On Emersonian Influence

Getting as far as page 157 in Harold Bloom's The Daemon Knows, I read his quote from Emerson's journals "Far the best part, I repeat, of every mind is not that which he knows, but that which hovers in gleams, suggestions, tantalizing unpossessed before him.  His firm recorded knowledge soon loses all interest for him.  But this dancing chorus of thoughts and hopes is the quarry of his future, is his possibility . . . ."  That much sounds very like something I thought recently.  Having had a number of arguments with people who when I noticed a similarity between something they said and the writings of some philosopher only to have them claim vociferously that they had come to their views entirely independently, I invariably take an opposite view,  that is, I assume that I have been influenced by such a writer even if I don't recall the occasion of that influence. 

After all I must have read quite a bit of Emerson in American lit classes if not on my own.  I have a vague distaste when I think of Emerson and must have gotten that some place.  On page 158 Bloom writes, "Frost was an absolute Emersonian; Mark Twain had no overwhelming American precursor.  Of the other writers discussed here, Faulkner never read Emerson, and Eliot scorned him: 'The Essays of Emerson are already an encumbrance.' Melville read and annotated Emerson and attended his lectures, while manifesting an acute ambivalence.  Hawthorne was the sage's walking companion in Concord but held out against him, yet Hester Prynne, Ahab, and Ishmael are dark Emersonians.  Henry James, linked to Emerson by family traditions, resisted him, though Isabel Archer is wholly a disciple of self-reliance.  Walt Whitman, though later he denied it, started from Emerson, just as Wallace Stevens subtly evaded his vast dependence upon Whitman and satirized Emerson while repeating him.  Hart Crane, wholly Emersonian, clearly takes his Platonic daemonization both from Concord and from Walter Pater."

How embarrassing for a writer (could he but know) to learn that despite his certainty that he had (like Twain) no precursor, that he was "an absolute Emersonian."  I searched a bit in the Library of America edition of Emerson's writings.  Surely I read "Self Reliance" at some point, and I recall his essay "the Over Soul" -- thinking him very like Jung, or vice versa, but that was it.  Perhaps I only read Emerson back in the 50s during classes.   I began reading his "The Conduct of Life" and ran across, ". . . You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer . . ."   Feeling temporarily outraged I shall perhaps scorn him once again (perhaps that is why I never read him extensively) as Eliot did.

Steps

    There were bits of
    Wetness, drops of rain,
    Mist mostly, riffling
    The pool, coots tucking
    Their heads beneath
    Their wings and dreaming.
    Beyond was machinery

    And beyond that empty
    Fields where a farmer
    Used to plant and live-
    Stock stood in corrals,
    Waiting.  I leaned out
    Toward the rusted wire
    And dark clouds leaned in,

    Expanding my equivocation.
    A set of crows twisted
    Their heads, watching.
    I stepped back and turned
    Toward a red tailed hawk,
    Not just in the wet sand
    But in steps we’d made.

    Love can be like that when
    It’s old and mostly gone –
    A long row of steps –
    But not so many as to
    Make this more than
    Its plight -- taking its
    Last breath on its last night.

Diving

  
   
    Once on a cold morning
    I dived surprised in a
    Quiet world -- perch, bass
    Suspended in all directions.
    I couldn’t like them remain
    So swam toward a large
    Bass which slipped away

    And  sent others scurrying.
    I never took a shot.
    This morning clouds hung
    From the mountain.  The
    Air was damp but rain had
    Yet to fall.  We hiked along
    The crumbled levee where

    I took several shots.
    The air became dense.
    A swirl of fog-like cloud
    Sustained the feel of
    Being where no one comes
    And nothing waits
    Save one lone hawk

    Who glares contempt.
    What dare we who move
    Beneath, who aimlessly run,
    Who dash from the levee
    To dive in an ocean of
    Tumbleweed, who finally feel
    The rain beginning to fall?

Obligations

                

    Just a few more things to tidy up,
    To Fulfill my responsibility, then
    I’ll be free to go, eighty-one
    Being a respectable age to, no
    One will be bothered if
    I do.  If I choose to
    Stay longer, pondering

    This feeling of having
    Gone on this long,
    Surviving two wives, a
    Number of relatives and
    Friends, I might look again
    For purpose, something to do
    In between reading Borges’

    Conversations and Connolly’s
    The Unquiet Grave, neither
    Of whom found purposes
    Worthy of much though they
    Moved on as long as they could
    With imposing style, and
    Enjoyed each warming day.

Seeking Beauty

    Seeking Beauty           

    It has rained.  Shall I take my camera
    And dogs out when the sand is wet
    And the sky is dark?  What could I
    Gain from such a day?  What thoughts
    Could rise from the mist enshrouding
    The Mountain? If I say to myself
    There is no point going if my

    Day won’t produce beauty,
    I will doubt activity of any sort.
    I will understand why some put
    Bullets through such thinking.
    If I embrace the dread and
    Take my camera or pen
    Into the dark of such

    A day, stand as the rain
    Pours; look up until
    My eyes fill,
    If that isn’t
    Beauty, beauty
    Has probably
    Past by.

   

K5 on a rainy day and other considerations

https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Dec-2015/

Leaving Olympus I started Pentax with the K20D but always liking backup. I bought a K7. As soon as it was out of warranty something went wrong with its AF, I couldn't get the focus dot to come on, so I sent it in for repair -- back to just the K20D and needing backup I bought a K5. Once the K7 was repaired I gave the K20D to my son, but . . . I didn't really trust the K7 anymore so I bought a K5iis and gave the K7 to my son -- probably perfect after the repair but I didn't trust it. Some time passed, other things went on, the price on the K3 dropped so I bought one. I found myself using the K3 all the time until . . .

I discovered the pleasures of Samyang. I liked the Samyang 85mm, decided to add a couple of more and then ordered a Pentax-M P/K SMC 200mm F4, excellent condition (the buyer said) for $89.99. The menu page asking which focal length a manual lens had wasn't popping up automatically, so I did some research, found I could access that screen right beneath the Shake Reduction, and in a non-Samyang type lens I needed to be sure and turn off C27 which keeps the shutter from working unless a manual lens is locked in "A." Did the 200mm that was coming even have an "A" lock? I didn't know.

And then the weather report indicated that it would rain the next day (today); so I couldn't use a non-WR lens. Plus, my camera settings were getting way too complicated for me to remember. I was sure to forget, grab a camera take it on a hike some future day and discover it didn't work properly and I couldn't remember why it was set the way it was. So I decided to set one of my cameras as a rainy day only camera, not to be used for manual lenses, but which camera?

I decided it would be between the K5 and K5iis. Did the K5 even measure up anymore? I looked for a comparison and found http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Pentax/K5 Unexpectedly it rated the K5 as better than the K5ii. The DXOMark rating rated the K5 against several other cameras and only the Nikon 7200 beat it out: http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Pentax/K5

So not only did I decide to make the K5 my rainy-day camera, reserving the K5iis and K3 for manual and AF lenses (haven't sorted out which camera to use for which), but I developed a new-found respect for the K5. It rained intermittently today. I had the K5 and the 16-85WR lens on this very dark day: see https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Dec-2015/ (all but one of today's photos are on page four of the Dec 2015 gallery) No camera was going to shine on a day like this one (IMHO) and in looking at the shots later on Lightroom 6 I couldn't see that the K5 or the lens did badly under these conditions.  I had the camera at ISO 400.  In retrospect I wish I'd shot some of them with ISO 800, but the apertures I was using never demanded a ridiculously low shutter speed so I left the ISO at 400.

Traveling

 

“I’m going away,” she said,   
Looking stern and resolved.
I took her to mean on a trip
Some distance away from
Which she’d eventually
Return.  Discovering my
Mistake only after I

Awakened I wondered
At her firm resolve, her
Desire to get it over and
Be gone.  I’ve never been
Interested in travel.
She’d read of voyages
At sea, packages deals

To England, France especially
Heaven, and what that would
Mean, promised advertisements
From him who went on ahead
To prepare a place for her
As it should be perhaps,
But I see no place for me.