Posts from the ‘insomnia’ Category

A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER: A studious young man..may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases and to make to his use as it were a common place booke.
1642 FULLER: A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
1668 HALE: I have commended the making and using of a Commonplace Book, as the best expedient that I know, for the orderly and profitable study of the Law.
1794 GIBBON: I filled a folio commonplace-book with my collections and remarks on the geography of Italy.
1837-9 HALLAM: They registered all his table-talk in commonplace-books alphabetically arranged.
Sunday morning brings the dawn in. It's just a restless feeling by my side. Early dawning, Sunday morning, it's just the wasted years so close behind. Watch out, the world's behind you. There's always someone around you who will call. It's nothing at all.
Sunday morning, and I'm falling. I've got a feeling I don't want to know. Early dawning, Sunday morning: it's all the streets you crossed, not so long ago. Watch out, the world's behind you. There's always someone around you who will call. It's nothing at all
“Peace upon earth!” was said. We sing it
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We’ve got as far as poison-gas.
A long, long time ago,
In the land of idiot boys,
There lived a cat, a phenomenal cat,
Who loved to wallow all day.
No one bothered him
As he sat content in his tree.
He just lived to eat: it kept him fat,
And that's how he wanted to stay.
Though he was big and fat,
All the world was good to him,
And he pointed out on the map
All the places he had been...
Fum, fum, diddle-um da
La la la la, la-la la la
Old boy he ran a little stop sign in the south
And he got in deeper trouble with his mouth
They wouldn't let him phone or make a bail
Just let him sit there in that Delford County jail.
It wudn't me, it wudn't me
I'm so glad it wudn't me
No phone, no bail, no plea
Oh, I'm so glad it wudn't me.
He had to break out of that Delford County jail
They put a Grand Dragon posse on his trail
And seven Alabama bloodhounds in a line
Buckin' and barkin' for a bite of his behind.
It wudn't me, it wudn't me
I'm so glad it wudn't me
Hound posses ain't my cup of tea
Oh, I'm so glad it wudn't me.
He was streakin' through the Delta double three
But them hungry hounds was gainin'on his lee
His feet was playin' "Louisiana Bound"
Lord, you help me pick 'em up, I'll put 'em down.
It wudn't me, it wudn't me
I'm so glad it wudn't me
Prayin' ain't no sure guarantee
Oh, I'm so glad it wudn't me.
He was streakin' through the Delta, stridin' wide
But that leadin' hound was meters from his hide
Lord, bless my feet, don't let 'em go corrupt
I'll lay 'em down as fast as you can pick 'em up.
It wudn't me, it wudn't me
I'm so glad it wudn't me
Just meters from a canine jubilee
Oh, I'm so glad it wudn't me.
He reached a highway through the ticket on the side
And a trucker came along and let him ride
But as he settled down to thank him for no harm
He saw a swastika-KKK band on his arm.
That's when he knew he had to get on help himself
'Stead of depending on someone else
He hung a left into that thicket 'cross the fence
And ain't nobody ever sawed or seen him since...
"I was still busy in pushing forward the repairs to the railroad bridge at Bear Creek, and in patching up the many breaks between it and Tuscumbia, when on the 27th of October [1863], as I sat on the porch of a house, I was approached by a dirty, black-haired individual with mixed dress and strange demeanor, who inquired for me, and, on being assured that I was in fact the man, he handed me a letter from General Blair at Tuscumbia, and another short one, which was a telegraph-message from General Grant at Chattanooga, addressed to me through General George Crook, commanding at Huntsville, Alabama, to this effect: 'Drop all work on Memphis & Charleston Railroad, cross the Tennessee and hurry eastward with all possible dispatch toward Bridgeport, till you meet further orders from me. U. S. GRANT.' The bearer of this message was Corporal Pike, who described to me, in his peculiar way, that General Crook had sent him in a canoe; that he had paddled down the Tennessee River, over Muscle Shoals, was fired at all the way by guerrillas, but on reaching Tuscumbia he had providentially found it in possession of our troops. He had reported to General Blair, who sent him on to me at Iuka. This Pike proved to be a singular character; his manner attracted my notice at once, and I got him a horse, and had him travel with us eastward to about Elkton, whence I sent him back to General Crook at Huntsville; but told him, if I could ever do him a personal service, he might apply to me. The next spring when I was in Chattanooga, preparing for the Atlanta campaign, Corporal Pike made his appearance and asked a fulfillment of my promise. I inquired what he wanted, and he said he wanted to do something bold, something that would make him a hero. I explained to him, that we were getting ready to go for Joe Johnston at Dalton, that I expected to be in the neighborhood of Atlanta about the 4th of July, and wanted the bridge across the Savannah River at Augusta, Georgia, to be burnt about that time, to produce alarm and confusion behind the rebel army. I explained to Pike that the chances were three to one that he would be caught and hanged; but the greater the danger the greater seemed to be his desire to attempt it. I told him to select a companion, to disguise himself as an East Tennessee refugee, work his way over the mountains into North Carolina, and at the time appointed to float down the Savannah River and burn that bridge. In a few days he had made his preparations and took his departure. The bridge was not burnt, and I supposed that Pike