Bob Ward played piano like Kenny Drew, as I lay in bed awake and listening in the middle of the night, 12 years old. Set the bar so high for me. 

I can't leave that book without putting this down......
From ON THE ROAD, Jack Kerouac

   "They piled right up into a saloon and we followed them. There we were! The leader was a slender, drooping, curly-haired pursy-mouthed tenorman, thin of shoulder, draped loose in a sports shirt, cool in the warm night, self-indulgence written in his eyes, who picked up his horn and frowned in it, and blew cool and complex, and was dainty stamping his foot to catch ideas, and ducked to miss others - and said, "Blow," very quietly when the other boys took solos. Then there was Prez, a handsome, husky blond, like a freckled boxer, meticulously wrapped inside his sharkskin plaid suit with the collar falling back and the tie undone for exact sharpness and casualness, sweating and hitching up his horn and writhing into it, and a tone just like Lester Young himself. 'You see, man, Prez has the technical anxieties of a money-making musician, he's the only one who's well dressed, see him grow worried when he blows a clinker, but the leader, that cool cat, tells him not to worry and just blow and blow - the mere sound and serious exuberance of the music is all HE cares about. He's an artist. He's teaching young Prez the boxer. Now the others dig!' The third sax was an alto, eighteen-year-old cool, contemplative young Charlie Parker type Negro from high school, with a broadgash mouth, taller than the rest, grave. He raised his horn and blew into it quietly and thoughtfully and elicited birdlike phrases and architectural Miles Davis logics. These were the children of the great  bop innovators.
   Stranger flowers yet - for as the Negro alto mused over everyone's head with dignity, the young, tall, slender blond kid from Curtis Street, Denver, jeans and studded belt, sucked on his mouthpiece while waiting for the others to finish; and when they did he started, and you had to look around to see where the solo was coming from, for it came from the angelic smiling lips upon the mouthpiece and it was a soft, sweet fairy-tale solo on an alto. Lonely as America, the throat-pierced sound in the night."

I wish I could go on. He goes on for another couple of pages about the music that was playing that night. I like him because he writes so that you are there. It brings  back memories, for me, of being in jazz clubs in the 60s, with my parents. I love him because he feels it like I do.

Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,---
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;---
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

- Shelley, not Keats

"I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
                                                     - Jack Kerouac

   Maybe that was his point. And maybe that was his appeal. We're all confused at times, if we're lucky, and it's nice to see someone express it so eloquently.
   I've finished the book. I love the man. And I even like him, though I wouldn't want to spend a significant amount of time with him. I wish that I could admire him, but I don't. That's okay, I have plenty of people I like hanging out with that I don't admire. I'm content just liking him.
   And I want to find out more about the culture that made him its hero.
   I hope he found some peace. Later on I'll read more by him. Now it's on to Ideas Have Consequences, by Richard M. Weaver. Something tells me it will be as dramatic a switch as the one from Dune to Kerouac.

   Richard Burton is an actor I heard OF all my life, but haven't heard much FROM. So I'm beginning my study of him, with this movie. I liked it, it reminded me a bit of A Man For All Seasons. Paul Scofield and Richard Burton both monumental actors. It's a pleasure to watch them both.
   Oh, and Peter O'Toole, too.

                                                       MYTH

   In the beginning, unbeknownst to anyone, the universe lay in utter darkness and silence. Massive (tho only in relation to each other, for there was nothing else to which to compare, nor anyone to care) chunks of rock floated aimlessly through nothing, occasionally slamming into one another, sometimes breaking up, their pieces floating away, directionless. 

  Without form and void, the blackness stretched on infinitely......

  Endlessly.

  Until. 

  From whence unbeknownst to anyone, there came streaking across the nowhere, streaking and shrieking, a massive geode, a geode as big as a spherical-esque galaxy. Black as everything on the outside, blending in with everything and the nothing they filled. And on the inside, oh on the inside, bristling with crystals, crammed with crystals, of every size and shape known to no one. Formed with physical and geometric perfection, hard as the tooth of Eternity. And oh, the song they sang! Of every frequency and tone and note. Of everything beautiful and shining. They tinkled and they hummed and they rang. And they screamed, as they hurtled through space, their very speed causing them to move forward, rather than aimlessly through the void. As the mass picked up speed, the howl became a thing that shook the time waves and caused time tsunamis across the universe. We're still recovering from that.

