OT: Nessmuk's Final Advice...

Kismet

Kismet

Joined
Jan 30, 2002
Messages
7,269
Nessmuk’s final advice.....

...act coolly and rationally. So shall your outing be a delight in conception and fulfillment thereof; while the memory of it shall come back to you in pleasant dreams, when legs and shoulders are too stiff and old for knapsack and rifle.

That is me. That is why I sit here tonight---with the north wind and sleet rattling the one window of my little den---writing what I hope younger and stronger men will like to take into the woods with them, and read. Not that I am so very old. The youngsters are still not anxious to buck against the muzzleloader in off-hand shooting. But, in common with a thousand old graybeards, I feel the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried me over the trail dawn until dark, is dulled and deadened within me.

We had our day of youth and May; We may have grown a trifle sober; But life may reach a wintry way, And we are only in October.

Wherefore, let us be thankful that there are still thousands of cool, green nooks beside crystal springs, where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from debts, duns and deviltries, and while commune with nature in her undress.

And with kindness to all true woodsmen; and with malice toward none, save the trout-hog, the netter, the cruster and skin-butcher, let us

PREPARE TO TURN IN. Woodcraft, Chapter X


Sort of renewing...for melancholy moments...there seem to have been a lot of those of late. Sometimes life is very difficult, no matter how hard one tries.



Be well and safe.
 
One of my favorite authors, along with Townsend Whelen.

Thanks for sharing, and prayers and best wishes for you.

Noah
 
Obviously I'm missing something here...Is Kis under the gun? I don't have a need to know, but since Kis and I are approximately the same age, I worry for his well being. :confused:
 
munk said:
I think Kismet is OK. Sometimes life is very very hard.

munk
Click to expand...


Roger that, Munk.

I've often wished life had a rewind button so I could right (or erase) some wrongs, too.

Noah
 
Kismet said:
Sort of renewing...for
melancholy moments...
......a lot of those of late.
Sometimes life is very difficult......
Click to expand...
Be Well & Safe

Prayers


~
~~~~~~~~~
<> THEY call me 'Dean' :)-fYI-fWiW-iIRC-JMO-M2C-YMMV-TiA-YW-GL-HH-HBd-IBSCUtWS-theWotBGUaDUaDUaD
<> Tips <> Baha'i Prayers Links --A--T--H--D
 
jaysusmerrynjoesuf !!!!

I'm Irish, ferpete'ssake !!!

You guys got me in a hurricaine watch and spiritual wake and alien attack and bear mauling and beingcalledup and itchyscalp and badhairday all rolled into one.

eeeeyyyyeee risssssshhhh

From Irish Authors Roundtable:

Humor and melancholy are complimentary in that the nuances of the one are greatly enhanced by the presence of the other. In Irish literature, this is represented by the characters' opinion that life is a trial and death sure to arrive at any moment, so best get on with the party and who's first up with a song?

Kerry Hardie: I would say that humor and melancholy both facilitate endurance: they are both ways of coping with a history that has probably more than its share of poverty, oppression and despair. Exile, the third great theme in Irish literature, also comes out of this trinity.

Thomas Moran: Humor and melancholy seem to me to be natural partners in Irish writing --- and in Irish thinking. Given the country's tragic history, humor is a necessary counterweight to sadness and suffering which otherwise might have been unendurable.

Frank Gannon: The best Irish writing seems to have sadness and funniness almost simultaneously. I think of the end of Roddy Doyle's great novel, The Snapper. I think most great art has the two things in a sort of tension. Like the best jazz is very wild and yet very structured. I think some of the best Irish writing is like that. John Synge's best work is like that, especially Playboy. On a day-to-day level "Irishness" is that, like laughter at a wake. For Irish people everything isn't funny OR sad. It's funny AND sad. Like life.

Robert Mooney: One clue to how I feel about this may a quote attributed to Yeats that I have framed and hanging in my office. It reads: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." (One might picture Hamlet as a stand-up comic, and a good one-a kind of Elizabethan Emmet Kelly.) A good poem or story can be the actual reconciliation of these two seemingly disparate emotions, or states. Experience tells many, though perhaps not all, that pure comedy --- a real laugh-fest, a joyously bubbling ointment with no fly in it to bother the texture --- is as untrue a representation of "life" as is relentless, unrelieved melancholy. Most of us perceive an amalgam of states and emotions comprising whatever it is life is, running the gamut from hilarious to catastrophic.

The Irish, with their cultural fascination with that bummer of all bummers, death (as evidenced by, among other indications, the ancient stone circles still visible across the landscape of Ireland to the wake as a sometimes raucous celebration) and their fabled sense of humor, seem to have a natural mastery of working in this moiling amalgamation. Their history encouraged such mastery of contradictory perception, I think. The alternative would have been-what? To give up altogether?

Thank you for your many kind and generous thoughts..., but ....it's just life that wearies sometimes...and sometimes I admit it...and sometimes I find an echo (as in this case with Nessmuk) that prompts a statement.

All part of the package.


Be well and safe.
 
What they all said. I sent smoke last night out to no one in particular ... maybe it was for you ... or for those other folks that I'll never meet that need it too.
 
Kismet said:
Nessmuk’s final advice.....

...act coolly and rationally. So shall your outing be a delight in conception and fulfillment thereof; while the memory of it shall come back to you in pleasant dreams, when legs and shoulders are too stiff and old for knapsack and rifle.

That is me. That is why I sit here tonight---with the north wind and sleet rattling the one window of my little den---writing what I hope younger and stronger men will like to take into the woods with them, and read. Not that I am so very old. The youngsters are still not anxious to buck against the muzzleloader in off-hand shooting. But, in common with a thousand old graybeards, I feel the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried me over the trail dawn until dark, is dulled and deadened within me.

We had our day of youth and May; We may have grown a trifle sober; But life may reach a wintry way, And we are only in October.

Wherefore, let us be thankful that there are still thousands of cool, green nooks beside crystal springs, where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from debts, duns and deviltries, and while commune with nature in her undress.

And with kindness to all true woodsmen; and with malice toward none, save the trout-hog, the netter, the cruster and skin-butcher, let us

PREPARE TO TURN IN. Woodcraft, Chapter X


Sort of renewing...for melancholy moments...there seem to have been a lot of those of late. Sometimes life is very difficult, no matter how hard one tries.



Be well and safe.
Click to expand...
Thanks Kis, getting here late but found it beautiful. I don't think Nessmuk was in a bad place, sometimes it is good to be old and just rest.:cool:
By the Gods we deserve it!:D

I'm glad that I'm on this end of life rather than the other.;) :D
 
Kismet said:
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to ddean again.
Click to expand...

I took care of it for you Kis...

.
 
Ok, all kind thoughts retracted, and replaced with: "Quit whining!" Unless you want to.
 
Fine, Aardvark, just fine.

You want some? Fine....

Just for that, I'm going to clean off a table top, or maybe a dresser, and put a note on it that it was YOUR fault so the Aliens can come and ...er... "deal" with you.

"Whine?" Damn man, it was the beautiful and sad thoughts of a sensitive soul who found an echo in lines put down by a man long ago. It was the tender moment shared with man-friends who had bonded, now sullied (I love saying "sullied") by the calloused and analytical dismissal of a cruel obsessive-compulsive youngish neat freak whose heart is so buried under the hard facts of life that he has no time for poetry and the sweetness of melancholy.

Fie (I love saying "Fie"--needs to be used more) on thee!




Be well and safe.
 
Sure took you a long time to say the same thing I did.

Tell you what, though, I'll have some Irish whiskey tonight and think of you.

And if 'neat freak' comes to mind when you think of me, take a look at Phil's 'Possessions' thread.
 
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