Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams

"All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold."

The Idea by Mark Strand

for Nolan Miller

"For us, too, there was a wish to possess

Something beyond the world we knew, beyond ourselves,

Beyond our power to imagine, something nevertheless

In which we might see ourselves; and this desire

Came always in passing, in waning light, and in such cold

That ice on the valley’s lakes cracked and rolled,

And blowing snow covered what earth we saw,

And scenes from the past, when they surfaced again,

Looked not as they had, but ghostly and white

Among false curves and hidden erasures;

And never once did we feel we were close

Until the night wind said, “Why do this,

Especially now? Go back to the place you belong;”

And there appeared , with its windows glowing, small,

In the distance, in the frozen reaches, a cabin;

And we stood before it, amazed at its being there,

And would have gone forward and opened the door,

And stepped into the glow and warmed ourselves there,

But that it was ours by not being ours,

And should remain empty. That was the idea."

Laura

"I'm not dead yet. I could be soon. And all I want to do, is put my arms around you."

Crying in the school library.

Western Civ

Rousseau: Social contract; french; romantic movement
Marquis: Sadist; French revolution
Robespierre: Jacobin; Reign of terror
d'Holbach: Atheist
Paine: common sense; american rev; god
Kant: Enlightenment

Closing

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny." - C.S. Lewis.

Easier

Make something beautiful, anyway.

Tongue

Surgery.

Tongue.

Insurance.

Appointments.

Christmas trees.

Zoloft.

Emails.

Cell phone.

Bloodwork.

Incredibly Close.

Gilmore Girls.

Homework.

Grades.

Christmas tree brownies.

Sea salt.

Mouthwash.

Kudos.

Risk.

Eyesight.

Overheating laptop.

Sirens.

Rain.