THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

This painting is titled "Waiting for the Muse," which was done for a friend of mine, in recognition of the friendship and inspired by a sketch she gave me.

Valentine's Day

For those who are coupled...or in a triad, v, quad, group setting, or even just plain unattached, happy Valentine's Day.

Of course, every day should be Valentine's Day.

A friend of mine is getting married today. It is not a bad day to get married. I wish her all the best.

I Plan to Live to 100 Years....

...if not longer.



We all have to have goals for ourselves. I figure 100 is a good age to pass, barring any unforseen accidents or acts of god. Get my daughter through high school and college, move on to Spain, live in a small coastal town on either side of Barcelona, make new friends, have old ones visit, make love to a redhead or two, paint and write, drink wine and whiskey and be happy.

Abraham Lincoln was born 200 years ago on this day, February 12, 1809.

RFK is one of my favorite politicians of the latter 20th century...if for no other reason than he was able to evolve as a human being and a politician, overcome some of his demons, and fight for what he believed was truly right. His speech on April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, was priceless. I believe that he probably would have won the nomination and most likely the presidency, had he not been killed in California. But he did get killed, we will never know, and we will always wonder how history would have been changed.


Bobby Kennedy also had a sense of humor, which is why I chose this quote for the day:


"People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him."

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."

Vincent van Gogh

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


--Rudyard Kipling