Happy Birthday, Tilbrook

Glenn Tilbrook was born on this day in 1957.

"Paranoid"...

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

R.E.M. released Document on this day in 1987.

"Disturbance at the Heron House" 

The monkeys and the monkeys ...

Railway.

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Happy Birthday, Van

Van Morrison was born on this day in 1945.

"Haunts of Ancient Peace"...

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark , "ABC Auto-Industry"

Frankenstein's monster ...

Released.

XTC released Mummer on this day in 1983.

"Wonderland" ...

Never.

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it -- that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing -- an actor, a writer -- I am a person who does things -- I write, I act -- and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

Stephen Fry

Pleasure.

Tischbein, Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787

To-day I have had a scene, which, if literally related, would make the most beautiful idyl in the world. But why should I talk of poetry and scenes and idyls? Can we never take pleasure in nature without having recourse to art?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happy Birthday, Shelley

Rothwell, Mary Shelley, 1840

It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I now stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league; and above it rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, “Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.”

As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me, but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.

“Devil,” I exclaimed, “do you dare approach me? And do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust! And, oh! That I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!”

“I expected this reception,” said the dæmon. “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You propose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.”

“Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! You reproach me with your creation, come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed.”

My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.

He easily eluded me and said,

“Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”

“Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall.”

“How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favorable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow beings. If the multitude of mankind knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my destruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no terms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale; when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defense before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me; listen to me, and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands.”

Mary Shelley, born on this day in 1797, from a special annotated edition of Frankenstein, "for scientists, engineers, and creators of all kinds"

Happy Birthday, Locke

Kneller, John Locke, 1697

The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

John Locke, born on this day in 1632, from Some Thoughts on Education

Effective.

Mental processes are at their most effective during times of stillness ...

Thank you, Steve.

Daily.

Thanks, Kurt.

Bowie, "Fashion/Let's Dance"

Faith.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow.

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from his speech given on this day in 1963

Finally.

I finally had to have my ties custom-made.

Thanks, Kurt.

Happy Birthday, Goethe

Stieler, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1828

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born on this day in 1749

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Feel.

Feel stuff.

Happy Birthday, Lifeson

Alex Lifeson was born on this day in 1953. 

The Exit Stage Left concert video from '81 ...

Happy Birthday, Hegel

Schlesinger, The Philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, 1831

The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, from The Idea of Artistic Beauty, Or The Ideal

Same.

“Everybody’s down here,” I said, “who’s up in heaven with God and the Son?”

“Oh, some saints and mystics and students of metaphysics 101.

People who care and share and love and try to do what’s right.

Beautiful old souls who read little stories to their babies at bedtime every night.

What you won’t find up in heaven are Christian-coalition, right-wing conservatives, Country program directors, and Nashville record executives.”

“Now,” I said, “I made some mistakes but I’m not as bad as those guys.

How can God do this to me can’t you sympathize?”

He said, “You’re wrong about God being cruel and mean.

God is the most loving thing that’s never been seen.”

“Well, hot shot,” I said, “Tell me this: which religion is the truest?”

“They’re all about the same,” he said “Buddha was not a Christian, but Jesus would have made a good Buddhist.”

Ray Wylie Hubbard, from “Conversation with the Devil”

Roger Taylor, "No More Fun"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Dare.

The MENTAL TRAVELLER

I travelled through a land of men,

A land of men and women too,

And heard and saw such dreadful things

As cold earth wanderers never knew.

For there the babe is born in joy

That was begotten in dire woe,

Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow;

And if the babe is born a boy

He’s given to a woman old,

Who nails him down upon a rock,

Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head,

And pierces both his hands and feet,

And cuts his heart out of his side

To make it feel both cold & heat.

Her fingers number every nerve

Just as a miser counts his gold;

She lives upon his shrieks and cries—

And she grows young as he grows old,

Till he becomes a bleeding youth

And she becomes a virgin bright;

Then he rends up his manacles

And pins her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves

Just as a husbandman his mould,

And she bcomes his dwelling-place

And garden, frutiful seventyfold.

An aged shadow soon he fades,

Wandering round and earthly cot,

Full filled all with gems and gold

Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul:

The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,

The countless gold of an aching heart,

The martyr’s groan, and the lover’s sigh.

