Category: Reading

23 Sep

Gloomily. Pauses. Then Cheerfully.

(gloomily). It’s too much for one man. (Pauses. Then cheerfully.) On the other hand …
13 Sep

Sometimes a banana is just a … quasar

Sometimes a banana is just a … quasar
01 Jul

John, your furry ones are also pining for you

01 Jul

I’ve ordered travel gear for the chickens

24 May

Whence Is the Flower?

Chelsea Flower Show 2005 — Britain’s greatest gardening show. The BBC has full coverage throughout this week. On Being Asked, Whence is the Flower?In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,To please the desert and the sluggish brook.The purple petals, fallen [...]
10 May

“… truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen”

Ariana Huffington’s Blog is up — and I’ve not yet gone through it comprehensively because I can’t get past Day One and the featured post by John Cusack on Hunter S. Thompson’s memorial service. I hear his voice (Cusack’s, not HST’s) and find that instead of gazing up from the kitchen table at [...]
07 May

Be the ball

Samadhi, or concentration of the mind, is the second of the three parts of the Buddha’s teaching, namely Sila (morality), Samadhi (concentration), and Panna (insight/wisdom). It has been taught by the Buddha using 40 different objects of meditation, such as mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati). Upon development of Samadhi, one’s mind becomes purified of defilements, calm, [...]
05 May

Lady Macbeth, Grendel’s Mother and Laura Bush

Surprising reference to Grendel’s mom in an article on surprising moves by first ladies — excerpted from The week the first ladies went mad in the Guardian via Salon: … by far the best first-lady moment of the week came courtesy of Lucy Kibaki, one of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s two wives, who stomped into [...]
25 Apr

Drooling and slurring like a drunk

This morning, as I nearly jerked out of the dentist’s chair, he said: “Oh, hit your funny bone, didn’t I?” “Mohagh [Bone, in English]?!” I asked. “No, not really your bone,” he chuckled, “just your nerve. You’ll be VERY numb now. Sometimes I go for months without hitting one, and then [...]
24 Apr

Song of … Nemesia

Today I planted pansies atop the stone walls around the chicken coop John built and filled the hanging baskets on the back porch with moss and cranberry-colored Nemesia hybrid, which should hang down nicely in contrast with the pale yellow of the house. Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d …~ Whitman [Song of [...]