A Mid-February Sky Dance

Dance toward me, please, as


if you were a star


with light-years piled


on top of your hair,


smiling,

and I will dance toward you


as if I were darkness


with bats piled like a hat


on top of my head.


~Richard Brautigan

via stillbeating

this makes me think of just about all of my male friends. mostly rtn, rMcG, wss, tk, ta, ch. a lot of ch.

via xkcd

via stillbeating

via vicerag

an invention patented in 1979 which catches birds and dispenses them into a cage which allows cats to eat them at their leisure.

via forbes

GQ recently did a slideshow of the 50 most stylish cars in the last 50 years. with a few of their choices i quibble. most of them, not so much.

but these cars ... these cars. absolutely gorgeous. i make no apologies for this list. it is obviously my taste, disirregardless of what time period they come from. and so it probably reveals some character flaw that three of the five are from the

last 15 years.

the ferrari 308 GTB

the jaguar XKE (1969), called by Enzo Ferrari "the most beautiful car ever made."

the bmw z8 (1999 - 2005)

the audi a5/s5 (2008 - present)

the aston martin db9 -- perhaps my favorite car of all time

Failing and Flying

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.

— Jack Gilbert

via among the pines

Beach Attitudes

Blessed is the beach, survivor of tides.



And blessed the litter of crown conchs and pen shells, the dead


blue crab in all its electric raiment.



Blessed the nunneries of skimmers,


scuttering and rising, wheeling and falling and settling, ruffling


their red and black-and-white habits.


And blessed be the pacemakers and the peacemakers,



the slow striders, the arthritic joggers, scarred and bent under


their histories, for they’re here at last by the sunlit sea.



Blessed Peoria and Manhattan, Ottowa and Green Bay, Pittsburgh,


Dresden.



And blessed their children.



And blessed the lovers for they shall have one perfect day.



Blessed be the dolphin out beyond the furthest buoy,


slaughtering the bright leapers,


for they shall have full bellies.



Blessed, too, the cormorant and the osprey and the pelican


for they are the cherubim and seraphim and archangel.



And blessed be the gull, open throated, screeching, scolding


me to my face,



for he shall have his own place returned to him.


And the glossy lip of the long wave shall have the last kiss.

— Robert Dana

via among the pines