From whiskey river:
Stone
Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash his teeth inside a tiger.
I am happy with a stone.
From the outside the stone is a riddle;
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though [...]

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[This is the first in a series of every-now-and-then posts about popular songs with long lives.]
Some great songs go through subtle changes over time: the original lyrics are updated to correspond to more modern diction and taste; rhymes get improved or dropped altogether; refrains are added and subtracted; and of course new arrangements can, with [...]

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A series of professional and personal disappointments. A young man on the brink of his 30s. No idea where his life is bound — forward, over the precipice? or backward, over that one? — or what he’ll find once he gets there. A motorcycle.
The details of the disappointments aren’t important. (Once you reach a certain [...]

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You know how in the Warner Brothers “Road Runner” cartoons, the coyote is forever running (or riding a rocket, or pogo-sticking, or being launched by an ACME Giant Slingshot) off a cliff? and at some moment he realizes that he’s done so, and as soon as he realizes it he loses all forward motion, waves [...]

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From whiskey river:
At Blackwater Pond
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?
(Mary Oliver)
And:
In the tea ceremony, the expression [...]

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Per usual, the Friday selection from whiskey river:
We suffer not from our vices and our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.
(by Daniel J. Boorstin)
…and a bonus:
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly [...]

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The scene: an elegant restaurant.
A waiter crosses the floor, headed your way. His dress is formal, his manner both imperious and humble. As he approaches, you can’t help admiring the grace with which he avoids other diners, other staff, furniture placed apparently where he’s most likely to collide with it. You wonder — you doubt [...]

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Like many — most? — people who like to think of themselves as creative, I’ve had my share of disappointments with the success of others‘ ideas:

Sometimes I’ve used a plot device, a character type, even a simple phrase in something I hope to have published… only to find it in some other work already published [...]

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From whiskey river:
September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.
(Alexander Theroux)
For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go.
(George Washington Cable)
…and:
If we were not beings who pass quickly away like all other things, none [...]

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Continuing last Friday’s meditation on the topic of sight, and the things which we might see differently “if only”…
First, from whiskey river’s commonplace book*:
Picasso is riding on a train and someone sits down next to him.
Recognizing who he is, the person asks, “Why don’t you paint people the way they really are?”
Picasso asks, “What do [...]

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