They are his meat, they are his drink:

He feeds the beggar and the poor

And the wayfaring traveller;

For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy,

They make the roofs and walls to ring—

Till from the fire on the hearth

Alittle female babe does spring!

And she is all of solid fire

And gems and gold, that none his hand

Dares stretch to touch her baby form,

Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,

If young or old, or rich or poor;

They soon drive out the aged host,

A beggar at another’s door.

He wanders weeping far away

Until some other take him in;

Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,

Until he can a maiden win.

And to allay his freezing age

The poor man takes her in his arms:

The cottage fades before his sight,

The garden and its lovely charms;

The guests are scattered through the land

(For the eye altering, alters all);

The senses roll themselves in fear,

And the flat earth becomes a ball,

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away—

A desert vast without a bound,

And nothing left to eat or drink

And a dark desert all around.

The honey of her infant lips,

The bread and wine of her sweet smile,

The wild game of her roving eye

Does him to infancy beguile.

For as he eats and drinks he grows

Younger and younger every day;

And on the desert wild they both

Wander in terror and dismay.

Like the wild stag she flees away;

Her fear plants many a thicket wild,

While he pursues her night and day,

By various arts of love beguiled.

By various arts of love and hate,

Till the wide desert planted o’er

With labyrinths of wayward love,

Where roams the lion, wolf and boar,

Till he becomes a wayward babe

And she a weeping woman old.

Then many a lover wanders here,

The sun and stars are nearer rolled,

The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy

To all who in the desert roam,

Till many a city there is built,

And many a pleasant shepherd’s home.

But when they find the frowning babe

Terror strikes through the region wide;

They cry, ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’

And flee away on every side.

For who dare touch the frowning form

His arm is withered to its root,

Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee

And every tree does shed its fruit;

And none can touch that frowning form,

Except it be a woman old;

She nails him down upon the rock,

And all is done as I have told.

William Blake

Catch.

I, who would wish to feel close over me the protective waves of the ordinary, catch with the tail of my eye some far horizon.

Virginia Woolf

However.

An ODE to THE CATCHER in the RYE

I killed that game

I killed that game because I could not meet expectations

Of those that were above my limitations

I couldn’t meet that ball as it went over that fence

I watched my team as their heads hung in sorrow

And I watched myself tremble.

This is because the things I knew as an innocent child

Wasn’t seen the same way as a man

And I did not want that

I didn’t want it…

1…

2…

3…

..strikes and you’re out

You don’t get another chance at life,

You don’t get the chance to be a child again.

And now that I know what that feels like

I wish to be a child once more and to remain that way

I watch my sister as she’s sit’n there on the carousel

Going round and round and round

I don’t want to be standing there watching

But on that carousel

I want nothing to do with these pains and responsibilities of being an adult

For I am a failing boy

I flunked out of 4 of my 5 classes at Pencey and couldn’t think of a way to move on

I wandered NY because I knew my parents wouldn’t care

Same thing with that ball game

I somehow knew that the people in the stands didn’t care

However there was this woman reading a magazine

And she looked up and then she looked down

I couldn’t tell if she cared or not

There was a hidden sorrow in her eye

And she believed that her son

Who was of poor sport and character, was the best man in the world

She believed because her son had won, that he had hit that ball over the fence

That he was the best person there

And that I had no right to stop the strong from being who they are

Now I’m not saying that baseball is like life

But it seems to me that when I put on the glove

On which my brother wrote in green ink the poems of the ones be loved

That it means I’m alive

And when something like killing a game happens

I’m dead to those who believed I could hit those expectations

I’ve died some many times over that I cannot count

I dare not count.

1….

2…

3…

… strikes and you’re out of the game of being a child

Old Phoebe my sister is still a child, still a smart child

And I’m her older brother that fails numerous times

That has no love,

No love to come home to, no one who cares

I have an older brother too who’s smart

And a younger brother, who's dead now was smart as well

The same one that wrote on my glove in green ink

The poems of the ones he loved

To him it was still a game

But to me it was life

And I killed that game

I killed myself before I knew it

I want to be Old Phoebe the still innocent child

I also want to be my dead brother because he too was a child

Now that my story has been told and you know what I am

What are you?

