№ 276. Wind, Sand and Stars

Western Sahara

“....I looked about me. Luminous points glowed in the darkness. Cigarettes punctuated the humble meditations of worn old clerks.

I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny.

№ 275. Geopolitics and Exit Strategies

Empires crumble, unions divorce, monarchs fade and historicities recede into forgotten myths. It is really just a matter of time --- in days, months, years, decades, centuries or light years (distance is a measure of time, because of the continuum).

Thus passes the glory of the world....

№ 274. Mercy Twice Struck

Storenvy

№ 273. Confession

Woody Quotes

I confess.
I tell him all things.
He nods, eyes closed.

A turn of phrase
Catches him.
He smiles, eyes still shut.

I ask for
Absolution
And penance.

He grants me
Neither.
He sends me off

To work on
Bach's Preludium
After Hanon.

№ 272. Dog's Death

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

by John Updike.

№ 271. Looking for Nakata's Keystone

I'm narrating in reverse as I recall the trips to Kyoto and Nara last March. No rules. No words.

№ 270. Mt. Inarii

"Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is." - Haruki Murakami

Old LPs & Keystones 

Here we stand: Backpack
Stuffed with metaphors;

Talismans to ward