Mark Strand - "The Night, The Porch"
To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.
Carvaggio - "Saint John the Baptist"
Blessings for the New Year
“Let there be peace. Grant goodness, blessing, and grace, constancy and compassion to us all.
Avinu — bless and unite all human beings in the light of your presence; for your light has shown us a holy path for living: devotion to love, generosity, blessedness, mercy, life, and peace.”
- from CCAR Machzor for Rosh Hashanah
Beth Orton - "Lonely"
Brittany Shepherd - Three Paintings
Marsden Hartley - Detail from Mount Katahdin, Autumn, No. 2 (1939-40)
Ashok Singha - Private Pools, New York City
Donna Summer - "I Feel Love"
Tennis - "Seafarer"
Paul Cezanne and Anselm Kiefer - Two Paintings
Cezanne - Grand Bouquet of Flowers - 1892-1895
Anselm Kiefer - The Morgenthau Plan - 2012
Hannah Arendt, from "Eichmann in Jersualem"
“Justice…demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.”