Are you those spectator that don’t care about

The children who wander, the children who are lost

Are you those who cheer for the weak

Or the ones who cheer for the “strong”

The ones who are no longer innocent

Are you cheering for yourself for I am not.

I have failed, been kicked out, thrown out

Perhaps it's this innocence that I strive to maintain and know

that has killed me and killed the game.

Not me

Not me

Now know that even though I kid

And even though I may not seem it

I am a smart boy

So please I ask that you cheer for me as well

Because who else would

J.D. Salinger

Excellent.

An excellent album (to greet the glory of a Monday morning) ...

Click.

In the author’s mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. For me it invariably begins with mental pictures. This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with the longing for a form: verse or prose, short story, novel, play or what not. When these two things click you have the author’s impulse complete. It is now a thing inside him pawing to get out. He longs to see this bubbling stuff pouring into that form as the housewife longs to see the new jam pouring into the clean jam jar. This nags him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It’s like being in love.

C.S. Lewis, from Of Other Worlds

Care.

Life is simple: We are living in a word that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything--in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. You cannot be without God. It's impossible. It's simple impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it. What is it that makes the world opaque? It is care.

Thomas Merton, from The Seven Storey Mountain

Russ & Daughters

Mac.

Robert Plant, "Carry Fire"

Introduced.

The world was introduced to R.E.M. on this day in 1980.

Side One, Track One ...

It's sandwich time.

Rest.

Bunny, Pastoral, 1893

“I hope it will be permanent,” said Helen, drifting away to other thoughts.

“I think so. There are moments when I feel Howards End peculiarly our own.”

“All the same, London’s creeping.”

She pointed over the meadow—over eight or nine meadows, but at the end of them was a red rust.

“You see that in Surrey and even Hampshire now,” she continued. “I can see it from the Purbeck Downs. And London is only part of something else, I’m afraid. Life’s going to be melted down, all over the world.”

Margaret knew that her sister spoke truly. Howards End, Oniton, the Purbeck Downs, the Oderberge, were all survivals, and the melting-pot was being prepared for them. Logically, they had no right to be alive. One’s hope was in the weakness of logic. Were they possibly the earth beating time?

“Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever,” she said. “This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilisation that won’t be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can’t help hoping, and very early in the morning in the garden I feel that our house is the future as well as the past.”

E.M. Forster, from Howards End

Wondrous.

Artificial intelligence is making kids doubt the authenticity of true beauty and the wondrous magic of reality.

Help kids see the difference.

Exactly.

It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults: though you will usually need to have made a name in some more fashionable kind of literature before anyone will publish them. But there may be an author who at a particular moment finds not only fantasy but fantasy-for-children the exactly right form for what he wants to say. The distinction is a fine one. His fantasies for children and his fantasies for adults will have very much more in common with one another than either has with the ordinary novel or with what is sometimes called "the novel of child life."  Indeed the same readers will probably read both his fantastic "juveniles" and his fantastic stories for adults. For I need not remind such an audience as this that the neat sorting-out of books into age-groups, so dear to publishers, has only a very sketchy relation with the habits of any real readers. Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.  No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table. The distinction, then, is a fine one: and I am not quite sure what made me, in a particular year of my life, feel that not only a fairy tale, but a fairy tale addressed to children, was exactly what I must write—or burst. 

C.S. Lewis, from "On Three Ways for Writing for Children"

Remember.

It is best to remember that there have been far more fish caught on a hunk of yarn than on the fanciest fly ever tied.

Roderick Haig-Brown

Matt Stillwell, "Hey Dad"

Better.

Ari Weinzweig on rituals ...

Not every routine we engage in becomes a ritual. We’ve been throwing out garbage, turning on the lights, and doing financial statements for 42 years. All are important, but, at least from my limited view (I’m not an accountant), none are about the sort of recentering and spiritual uplift that rituals can help us to create. At their base level, they’re a great business practice, a clearly stated job expectation, and a tactical and practical way to improve customer service and collegiality amongst coworkers. Sticking with those routines, as Verne Harnish said, is important. If we find ways to imbue them with more inspiration and meaning, it’s all the better still. Author Anne Lamott offers,

Here’s the true secret of life: We mostly do everything over and over. In the morning, we let the dogs out, make coffee, read the paper, help whoever is around get ready for the day. We do our work. … I love ritual and repetition. Without them, I would be a balloon with a slow leak. 