had been caught and hanged. When we reached Columbia, South Carolina, in February, 1865, just as we were leaving the town, in passing near the asylum, I heard my name called, and saw a very dirty fellow followed by a file of men running toward me, and as they got near I recognized Pike. He called to me to identify him as one of my men; he was then a prisoner under guard, and I instructed the guard to bring him that night to my camp some fifteen miles up the road, which was done. Pike gave me a graphic narrative of his adventures, which would have filled a volume; told me how he had made two attempts to burn the bridge, and failed; and said that at the time of our entering Columbia he was a prisoner in the hands of the rebels, under trial for his life, but in the confusion of their retreat he made his escape and got into our lines, where he was again made a prisoner by our troops because of his looks. Pike got some clothes, cleaned up, and I used him afterward to communicate with Wilmington, North Carolina. Some time after the war, he was appointed a lieutenant of the Regular Cavalry, and was killed in Oregon, by the accidental discharge of a pistol. Just before his death he wrote me, saying that he was tired of the monotony of garrison-life, and wanted to turn Indian, join the Cheyennes on the Plains, who were then giving us great trouble, and, after he had gained their confidence, he would betray them into our hands. Of course I wrote him that he must try and settle down and become a gentleman as well as an officer, apply himself to his duties, and forget the wild desires of his nature, which were well enough in time of war, but not suited to his new condition as an officer; but, poor fellow! he was killed by an accident, which probably saved him from a slower but harder fate."
—from the "Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman"
He is said to have been the last Red Man
In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed—
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher’s license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
“Whose business,—if I take it on myself,
Whose business—but why talk round the barn?—
When it’s just that I hold with getting a thing done with.”
You can’t get back and see it as he saw it.
It’s too long a story to go into now.
You’d have to have been there and lived it.
Then you wouldn’t have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.
Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red Man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
“Come, John,” he said, “you want to see the wheel pit?”
He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came up stairs alone—and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn’t catch—then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel pit all right.
In Havenpool Harbour the ebb was strong,
And a man with a dog drew near and hung,
And taxpaying day was coming along,
So the mongrel had to be drowned.
The man threw a stick from the paved wharf-side
Into the midst of the ebbing tide,
And the dog jumped after with ardent pride
To bring the stick aground.
But no: the steady suck of the flood
To seaward needed, to be withstood,
More than the strength of mongrelhood
To fight its treacherous trend.
So, swimming for life with desperate will,
The struggler with all his natant skill
Kept bouyant in front of his master still
There standing to wait the end.
The loving eyes of the dog inclined
To the man he held as a god enshrined,
With no suspicion in his mind
That this had all been meant.
Till the effort not to drift from shore
Of his little legs grew slower and slower,
And, the tide still outing with brookless power,
Outward the dog, too, went.
Just ere his sinking what does one see
Break on the face of that devotee?
A wakening to the treachery
He had loved with love so blind?
The faith that had shone in that mongrel's eye
That his owner would save him by and by
Turned to much like a curse as he sank to die,
And a loathing of mankind.
“Waiting Both”
A star looks down at me,
And says: “Here I and you
Stand, each in our degree:
What do you mean to do,––
Mean to do?”
I say: “For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come.” –– “Just so,”
The star says, “So mean I,
So mean I.”
Cf. Job 14:10-14 But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.
N.B.: “Waiting Both” was first published in The London Mercury for November 1924. Collected in Human Shows: Far Phantasies, Songs & Trifles (1925), where it appears as the first poem in the volume. Written in the early 1920s, according to Samuel Hynes in his edition of the complete poems.
Upon making known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding for the present, ushered us into a little room, and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded repast, turned round to us and said - "Clam or Cod?"
"What's that about Cods, ma'am?" said I, with much politeness.
"Clam or Cod?" she repeated.
"A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?" says I; "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter time, ain't it, Mrs Hussey?"
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.
"Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for us both on one clam?"
However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favorite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word "cod" with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savory steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod- chowder was placed before us.
We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head? What's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? "But look, Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your harpoon?"
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes.
--Melville, "Moby-Dick"