Under certain conditions,
when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance
even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;
or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;
when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still
it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.
The Clod and the Pebble
Mad Song
A person who has an absurd love of Kentucky might well say that author and humorist Mark Twain — birth name Samuel Clemens — was born with a head start in life. That’s because Twain’s mother, Jane Lampton, was a native of Adair County, in the southern part of Kentucky. And as a young adult, Twain, too, likely spent an appreciable amount of time in the Bluegrass state.
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"Fairy Tale," by Ron Padgett from You Never Know (Coffee House Press).
Fairy Tale
The little elf is dressed in a floppy cap
and he has a big rosy nose and flaring white eyebrows
with short legs and a jaunty step, though sometimes
he glides across an invisible pond with a bonfire glow on his cheeks:
it is northern Europe in the nineteenth century and people
are strolling around Copenhagen in the late afternoon,
mostly townspeople on their way somewhere,
perhaps to an early collation of smoked fish, rye bread, and cheese,
washed down with a dark beer: ha ha, I have eaten this excellent meal
and now I will smoke a little bit and sit back and stare down
at the golden gleam of my watch fob against the coarse dark wool of my vest,
and I will smile with a hideous contentment, because I am an evil man,
and tonight I will do something evil in this city!
With renewed resolve, appropriate for this New Year’s Day, I am restarting my commitment to read a lot more that has been written by and about Mark Twain. I begin (again) with this book:
Sam Clemens was born in Florida, MO in November of 1835 when the population of the village was exactly 100. His family had moved there the previous May or June with the hope that a railway line would be extended from St. Joseph and that the Salt River would be made navigable to the Mississippi. Neither happened. The family moved to Hannibal, 35 miles to the northeast, in 1839.
Florida is a currently uninhabited village in Monroe County, Missouri, United States. It is located at the intersection of Missouri Route 107 and State Route U on the shores of Mark Twain Lake. The population was 200, per the census data in the 1911 Cram's World Atlas. The population was however down to nine residents according to the 2000 United States Census, and following the 2010 Census, the village was reported as uninhabited. The Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site is located in Florida, with Mark Twain State Park nearby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida,_Missouri
November 30 Monday – Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) was born two months premature in the hamlet of Florida, Missouri to John Marshall Clemens (1798-1847) and Jane Lampton Clemens (1803-1890). The baby was named Samuel, for John’s father; Langhorne, for the friend of John Marshall’s who had helped him in his youth in Virginia.
Halley’s Comet had reached its perihelion on Nov. 17. It would return again in 1910, reaching its greatest visibility on Apr. 19 of that year, two days before Sam’s death.
Sam received a letter from Joseph G. Hickman of Florida, MO, January 20th, 1878:
Florida boasts greatly of being your birth-place & there has been of late quite a little discussion in the Co papers as to what part had that honor. Your letter to Mr Holliday of St Louis of course settled the question—It was published in the papers.
Florida jogs along after the same old style & sits like Rome on her hills,—always the same. The picture of your old house is true to nature & it is to this day the same as you see in the picture to the minutest particular. It is now occupied by the village shoe maker—there is no telling what other great man may go forth from beneath its eaves—The man in the street is intended to represent you off on your pilgrimage after style of your speech at meeting in honor of poet Whittier. The little girls say don’t forget those pretty Chromos for they will wait with patience to hear from you. I live at & own the mill owned by Boyle Goodwin on the north fork of Salt River. / Yours truly / Joseph G. Hickman.
Joseph G. Hickman to SLC, 20 January 1878 · Florida, Mo., (UCLC 32637).
Gary Scharnhorst writes: By 1837 the village was growing rapidly, with three mills and four distilleries. ...annually produced some ten thousand gallons of whisky and three thousand gallons of brandy and gin. Then all went to smash in the credit crunch that followed the Panic of 1837. The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835-1871
Other links:
The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.
Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.
For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.