It's the rigor, the routine, the rhythm, and the repetition that helps hold our organizations, and our lives, together. If we stick with stuff we believe in that is beneficial, good things are likely to come from it. The Marginalian’s Maria Popova writes,

The true purpose of discipline—for this is the practice at the heart of routine—is to make room for the magical in the mundane. Paradoxically enough, it is an act of liberation rather than submission—routine grants us the stable platform within, from which we can begin not only to tolerate but perhaps even to enjoy the shaky messiness without.

My realization of recent days is, as I’ve shared above, that when we use those routines in the right way, when we engage deeply with open hearts, they have the potential to be rituals. “Managing by Pouring Water” is a routine I’ve been doing for probably 15 years now. It is, I now realize, a ritual as well. It’s certainly practical—I fill water glasses, customers get better service, and staff feel supported. But truly, it’s just as important for my own self-management. By doing it every evening, in a wonderful way, it helps me get my mental feet underneath me! When I do it, I am informed, inspired, recentered, reminded of our impact, and excited about ways we can get better.

Aqua.

Railway.

Ah.

AN ODE to THE CORNER

Read the roll of those that played

Count every face; the crowds that made

A church of light, a field of dreams

A century of us; our team

Farewell the sun, and bar the gates

As fades the final roar

The brightest home; our eager youth

Like summer is no more

But ah, the blue and green of it

The light upon the field

The noise, the smell, the crowd, the sky

Our common heart revealed

The many, one; in summer’s sun

We pulled the runner home

A grassy sea, an English ‘D’

The athletes’ skill a poem

The memories stray in twilight’s fade

Was Boone at first, or third?

Did Kaline stem the Cardinal tide?

Who was it caught The Bird?

But recalled exactly in our hearts

We loved our time, this place

100 years, let’s go! … play ball!

The thrill … this park … its grace

Echoes carry; springtimes fly

Now autumn’s shadows yield

Forever winter drapes the cry

“Long gone!” across the field

If there be ghosts that know the land;

Called back to hallowed scenes

My father and my father’s Dad

Still hold this field of dreams

That section there, in leftfield high

My father and I came

And then, in turn, I brought my son

To our eternal game

So read the roll of those that played

Count every face; the crowds that made

A church of light; a field of dreams

A century of us … the team

Tom DeLisle

Superior.

What is malleable is always superior to that which is immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation. 

Lao Tzu

Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

They don't call him The Professor for nothing.

Happy Birthday, McKim

McKim, Central Building of the Boston Public Library, 1895

Charles Follen McKim was born on this day in 1847.

"Take Flight" ...

Happy Birthday, Borges

The ART Of POETRY

To gaze at a river made of time and water

And remember Time is another river.

To know we stray like a river

and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream

that dreams of not dreaming and that the death

we fear in our bones is the death

that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol

of all the days of man and his years,

and convert the outrage of the years

into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset

a golden sadness--such is poetry,

humble and immortal, poetry,

returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face

that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.

Art must be that sort of mirror,

disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,

wept with love on seeing Ithaca,

humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,

a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,

passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same

inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same

and yet another, like the river flowing.

Jorge Luis Borges, born on this day in 1899

Saint-Saëns, Sonata for Bassoon and Piano in G Major, Op. 168

Sophie Dervaux performs the Allegretto scherzando ...

Have you ever heard a contrabassoon?

Harrison.

The date is August 23, 1990.  Jim Harrison has just released a new collection of novellas, The Woman Lit by Fireflies, and is being interviewed on Fresh Air ...

If you're going to make a change in life, the more ritualized you make it, the more permanent it will be.

Ink-Blend.

Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was—a whisper.

What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents' window long ago. Be dandelion wine in the ketchup bottle capped and placed with an inked inscription: June morn, first day of Summer, 1923. Summer 1926, Fireworks Night. 1927: Last Day of Summer. LAST OF THE DANDELIONS, Oct. 1st.

Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity

Spice.

This couldn’t be just a lake. No real water was ever blue like that. A light breeze stirred the pin-cherry tree beside the window, ruffled the feathers of a fat sea gull promenading on the pink rocks below. The breeze was full of evergreen spice.

Dorothy Maywood Bird, from Mystery at Laughing Water

Thanks, Buff.