The Fountain

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes--I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless i know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally _regret_ life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing? Uh huh. Frank O'Hara

Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change? I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves. Meditations in an Emergency - Frank O'Hara - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French? Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth. Frank O'Hara -- Post From My iPhone

This time of year is always interesting. About midway through summer, there's this moment when the season changes as if it takes in a deep breathe to suddenly exhale, as if to mark change from the blast furnace of summer to what waits ahead with the promise of cool weather in the months to come. -- Post From My iPhone Location: Munro Ave,Columbus,United States

I just finished re-reading Annie Dillard's short little book "Holy the Firm" I highly recommend anything she has written. She thinks and writes about both simple and profound things in a way that prods and helps one to think about them in fresh and honest ways. Although her writing covers an uncommon range of topics, she is always as she says in "practicing unlicensed metaphysics in a teacup. She is not often conducive to extracting short quotations because she circumnavigates a topic, weaving a web of images and ideas that lead surreptitiously to small discoveries. However, here is a brief excerpt. It conveys much fuller meaning within the context of the book, but I thought it apt and quotable anyway: It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools—that we are sown into time like so much corn, that we are souls sprinkled at random like salt into time and dissolved here, spread into matter, connected by cells right down to our feet, and those feet likely...

Rule No. 224:  People who habitually mark e-mails as "urgent" usually possess neither the authority to send an urgent e-mail nor the intelligence to tell the difference. Rule No. 309:  The cooking time is always 10 to 12 percent longer than the recipe says. Rule No. 565:  If you can hear music through the headphones of the person sitting next to you, it will never be a song you like. Rule No. 582:  The more wintry the adjectives used on the package to describe the gum, the less flavorful the gum. Source: Esquire Magazine Feb 2007

I was mildly startled recently to realize that I have been friends with Peter Bowden for almost four decades. Much could be said about the value of that friendship to me, from the early days of high school and college—sharing long conversations that helped prod and shape our thinking, helped us begin to discover who we were and to contemplate who we wanted to be—right up to this day—when, although far too brief and sparsely scattered, our visits always help me to re-orient and re-think what is most meaningful and valuable in my life. When we were in Phenix City for Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, my younger daughter, Sarah (now 24), asked if we were going to get together with Peter and Valerie at Christmas, and if so, she didn't want to miss it. I suppose I had assumed that our annual visit was just another example of things children tolerate as they are obligated to tag along wherever their parents go. (I’m quite sure that our daughters could quickly name several e...