As distance became more of a thing, caused by the huge rock moving so differently in relation to everything else, and after the geode had covered an unfathomable distance, there appeared (to no one) another geode, of the same size, and on the same track, from the opposite direction. Since there was now direction. 

In no time at all (and the last time for THAT to happen) the two galactic crystal caves collided. The impact of the crash shook the universe like the wind snaps a sheet. The Big Bang itself stopped in its outward journey to look back and marvel. 

The friction of all the crystal had ignited an explosion of sparks, burned some of the crystal itself, changed some, spun off huge masses of burning material, igniting many of the rocks already nearby. Igniting everything. New explosions igniting newer ones, masses of rock now bouncing off one another until a circular motion had been established. 

All the time......singing. Shouting and laughing and chanting. Adding to each piece of stone in the sky light and music.

And it all marched outward with the universe, filling Everythingnothingforever with silvery song.  

   Okay, I'm well into the second half of On The Road, and I'm beginning to think I liked this book better when it was fiction and the heroes were a couple of 12-year-olds floating down the river on a raft, occasionally "liberating" a watermelon from a garden along the way - and freeing a slave while they were at it. Mr. Kerouac was born in '22, which puts him in his late twenties when he took that trip, which has gone from a description of the beautiful land and the beautiful people they were seeing to a chronicle of bad behavior. I had started the story thinking much better of him. I hope before he closes out this story he'll lay down his ideology that justifies stealing everything that isn't nailed down, humping every female that will hold still, and complaining about the cop who pulled them over for barreling down the streets of D.C. at 80 mph. Yes, that cop was wrong to demand most of their money to make it go away, but the crime spree that brought them to that moment rather cost them their righteous indignation.
   A little disappointed so far, but holding out hope that this great talent comes with some good character qualities after all.

P.S. If you peeps could respond, I'm sure someone would tell me I have missed the point altogether. I quite agree, and wish someone would explain the point to me. So far, Mr. K hasn't.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy."

Going to the Capitol to stand for those who can't stand for themselves.  💔

When granddaugher Darcy hears these guys playing on the big screen in the living room, she comes running from wherever she is in the house to watch. 

He is not silent.
He is not whispering.
We are not quiet,
We are not listening.
     - Out Of The Grey

"A great singer is he who sings our silences."
                                 - Khalil Gibran

   I spent some of last summer getting reacquainted with some people I hadn't seen in some time. As I answered the questions they asked me, I realized that I was telling them nothing different than they would hear from any other person, and their attempts to get to know me had fallen flat. I found myself wishing that they would ask me something like what I was reading and what I thought of it. But nobody did. And I realize now that that's what I have wished all my life. Fourteen years old, in school, I found myself bored to tears with the things the people around me were talking about, and wishing somebody would express an interest in some of the things that I had rolling around in my brain. The really humiliating times were when I spoke up and tried to spark an interest.
   I waited impatiently to join the world of grown-ups.
   HA! Here I am. The more things change.......

Dedicated, by the way, to my dear friend Lauren. Hang in there, Baby.

My first contribution to the online writing club I've joined is due on Sunday. The prompt is Stars. I'm working on it. - Started as I was waking up this morning. When it's finished I'll post it here. 

Respect.

AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH
                       - William Butler Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

I post this today in honor of my friend Nick Collier, an Irishman who came and fought in another country's war when he was very young. Fortuitous, that it should appear in my Poem A Day book, the day after a reunion with Nick last night, when we talked about his service and about Yeats.  Respect to you, my friend. 🍷

Fighting fishes have fantastic fins.
        - my 5-year-old student. 

"A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down..... If it's a good book, nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him."
                            - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I've liked her since 7th grade. 

FIRST FIG
   - Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light!

So..... I'm working my way through On The Road. What a great story. And I think I'm in love with this man. Probably because he uses words so well. I'm silly that way.  He tells the story so well that you feel you're going there with him, and feeling the things he feels. That's confusing to me, because he describes the beautiful country he's traversing, and even the cities back east that he came from, so perfectly. He describes the people so magnificently. You feel you've met those people. You know what he's talking about. And he seems to love them deeply, and you feel that with him too. And yet he keeps talking about how sad life and the country and the world are. I'm about halfway through the book and am eager to get on with it, to find out what he's so miserable about. 

