red tail lights ahead …
watching, looking, mirror glance …
white headlights behind
Driving in the pre-dawn darkness …
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Synchronicity II, 1983, Sting
Dressing for Success?
Today, one polo pony …
equals one necktie
I admit that I have a closet full of polo shirts and I cannot remember the last time I wore a tie to work.
BUT let me say that I bought all my polo button downs and summer shirts at Value Village or Thrift Stores or Goodwill.
I get a nice shirt for $4 and someone else paid for the pony.
Invisible Force?
Wake up aroma power!
Just smell the coffee!
May the force be with you.
Is the coffee theme getting worn out?
Forced?
Siri, Play Music
Playing all songs; Shuffled: plays …
Mozart to Motown!
A range and amount of music unimaginably available at the sound of my voice. Kings, Emperors, Princes of Industry never had such music at their beck and call.
Here in my hand, (I shouldn’t say that as it’s illegal to hold your device and drive in Georgia), in my car, I think of how many cassette tapes it would take to equal what I have on this stupid thing.
Sunshine this morning!
Flooding through windows. My Soul …
claps its hands and sings!
Based on one of my favorite lines of poetry and just the words to describe the feeling of the sunshine pouring in this morning. With all due respect to my friends and family up north, weather in Georgia cannot compare with the snow. But, it seems it has been so long since we have seen the sun down here.
Somewhere, Jim Harrision I think, writes that Spring Time moves north, 5 minutes every day …
It was Harrison who has a great quote on the Yeats poem … if I could only find it.
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed © 1961 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.
Today, my iPad.
As a kid, my World Wide Web?
Creston Library!
When I say the the Creston Branch Library, I mean the one in the old OLD KENT BANK building.
Were more books ever crammed into a small place? It’s aisle’s went back and around and sideways and at angles. I LOVED this place. I think I carried my first Temporary card (which allowed me, as a six year old, to check out 2 books) in my wallet for 40 years.
Everything and anything you needed to know was in their somewhere and the librarians knew how to find it.
I got to work for the Grand Rapids Public Library in the early ’90s and being paid to answer bizarre questions about local history and anything else was the most satisfying job I have ever had.
On a gloomy day,
a good feeling from the radio –
The Lark Ascending
On a day when I should be saluting George Washington this is an honest reflection of the moment.
On a very gray and foggy morning in Atlanta when I have lost all motivation, I was writing a note to a friend and thanking them for at least giving me a good feeling on a gloomy day and after I wrote that I noticed my online radio station, Classic FM, from London, was playing Edward Elgar’s Lark Ascending and I had to stop and listen until it was done
My Song? Black Coffee …
Sarah Vaughn, the Divine One,
all I do, is pour …
Sarah Vaughn, the Divine One. So said Ella Fitzgerald and I am not prepared to argue. Here is a link to a digital recording of an old 78 record from 1949. For me, the hiss of the needle on the record just adds to the appeal.
Lyrics
I’m feeling mighty lonesome
Haven’t slept a wink
I walk the floor and watch the door
And in between I drink
Black coffee
Love’s a hand-me-down brew
I’ll never know a Sunday
In this weekday room
I’m talking to the shadows
One o’clock to four
And Lord, how slow the moments go
When all I do is pour
Black coffee
Since the blues caught my eye
I’m hanging out on Monday
My Sunday dream’s too dry
Now, a man is born to go a-loving
A woman’s born to weep and fret
And stay at home and tend her oven
And drown her past regrets
In coffee and cigarettes
I’m moody all the morning
Mourning all the night
And in between, it’s nicotine
And not much hard to fight
Coffee
Feeling low as the ground
It’s driving me crazy
This waiting for my baby
To maybe come around
Mmh, mmh, mmh
Songwriters: Francis Joseph Burke / Paul Francis Webster
Cellphone! A great name!
With one, freedom lost, in cells,
staring at black bars.
black, bleak, comfortless
cold windy rain, cursed sleet
stay under covers
No Haiku For You 