Welcome to my world. When i was a very small child i dreamt a blob devoured me. blog/blob. i begin this journey with no small amount of trepidation that our blogs may have some secret power to suck out our very souls. how silly, i say and take my first step through the looking glass, down the veritable rabbit hole, into the world of cyber-reality. i step carefully now..come join me.

My father's family can be traced to the Welsh borderland of England--a small hamlet of Malpas, extant since before Roman Times--and occupied even today. My surname has become part of the landscape not only there, but also in west Texas, and California too. Stockton. A good strong name. Today we are entering our own Brave New World here in America, and knowing my ancesters are from their own original Malpas, I feel a kinship to those outliers from Malpais of Orwell's world. Enough for today, the end of July 2009.

It is difficult
to get the news from poems,
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
William Carlos Williams

As Kingfishers Catch Fire
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose

Ah, not to be cut off,

not through the slightest partition

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner---what is it?

if not intensified sky,

hurled through with buds and deep

with the winds of homecoming

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ah, Not to be Cut off