Don’t ask. Don’t ask how many times I’ve watched this loop. Source: gifycat. Thank you Jack.
Riding Metro North. Walking backwards.
7:34 p.m. train. Grand Central station. Last peak hour train home. Standing room only. Heads down, glowing screens, wifi slow, thousands sucking on the same straw. Pages loading slowly, then stopping altogether. One head, after another, mine too, lifting in frustration. Beach ball spinning, locked up. There’s a message in this. To thousands of us sitting on this train. Whether we are listening, now that is another story.
8:31 p.m. Walk home. Down the platform. Up the stairs. Across the bridge over I-95. Up the hill – and the last 1/4 mile stretch, before losing this tie, this shirt sticking to my back, and these leather shoes strapped around my feet for last 12 hours. Free me, please!
I see them in the distance. Two boys, 7 or 8 years old, kicking a soccer ball on front yard. Mom sitting on the porch reading. When’s the last time I’ve seen this? [Read more…]
The Line and Beyond
Don’t get misled by the floppy ears and the deliciousness. He’s a wild beast. A Wild Beast.
My eyes take inventory of the damage.
There are four swollen puncture marks. All on the same hand. One gouge on the bulging vein on top of the right hand, two side by side on the wrist two inches above it, and one lightly visible on the fatty part of the skin above the thumb and index finger.
I slide my thumb into the palm in my right hand. I grip. Pain shoots up my hand, wrist and arm. Self-inflicted. Sort of. Not really.
It was all triggered by my step counter flashing red, urging me to get up off the couch – Walk! Harmless enough.
Rachel is glued to The Bachelor. (Mind numbing trash). I’m catching up on the morning papers. And Red Lights are still flashing.
I get up.
Zeke eyes me as I make a loop around the kitchen, the living room and the family room.
I make a second loop, and I pick up the pace heading into the third. Zeke jumps off the ottoman and gives chase.
I run. [Read more…]
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
Charlie wants his friend to wake up and play!
Snack Time!
Image Credit. (I learned this morning that this cute critter is a “Sugar Glider” from the possum family. It is native to Australia. It’s name comes from its love of sugary nectarous foods (no wonder I was drawn to it) and its ability to glide through the air, much like a flying squirrel.
Habits
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
— Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (1885 – 1972) was born in Hailey, Idaho and was an American expatriate poet. During his stay in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. His political views ensure that his work remains controversial; in 1933 Time magazine called him “a cat that walks by himself, tenaciously unhousebroken and very unsafe for children.” Hemingway nevertheless wrote: “The best of Pound’s writing – and it is in the Cantos – will last as long as there is any literature.”
I resolved that at 30 I would know more about poetry than any man living, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was “indestructible,” what part could not be lost by translation and – scarcely less important – what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated. In this search I learned more or less of nine foreign languages, I read Oriental stuff in translations, I fought every University regulation and every professor who tried to make me learn anything except this, or who bothered me with “requirements for degrees.”
Sources: Photograph – Thank you Carol @ Radiating Blossom via Etsy.com. Poem: Journal of Nobody
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week!
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week!
T.G.I.F.: And the Cute Award goes to…Otis!
Source: Thank you OCD: Obsessive Corgi Disorder
You’re my best friend…
1 minute clip. I’m confident that this clip, paired with Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend“, will put you in the right frame of mind to kick off your day.