Olivia

-Ian Falconer, Olivia

To Make Gosky Patties

Take a Pig, three or four years of age, and tie him by the off-hind leg to a post. Place 5 pounds of currants, 3 of sugar, 2 pecks of peas, 18 roast chestnuts, a candle, and six bushels of turnips, within his reach; if he eats these, constantly provide him with more.

Then procure some cream, some slices of Cheshire cheese, four quires of foolscap paper, and a packet of black pins. Work the whole into a paste, and spread it out to dry on a sheet of clean brown water-proof linen.

When the paste is perfectly dry, but not before, proceed to beat the Pig violently, with the handle of a large broom. If he squeals, beat him again.

Visit the paste and beat the Pig alternately for some days, and ascertain if at the end of that period the whole is about to turn into Gosky Patties.

If it does not then, it never will; and in that case the Pig may be let loose, and the whole process may be considered as finished.

-Edward Lear, Nonsense Cookery

A Vicious Circle

It's like what one of those Middle West poets said: You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life...It's what they call a vicious circle.

-Thornton Wilder, Our Town, Act II

Lucinda Matlock

I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.

-Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

Free and Strong and Natural

The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there’s nobody noticing. Now that’s the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man’s got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird.

-Frederick Buechner, Treasure Hunt

Paranoia

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

-Philip Lopate, quoted by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird

Conventional Wisdom

Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.

-Daniel Pinkwater, Borgel

Doing What You Are Told

…The bit of advice that comes into my head is this; don’t expect (I mean, don’t count on and don’t demand) that when you are confirmed, or when you make your first Communion, you will have all the feelings you would like to have. You may, of course: but you also may not. But don’t worry if you don’t get them. They aren’t what matter. The things that are happening to you are quite real things whether you feel as you wd. wish or not, just as a meal will do a hungry person good even if he has a cold in the head which will rather spoil the taste. Our Lord will give us right feelings if He wishes—and then we must say Thank you. If He doesn’t, then we must say to ourselves (and Him) that He knows us best. This, by the way, is one of the very few subjects on which I feel I do know something. For years after I had become a regular communicant I can’t tell you how dull my feelings were and how my attention wandered at the most important moments. It is only in the last year or two that things have begun to come right—which just shows how important it is to keep on doing what you are told.

-C. S. Lewis, Letters to Children

DESDICHADO

*This is the Heir; come let us kill Him.
*Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her Beloved?

Christ walks the world again, His lute upon His back,
His red robe rent to tatters, his riches gone to rack,
The wind that wakes the morning blows His hair about His face,
His hands and feet are ragged with the ragged briar’s embrace,
For the hunt is up behind Him and His sword is at His side,…
Christ the bonny outlaw walks the whole world wide,
Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me,
Lie among the bracken and break the barley bread?
We will see new suns arise in golden, far-off skies,
For the Son of God and Woman hath not where to lay His head.”

Christ walks the world again, a prince of fairy-tale,
He roams, a rascal fiddler, over mountain and down dale,
Cast forth to seek His fortune in a bitter world and grim,
For the stepsons of His Father’s house would steal His Bride from Him;
They have weirded Him to wander till He bring within His hands
The water of eternal youth from black-enchanted lands,
Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with me,
Or sleep on silken cushions in the bower of wicked men?
For if we walk together through the wet and windy weather,
When I ride back home triumphant you will ride beside Me then.”

Christ walks the world again, new-bound on high emprise,
With music in His golden mouth and laughter in His eyes;
The primrose springs before Him as He treads the dusty way,
His singer’s crown of thorn has burst in blossom like the may,
He heedeth not the morrow and He never looks behind,
Singing: “Glory to the open skies and peace to all mankind.”
Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me?
Was never man lived longer for the hoarding of his breath;
Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain…
If we perish in the seeking…why, how small a thing is death!”

-Dorothy Sayers, Catholic Tales and Christian Songs

How to Slice a Cake

“We may liken our statistics to a large crumbly loaf cake, which we may cut in slices to obtain easily edible helpings. The method of slicing may be chosen in different ways—across the cake, length-wise, down the cake, or even in horizontal slices, but only one method of slicing may be used at a time. If we try to slice the cake more than one way at a time, we shall be left with a useless collection of crumbs.”

-Lawrence H. Longley-Cook , “An Introduction to Credibility Theory”

Snark Taxonomy

"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
The warranted genuine Snarks.

"Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,
Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
With a flavour of Will-o-the-wisp.

"Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day.

"The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
And it always looks grave at a pun.

"The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
Which it frequently carries about,
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes--
A sentiment open to doubt.

"The fifth is ambition. It next will be right
To describe each particular batch:
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,
From those that have whiskers, and scratch.

"For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet, I feel it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums--" The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away.

-Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

The Evening Wore On

The evening wore on. That’s a very nice expression, isn’t it. With your permission I’ll say it again. The evening wore on.

-Mary Chase, Harvey

Providence

…When I dropped the window off that falling ladder back in 1971, I didn’t know that my son had come around the corner of the house and was standing at the foot of the ladder watching me. The window hit the ground and burst, the ladder hit the ground and bounced, and his father landed face first in the crysanthemums; all three missed him by a few feet. Quite a spectacle for a little boy to see up close, and he laughed out loud and clapped his hands. I moved my arms to make sure they weren’t broken into little pieces, and I clapped, too. Hurray for God! So many fiction writers nowadays would have sent the window down on that boy’s head as if it were on a pulley and the rope were around his neck, but God let three heavy objects fall at his feet and not so much as scratch him. He laughed to see me and I laughed to see him. He was all right and I wasn’t so bad myself.

-Garrison Keillor, We Are Still Married

Could Be A Lot Worse

a kiss for the miles to drive, a prayer for when it rains
one shot of perspective, a couple more to kill the pain
when all the best metaphors are hitting too close to home
when all the best metaphors are bleeding from your bones

I'm gonna die a failure, but to happiness awake
you can go to sleep in hell, and wake up at heaven's gate
think of all that we missed today that lay right before our eyes
think of all that fades away in our hard-pressed compromise

this is dangerous terrain we're attempting to traverse
and it's a cryin' shame, but it could be a lot worse

so you proceed with caution, though you're mumbling in the dark
and that one shot of perspective has finally hit your heart

faith, she's a whistling train running hard in the dark
hope is like a thing untamed, gonna lay to waste your heart
love is a little bit of God, there for all to know
love is the everlasting arms that never do let go...

this is dangerous terrain we're attempting to traverse
and it's a cryin' shame, but it could be a lot worse

-Bill Mallonee

Rare Pleasures

Has anyone yet said publicly how nice it is to write on rubber with a ballpoint pen? The slow, fat, ink-rich line, rolled over a surface at once dense and yielding, makes for a multidimensional experience no single sheet of paper can offer. Right now dozens of Americans are making repetitive scrolly designs on the soft white door-seals of their refrigerators, or they are directing their pens around the layered side-steppes and toe-bulbs of their sneakers (heads bent, as elders give them advice), or they are marking shiny initials on one of those gigantic, dumb, benevolent erasers (which always bounce in unforeseen directions when dropped, and seem so selfless, so apolitical, so completely uninterested in doing anything besides erasing large mistakes for which they were not responsible), and then using the eraser to print these same initials several times, backward, on a knee or forearm, in a fading progression. These are rare pleasures.

-Nicholson Baker, "Rarity," The Size of Thoughts

Bird by Bird

…Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

The Windhover: To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

-Gerard Manly Hopkins

The Gospel as Comedy

He speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking. I suspect that Jesus spoke many of his parables as a kind of sad and holy joke and that that may be part of why he seemed reluctant to explain them because if you have to explain a joke, you might as well save your breath. I don’t mean jokes for the joke’s sake, of course. I don’t mean the kind of godly jest the preacher starts his sermon with to warm people up and show them that despite his Geneva tabs or cassock he can laugh with the rest of them and is as human as everybody else. I mean the kind of joke Jesus told when he said it is harder for a rich person to enter Paradise than for a Mercedes to get through a revolving door, harder for a rich person to enter Paradise than for Nelson Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank…

…God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turn out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up “Amazing Grace.” If you have to explain it, don’t bother.

-Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Camp Songs #7

Way up in the sky
The little birds fly
While down in the nest
The little birds rest

With a wing on the left
And a wing on the right
The little birds sleep
All through the night

Shhhh. THEY'RE SLEEPING!

