This utterly breaks with the whiskey river Fridays tradition here. But the most recent post there seems to demand passing around among ourselves. From whiskey river: I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can’t [...]

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From whiskey river (italicized portion): People don’t realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature… I think a person finally emerges from all this nonsense when he becomes aware that his life has a much larger meaning he has been ignoring — [...]

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[Image of Fay Ray, by William Wegman (1988), found here, as well as elsewhere on the Web (e.g., Style Me to the Moon)] From whiskey river: My Hand See how the past is not finished here in the present it is awake the whole time never waiting it is my hand now but not what [...]

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[Video above: "Rio," by Hey Marseilles. Lyrics at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis [...]

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From whiskey river: If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next — if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions — you’d be doomed. You’d be as ruined as God. You’d be a stone. You’d never eat or drink or laugh or [...]

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From whiskey river: Moonrise And who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, [...]

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[See the note at the end of this post for info about the above song.] From whiskey river: Falling Long before daybreak none of the birds yet awake rain comes down with the sound of a huge wind rushing through the valley trees it comes down around us all at the same time and beyond [...]

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From whiskey river: It was almost dark on an early summer eve, and the forest was never more enchanting than now, at dusk. At dusk the mountain begins to withdraw its force back into itself and become quiescent. If you too can become quiescent, so still that you can’t think of your name, you can [...]

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[Image above, "Don't Wait for Tomorrow" (original oil on board, 92cm x 122cm), by Nadeem Chughtai] From whiskey river: I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just [...]

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[Image: "Little Red Riding Hood," copyright Amanda Gray; all rights reserved. See original at her blog, what now] From whiskey river: Cutting Loose for James Dickey Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, you sing. For no reason, you accept the way of being lost, cutting loose from all else and electing a world where you [...]

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