Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?Colm Doherty: No,…
“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” — Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Most every year I travel to New York City in November for work and get to experience the city just before…
“You start earning a million dollars, and you get all the stuff that comes with it. On week one, when you get a nice house with a nice shower, and a nice car, that feels good. But by week two or three, that’s just your shower. That’s just your car. It’s just your house. You’ve…
“Our life is also what we have not dared to do … what escaped us.” — Javier Marias Javier Marias passed away on September 11th, triggering a series of tributes to a productive literary life. This quote stood out for me, for all the reasons you might expect from this particular blogger. If there’s a…
“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success.” — Henry David Thoreau I frequently tout the value of each day, going to great lengths to remind myself…
‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s lifeTryna make ends meetYou’re a slave to money then you dieI’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been downYou know the one that takes you to the placesWhere all the veins meet yeahNo change, I can changeI can change, I can changeBut I’m here in my moldI…
How many hoursdo I sit hereaching to do what I do not dowhen, suddenly,he throws a single note higher than the othersso that I feelthe green field of hope, and then, descending,all this world’s sorrow,so deadly, so beautiful.– Mary Oliver, Schubert Today is the anniversary of the death of Franz Schubert, who passed away at…
And I don’t believe in the existence of angelsBut looking at you I wonder if that’s trueBut if I did I would summon them togetherAnd ask them to watch over youTo each burn a candle for youTo make bright and clear your pathAnd to walk, like Christ, in grace and loveAnd guide you into my…
“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” – Carl Sagan I met an old friend at the airport, both of us heading for the same plane, and we caught up on each other’s lives until we boarded the plane and went our separate ways on the other end…
I regularly break the accepted rules of gardening. Rules like putting the tall plants in the back of the garden. But when something like a balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) or bee balm (Monarda) are shoved way to the back you lose something intimate that you gain when they’re right in your face. So my apologies…