Tag: reality

We all have that feeling, and then we come back to reality.

Live & Learn8 Comments

Andrew, can you end with a family-friendly joke? This was a Louis C.K. joke that Seinfeld told when they were doing a conversation — comedians on comedians. The joke is something like: You know, going on vacation with the family, I put the kids in the car seats. I put my wife in the car. Put the coffees in the coffee holder. I put the bags in the back. I close the trunk. I close my wife’s door. I close the kids’ door. And when I’m walking from my wife’s door to my door, that’s my vacation.

I know exactly the joke you’re talking about. I think about it constantly. It’s so good, and at its core you could say quite mean. That’s the beauty of a joke. It allows us to access these darker thoughts and emotions that we have: He loves his family, but in that moment, they’re safe, and I don’t have to deal with them. We all have that feeling, and then we come back to reality. And that’s what would be awesome: If people get that these things that we’re saying — it’s just what we feel in that little moment, and then we step back.

— Andrew Schulz, “‘Podcast Bro,’ Might Be America’s Foremost Political Journalist.” Interviewed by David Marchese. (NY Times, June 21, 2025)

Walking. With those unheard are sweeter?

Live & Learn44 Comments

4:50 a.m. Late jump. Scrambling to get out before sunrise. 816 consecutive (almost) days on my daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. 816 days, like in a row.

I walk.

Cloud cover is heavy, humidity is heavier. Twilight is patchy.

I was up late last night reading Seán Hewitt’s memoir All Down Darkness Wide.  He shares an excerpt from a Keat’s Poem: ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.’ And Hewitt continues…”And what of them.”

And what of them.

I didn’t find Keats, or poetry, until late in life. And like the toddler scrambling to catch his parent who lurches ahead, I’m still playing catch-up.  I thought I understood the lines, but lacked confidence to say, yep, that’s right, you got it DK.  So, I shut down my Kindle, and googled the lines for an interpretation by Meursault to validate my understanding:

This line from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is an example of Keats arguing that the power of thought, the imagination and anticipation is often greater than the act itself. Music and “melodies” that are imagined and anticipated are always in tune. They are played perfectly. A melody composed in the mind, cannot possibly be played badly or incorrectly. There is no possibility of error or an imperfect note. Therefore, Keats believes that imagining something brings more fulfillment and contentment than a “real” version ever could. He thinks that anticipation and expectation often outweighs the copy in the real world and that something real can only be disappointing compared to the imaginary.

I re-read the interpretation again, paused, shut down my Kindle, and fell asleep noodling the unheard.

So, back to this morning.

I walk.

…the imagination and anticipation is often greater than the act…they are played perfectly…therefore, Keats believes that imagining something brings more fulfillment and contentment that a “real” version ever could..

To my right, there’s a Great Blue Heron.  His long legs, and webbed feet slide across the ever-so-green algae.

To my left, there’s an Egret, ever-so-white as fresh snow.  Her feet in ankle-deep, cyan (?) tinted water, pausing from fishing for a moment. Go head DK, here’s my good side. I’ll wait for you to get your focus just right.

My imagination bringing more fulfillment and contentment than this?

Sorry.

That’s bullsh*t.

Notes:

  • Photos: DK @ Daybreak. 5:24 a.m. July 30, 2022. 74° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here  (birds), and here (landscape)
  • Meursault (John Keats Forum, April 16, 2009)

none of us can bear too much reality

Live & Learn51 Comments

Thinking about swifts has made me think more carefully about the ways in which I’ve dealt with difficulty. When I was small I comforted myself with thoughts of layers of rising air; later I hid myself among the whispers of recorded works of fiction. We all have our defences. Some of them are self-defeating, but others are occasions for joy: the absorption of a hobby, the writing of a poem, speeding on a Harley, the slow assembly of a collection of records or seaside shells. ‘The best thing for being sad,’ said T. H. White’s Merlin, ‘is to learn something.’ All of us have to live our lives most of the time inside the protective structures that we have built; none of us can bear too much reality. We need our books, our craft projects, our dogs and knitting, our movies, gardens and gigs. It’s who we are. We’re held together by our lives, our interests, and all our chosen comforts. But we can’t have only those things, because then we can’t work out where we should be headed.

—  Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (Grove Press, August 25, 2020)

Photo Salvi Danes, (Barcelona) (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

It’s been a long day

Live & Learn44 Comments

Phoenix, AZ.

Visiting Brother.

Time: Now.

I was inspired by the full Moon over the Camelback Mountains the night before.

I was further inspired by a Moon quote from a Murakami book that I came across this morning.

So much inspiration is grist for a blog post.  As the bio suggests, if it moves me, it goes up. No other criteria required. Full stop.

Tell my Brother that I’m going out to take some shots of the Moon with my Smartphone.  How hard can it possibly be, right?

I step outside.

I walk a block looking in all directions.

Then I walk a second block.  It was a cloudless day in Phoenix. How hard can it be? Pretty damn hard without the Moon.

I get in car.  I drive 5 miles east.  Why East?  Because the Sun Rises in the East.  So Moon must be East. Does this make any sense? It gets Dark, the Moon is there. Does it rise at all?

I could have Googled it before I left (“Does the Moon Rise?  “What time does the Moon rise in Phoenix today?”)

But, WTH would I do that for?

In 50+ years, it has never dawned on me that the Moon wouldn’t be there waiting for me when it was dark on a cloudless night.

I drive back. Wow. Empty handed. Embarrassing and beyond.

“What took so long?”

“I couldn’t find the Moon?”

“You’ve got to be kidding?’

“No Moon.”

“OK Smart a**.  Does the Moon rise or is it just there?”

He has no clue either. Same root, same stock.  Makes sense.

He’s watching me write this Post.  He’s staring, wondering: “You aren’t really going to tell the world that you don’t know Jack about the Moon are you?”

Apparently I’m going to do exactly that. Yep.

I’m connected to my own reality here.

“We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”

~ Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart 

Notes:

How to describe the way these two waves of reality, the world and dreams, meet, do battle

Live & Learn18 Comments

Gosia-janik

How to describe the way these two waves of reality, the world and dreams, meet, do battle, fail to reach agreement, conclude short-lived treaties that are immediately broken, how at dawn they stare at one another incomprehendingly, begin to build bridges again by evening, and then once more turn furiously upon each other, with a passion mixing love and hate, and afterward, drift to sleep by the side of a highway leading nowhere, on an embankment where weeds grow with their heady scent.

~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay (April 4, 2017)

Notes: