Most of the links to the audios go to a dead page.  Bummer!

Winter continues . . .

The greenhouse was finally finished, but wow, how noisy.

Need to update this site.

Saturday, May 29th, I attended the Meadowgrass Fesitival at La Foret in the Black Forest -- which I highly recommend for great music and great food and a beautiful environment -- and discovered this music:  http://www.gregoryalanisakov.com/music/  This is the website for Gregory Alan Isakov.  The schedule is on this site also, and the next stop is San Diego at Lestats on June 10th. 

Here is the Meadowgrass link: http://www.laforet.org/thelineup.html

It will happen again next Memorial Day weekend.  Don't miss it!

Rick Davis is playing harmonica on this.  I'd love to have a solo.

Moonbeams & Thin Air The way you love me is unfair Your good intentions all turn to lies all moonbeams and thin air I no longer know what I may share without clean water, the orchid dies the way you love me is unfair between us at first was something rare but history tells me it's no surprise it's all moonbeams and thin air. for you i laid my raw skin bare too often i've exposed myself unwise the way you love me is unfair some things in life are meant to wear long....but .... still time grows wings and flies it's all moonbeams and thin air i recall the touch of your hands in my hair but now i'm unreflected in your eyes the way you love me is unfair it's all moonbeams and thin air i love you more than you care....... (c)2008 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Travis Lemle is the artist.

Once long ago we created the Solotramp website together, Travis' art, my poetry.  The title of this art is "Alone." 

Then we didn't go into the site for a period of time, and it vanished.

At last -- a new one.  I know that it's been awhile. It's on the long side--more than five minutes.

Happy new year! 

(c)2010 BINNINGS

If you've gotta have one, well here it is: . . . the Guaranteed Love Spell . . .

This is the guaranteed love spell to be chanted under a blue trapper's moon

I am every woman whose eyes have held yours

who has steamed your nettles raised welts in your mind

made you weep, laugh, drift

I strip away your barricades your hesitation to love

and my breath stuns enchants you with the scent of ginger, sassafrass

I fill your bowl I am a mosaic of spices to awaken your taste

my touch sings to your skin like a harem of bells

I am the yeast leavening your dough to ecstasy

I host your roots, make you lucid I lay my claim to you Y

ou will never forget me

(c)2006 Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

FIRST ELEGY Excerpt from the Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke - Translation

My translation has attempted to somewhat simplify to make more accessible to Americans. I hope I have not lost the profundity of Rilke.

First Elegy (Excerpt)
Who, if I cried out, would listen among the classes of holy angels?
and should one clasp me to its breast,
its profound essence would dissolve me.  For beauty
is nothing but the first sight of a terror
that we can hardly stand except that it quietly refrains
from destroying us.  Every angel is too awesome.
And so I swallow my luring call and weep in the dark.
Who can help us us? Not angels, not men—and animals
know that we’re homeless in this world we’ve constructed.
Maybe along a hillside a tree stands that we can see
each day, and there are always yesterday’s streets
and the fidel habit moved in like a tenant who now secure
shall not move on.  Oh, and there’s night—night when a cosmic wind
erodes our faces—gentle, yearned for, but how it forces
us to confront the solitary beat of life.  Is it easier for lovers?
No, they only conceal the lottery from each other.
Don’t you understand yet? Throw the emptiness
from your arms into the clearing where we breathe—
maybe the bird in the widened air will fly viscerally.

  -Translation - Eleanor A. Binnings (c)2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
=================
Die erste Elegie
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Und so verhalt ich mich denn und verschlucke den Lockruf
dunkelen Schluchzens. Ach, wen vermögen
wir denn zu brauchen? Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt. Es bleibt uns vielleicht
irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich
wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern
und das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit,
der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie und ging nicht.
O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind voller Weltraum
uns am Angesicht zehrt –, wem bliebe sie nicht, die ersehnte,
sanft enttäuschende, welche dem einzelnen Herzen
mühsam bevorsteht. Ist sie den Liebenden leichter?
Ach, sie verdecken sich nur mit einander ihr Los.
Weißt du's noch nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere
zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel
die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.

It's after midnight on the sixth year after you inaugerated
the shattering of my heart, and I'm not thinking about the way
you held me in the palm of your long-fingered hand nor looking
for those letters I saved somewhere in a cardboard box,
but rather realizing how murdering the memory of you

didn't quite end the sense of your breath in my ear
nor your stroking of my leg that night before the taxi came
and took you permanently away from me.

You'll never know the way you lived in my cells . . .
Nor the way I used to gaze at the stars to feel close to you--
same stars, same old moon tonight -- reminding me

how small and alone I am, no one filling my pores
with hot, yearning music, no one carrying me
where I've never been before nor wanting to jump the fence
into my yard . . . Oh, this holy life in an expanding universe

where it's after midnight on the eve of a fading dream
of the impossible. I'm learning, at least, to sleep eyes open,
although I still sleep naked as if I were immune to the cold . . .

This body eclipsed so long, it's as though the world's turned dark.
And now the languid stretch of limbs, wanting the feel
of anything . . . even if just feeling my textured, soft skin.

(c)2007  Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED