I will be the gladdest thing under the sun

That right there. That has been my expression every morning when I step out into the sunshine, and I take my little pup Gretchen and her short little Dachshund legs on a walk around our neighborhood. Being in Southern California, we don't experience the same kind of winter as the rest of the country. That doesn't mean, however, that winter hasn't been a grind. Work duties have increased, personal time has depleted, but I'm feeling optimistic and invigorated despite it all.

For weeks, I've been dreaming about the spring, and couldn't be happier that today marks its first official day. A vacation with the people I love the most is just around the corner, which might be the real reason there's been a bit more of a kick in my step recently. So in light of that, a little spring poetry on this happy, sunny Friday. And you're welcome for that picture of a smiling kitten in a hat box.

I will be the gladdest thing
    Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
    And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
    With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
    And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
    Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
    And then start down!
                   - Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"

 xx

(image via Yvette Inufio)

"O me! O life!"

1951 - 2014

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;

Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;

Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;

That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

- Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass"

Today, the world lost a comedy legend..  Goodbye Robin. xx

"Isn't this enough?"

via

Isn't this enough?
Just this world?
Just this…

Beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable, NATURAL world?

How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?

If you're so into your Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet…… is just fucking silly.
Or something like that.

Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
Then whatever, that's ok.

But here's what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long
As my great great great great uncleses and auntses.

Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine.

- Tim Minchin, "Storm"