Arts.

Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.

M.F.K. Fisher, from Serve It Forth

Guess.

FOURTEEN POEMS CHOSEN from MORAL PROVERBS and FOLK SONGS

1

The eye you see is not

an eye because you see it;

it is an eye because it sees you.

2

To talk with someone,

ask a question first,

then -- listen.

3

Narcissism

is an ugly fault

and now it's a boring fault too.

4

But look in your mirror for the other one,

the other one who walks by your side.

5

Between living and dreaming 

there is a third thing.

Guess it.

6

Look for the other half

who walks always next to you

and tends to be what you aren't.

7

In my solitude

I have seen things very clearly

that were not true.

8

Form your letters slowly and well:

making things well

is more important than making them.

9

What the poet is searching for 

is not the fundamental I

but the deep you.

10

Beyond living and dreaming

there is something more important:

waking up.

11

Pay attention now:

a heart that's all by itself

is not a heart.

12

If it's good to live,

then it's better to be asleep dreaming,

and best of all,

mother, is to awake.

13

When I am alone

how close my friends are;

when I am with them

how distant they are!

14

But art?

It is pure and intense play,

so it is like pure and intense life,

so it is like pure and intense fire.

You'll see the coal burning.

Antonio Machado

Thank You, Jessica.

Rowan.

Thanks, Jess.

Happy Birthday, Mahal

Taj Mahal was born on this day in 1942.

"Lovin' in My Baby's Arms"...

Thanks, Jess.

Magnificent.

Karr, Meg, The Magnificent, 2025

“What I would do for wisdom,”

I cried out as a young man.

Evidently not much.

Or so it seems.

Even on walks

I follow the dog.

Jim Harrison

Insight.

Karr, Self-Portrait with Emmy-G, 2024

Dogs are mute and obedient, but they have watched us and know us and can smell how pitiful we are. It should astonish us, move us, overwhelm us that our dogs continue, incredibly, to follow us and obey us. Maybe they despise us. Maybe they forgive us. Or maybe they like having no responsibility. We’ll never know. Maybe they see us as some sort of unfortunate race of overgrown, misshapen beings, like huge sluggish beetles. Not gods. Dogs must have seen through us, they must possess a crushing insight that thousands of years of obedience holds in check.

Tove Jansson,

Except.

Pursue the authentic—decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don’t even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich, from "Advice to Myself"

Thanks, Jess.

When.

Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had travelled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned. Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown.

Henry Rollins

Thank you, Jessica

I stay outside and live within ...

Sacred.

Allison Ijams Sargent attempts to map Heaven ...

If our universe is mappable, my student’s logic went, then everything, including heaven should be represented. Why couldn’t we find it? My students wanted one more rectangle on the board. I wanted to honor them, because they are so deserving of my honor, but could only answer: “I don’t know where to put it.”

I, too, wanted a place where there were celestial alternatives to the abrupt and final answers on my flimsy handout, to find the space my students had the capacity to imagine. But for now, all I had to offer was what we had right then and there: a space that contained everything that was sacred to me. 

Thank you, Jessica. 

Excellent.

 An excellent album ...

Thanks, Jess.

Morning.

Obata, Morning at Mono Lake, 1930

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Happy Birthday, Prine

John Prine was born on this day in 1946.

"When I Get to Heaven" ...

Thank you, Jessica.