No such thing as a free dove?

[lizzytysh]

That's what I'm saying, Sue, that they still look the same size on this end. I'm not sure if it's a 'temporary' fix or simply a fix for viewing from your own computer; as a whole, though, looking at it from my computer, everything looks unchanged, with the exception of your 8:53, in the ways I described. I'm not suggesting anything about what she did or why or its being her good manners to do so. I was observing that it must be something that comes through to you only because everything still looks essentially the same here, and I'm curious about that.


~ Lizzy

[Manna]

that's strange.

here's the normal stuff.

here's some bigger stuff

here's some bad-mannered stuff

how's it look, Lizzy?

[lizzytysh]

It looks all the same, Manna. As I'm recalling, though, now that you've done that... that I've made things bigger and they didn't show that way at home, but PRESTO when I got to work, there they were at the larger size . So, I guess it's just my own computer that's insisting on status quo . Thanks for the demonstration .


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

I wrote a little story here which i removed. It was about the dove. I was wrong in that I had used a dove in a story where a stork belonged. ooops !

But in finding out that I was wrong I did come to learn that the dove is the only bird that is Korban in the Jewish tradition, which means that it can be sacrificed to God by a Kohen and eaten by him.

[imaginary friend]

"...which means that it can be sacrificed to God by a Kohen and eaten by him."

eaten by whom? God or the Kohen? What is a Kohen? The krack in a Cohen?

[lazariuk]

"...which means that it can be sacrificed to God by a Kohen and eaten by him."

eaten by whom? God or the Kohen? What is a Kohen? The krack in a Cohen?

I am not really sure why i put out what might be just some useless bit of information that might not have anything to do with why he used the dove in this specific song.

but to answer your questions that you wrote from vancouver on january 16th which happens to be where some of my thoughts go every january 16th.

the tradition that leonard was born into has a special place for people named Cohen which included saying a specific blessing, which Leonard happens to say at times. the same tradition gives to people named Cohen, the honor or job of a certain sacrifice and one of the perks of the job is that they get to eat the sacrifice. Different animals can be used but the only bird that can be used is a dove. I wrote Kohen because that is the way I see it mostly written but my understanding is that the name Cohen is being meant as well.

if anything that i wrote here is inaccurate and it might well be because this is not my tradition that I am writing about, please feel free to correct my ignorance.

[imaginary friend]

I hope that your annual January 16 thoughts of Vancouver are kind and happy.

Thank you for the Cohen/Kohen response. I have more questions, but not about the dove – so I'll post them on other threads.

[Sue]

I promise to tell Sue everything there is to tell about my avatar,
------ provided Sue tells me first what in tarnation nation hers is supposed to be!!!

It's a fingerprint. Sorry you had to find out this way.

[lizzytysh]

After reading your quoting of Greg, I tried to figure it out myself. What I could best see in it was a modern-art depiction of a boat, tilted with its sail fully billowed, in a blue sea with matching blue sky, both reflecting onto the sail.

Then, I read your answer . Fortunately, now that I know what it is, I can see that, too.


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

I promise to tell Sue everything there is to tell about my avatar,
------ provided Sue tells me first what in tarnation nation hers is supposed to be!!!

It's a fingerprint. Sorry you had to find out this way.

Which finger?

[Sue]

What I could best see in it was a modern-art depiction of a boat, tilted with its sail fully billowed, in a blue sea with matching blue sky, both reflecting onto the sail.

How pretty! I have difficulty making it out though. I think, to answer Jack, that it was one of my thumbs but I can't get enough light on them at the moment to tell which. The vertical lines are evidence of serious manual labour though and as such, of course, a source of great pride.

[lizzytysh]

Hi Sue ~

I'll describe it as best I can, so maybe you can see it. If you cut the frame of your avatar into quadrants, you'll have the upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, and lower-right.

Going from the upper-left to the lower-left is a vertical line that has a white highlight along it. I don't know sailboat terms, but that's the wood or metal pole/rod that holds the main sail.

In the upper-right, is the heavy spot of sunlight and reflection of glare from the water showing as white on the top portions of the fully-billowed sail. The white goes over into the left portion and downward into the right portion, as well, but it's primarily in the upper-right.

The outside line of your thumb there goes from that bright area I've just described, and curves downward, creating the remainder of the fully-billowed sail.

There are two, 'horizontal' lines on the bottom-left and bottom-right.