The bright sun comes up
The dew falls away
"Good morning, good morning"
The little birds say

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

Camp Songs #6

As I was walking down the street, one dark and stormy day
I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay
The sign was torn and tattered from a storm the night before
The wind and rain had done its job and this is what I saw:

Chew Coca-Cola cigarettes, smoke Wrigley Spearmint beer
Ken-L-Ration dogfood makes your complexion clear
Simonize your baby with a Hershey's candy bar
Texaco's the beauty cream that's used by all the stars

Spend your next vacation in a brand new Frigidaire
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three
People over 65 should bathe in Lipton tea

Camp Songs #5

I woke up Sunday morning
I looked up on the wall
The skeeters and the bedbugs
Were havin a game of ball

Chorus:
I'm singin eeny meeny and a miny moe
Catch a wiffer woffer by the toe
and if he hollers, hollers, hollers let him go
I'm singin eeny meeny and a miny moe

The score was six to nuthin
The skeeters were ahead
The bedbugs hit a homerun
And knocked me out of bed

I went downstairs to breakfast
I ordered ham and eggs
I ate so many pickles
The juice ran down my legs

Just walkin round the corner
Not doin any harm
A policeman came along
And grabbed me by the arm

They threw me in the sewer
And that is where I died
They did not call it murder
They called it sewercide

Camp Songs #4

Have you ever seen a fishy on a hot summer day?
Have you ever seen a fishy all frozen in the bay?
With his hands in his pockets, and his pockets in his pants?
Have you ever seen a fishy do the hoochy koochy dance?
You never have. You never will.

Have you ever seen a fishy out driving in a car?
Have you ever seen a fishy playing pac man in a bar?
With his hands in his pockets, and his pockets in his pants?
Have you ever seen a fishy do the hoochy koochy dance?
You never have. You never will.

Have you ever seen a fishy in a house on a hill?
Have you ever seen a fishy on a ten dollar bill?
With his hands in his pockets, and his pockets in his pants?
Have you ever seen a fishy do the hoochy koochy dance?
You never have. You never will.

Camp Songs #3

Fried ham, fried ham
Cheese and baloney
After the macaroni
We'll have onions
Pickles, and pretzles
And then we'll have some more
Fried ham, fried ham, fried ham!

Camp Songs #2

Waaaaaaaaaaaay
Out in the windswept desert
Where nature knows no man
A BUFFALO spied his brother
A lyin' in the sand
Said the BUFFALO to his brother,
"What makes you lie that way?"
But the BUFFALO did not answer
He's been dead since way last May
(Since way last May...)

Camp Songs #1

She sailed away
On a sunny summer day
On the back of a crocodile
She said, said she,
"He's as tame as he can be;
I'll ride him down the Nile."
Well the croc winked his eye,
As she bade them all goodbye,
Wearing a happy smile
At the end of the ride,
The lady was inside,
And the smile was on the crocodile!

The Ballad of Billy M'Caw

Oh, how well I remember the old Bull and Bush
Where we used to go down of a Sattaday night,
Where, when anything happened, it came with a rush,
For the boss, Mr. Clark, he was very polite

A very nice house, from basement to garret
A very nice house. Ah, but it was the parret,
The parret, the parret named Billy M'Caw,
Who brought all those folk to the bar.
Ah! He was the life of the bar.

Of a Sattaday night, we was all feeling bright,
And Lily LaRose, the barmaid that was,

She'd say 'Billy! Billy M'Caw! Come give us,
Come give us a dance on the bar.'
And Billy would dance on the bar,
And Billy would dance on the bar.
And then we'd feel balmy, in each eye a tear,
And emotion would make us all order more beer.

Lily, she was a girl what had brains in her head;
She wouldn't have nothick, no not that much said.
If it came to an argument, or a dispute,
She would settle it offhand with the toe of her boot

Or as likely as not put her fist through your eye.
But when we was happy and just a bit dry,
Or when we was thirsty, and just a bit sad,
She would rap on the bar with that corkscrew she had

And say 'Billy! Billy M'Caw!
Come give us a tune on your pastoral flute!'
And Billy'd strike up on his pastoral flute,
And Billy'd strike up on his pastoral flute.
And then we'd feel balmy, in each eye a tear,
And emotion would make us all order more beer.

'Billy! Billy M'Caw!
Come give us a tune on your moley guitar!'
And Billy'd strike up on his moley guitar,
And Billy'd strike up on his moley guitar.
And then we'd feel balmy, in each eye a tear,
And emotion would make us all order more beer.

