Picklier.

The longer they sit in their pickle liquid, the picklier they get.

A summer tradition (add thinly slivered jalapenos and their seeds) ... HERE.

Peaceful.

A POET DREAMS of the MOUNTAIN

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

Mary Oliver

Singular.

What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I’d have you do it ever. When you sing,
I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and for the ord’ring your affairs,
To sing them too. When you dance, I wish you
A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that, move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.

William Shakespeare, from The Winter’s Tale

Rent.

TOWER of SONG

Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I'm crazy for love but I'm not comin' on.

I'm just payin' my rent every day in the Tower of Song

I said to Hank Williams "How lonely does it get?"

Hank Williams hasn't answered yet

But I hear him coughing all night long

Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song

I was born like this, I had no choice

I was born with the gift of a golden voice

And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond,

They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll

I'm very sorry, baby, it doesn't look like me at all

I'm standin' by the window where the light is strong

Ah, they don't let a woman kill you, not in the Tower of Song

Now, you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure:

The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor

And there's a mighty Judgement comin' but I may be wrong

You see, I hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song

I see you standin' on the other side

I don't know how the river got so wide

I loved you, baby, way back when...

And all the bridges are burnin' that we might've crossed

But I feel so close to everything that we lost

We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again.

Now, I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back

They're movin' us tomorrow to the tower down the track

But you'll be hearin' from me, baby, long after I'm gone

I'll be speakin' to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song.

Yeah, my friends are gone and my hair is grey

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I'm crazy for love but I'm not comin' on.

I'm just payin' my rent everyday in the Tower of Song.

Leonard Cohen

Beyond.

Thou takest the pen–and the lines dance. 
Thou takest the flute–and the notes shimmer. 
Thou takest the brush–and the colors sing. 
So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond time where Thou art. 
How, then, can I hold back anything from Thee.

Dag Hammarskjöld

Kingdom.

Well, the sun's not so hot in the sky today
And you know I can see summertime slipping on away
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed
So I'll be king and you'll be queen
Our kingdom's gonna be this little patch of green

James Taylor, from "September Grass"

Thank You, Poetessa.

Shenandoah.

Thank you, Jess.

Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, "I Dug Up a Diamond"

Heaven.

MOST SWEET it IS

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 
To pace the ground, if path be there or none, 
While a fair region round the traveller lies 
Which he forbears again to look upon; 
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, 
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone 
Of meditation, slipping in between 
The beauty coming and the beauty gone. 
If Thought and Love desert us, from that day 
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse: 
With Thought and Love companions of our way, 
Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, 
The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews 
Of inspiration on the humblest lay. 

William Wordsworth

Anything.

Anything you do can be fixed.  What you can not fix is the perfection of a blank page.  What you can not fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it, because there's nothing there to fix.

Neil Gaiman on pens, journals, and where ideas come from ...



Thank You, Jessica.

Own.

Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Thank You, Jessica.

Sanctum.

The hard routine is primarily an exercise in mental toughness. As such, it is vital to grasp the component of psychology that permeates the hard routine. In any rigorous endeavor, the bedrock for success lies in the mindset of the individual. I am reminded of the story popular in the business world about burning boats. Alexander the Great, when he sailed into Asia, disembarked his infantry and then set his entire navy ablaze in the harbor. The only way home meant a march across land and through the enemy: victory or death. Total commitment. A potent psychological shift occurs when the possibility of giving up disintegrates into ashes. The hard routine grants the willing participant entry into a hard sanctum located in a lucid place of the mind, free of the “soft” psychological distractions and habits that can hinder sustained changes in action. In short, it boils down to denial of self-indulgence.

The principles of setting up a hard routine are simple. Following them is too, but it takes total commitment. 

1. Recognize that there is a benefit to not getting everything you want. 
2. Understand that mental toughness is born of adversity; that it will atrophy if not consistently engaged; and that it carries over to everything you do. 
3. Objectively scrutinize one or a handful of things in your life that you think you need but could actually do without. 
4. Deny yourself those things for a specified period of time.

