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 in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

(by Eric Hoffer)

…and — not from whiskey river — this:

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

(by Billy Collins)

Finally, the deep-blue version (lyrics follow):

You Don’t Know Me

You give your hand to me
Then you say hello
I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don’t know me

No, you don’t know the one
Who dreams of you at night
And longs to kiss your lips
And longs to hold you tight
Oh I’m just a friend
That’s all I’ve ever been
’cause you don’t know me

I never knew
The art of making love
Though my heart aches
With love for you
Afraid and shy
I’ve let my chance to go by
The chance that you might
Love me, too

You give your hand to me
And then you say good-bye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
You’ll never never know
The one who loves you so
Well, you don’t know me

[break]

You give your hand to me, baby
Then you say good-bye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
No, no, you’ll never ever know
The one who loves you so
Well, you don’t know me

(by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold, performed by B.B. King and Diane Schuur)