'Billy! Billy M'Caw!
Come give us a tune on your moley guitar!'
Ah! He was the life of the bar.

-T. S. Eliot

Bananas

I detest bananas,
A smug fruit, designed to be eaten in railway carriages
On Bank Holidays,
With a complexion like yellow wax
And a texture like new putty
Flavoured with nail polish.
Yes, we have no bananas,
Glory be!

-Dorothy Sayers, "Lord, I Thank Thee - "

Olives with Cream Cheese

On their own, olives are old, pickled, briny, rusty--but set them off against a background of cream cheese and you have jewelry.

-Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine

Dabble and Splash

This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea (I think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there never dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal.

-C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Mud Pies

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea…We are far too easily pleased.

-C. S. Lewis, Transposition and Other Addresses

Songs of Ocean

Lord, the water floods have lifted,
Ocean floods have lift their roar;
Now they pause where they have drifted,
Now they burst upon the shore.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
For the ocean's sounding store.

With all tones of waters blending,
Glorious is the breaking deep;
Glorious, beauteous without ending,
God Who reigns on heav'ns high steep.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Songs of ocean never sleep.

-John Keble, "God, the Lord, a King Remaineth"

Walking Across the Atlantic

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping out onto the first wave.
Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.

I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.
But for now I try to image what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

-Billy Collins

The Time Has Come...

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No clouds were in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead—
There were no birds to fly.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.’

-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Perseverance

Now, if God saves us, it will be a trying matter. All the way to heaven, we shall only get there by the skin of our teeth. We shall not go to heaven sailing along with sails swelling to the breeze, like sea birds with their white wings, but we shall proceed full often with sails rent to ribbons, with masts creaking, and the ship’s pumps at work both by night and day. We shall reach the city at the shutting of the gate, but not an hour before. O believer, thy Lord will bring thee safe to the end of thy pilgrimage; but mark, thou wilt never have one particle of strength to waste in wantonness upon the road. There will be enough to get thee up the hill of Difficulty, but only enough then by climbing on your hands and knees. You will have strength enough to fight Apollyon, but when the battle is over your arm will have no strength remaining. Your trials will be so many, that if you had only one trial more, it would be like the last ounce that breaks the camel’s back. But, nevertheless, though God’s love should thus try you all the journey through, your faith will bear the trying, for while God dashes you down to the earth with one hand in providence, he will lift you up with the other in grace. You will have consolation and affliction weighed out in equal degree, ounce for ounce, and grain for grain; you will be like the Israelite in the wilderness. If you gather much manna, you will have nothing over; while, blessed be God, if you gather little you shall have no lack. You shall have daily grace for daily trials.

-C. H. Spurgeon

Smart Or Pleasant

“Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she’d say: ‘In this world Elwood, you must be’—she always called me Elwood. ‘In this world Elwood, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

- Mary Chase, Harvey

How to Catch a Snark

“You may seek it with thimbles—and seek it with care
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap—”

-Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

Sneezes

“It does remind me of the time I sneezed a gold tooth out of my head on Penalty Street down at Bangor,” said Captain Broad.

“Did you?” said Captain Huffle, though perchance he had heard the story before.

“Sneezes often come in threes, you know,” said Captain Broad, “and there were some who gathered about to see what I would produce next.”

-Van Reid, Mrs Roberto

Remembering

When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.

-Frederick Buechner

Logic

“Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.” What is permitted to Jove is not permitted to your cow.

-William F. Buckley, National Review

Winn-Dixie

“Come on, Winn-Dixie,” I said to the dog.

I started walking and he followed along behind me as I went out of the produce department and down the cereal aisle and past all the cashiers and out the door.

Once we were safe outside, I checked him over real careful and he didn’t look that good. He was big, but skinny: you could see his ribs. And there were bald patches all over him, places where he didn’t have any fur at all. Mostly, he looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.

“You’re a mess,” I told him. “I bet you don’t belong to anybody.”

He smiled at me. He did that thing again, where he pulled back his lips and showed me his teeth. He smiled so big that it made him sneeze. It was like he was saying, “I know I’m a mess. Isn’t it funny?”

It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.

“Come on,” I told him. “Let’s see what the preacher has to say about you.”

And the two of us, me and Winn-Dixie, started walking home.

-Katie DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie