The Lovers’ Chronicle 28 August – two hands – birth of Goethe – art by Edward Burne-Jones – photography by Vittorio Sella & Jean-Philippe Charbonnier – death of Leigh Hunt

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  I agree with Mac.  First kisses are among my most cherished memories.  Do you have any memorable kisses?  What happened when she/he kissed you?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

for a song that goes
with one of those words
gotta be Willie
“Oh which one”
one he did not write
and that i have never
heard anyone else sing,
“Hands on the Wheel”
the song ends with;
“And I looked to the stars, tried all of the bars
And I’ve nearly gone up in smoke
Now my hand’s on the wheel of somethin’ that’s real”
the song ends with “And I feel like I’m goin’ home”
i do not feel that way, but i know what my hands are on

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

to tango, to do this right, not just about that, style counts, no point in proceedin’ without a little panache, and while we are at it, might as well to have, not too much though, no need to be gauche, one more thing, your hands please in mine, it goes like this

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

this belongin’,
something new
from where we have been

what was settled
or not, left behind
and the canvas,
under our steady strokes,
revealin’, a greater healin’

feel the emotion
a cleansin’
a deep openin’ goes on

now held in two hands,
where will this life take us

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

watchin’ you,
chasin’ light
your brush dancin’
across the canvas
i look on as if seein’
for the first time

i sense a beginnin’,
an openin’ between us
a belongin’, somethin’
new from where i have been

you put the brush in my hand
now held in two hands,
where will it take us

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

for Pamela

write what cannot be said

never saw this comin’
but those blue eyes
and that smile
there is more to you
than i could imagine

been such a long time
but the inspiration flows
strong enough to sweep
away all that came before

then, there it is
in the arms
of a favorite moment

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

my favorite moments for sure
“Mine are the anticipation
leading up to those moments.”

funny, i was writin’
about you today
still on my mind
from last night
i expect

you know
you can take
comfort, always

two hands,
yours in mine
and together
we will face it all

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“When I rise, he is already up,
his brush dancing across the canvas
Watching him, chasing first light.
I look on as if seeing for the first time.”

“I sense in him a beginning,
a belonging, something
new from where he has been.”

“What was settled or not,
he has left behind. And the canvas,
under his steady strokes is revealing,
gradually a greater healing.”

“I can feel the brush strokes
a motion bearing down, an accumulation.
His careful strokes, the swirling; a cleansing.”

“I stand near him and he looks at me
A deep opening goes on in him
He puts the brush in my hand
and his hand guides mine.”

“Now held in two hands,
where will this life take us.”

***

pop quiz;
when at the gym
and someone is usin’
the dumbbells you want,
do you wait, go light or go heavy
go heavy! because you can!

go heavy, because you can
because you are the strongest,
son of a son of a big man
and the high you get
is unlike anything
best ever

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

You can call me MacGregor
Or you can call me,
Mr. Did-Not-Understand-Myself-For-Forty-Years
Yeah, payin’ a helluva price for that

Do you wish to roam farther and farther
See… Sorrow lies so near
Only learn to seize it,
For it is always here

“Are you all right tonight?”
Yes, the verse is flowin’
And the pain is so close,
It is palpable, it guides me,
It takes me where I must go

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Wish i could say
Dark signs that crawled
Who watched the moon
Delve inward now
Would turn toward
Madness beckons
Wonder always

Sorry y’all; madness
beckons and darkness
descends. I must go

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

for Kelli

He waits, patiently
In silent sorrow
Starin’ at the emptiness
Hopin’ for the words
That will save his soul

Adrift, without a muse
For so long, he only
Hears the Dark Muse’s words
He doubts he can ever
Hear words of love and light

”To hear, one must only listen”

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Frankfurt 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832 Weimar); author of the epic drama Faust and father of German literature.

He moved to Italy in 1786, and when he returned to Germany in 1788, he fell in love with a woman from Weimar, Christiane Vulpius, a 23-year-old who was 16 years his junior. That year, he wrote her an epithalamium, a specific type of poem written for a bride on the way to the marital chamber. But he did not actually marry her; instead, the couple lived together for 18 years unwed.

They were still living together in 1806, with children, when some of Napoleon’s French soldiers — who were drunk — broke into their home in Weimer one evening. Goethe was terrified, but Christiane started shouting at the soldiers, fending them off in hand-to-hand combat, and protecting the bewildered man of the house. After a prolonged skirmish, she pushed them out of the house and barricaded the kitchen and the cellar so the soldiers could not try to steal any more of their food. Grateful to the brave and steadfast woman who had saved his life and home, Goethe went down to a church the very next day and married her.

quotes

Do you wish to roam farther & farther?
See! The Good lies so near.
Only learn to seize good fortune,
For good fortune’s always here.

Who wants to understand the poem
Must go to the land of poetry;
Who wishes to understand the poet
Must go to the poet’s land.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

That is the true season of love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.

Edward Burne-Jones
Photogravure of a portrait by his son Philip Burne-Jones, 1898

Today is the birthday of Edward Burne-Jones (Birmingham, England 28 August 1833 – 17 June 1898 London); artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in Britain; his stained-glass include windows in St. Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham, St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, Chelsea, St Peter and St Paul parish church in Cromer, St Martin’s Church in Brampton, Cumbria (the church designed by Philip Webb), St Michael’s Church, Brighton, All Saints, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, St Edmund Hall and Christ Church, two colleges of the University of Oxford. His stained glass works also feature in St. Anne’s Church, Brown Edge, Staffordshire Moorlands and St.Edward the Confessor church at Cheddleton Staffordshire. By the 1860s Burne-Jones was discovering his own artistic “voice”. In 1877, he was persuaded to show eight oil paintings at the Grosvenor Gallery (a new rival to the Royal Academy). These included The Beguiling of Merlin. The timing was right, and he was taken up as a herald and star of the new Aesthetic Movement.

In addition to painting and stained glass, Burne-Jones worked in a variety of crafts; including designing ceramic tiles, jewellery, tapestries, and mosaics.

In 1856 Burne-Jones became engaged to Georgiana “Georgie” MacDonald (1840–1920), one of the MacDonald sisters. She was training to be a painter.

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Vittorio Sella (Biella, Kingdom of Sardinia; 28 August 1859 – 12 August 1943 Biella, Kingdom of Italy); photographer and mountaineer, who took photographs of mountains which are regarded as some of the finest ever made.

Sella was born in the foothills of the Alps and acquired his interest in Alpinism from his uncle, Quintino Sella. He made a number of significant climbs in the Alps, including the first winter ascents of the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, and the first winter traverse of Mont Blanc.  He took part in several expeditions further afield, including three to the Caucasus (where a peak now bears his name), to Mount Saint Elias in Alaska, to the Rwenzori in Africa, and the 1909 expedition to K2 and the Karakoram. The latter three expeditions were in the company of Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi. Sella continued to climb into his old age, and made his last attempt on the Matterhorn at seventy six. The attempt failed when one of his guides was injured in an accident.

Gallery

Village et Mte. Cristallo, c. 1880Mt. Tepli, Central Caucasus, c. 1890

it was on this day in 1859 that English poet Leigh Hunt died in London.

Ariadne Waking

The moist and quiet morn was scarcely breaking,
When Ariadne in her bower was waking;
Her eyelids still were closing, and she heard
But indistinctly yet a little bird,
That in the leaves o’erhead, waiting the sun,
Seemed answering another distant one.
She waked, but stirred not, only just to please
Her pillow-nestling cheek; while the full seas,
The birds, the leaves, the lulling love o’ernight
The happy thought of the returning light,
The sweet, self-willed content, conspired to keep
Her senses lingering in the feel of sleep;
And with a little smile she seemed to say,
“I know my love is near me, and ’tis day”.

One of my favorite memories of all is the memory of our first kiss.

Jenny Kissed Me

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

The Song of the day is The Derailers – “Then She Kissed Me”

She Kissed Me

She would awaken,
with dawn barely breakin’,
lullin’ from overnight lovin’
Sweet contentment would conspire
to keep her lingerin’ at the edge of sleep.
Then, a little smile that seemed to say,
‘My love is near and it is day
and time to love again’
Then she would kiss me

Whatever else happened,
no matter what came
it mattered not
She kissed me

© copyright 2012 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

And today is the birthday of Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (Paris 28 August 1921 – 28 May 2004 Grasse, France); photographer whose works typify the humanist impulse in that medium in his homeland of the period after World War II. Charbonnier’s photographs are historical documents showing us the transformation of French society between 1945 and 2004.

Charbonnier married Gisèle Gonfreville, with whom he had two daughters, divorcing her to marry Agathe Gaillard, with whom, in 1975, he opened a photography gallery in Paris, the Agathe Gaillard Gallery, which dealt in Charbonnier’s popular Paris photos. Today, the gallery still exists and shows classic mid-century French photography. He and Agathe had a daughter, Eglantine. In 1996 he married Christine Vaissié, graphic designer and art director, who assisted in the preparation of the retrospective Charbonnier exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris in 1983.  She remained with him until the end of his life.

In 1983, he was awarded the Vermeil Medal for Photography by the city of Paris.

Gallery

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

A peevish self-will’d harlotry it is. – Shakespeare