The line on the bottom-left is the short one and slants downward toward the center. It gives the impression of either the front or aft of the boat or of a rig coming out from the boat. Its tilt being at the 'same' angle as the billow gives the impression that the boat is tilted slightly to the right in the picture.

The line also on the bottom-left, but the majority of it is in the bottom-right slants upward away from where those two lines 'meet' and gives the impression of being the bottom of the boat. It's a thicker line that tapers thinner as it reaches and even slightly crosses over the bottom-right part of the billow, which is the line of your thumb. The outermost spot on that line is lower on the vertical plane than the outermost spot on the short line. This adds to the impression of the boat being slightly tilted.

There is still some blue to the right of your thumb line... as well as a smidgeon of it to the upper left of your thumb line. Those areas of blue are the sky.

The areas of blue beneath those two, bottom lines are the water. Because there is still some blue on the fully-billowed sail, they are the reflections of blue from the sky and the water.

If you didn't become lost in my 'explanation,' can you see it yet?


~ Lizzy

[Sue]

...' can you see it yet?

I'm beginning to get the billowing, so yes I think I am probably seeing it right. Are you hoping to get to see Leonard when he tours? I think I might try and go, simply for - or out of- a sense of the occasion, although I wouldn't expect really to gain anything from the experience that I haven't already got from his work. Why would anybody go, why would you go? What is it we're after?

[lizzytysh]

Hi Sue ~

Well, at least you're kind of getting the billowing . It's all just so clear to me... .

Yes, I will be somehow managing to see Leonard somewhere... though finances keep slipping away due to various things. So, it's not going to be easy.

Good questions about why in person? For me, experiencing the person and the music in person has a different dynamic. Seeing their eyes and expressions and subtle movements reaches my sensors differently in person than by video. Seeing/meeting someone allows for a true sharing of energy that with someone so admired becomes an unforgettable experience. Being in someone's energy field ~ and, when Leonard speaks or sings, his energy field extends and permeates further than many others ~ can be profound. As you know, those are difficult questions to answer. Kind of like trying to find a billowing sailboat on the water in a thumbprint. For now, that's my best .


~ Lizzy

[gregpeter]

Hi Joe,

I'm new here so I'm not sure if you'll see this...

Your reference to "a copy of the plot outlines of 101 of the world's greatest poems as published by National Lampoon" was the only info that I could find on the web about a photocopy of the page that I came across the other day. You don't happen to know which issue it was in by chance? I'd love to use it with my students and I'm assuming that the mag has a list of the poem titles that a referenced as well...

Hope this reaches you...

Thanks - Greg

Hi Greg and all-

First order of business-is "Sue" the same "Sue" who we used to speak with at the Newsgroup? I hope so as she has great insights and if she isn't-well welcome anyway-because she has great insights.

Second order of business-Greg, I just have to say how much I enjoy your posts. They are full of information, entertaining, very funny, and always, always, make me look at something differently than I did before.

I, too, love these discussions-though, I've been told on a few occasions that they risk ruining a perfectly good song through over-analysis-whatever that is.

Now, I must confess that I was completely unaware of the poem, "Dover Beach"- a sad thing to admit for an English Major who has prided himself on continuing scholarly pursuits in my post-graduate years. I'll blame it on going from the course-"Romantic Poetry" directly to "Post-Victorian and Edwardian Literature." In leaping from Keats and Byron to Thomas Hardy and A. E. Houseman, I've apparently skipped a few good poets.

And speaking of poetry, I wanted to mention that I recently resurrected a copy of the plot outlines of 101 of the world's greatest poems as published by National Lampoon a while back.

In the hopes that I won't ruin any good songs (or poems), I plan to sprinkle in several-why let's start right now:

1. A poet looks at a nightingale and thinks about death.
2. A poet looks at a dead groundhog and thinks about death.
3. A poet looks at a toad caught in a lawnmower and thinks about death.

Our poet, dear old LC, probably has thought about death poetically for many years. Let me go back to several lines from several songs (I'm being intentionally vague numerically as something might strike me later and throw off my math).

When I first heard, "The Faith" I was taken back to his lines from "The Guests."

"One by one the guests arrive, the guests are coming through
The open-hearted many the broken hearted few.
And no one knows where the night is going
And no one knows why the wine is flowing
Oh love, I need you, I need you, now."