Dad used to play this on the guitar and sing. I was lazy Mariah..  

Hold my hand, flow back to the summer time
Tangled in the willows, now comes the tide
How can I believe you, how can I be nice
Tripping around the tree stumps in your summer smile
               - Glass Animals

I wanna trip around the tree stumps in your summer smile.....

GIVING UP SMOKING
         - Wendy Cope

There's not a Shakespeare sonnet
Or a Beethoven quartet
That's easier to like than you
Or harder to forget.

You think this sounds extravagant?
I haven't finished yet -
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette.

UNSUPERVISED!!!

I am alone for three days! Yes, my inner 14-year-old is coming out. I will crank up the music, live on junk food, jump on the beds, get into the liquor cabinet....... FUN!

   Exciting! Sunday, Raymond and the brewmaster Jereme are heading to Seattle to buy the brewing system - accompanied by our son Chris, who will be video documenting the whole thing, for posterity. Loaded with his gimbals and dongles and lavaliers, ohmy.

Just when you think you've seen the last of someone. My day just got made good enough to last me a couple of weeks......... Prodigious!

A month is too long to wait, to be surrounded by creative, expressive, extremely literate people. This Tuesday....... Yay!

I was introduced to this group by my friend Jimmy last week. Sweet, clear falsetto. Early 70s soul. Nice.

   I am so proud of my Sweetheart. Last night we went to a performance at the restaurant and bar that we have bought and will be taking over in a couple of weeks. A lady from the local newspaper was there, and said to him, "No use keeping it quiet, everyone knows."  People came up to him all night, congratulating him and telling him how excited they are about the place once he's running it. The former owner sat with us and told us about all the promotions and special events they have, and we watched the people - noting who our customers are. He's going to have his hands full - and if anyone can rock it, my man can.
   Everybody Loves Raymond. In Bastrop, Texas that means someone different.   👏  

 peace 

(I got Jesus' recipe for wine)

Came in the mail yesterday! Recommended by a member of the poetry circle. It'll go on the growing stack, and I can't wait to read it.

FROM On The Road
              - Jack Kerouac


"Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves, and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed and burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries."

Can the man write, or what.

Always a good idea to wear a cat that matches your outfit......

I AM NOT I
      Juan Ramón Jimenez

I am not I.
                   I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget.
The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate
The one who takes a walk when I'm indoors
The one who will remain standing when I die.

The Brain - is wider than the sky -
For - put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You - beside

The Brain is deeper than the sea -
For - hold them - Blue to Blue
The one the other will absorb -
As sponges - Buckets - do -

The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - pound for pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As Syllable from Sound

Emily Dickinson

Thanks to my friend who sent me this song when HE was feeling glum. Maybe that's the best way for anyone, simple or royal, to feel better. Share with someone else!    

Aquí estoy.

MY LOVE IS LIKE TO ICE
           - Edmund Spenser

My love is like to ice and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows, the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind,

G'mornin'!

In the quiet of solitude
The secret spirit soars -
Alone, alone, all alone
Behind these thrice-locked doors.
        - Ann Kilcrin Ward

I found this one among my mother's things not long after she died. I was very young - 9 or 10, but I could relate, and I took it to heart. Since then, the time I've spent alone has been one of my greatest treasures. I also love being with people, but I'm redeemed and sanctified in solitude.


"Men go crazy in the congregations, they only get better one by one." - Sting

I come from little-known greatness.

Bury My Legs

Bury my legs where the long days shine,
Where the tall hopes calmly graze;
Bury my eyes where the air is sweet
With a tawny, summer haze.
Bury my eyes where the grass is cool
As the fruit that drops from the tree;
Bury my eyes in Kokomo,
And I shall wake up and see.

Bury my arms beneath the trees
Whose limbs are reaching down;
Bury my arms with my memories,
In fertile soil and brown;
Bury my arms where the joy I've known
Cannot depart the land;
Bury my arms where my heart still lives,
And not in eastern sand.

Bury my legs in the fields I've walked
In laughter and in pain;
Bury my legs in the fragrant earth,
Washed by young green rain;
Bury my legs where there's room to run,
And a goal that's worth the running;
Bury my legs in Kokomo - 
I'm coming home, I'm coming.

