--I’M STILL WORKING ON MY MASTERPIECE

…Songs stuck in my head this week:

“Fool If You Think It’s Over,” Chris Rhea

“Boston,” Augustana

“Waiting On A Friend,” Rolling Stones

“Stay,” Sam Smith

“Jesus Walks,” Kanye West

“Rainy Day People,” Gordon Lightfoot

“My Sharona,” The Knack

“New York State of Mind,” Alicia Keyes

…Tomorrow I leave for Mexico, back a week from Saturday.  I suspect the weather will be nice.  It might even be perfect.  I sure hope so.  There’s probably no chance of me writing here until I return, so I’ll leave you with these:

"Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, 'Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.' So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look." —Marina Abramović

"What any human being can do in life depends upon the foundation laid between birth and age five." James Meredith

“The art of being wise is the  art of knowing what to overlook.”   William James

"We were brought up with the value that as we sow, so shall we reap.  We discarded the idea that anything we did was its own reward." Janet Harris

 "A book must be an ice-axe to break the frozen seas inside our souls." Kafka

 "It is never too late to be what you might have been." George Eliot

 "Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off.  Build your wings on the way down." Ray Bradbury

 "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof crap detector." Hemingway

 "I believe poems begin as grit, as curiosities that get stuck in the mind." Sean Hicks

"To get your ideas across use small words, big ideas, and short sentences." John Henry Patterson

“Persevere.  If you fuck up, you won’t be the only one.”  Elizabeth Wales