creation of crisis after crisis, then he and his merry band of Marxists can build their Tyrannical dream, throwing crumbs to the desperate masses.
Artists sometimes put lens glare in paintings, too.
DBQ, come to my neighborhood, you will see children swarming to the Ice Cream Truck.
Thank you. You have cheered me up.
Like Jayne. We used to hear the music, scrounge for change and knowing the regular route of the truck, hop onto our bikes (no helmets or shin guards) and race to intercept him on the next block. Yum.
I think I'll have to buy an ice cream bar for lunch today.
once i had a sweetheart she was fine and good lookin. we sat in the kitchen while her momma was cookin. great song.
My son believes that it is an innate trait in the human soul to expect and search for a savior.
Heh. When I was a kid we didn't have the money for things like ice cream trucks, so my parents told us it was a "music truck". I don't think we caught wise until we were teenagers.
Lem, your father sounds wonderful, a rare man able to share his deep understanding of life.
Ours was a dead end street and by the time the ice cream truck looped around we'd all be waiting with our nickles and dimes in front of our house. Popsicles were a nickle and the other stuff a dime. I can remember when ice cream sandwiches, my favorite, went up to 12 cents.
Thanks for the kind thoughts everybody.
Sorry I didn't catch it earlier.
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