12 Keyword Searches

Diane Wolfe over at Spunk on a Stick will be giving a review of my book A Lizard's Tail. Hop on over there and see what she has to say about it!

Today's post is about strange keywords searches that have brought people to my blog. They could be used as writing prompts, a jumping off point for writing the next big story.

Ready?

1. I get random thoughts early in the morning (So do I, hate those pesky things!)

2. Corp of engineers fickle finger of fate award (How many of you remember Laugh-In? This clip from 1968 shows clearly that some things never change.) 

3. Kaleidoscope shells (I want one.)

4. Spelling spiders (I have this image of little spiders sitting at their little desks copying spellings words off a blackboard.)

5. Eleanor Roosevelt in color (Was she strictly a black and white sort of person?)

6. Iguana sore mouth (What? Sounds like a disease!)

7. Thrust stone old construction window (This makes perfect sense to me, how about you?)

8. Turning into the alien monster (That would be a neat Halloween trick.)

9. Half woman, half bird (I think she's called a harpy and there's your answer to turning into an alien monster AND your Halloween costume)

10. Gas spraying lizards (In the immortal words of Monte Python, "RUN AWAY!")

11. Lizards with a penny in throat (I suspect that would be a choking lizard.)


12. "Whoever you are, go out into the evening." (This is actually the first line of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke.)


Initiation

Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from that worn-out door-stone
slowly you raise the shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have the world (and shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go.

Rilke 1875-1926

Rilke at three. His mother lost an infant daughter and, in her grief and desire to have a girl, dressed him in girl's clothing. When  his poetic and artistic talents were becoming apparent, his parents made him attend a military academy, where he stayed for five years before illness caused his departure.

He must have been miserable. But it didn't seem to make him bitter. I've always gotten the sense from his poems that he had great sensitivity towards women and life.

He was only 51 when he died of leukemia.



Have you checked for keyword searches on you blog? Got a favorite one from the ones I've shared?

Poems by Rilke

It would be nice to at least be able to read German so I could read his poems in their original form. I wonder what is lost in translation?

Years ago, in my early 20s, I copied several of his poems into a spiral notebook. I did not take note of who the translator was. Something I regret, for in the intervening years I have read other translations of some of the poems I copied and have not liked them quite so well. As an example I have given two versions of one poem. Even the titles are different. The second version is from my notebook.

Entrance

Whoever you are: step out into the evening
out of your living room, where everything is so known;
your house stands as the last thing before great space:
Whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their fatigue can just barely
free themselves from the worn-out thresholds,very slowly, lift a single black tree
and place it against the sky, slender and alone.
With this you have made the world. And it is large
and like a word that is still ripening in silence.
And, just as your will grasps their meaning,
they in turn will let go, delicately, of your eyes . . .

Initiation

Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scare lift themselves from that worn-out door-stone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go.


Here are two more from my notebook.

Solitude

Solitude is like a rain.
It rises from the sea to meet the evening;
it rises from the dim, far distant plain
toward the sky, as by an old birthright.
And thence falls on the city from the height.

If falls like rain in that gray doubtful hour
when all the streets are turning toward the dawn,
and when those bodies, with all hope foregone
of what they sought, are sorrowfully alone;
and when all men who hate each other, creep
together in on common bed for sleep;

the solitude flows onward with the rivers...


A Woman's Fate

Even as a king out hunting seized a glass,
something to drink from - any glass, no matter -
and someone after that in a sure place
put the slight thing away, to guard it better:

thus destiny, which also has a thirst,
picked up this woman, drank of her till slated,
an afterward some trivial fellow durst
not put her to her use, for fear she break,

and stuck her in that careful cupboard where
one cherishes all costly things and rare
(or things that people fancy have some worth).

And there she stood, as strange as something loaned
slowly growing merely old and blind,
and was not prized and never rare on earth.

A Random Thought

I must be feeling a bit misanthropic, therefore, I need a little poetry.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven - by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


And because it will be a full moon tonight...

To the Moon- by Rainer Maria Rilke

Moon, svelte person,
who makes you pregnant
every month?
And who makes you always
engrossed in your pregnancy
--almost terrestrially?

You attract the blood
of our pubescent virgins.
But what do you mother
twelve times a year?

Shall we raise your light
offspring in ourselves?
Inside me I found a soft
candle decorated with gilt
which I think suits your taste.