no worries!

2 degrees. thank you 🥱

Hello. Read over this thread & choose another section for me to read tonight. Thanks!

That’s what I was thinking & then my thoughts remembered a beloved poem:

“Failing and Flying

BY JACK GILBERT

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48132/failing-and-flying

I’m not familiar with Clune— he sounds interesting. When John passed away a few years ago— The Paris Review shared this piece on Twitter & it grabbed my attention.

“It is as though the actual Ashbery poem were concealed from you, written on the other side of a mirrored surface, and you saw only the reflection of your reading. But by reflecting your reading, Ashbery’s poems allow you to attend to your attention, to experience your experience, thereby enabling a strange kind of presence. But it is a presence that keeps the virtual possibilities of poetry intact because the true poem remains beyond you, inscribed on the far side of the mirror.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/12/09/the-i-and-the-you/

So— not everyone enjoys his poetry. But I do! It’s uncanniness speaks to me.

God— I love John Ashbery #poetry

“ANOTHER KIND OF AFTERNOON

Remotely the unnamed keeps up with me. It must be quite a time since the last dignitaries visited with you. Yes, and I'm about out of breath

for all the quiet cells we kept company in. Must be a zillion years

Look, here comes one of them.

I know I just met the czar's brother

in a book report. Soon it was time to return home, past the midpoint, skipping-place. Fierce, how that cloud suffocates the sun, then is gracious for a while”

I’ve gotten along so long with just my iPhone (& an outdated Chromebook & iPad— I rarely use).

I have a company issued laptop that my IT can remote access whenever they desire— so that device does not count— work only.

The only time I mourned not having my own computer was when I deleted my 7 year old Twitter account — no where to put the zip files.

But now—that I’m on Nostr— I feel it’s time to rely on something else besides my ☁️

People have difficulty with emotions. Joe lived with complexity. Huxley’s story shows how people escape.

I agree. I was looking through my Joseph Campbell books (cannot find the quote) — but there is this story I always liked about him waiting for his wife (she was a dancer & studied with Martha Graham). Joe was impatient because she was late. & then he remembered about living in the present moment & I think he credits Huxley. And of course— everything he learned from Buddhism.

thank you 📚

Thank you for your insight. As for Lispector, yes— I have a 22 year old son & I’m not sure she would be as meaningful to him. Although— I’m not sure. One is never sure— that is why a variety of artistic & scientific expression is important.

You might be part of the reason I’m converted to this proclaimed truth. I once heard Ben Moser (English translator & biographer of Lispector)say that many in Brazil grow up reading Clarice Lispector. Is this true?

I read her later in life but I feel if I had read her earlier— certain parts of my life might have made sense to me.

looking forward to reading — thank you again

🤣 Happy Father’s Day

Thank you! I will order them for my summer reading list. I have a deep respect for the booker prize selection process.

I read both those Coelho books you mentioned & Brida

Lispector & of course Coelho. One of my favs: https://www.amazon.com/Witch-Portobello-Paulo-Coelho/dp/006133880X

If you are asking me— I have not read Ruffato yet. Do you have a recommendation from these selections or from another Brazilian artist?

💛💛💛💛🫂