- Ann Kilcrin Ward

From ON THE ROAD, Kerouac

"I wanted to see Denver ten years ago when they were all children, and in the sunny cherry blossom morning of springtime in the Rockies rolling their hoops up the joyous alleys full of promise - the whole gang. And Dean, ragged and dirty, prowling by himself in his preoccupied frenzy."

I think I know Dean. Maybe I am him.

From ON THE ROAD
     Jack Kerouac

Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the Spirit of the mountain was thinking, and looked up and saw jack pines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. In the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great Western Slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs and dropped, and led you to the Eastern Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night, eastward over the Plains, somewhere an old man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word, and would arrive any minute and make us silent.

Mr. K can certainly paint a picture........

POST MATRIX READING LIST

1. Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, W.B. Yeats
2. Dune, Frank Herbert
3. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
4. Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver
5. Reader Come Home, Maryanne Wolf
6. The Spell of The Senuous, David Abram
7. Beauty, Sagmeister and Walsh
8. My Emily Dickinson, Susan Howell
9. The yeffin Iliad
10. The Yodessey 

To be continued.......

"Think a truly radical thought: think what a revolution it would be if everyone on earth played in the surf once a week. How much depression and suicide, how much hatred and violence, how much resentment, and anger and envy and boredom and addiction, how many wars and murders and plots and tyrannies would just go out like a candle in the water? The sea is a peacemaker. How can surfers be warmongers? How can anyone drenched with the wisdom of playwater ever come up with this brilliant idea, the idea that's moved so much of our history? - "Hey, it seems we've got problems. Let's deal with them this way: let's dress up in funny uniforms and go out and kill each other."

In my next life I will be a surfer. I know I said that last life, but this time I mean it.

I'M GOING ON A DIET

Daily:

A chapter of the Bible (meat)
A Year with C.S. Lewis (potatoes)
A Poem a Day (salad)
A chapter of current book. (dessert)

That's the food. The exercise?

Introduction To Latin
Introduction To Formal Logic

And the fun!

Onlineitalianclub

(This, dear peeps, is what happens when you work out facing a wall full of bookcases!)

And the Air That I Breathe? -

All Day Music!  hahahaha........

Today I asked you what something meant, and you gave me its definition.
You misunderstood me.

Marvelous mood, great workout music. Gonna rock it.

"I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope." - Dr. Seuss

Good ideas - books - music - movies - art - don't get old. They transcend space and time. So do good people. A person who bases his likes and dislikes on fads is old before his time. Even if he's ahead of his time. Time has nothing to do with these things.
                              mwk, June 2010

"You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life to ours is as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit." - C.S. Lewis

When I run into someone I haven't seen in a while (which is most everyone, as I've been in hermit mode for a while) and he or she asks what I've been up to lately, "I've been doing a lot of thinking" is an awkward answer. But it's the truth. And it's something. It's a lot.

wow

ON THE ROAD
       mwk

Flying down the highway,
Rain splattering down on my windshield,
Wipers wiping to the beat of the polyrythmic music
Filling the acoustically perfect minivan.
The heater doesn't work
But the seat warmers do
So mine is on.

Soaring down the highway,
Dancing to all of it.
My fingers are cold,
But my heart is warm,
My smile is warm,
And my seat is warm.

Beautiful music, beautiful pictures.

Sounds so good late on a Saturday night, filling all the nooks and crannies of the house.....and my head.

MY LIFE CLOSED TWICE BEFORE ITS CLOSE
       - Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close -
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me.

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of Heaven
And all we need of hell.

I love this old building. 602 Main Street.

I'm glad you like your costume.
It looks good on you.
If I were into costumes
I'd likely wear that one too.

When the non-comformists all begin to look alike....... that's when I begin inching toward the door.

DON'T BE LITERARY, DARLNG
              - Sasha Moorsom

Don't be literary, darling, don't be literary
If you're James in the morning you're Hemingway in bed
Don't talk of yourself in the style of your own obituary -
For who cares what they say of you after you're dead.

Don't be always a thought ahead and a move behind
Like a general reconnoitering dangerous ground,
This is a game it's much better to enter blind
And the one who wins is the one who's caught and bound.

