P.S.

One last thing, for those who may be depending on the Daily for this information:

March 20, 1:48 a.m. EDT

Farewell, Gentle Reader!

It's time to move on. I think I've exhausted this format for myself (though hopefully not so much for you!) and it's time to A) take my more personal musings private, and B) explore other formats and venues. Something will be forthcoming, though not sure when. I will post info here on where and how to find me; check back in a couple months if you like. Or let me know, send me an email, call, whatever and I'll be sure to alert you if there's something to see. You know I am Roger at the rrbrand address in the dot-com domain. Mid- to late-May might be a good time to check, to see the new Utah photos — southeast this time, Cedar Mesa.

All of these ramblings will still be here if you ever want to browse them again; there are a lot of brilliant "gems of others" to be found here! Meantime, I've been reading one Mary Oliver poem every night of late, and so will leave you with these two...

The Ponds
by Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided—
and that one wears an orange blight—
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away—
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.


Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead—
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging—

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted—

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Take A Minute To View These:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/11/mccainobama-parody-like_n_86017.html

Look at both of them. Well worth a couple minutes.

Yes, you can!

Note to self...

...I may need this again someday. Or you, gentle reader, may need it now:

Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples

From the New York Times. An exerpt:

"And recent brain-scan studies show that romantic love really can last years into a marriage. Last week, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Albuquerque, researchers presented brain-scan data on several men and women who had been married for 10 or more years. Interviews and questionnaires suggested they were still intensely in love with their partners. Brain scans confirmed it, showing increased brain activity associated with romantic love when the subjects saw pictures of their spouses."

The Daily Crisis

"Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."

— Anton Chekhov

Which will it be?

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

— Edith Wharton

Me, too, Edith. Me, too.

In Slovakia

Can we deny what the tea leaves say? Or other signs?

In Slovakia they grow potatoes
and cabbages
and women with strong backs and hearts.

The gypsy woman with her breasts pushed up pale
through a baggy dress printed with flowers
and a faded fringed shawl
takes his hand in hers and spreads it wide.
Her crooked finger traces his lines.
From underneath the knotted scarf
(that holds her golden hair off her
pale aquiline face and the gold hoops
of her earrings;
odd
this gypsy milky white and fair-haired)
her eyes narrow and she sighs.

It is not quiet here. There are
night noises, insects, dogs,
and on the other side of the wooden wagon
near where the horses are tethered
laughter and singing and a mandolin.
The fire crackles, too, nearer, and casts an unstill
glow in the gypsy's eyes.

"What?"

Her eyes look into and through him and then,
away.
Almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head.

This ending isn't quite right yet, I know, though I've tried several things. I'll keep working on it.

Prostrate in Prayer

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

— Rumi

Speak in Me

Speak in me this day, God
Echo in my heart
And resound through all creation:

Voice of Love
Voice of wonder
Voice of praise
Voice of thanksgiving
Voice of kindness
Voice of patience
Voice of encouragement
Voice of blessing
Voice of truth.

Snow

IV.

No sound
Where sound always is
Snow falling.

Double-Good Day!

What could be better than a no-drive day, except a no-drive day spent watching six inches of snow fall?

This town is beautiful, and strikingly so in the snow. I walked up to the cemetery to watch the snow and the night fall. Deliciously quiet. I could see the lights of Taneytown, and Oz (the Lehigh plant in Union Bridge), but not the trails at Liberty.

The darkness descended ever so quietly — there was no space between the day and the dusk and the dark — even as the snow stopped falling.

You Go, Girl!

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

— Maureen Dowd

I, Slovak...

Interesting (from The Writer's Almanac, where else?)...

It's the birthday of novelist, short story writer, and playwright Karel Capek, (books by this author) born in Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia (1890). A writer of novels, visionary romances, travel books, stories, and essays, Karel is best known for his plays, especially R.U.R. (1921), which introduced the word "robot" to the world. He got the idea when he was reading while riding in an automobile. He looked up from his reading and suddenly the crowds looked to him like artificial beings. At the premiere of R.U.R., audiences and critics were both fascinated and terrified by its vision of a technically advanced society unable to control its ultimate labor-saving creation, the robot.

Why, why, why?!?

"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order."

—Eudora Welty

Happy New Year!

Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power —

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

—Kalidasa
India, 4th century A.D.