Paxton

The New Necklace ~ William McGregor Paxton

Gerry likes this one that we saw last summer,
June 2014
at the Painting Women Exhibit
Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art
~ Las Vegas ~

These two Paxton paintings seemed perfect for
this month's book blog: "A Girl and Her Book"

Daredevil

Daredevil Geranium ~ Salmon Pelargonium

It's been a month, and I still can't remember,
but I don't think it was about geraniums!

"Can anyone remind me why I wrote
'Daredevil'
on my to do list for today?"

1.
Jason Fish:
Wouldn't happen to refer to the new-ish TV series on Netflix?

Gerry:
That was my guess . . . someone must have mentioned it to us
. . . maybe it was Jason!?

Brendan McInerney:
It's an amazing series.

2.
Leonard Orr:
I hope you were not planning to walk on a tightrope
between two Chicago skyscrapers
(with Panama bag filled with books).


3.
Michael Lipsey:
Perhaps you were going to jump the Grand Canyon
on your motorcycle?

4.
Anthony Cawdron:
Buy their IPA

5.
Cate Delong:
I think you meant to buy a new lipstick in hot pink.
What do these guys know!

[My favorite: Extreme Pink, lower left]

6.
Nicole Evans-Greek:
Swim in freezing weather?

7.
Sherry Owens Vollmer:
When you do remember,
please tell us because now I'm dying to know!!
My vote would be the lipstick...hahaha!

8.
Bruce Carriker:
This was the day you're going skydiving.

P.S.
How about "The Present"?

Corner of the Universe Here in Indiana

Vintage Property Marker in the Corner of Our Backyard

August 25, 2014

A Corner Still Standing But No More Fence

July 4, 2012

~ from a further distance you can see
that the Menard's Store and parking lot
has rendered the old fenceline obsolete

Wire Fence and Metal Post Swallowed Up by Tree!

October 28, 2014
A couple of years ago, a West Coast Acquaintance asked me, "Are people less obsessed with 'becoming SOMEONE' in the Middle West. I gather this a bit from Meghan Daum. It is 'off,' I think, in the land of so many venues for learning to 'let go' and 'just be' to be, like, seeking inclusion in e.g. 'the who's who of Zen.' It is not the way to simply enjoy and be creative. Any thoughts or senses? I guess you can only compare to Philly."

Hmmmmm. Does the fact that there is so little chance -- no matter where one lives -- of "becoming SOMEONE" offset the quest for such? I'd say that even out here in the Mid -- not Middle! -- west, we were pretty much raised on the youthful aspirations expressed by Luisa in The Fantasticks:

"This morning a bird woke me up.
It was a lark, or a peacock,
Or something like that.
Some strange sort of bird that I'd never heard.
And I said 'hello.'
And it vanished: flew away.
The very minute that I said 'hello.'
It was quite mysterious
So do you know what I did?
I went to my mirror and brushed my hair two hundred times
Without stopping.
And as I was brushing it, my hair turned gold!
No, honestly! Gold!
And then red.
And then some sort of a deep blue when the sun hit it.
I'm sixteen years old,
And every day something happens to me.
I don't know what to make of it.
When I get up in the morning and get dressed,
I can tell:
Something's different.
I like to touch my eyelids
Because they're never quite the same.

Oh! Oh! Oh!
I hug myself till my arms turn blue,
Then I close my eyes and cry and cry
Till the tears come down
And I can taste them. Ah!
I love to taste my tears!
I am special!
I am special!
Please, God, please --
Don't let me be normal!" [emphasis added]

Lyrics by Tom Jones
Music by Harvey Schmidt

See more @ You're Out Walking, Scarred But Standing,
Scars: Without a Hurt the Heart is Hollow

In the end, I told my West Coast Pal that Zen might speak to some, not all. Of course, to live a creative life, set apart somehow, I've always surrounded myself with people who crave that.

A Beautiful Southern Indiana Gateway to the Soul
Photographed by my creative friend Diane Coiro

May 26, 2015

P.S.
Click to see few more Indiana fence posts . . .

Summer Solstice House

Summer Solstice House with Day Lilies & Mighty Oak

Previous Summer Solstice Posts

2009: Summer Solstice Connection

2010: Summer Solstice ~ Merry Months

2011: Never Above, Never Below, Always Beside

2012: Summer Solstice Elves

2013: Earth-maker Pain-bearer Life-giver

Stephen's Dilemma

Seasoned Hacking Chesnut
or
Coffin - shaped Snuffbox?