If you can't be straight then just say nothing instead.
I'll know what you mean much better than if it was said.

Wearing this outfit, and in this mood. Haha!

HAPPY DAY!

   Today at 10 am, Hubby and the partners are set to close on a beautiful restaurant on Main Street here in town. It's called 602 Main Street, named after the zip code, not the street address. We'll keep that name and add a little to it. It's to be a restaurant and a brewery, with our dear friend Jeremy Walker as the brew master. And Raymond as the food magician. It's going to be a fantastic place. I can't wait!
   Pics to follow........

Last night as we sat across the table from each other with a bottle between us, chatting quietly, a beautiful, slow bluesy song came on. You smiled, tilted your head back, and closed your eyes. And I watched, as your face reacted to the music.

"Nothing but beautiful noise" - my five-year-old student, about Tchaicovsky's First Piano Concerto

ACCIDENTS OF BIRTH
             - William Meredith

Spared by a car - or airplane - crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.

For I've been brought back from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I've also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world's gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
                         But it's not this random
life only, throwing its sensual
astonishments upside down on
the bloody membranes behind my eyeballs,
not just me being here again, old
needer, looking for someone to need,
but you, up from the clay yourself,
as luck would have it, and inching
over the same little segment of earth -
ball, in the same little eon, to
meet in a room, alive in our skins,
and the whole galaxy gaping there
and the centuries whining like gnats -
you, to teach me to see it, to see
it with you, and to offer somebody
uncomprehending, impudent thanks.

Look at me looking at you
Grinning at you
Calling you on the lies in your eyes

Mmmm.........

   Ever read The Chronicles of Narnia? The thing that Professor Kirk is most famous for saying is, "It's all in Plato! What DO they teach in those schools these days?"
   One of my favorite examples of that thinking is a quote by another Narnian character, Puddleglum, when told by the wicked underground queen that Narnia and everything he knows of it is just a story, just a game.  "Suppose we HAVE only dreamed or made up all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.  ........ four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side, even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia."

   What  Plato said was, "But perhaps there is a model of it (the perfect city) in heaven, for anyone who wants to look at it and to make himself its citizen on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference if it is or ever will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city, and no other."

   Deep respect to Mr. Lewis, for  such a good story. And gratitude for the fact that we can see things that aren't right in front of us, we can see ideas, and count them as even more important than the physical things around us. Life is good. 

One of my daughters came last night with this Romanesco broccoli. I had never seen one before, and it started quite lively conversation among our nerdy family. Each row of spikes is a spiral, and on each spike is a row of smaller spikes that also forms a spiral, and so on. Fascinating!

   Last night, to celebrate Hubby's birthday, and also the homecoming of our son from his holiday trip to Lebanon, I roasted ten pounds of chicken, with about five pounds of potatoes, all slathered in a potent garlic sauce. This, and a huge salad with lemon juice and olive oil and fresh garlic dressing, along with pita bread, olives, and shanklish, were the dinner Hubby and I and all the kids and grand baby sat and feasted on - along with copious wine - while Peter told stories of his adventures in Lebanon. I'm telling you, Sicily has NOTHING on that little town in the mountains, for rough, hilarious misbehavior!
   My favorite people on the planet filled my house last night.
   I wish that cat would quit stomping around........  😏

Yesterday we sat across the table from each other with a pot of coffee between us, chatting quietly. And as I looked at you, the years all melted together.

The scene has never changed. How long have we shared the table? Shared the fascination with all things, the wondering out loud.... pondering.... hypothesizing..... arguing. Shared the drug of beauty, of knowledge and understanding. With each other's help, knowing and understanding each other, and ourselves.

Thank you. A million times thank you.

What a beautiful, uplifting song! I had never seen the lyrics in English.  💖

You're beautiful in so many ways, Baby.  💖

HELLO, SPRING!
                   - mwk

You came not a moment too soon.
I'd lost all my faith in warm June.
Winter's chill had reached my heart
When I heard you whistle your tune.

Life was a lull 'til you came along.
With a breath of warm breeze you taught me your song
And led me singing to a place in my dreams
I know with certainty I belong.

Come, sweet Spring -

Come join in these dreams of mine
Where there is no place, there is no time -
Where we can quietly dance a dance
That will make the hot summer shine.

Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
                C.E.T. Chairman Toure Bomoko. Dune

And this, I think, is the last bit of wisdom I'll be sharing from that remarkable book. On to Mr. Kerouac!   

 If you love your opinion so much that a threat to it feels like a threat to you, that's an emotional element that doesn't belong to clear thinking. Find the source of that and reason your way through it.
                                                            - mwk

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
                                                              Bene Gesserite Litany Against Fear - Dune

Doncha just love epiphanies? When previously confounding pieces of the puzzle click into place....... So freeing! So invigorating!

DEAR BOB (trespasser's anthem)
    -mwk

Whose woods these are I've never met
A real fine person, though, I bet.
The land is beautiful, can't have been cheap
And can't be an easy thing to keep.

I've stopped here before a couple of times
To gaze and dream and concoct some rhymes.
This time I want to walk among the trees,
Smell the dirt, crunch the leaves.

Relax, Bob....
I don't want to build a house, or even pitch a tent.
Just peace from time in solitude spent.
Want to climb a tree or snuggle into a nook
And write a poem or read a book.

Want to listen to the whispers, touch the bark
I won't go in deep, won't stay after dark.
I grew up in the woods, need to go back now and then.
Need to remember who I am.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep."
And keep my word I most assuredly will
But I also have a soul to fill.

I need the loveliness, the dark and deep
To shake me, wake me out of sleep.
The desert I dwell in leaves me dry and bare,
Blind from the sun's incessant glare.

Don't be frosty, now, Bob.
Don't be a self-righteous snob.
I'll leave this luscious, living, secret realm
Until the loneliness quite overwhelms.

Then I'll be back.

Our internet's not working, so I'm  obliged to do everything on my cell phone, which isn't easy. Please excuse typos, I'll fix them when I have better eyes.  ;)

Look at the late Christmas present I got! From our friend the artist. 

I cannot wait to delve into this book. This seems to say some things I've been thinking for some time.

Don't blink!!

BOND
   - mwk

Today as I was driving down the road at about sixty miles an hour,
I noticed a man on the side of the road,
Walking against traffic.
In the split second it took to see him and pass,
Our eyes met.
Struck by this, I quickly glanced in the rear view mirror.
He was looking back.

How Can I Keep From Singing

Enya

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth´s lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness 'round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I´m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

Last night you and I sat across the table from each other with a bottle of wine between us, chatting quietly. And that song came on.
   We didn't look at each other. And we didn't talk.
A few moments after it ended, still looking elsewhere, I asked you a question about something not insignificant, but not important.
   You answered, and we were back.

The silence will feed me for at least a week.
                  - mwk

   People laugh at me (or scowl at me) because I'm a morning person and I love Mondays. I laugh back and tell them it's a chance to start over. I need about a million second chances, I screw up enough for two sunrises per day!
   This poem says it perfectly. Great for the first day of the year. Let it be what you hear every morning!

NEW EVERY MORNING
      - Susan Coolidge

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
   And, in spite of old sorrows
    And older sinning,
    Trouble forecasted
    And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/Madreblu-Certamente-lyrics.html

Certamente passerà qui su di me

sicuramente non mi rimarrà

quasi niente, tornerò alla verità

ma latente

la tua voce suonerà, suonerà…

Chiaramente poco tempo durerà e

velocemente l’impazienza

prima o poi scomparirà

nella mia mente tutto si cancellerà

però latente la tua voce, la tua voce giocherà.

Aspetto qui, aspetto

il temporale aspetto

che questo caldo arrivi alla fine

non riesco a dormire.

Aspetto qui, aspetto

il temporale aspetto

che questo caldo arrivi alla fine

e mi faccia dormire.

Certamente passerà qui su di me

immediatamente io mi scorderò di te

completamente e tornerò alla realtà

e lentamente la tua voce…la tua voce se ne andrà.

Aspetto qui, aspetto

il temporale aspetto

che questo caldo arrivi alla fine,

non riesco a dormire.

Aspetto qui, aspetto

il temporale aspetto

che questo caldo arrivi alla fine

e mi faccia dormire.

Under the surface....your voice will play on.....

Hubby is making shanklish - easily one of the stinkiest cheeses known to man.......

And Baby Girl's eating it like there's no tomorrow.  Haha....