http://www.wildyorkshire.co.uk/naturediary/docs/2005/7/4.html
Carpenter's The Thing was on...now another spooker...
Reading about the Paleolithic and the Neolithic one gets the impression that these Ages are gone...only to be discovered in caveman graves...not so...living American Indians have still many of the ceremonies and rituals, the other "code"...and they were, are, Neolithic peoples...I suppose there are even still undiscovered Neoliths out in New Guinea....
And these are the ages that the old Greek's called Golden....and surley the way people live has changed...and so can be categorized for different times...but the animals haven't...they're still in the 'golden' age...which is what the world is...basically...Life on Earth has little regard for Man's Ages...
So the Neolithic isn't a lost age...it's actually right outside Tree in the Door...somewhat marred by building noise and such...but it's a real stone age setting.
But what is lost is the senses people had when hunter gatherers...and early farming...the Navajos with maize and peaches and such.
Which brings me to something I wanted to look up I heard on a show...oh I cant recall...think it was talk show...Charlie Rose interview..of....if it comes back...but what was said was that John Philip Sousa said the invention of records would end people singing. People used to sing all the time...at home, at work...but with recorded music...they would just sit and listen...brb...well, I could maybe find it...it was a lament by Sousa...that a new technology was going to make one kind of music...real singing...go extinct...
Technology is doing that all the time...people dont walk anymore..they ride in cars...and too the cars and lay out of cities makes it only possible to walk anywhere only on the shoulders of public roads...
Robert Graves has a lot of these laments in the White Goddess...lemesee if I can get the 'circus tent' bit...brb...
quote
"Nowadays" is a civilization in which the prime emblems of poetry are dishonoured. In which serpent, lion, and eagle belong to the circus-tent; ox, salmon and boar to the cannery, racehorse and greyhound to the betting ring; and the sacred grove to the saw-mill. In which the Moon is despised as a burned-out satellite of the Earth and woman reckoned as "auxiliary State personnel." In which money will buy almost anything but truth, and almost anyone but the truth-possessed poet.
unquote
I picked up the White Goddess, seeing on the jacket, or somewhere inside, a bit about the Battle of the Trees...and I though it an enviornmental story of some sort...like loggers vs. tree huggers...well indeed it is...but the Battle of the Trees is another thing too....an old poem made of enchanting riddles...that enchanted Graves...and his readers...
here's a bit I did using the kinda way englyn's go...
a poem:
Counting Campsites instead of Hoofed Locusts
May Lake,
Where I usually stay,
Near the fallen tree root where the marmots play.
Tuolumne,
With my sister and niece,
For my sister’s birthday:
Cots, and a wood stove quick to heat.
Ireland Lake,
Open tundra like spring flower land:
Midnight and lightning storm passing
Wind on the tent fabric like an electric scratching hand.
Lower Young Lake,
On the open soft sand, a sunny bower:
Thunder and lightning, Ragged Peak and Mt. Conness glower.
Nelson Lake,
Teetering on Elizabeth’s snow cornice pass, and beyond:
Footsteps to a deer belong? A solo night sound….
Sardine Lake,
Down Bloody Canyon (red red in the morning sun’s line):
A tree with a face, frightening!
As the nite black wind haunting.
Volgelsang,
In the white tent a lemonade stand,
And where I lay on the lakeshore’s grass
The mountain flowers to ogle.
Sunnyside,
Indeed, across the meadow the morning sun will glare
Abrupt as some fool with a trumpet at the hillside community blare.
Tree in the Door, in between,
Nighttime paddles to the can, and Yosemite Fall’s roar:
Twelve cabin neighbors, and more—they all snore.
Upper Young Lake,
To Conness in the morning:
Full moon’s reflected rise peeking over the lake’s wall…..a coyote singing….
Tuolumne Walk In,
At the store’s grill, break fast and lunch,
At the bus stop picnic tables, tales,
Everyone arriving and going, their packs hunch…
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
quote
My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry... [p. x]
Robert Graves, The White Goddess
unquote
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Yosemite
Feb. 28, 2007
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