Which would you pick?

You can read more about Stephen's Dilemma
on my recent posts

~ His Little Snuffbox ~
&
~ The Young Language of Stephen Dedalus ~

@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

"Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe
. . .

Stephen Dedalus is my name,
Ireland is my nation,
Clongowes is my dwellingplace,
And heaven my expectation"

from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce

Another Monday

Writer's Block?

A Case of the Mondays?

Just Another Manic Monday?

Some Rainy Days and Mondays are like that!

**********

Preference

Stuck with another day,
how should we pass
it?

If anything worked for you before
-- I'd give that

preference.

Mirabai (1498 - 1550*)
16th - Century Indian Mystic
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
*Differing dates
suggested by various editors.

P.S.
See also: "Fools Who Have Wit"

Cityscape

Sam's Cityscape ~ 1999

Good luck Sam McCartney,
bound for New York, New York!

“On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.”

“By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere. . . ."

"But the city makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin-the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled. . . .”

from Here Is New York by E.B. White
American Writer (1899 - 1985)
Recipient of Honorary Pulitzer, 1978
Famed for children's favorites, Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little;
also The Elements of Style; and many, many wonderful essays
New York, Lello Sky ~ 1997

More Artwork
from the University City New School Years
West Philadelphia

Update ~ September 2016
"For a Long Life, Retire to Manhattan"
Sam, hang on to your apartment . . .
Dad and I can retire there! Right, Gerry?

Your House, Of Course

Hanging House ~ Stanford University Outdoor Art

Where am I going on this glorious journey?

To your house,

of course.

Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Persian Spiritual Sage

When recalling her first visit to New York City,
American essayist Anna Quindlen writes,
Something deep inside me just said "Yes."

from "City Kid" in Living Out Loud, 227

Some houses can make you feel the same!

Live Without Thought of Dying

For my sister and brother - in - law, Peg & Ron
and for my friends Pat & Alan

Beautifully Camouflaged Duck

Live Without Thought of Dying

We work so hard to fly
and no matter what heights we reach
our wings get folded near a candle,
at the end,

for nothing can enter God but Himself.
Our souls are some glorious substance of the divine
that no sentry wants to stop.

Live without thought of dying,
for dying is not a truth.

We have swayed on the sky's limb together,
many years there the same leaves grow.

But then they get that look in their eyes
and bid farewell to what they disdained or cherished.

This life He gave the shell, the daily struggles we know,
sit quiet for a minute, dear, feel the wind,
let Light touch you.

Live without thought of dying,
for dying is not a truth.

~ St. Catherine of Siena, 1347 - 1380

A Flash of Goldfish?
Rushing past in the twinkling of an eye!

All photos taken
at the Sheraton Hotel, Palo Alto, California

Twine

Best of Both Worlds: Tea ~and~ Wine!

" 'Come for Twine'
is what I write on the invitations.
We'll start at 4:30 with tea, and then,
because the sun will be over the yardarm,
wine and cocktails."

drawings & twine invite
from the website
of artist and wise woman
Susan Branch

"Drink tea, a friend to those seeking wisdom."

from "A Simple Song of Fun"
found in
The Second Dalai Lama: His Life and Teachings
translated by Glenn H. Mullin

Thanks to my friend Cate
for sharing with me the wisdom of the Dalai Lama
and being my co - fan of everything Susan Branch!

Previously on the Quotidian Kit:

Autumn ~ Winter

Spread Before Me A World

University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Philadelphia, PA

Visiting the Museum with Grandma Rosanne in 1996


Map

Flat as the table
it’s placed on.
Nothing moves beneath it
and it seeks no outlet.
Above—my human breath
creates no stirring air
and leaves its total surface
undisturbed.

Its plains, valleys are always green,
uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,
while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue
beside the tattered shores.

Everything here is small, near, accessible.
I can press volcanoes with my fingertip,
stroke the poles without thick mittens,
I can with a single glance
encompass every desert
with the river lying just beside it.

A few trees stand for ancient forests,
you couldn’t lose your way among them.

In the east and west,
above and below the equator—
quiet like pins dropping,
and in every black pinprick
people keep on living.
Mass graves and sudden ruins
are out of the picture.

Nations’ borders are barely visible
as if they wavered—to be or not.

I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.

By Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, 1923-2012
Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh

Soil Map at the Dallas Airport

License Plate Map by Mark Dudley

P.S.
HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY BEN!

See also: In A Museum & Lot's Wife