One of these daysI’m gonna sit down and write a long letterTo all the good friends I’ve knownAnd I’m gonna tryAnd thank them all for the good times togetherThough so apart we’ve grown— Neil Young, One of These Days Talking to an old friend, we asked each other about other old friends. Who have we…
“What makes a man beautiful? Isn’t it being an excellent man? And so, if you wish to be beautiful, young man, work at this, the acquisition of human excellence. But what is this? Observe who you praise, when you praise many people without partiality: do you praise the fair or the unfair? ‘The fair.’ Do…
And inside every turning leafIs the pattern of an older treeThe shape of our futureThe shape of all our historyAnd out of the confusionWhere the river meets the seaCame things I’d never seenThings I’d never seenI was brought to my sensesI was blind, but now that I can seeEvery signpost in natureSaid you belong to…
Through the windowwe could see how far away it was to the gates of April.Let the fire nowput on its red hatand sing to us.— Mary Oliver, November November comes to an end, and just like that, December is at our doorstep. The ambient light of incandescent and LED bulbs make total darkness an impossibility…
And you know that when the truth is toldThat you can get what you want or you can just get oldYou’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway throughWhy don’t you realize, Vienna waits for you?— Billy Joel, Vienna Today I deleted an old manuscript. The truth is, it was never going to get…
A friend asked me which five songs I would choose if I could listen to no other song but those five for the rest of my life. An impossible task, really. Beyond your wedding song, if you truly loved it, what do you choose? Hard rock? Dance music? Introspective music? Singalong songs? Jazz? Classical? Death…
“I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.” ― Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar I’m determined to read 5-6 more books before…
One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice —though the whole housebegan to trembleand you felt the old tugat your ankles.“Mend my life!”each voice cried.But you didn’t stop.You knew what you had to do,though the wind priedwith its stiff fingersat the very foundations,though their melancholywas…
If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chanceIf you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you backIf you’re gonna love somebodyHold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can‘Til you can’t— Cody Johnson, ‘Til You Can’t In America, this week is…
Many months ago I dropped what used to be Twitter from my life. I missed it immediately, not for the political extremism but for the carefully cultivated feed I’d developed over the years I had it. Sometimes I still miss that, because the alternatives aren’t all that great yet. But I keep pressing on with…