My CMS The View from a New City

May 4, 2025

Lines Lost Among Trees

Filed under: daily — metamind @ 8:15 pm

LINES LOST AMONG TREES
by Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press)

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place-
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem-
not out into the world of strangers’ eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

April 25, 2025

Mind Stretch

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 2:22 pm
“Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity — thou must commune with God.”
― Joseph Smith, The Teachings of Joseph Smith

New Horizons

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 8:42 am
There is a future and you are it.

Elder Dieter F. Uctdorf to the 2025 graduating Life Sciences College graduates of Brigham Young University.

April 12, 2025

Doomscrolling

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 9:12 am
Browsing though the internet news apps and Youtube gives one a smorgasbord of stories about the evils occurring these days. This morning I have had an epiphany about this state of affairs. “You Can’t be Cheated.” I am here for the experiences, both good and bad. I am under no obligation to ingest the bad news stories and to then disseminate them to others. “Time wounds all heals.” It is not my job to point out to others what must be obvious to those with eyes to see. Rather I need to focus on my actual current state of affairs and to give thanks for the many glories I am privileged to experience.

March 26, 2025

Egyptian Connection

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 9:32 pm

Another very interesting video. I should link it to my mysteries app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McUvvaCMzk0

March 25, 2025

Trust

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 9:01 am

I just watched this and am moved to recommend it as good and true to everyone I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGrYL0diuxo

March 13, 2025

The Space-time Continuum

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 10:15 am

When I was a soldier in Vietnam, one day our little column was moving through the jungle, somewhere between Saigon and the Cambodian border. As we came over a rise, I saw jungle stretched out before us with its meadows, rivers and streams. Even though the spirit of war and the threat of death hung over everything, the view was so beautiful that it still lives in my memory. Recently I had the opportunity to return to Vietnam and revisit the area where I served. The jungle was all gone, turned to a multitude of little rubber tree plantations. The place I had seen no longer exists. This experience has caused me to move from a view of the world as a collection of objects and toward the view of the world as a series of events. You can never step into the same river twice.

My Work and My Glory

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 8:48 am

I am neither rich, nor famous. I have published no books, nor won any great awards. It seems the headwinds of life have been blowing throughout my career. I had to sue my longest term client to overcome its breach of contract and get compensated for years of faithful work. etc… Sometimes I feel like reciting Gerard Manley Hopkins:


Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
……..

But when I do, I know it is a lie. Our first child was born when I was making a dollar an hour, milking cows. I had to check our third child out of the hospital using a credit card. Without patron or much in the way of visible means of support, my wife and I raised, clothed and educated six children. We are now the proud progenitors of twenty five ( soon to be twenty six) souls. And there appears to be no end in sight. Truly an eternal blessing that flows without compulsory means forever. Even in hindsight, I can’t account for how we pulled it off. Only by the grace of God.





February 28, 2025

Evidence for Wisdom of the Aged

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 9:13 am

See this discussion of numbers that demonstrate the wisdom of the last post. Listen for the quote, “…one day but not now.”

February 22, 2025

Wisdom of the Aged

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 8:10 am

I recently watched a YouTube commentator waxing wise about the things people fret over during their lives which they realize, upon reaching 70, were not worth the effort. The list included such things as social status and career.

The other day I was talking with a neighbor who is suffering from several age related maladies. I commented that we would obviously not be running any more marathons together. I noted that as those words came across my lips , i felt not a hint of regret. I later reflected upon the point, in my last marathon, where I was suffering the pain that inevitably comes toward the end of that race. I said to myself, ” you better enjoy this last three miles, because you are never going to be twenty-three miles into a run again in your life.”

The later stages of life reveal certain truths. One such truth is that their are things which can only be accomplished by the young. Obviously, you have to bear your children while you can. To my descendants I would say, if you have a choice and if you waste that period of your life only pursuing worldly status, or a ‘career,’ you will eventually have regrets.


Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress