(weird and silly) Things I Want:

(This is my second entry today, so you can be sure it's raining outside, so you can be sure I'm drinking too much coffee.) In life, I'm inclined to write lists. Once in a while, my lists have an extraordinary or weird aspect. For example, on a grocery list, I will sometimes include an item that I could never afford or even find, like a rare mushroom or champagne. After I made the following silly list in a hurry, my partner picked it up, read it, and we laughed. I love laughter; mine, yours, ours. . .

Above is A Joan Crawford Alphabet by Donald Urquhart and to the right is a movie poster (artist unknown)

Things I want:
not necessarily for myself but wild horses
a solid gold menorah
a mayan monument
a real Picasso that takes up the whole wall
a vintage tiara
one thousand bottles of Veuve Cliquot
to travel at night always
longer days and longer nights sometimes
a deep sea hub
a chartreuse kimono
parallel universes
peace/ all criminals reformed
endless romantic possibilities
a life-sized Jade elephant with sapphire eyes
a cathedral (to record in)
a country church (to write in)
a black Jaguar (car)
a melanistic jaguar
Shirley Temple as a child forever
to be internally composed of stars
to play everything Bach and Mozart ever wrote by memory
to lay an egg painlessly
to fly

In Between A + B

I'm a dreamer, it's true. My penchant for dreaming was honed by days of being driven across Canada, through wilderness, for days on end as a child. One must quietly amuse oneself, and there is only so much reading, napping, and listening to music that one can do while traveling. I always found it made me carsick to write on paper, so I composed in my head. I don't usually post two paintings by the same painter on an entry, but Courbet, here, seems to have painted these from the right from the roads I've traveled, and I can almost taste the licorice and scotch mints (road snacks) I used to eat in the Buick. . . . Here are words for you to taste, bon appetit!

Above is Gustave Courbet's Village In Winter, to the right is his The Lake Neuchatel

When you are passing

at 100 km/hr, picking

a spot in the trees or fields

on the banks of the highway,

just the right setting

to place the scene you're building

of a rustic, romantic encounter

and keep your eyes on it

long as possible -----------------------

turning your head until

you can't see it anymore,

but keeping that vision in your mind's eye,

just rest, holding onto it as it is

not changing it, or building it

just waiting and lovingly balancing it

somewhere in between attention

and imagination/ in between

creation and description/

witnessing and daydreaming. . .

Right through the experience -------------

subtly detached ---------- until you see

the same kind of spot again

however many yards and miles have passed.

Some trips, stretches. . .

the reverie builds, strengthens. . . . .

when the settings come more frequently

and there is no rest or reawakening -

to just hold it as it is! -

there's a constancy (that breaks

only long enough for the heart

to pump but never suffer for it's loss);

of a proper place to dream.