CONNECT

Magical.

Learning how to season food effectively is one of the cornerstones of good cooking. When novice cooks ask me why their food doesn't taste as good as they want it to taste, the answer is almost always that they aren't using enough salt. I recommend the following exercise: Make a bowl of buttered pasta using no salt at all. Taste it straight out of the pot. Then add a good pinch of salt to it, toss it, and taste it again. Repeat. Taste again. Repeat that process until suddenly the flavor pops, your mouth beings to water, and things start to get really friggin’ tasty. THAT is the power of salt. It makes food—any food, every food—taste more.

But that isn't the case with black pepper. If you were to repeat that same challenge using pepper, you’d add and add and add and never experience that magical, ah-HA moment. That bowl of pasta will start tasting spicier, and more floral, but it will never start tasting like the platonic ideal of noodles and butter. And that’s because pepper does not possess the same magical flavor-enhancing qualities that salt does—it makes food taste like it was seasoned with black pepper.

CONNECT

Guilty. 

Thank You, Jessica.

Suddenly.

In the Harry Potter books, there's this place called the Room of Requirement. The way it works is you walk three times in front of this certain patch of wall at Hogwarts, thinking, like, I really need a coffee. And then suddenly in that room a coffee shop will appear. Or, I need a place to make my magic potion in secret, and then a room with all the ingredients for your magic potion will appear.  

Libraries are like that. But in real life. That's what they do. 

CONNECT

Thank You, Jessica.

Excellent.

An excellent herring ...

Thank You, Jessica.

Light.

My light thou art, without thy glorious sight

My eyes are darkened with eternal night;

My Love, thou art my way, my life, my light.

Thou art my way, I wander if thou fly;

Thou art my light, if hid, how blind am I!

Thou art my life, if thou withdraw'st I die.

Thou art my life; if thou but turn away,

My life's a thousand deaths. Thou art my way;

Without thee, Love, I travel not, but stray.

Lord John Wilmot

Thinking.

LANDSCAPE with FRUIT ROT and MILLIPEDE

I cut off my head and threw it in the sky. It turned
into birds. I called it thinking. The view from above—
untethered scrutiny. It helps to have an anchor
but your head is going somewhere anyway. It's a matter
of willpower. O little birds, you flap around and

make a mess of the milk-blue sky—all these ghosts
come streaming down and sometimes I wish I had
something else. A redemptive imagination, for
example. The life of the mind is a disappointment,
but remember what stands for what. We deduce

backward into first causes—stone in the pond of things,
splash splash—or we throw ourselves into the future.
We all move forward anyway. Ripples in all directions.
What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be
alive. Something dead that doesn't know it's dead.

A painting, for instance. An abstraction. Cut off your
head, kid. For all the good it'll do ya. I glued my head back
on. All thoughts finish themselves eventually. I wish
it were true. Paint all the men you want but sooner or
later they go to ground and rot. The mind fights the

body and the body fights the land. It wants our bodies,
the landscape does, and everyone runs the risk of
being swallowed up. Can we love nature for what it
really is: predatory? We do not walk through a passive
landscape. The paint dries eventually. The bodies

decompose eventually. We collide with place, which
is another name for God, and limp away with a
permanent injury. Ask for a blessing? You can try,
but we will not remain unscathed. Flex your will
or abandon your will and let the world have its way

with you, or disappear and save everyone the bother
of a dark suit. Why live a life? Well, why are you
asking? I put on my best shirt because the painting
looked so bad. Color bleeds, so make it work for you.
Gravity pulls, so make it work for you. Rubbing

your feet at night or clutching your stomach in the
morning. It was illegible—no single line of sight,
too many angles of approach, smoke in the distance.
It made no sense. When you have nothing to say,
set something on fire. A blurry landscape is useless.

Richard Siken

Thank You, Jessica.

Lord Huron, "Meet Me in the Woods"

Thank You, Jessica.

Jimmy Buffett, "Come Monday"

... With you I'd walk anywhere.

Colorado.

Thank you, Jessica.