vases with faces and pine cones for hats
books strewn here and there about painted houses and childhood ramblings and motorcycle journeys in the sun
coffee brewing and candles burning and fox calls in the dead of night

songs from this album: Madman Across the Water by Elton John, 1971
these books: Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler, 2001
and Death in Kashmir by M. M. Kaye, 1984
home made sourdough crackers
beautiful geraniums and wilting petunias
anxiety and
gratitude
and a sense of being lost within the walls of a deep dream

Once she’s locked the attic door behind her she feels a sense of release, a crack of light in the darkness. What is the name for what she’s feeling?
She wishes it were liberation.
from The Age of Light, by Whitney Scharer, 2019

When I come across a long lost book, for example I flip to random pages and see if they have anything to tell me.
from Keep Going by Austin Kleon, 2019


kicking leaves on walks
berry pies
Gene Autry
this book: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
young bucks eating pumpkins
gathering greens from the fields
a healing pup
balsam candles

words can be so heavy

And I thought, as he reached down to brush the hair from my eyes, the trouble with dreaming is that we eventually wake up.
from The Year of the Monkey, by Patti Smith, 2019

the sun kissing the edges of leaves
walks along the river
this book, Hold Still by Sally Mann
the smell of peony and rose
Johnny Cash singing, Daddy Sang Bass
the Laurel Highlands on a cool, fall morning



Amo, amas, amat, she thought. Amamus, amatis, amant. Their Latin teacher had made them march through the halls chanting conjugations. I love, you love, he, she, or it loves. It loves? That made no sense. We love. You (plural) love. They love. And then, of course, the perfect passive subjunctive – would that I had been loved – the saddest conjugation of them all.
From The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller, 2012

The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become.
from The Journal 1837–1861 by Henry David Thoreau