And then the lines that talk about the "host" presumably-tossing the guests "beyond the garden wall." This is an action that is not particularly hospitable. Though we really don't know what lies beyond the garden wall.

Then, in "Coming Back to You"- dear Leonard addresses this vague entity-

"Because you are a shining light, there are many that you see."

I think it's time for a couple of more plot summaries:

12. A poet watches his wife pick blueberries and thinks about sex.
28. Adam and Eve lose Paradise and from that moment on think about sex and death.
32. A little horse stops by woods on a snowy evening and the driver thinks about death.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but Leonard addresses these vague entities calling them "Love" and "shining light" and the un-named "Host" and he might be referring to whatever notion that he has of a creator, or directing force, deity, or whatever the hell our pea-brained skulls try to use to explain so many of the mysterys that surround us.

The "Holy Dove" is of course, a reference to the Holy Spirit and the third person in the "trinity". The "Father"-an obvious attempt by humans to explain the director role of the deity. Then, in Christianity, Christ becomes the Human face-the brother and son, yet fully part of the deity. The third part of the trinity is the most mysterious and probably the most difficult to describe. St. Patrick held up the shamrock and for those going to Dublin, perhaps it is best described by him in that fashion. I think it best describes the mystery of it all.

And now, I do think that he was writing with a reference to Arnold's poem. Your theory of the trend (at that time) to bow toward the scientific, is very reasonable. And now, it is just the opposite-we have leaders throwing faith in our faces. I think it is particularly striking that when I looked up the reference to the poem in Wikipedia that you provided, I was also directed toward "German higher criticism"-this is specifically the type of group that our good Pope Benedict was addressing when he made the awful faux pas that's cost some Nun her life already and will probably cause many more deaths over time. I'm not defending the Pope-as one of the Priest's that I used to hang around was not a big fan, but it clearly evokes how religion (read Faith) colors our world.

Time for some more plot summaries:

41. Lord Alfred Tennyson thinks about John Milton.
42. Robert Lowell thinks about Elizabeth Bishop.
50. Milton remembers Virgil.
33. A poet spies a white spider holding up a white moth on a white flower (heal-all) and thinks about something or other that English teachers have to explain to their students. (I stuck this one in because it is clearly different).

I was going to quit now, but I remembered that I really didn't say what I wanted to say. It brings back a line that I read criticizing the movie that Franco Zefferlli made about Christ-"He forgot to resurrect him!"

Anyway, this sea so deep and blind, and unknowable and no one has any intrinsic knowledge about what it's all about, and here you have all these millions and millions of people passin' through. There is no doubt that tremendous cruelty goes on, but at the same time one has to recognize that the human heart has this amazing capacity for love and compassion. As I heard an dog trainer say one time, in a different context-"There aren't any Gandhi's in the dog kingdom."

How do we make any sense of this? Leonard has been pretty generous to organized religion in interviews. He speaks of the comforting role that religion has played in an interview that John MacKenna conducted awhile ago-I wish that I had a transcript of it. He says that he would never ridicule organized religion. Yet, in my own way, as a practising Catholic, I can understand the danger and the terrible wrong-headedness that has lead to slaughter and unbelievable suffering.

Time for a few last plot summaries:

30. A poet leaves an astronomy lessons and looks up at the stars to think about eternity.
18. A knight meets La Belle Dame Sans Merci and thinks about sex and death.
34. A buzz saw cuts off a young boy's hand, causing the poet to think about Shakespeare and death.

One last thing, Greg, about your great post-I loved the aural analysis. Leonard has a great ear and I was just thinking about how great the sound of the words are in "Half the Perfect World." Plus, it had the added bonus of my looking up the words in the "Blue Alert" booklet and was treated again to the sight of Anjani holding a cup of coffee in her knickers.

Listen to the great sonics here:

"The Candles burned
The moon went down
The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where loves unwilled, unleashed
Unbound-
And half the perfect world is found."

Pretty nice stuff and brings us back to the sex part-Leonard likes that probably better than death, I guess.

Last plot summaries:

99. Matthew Arnold remembers Shakespeare.
101. Matthew Arnold looks at a nightingale and thinks about death.

All the best,

Joe

P. S. to Tom-as a professor reminded me one time about using the books in a poet's library. They may be there, but there is no guarantee that the poet read them. I have a lot of books-some have not been read, but maybe that's just me.