[Above, a set of miniature Egyptian canopic jars depicting, according to the retailer, “Anubis, Horus, Monkey God, Prince.”* Click image for original.]
From whiskey river (which this week celebrated eight years of bringing to the Web wisdom about things we generally know, but generally do not speak of):
Shinto
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.Eight million Shinto deities **
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us —
touch us and move on.
(Jorge Luis Borges)
