everywhere

I'm finding beautiful things everywhere these days. Beauty in finding my stride here--figuring out what I need to do to keep myself reasonably happy. Learning (every day) to live now, not to sacrifice the present to a suppositious future (to paraphrase John Dewey again).

I just read Sula, by Toni Morrison. It is one of the most beautiful and disturbing books I've read. Her mastery of fiction--it blows me away. I can't even conceive of how you'd go about writing a novel (I joke that I write poems because I don't have the attention span for fiction, but it's kidding on the square, and 'attention span' might be a question of discipline). The characters are complete, they are real. Everything is precise and necessary. I aspire to write so well. If you have the money, buy this book. If not, borrow it from the library.
Yesterday I went to Strasbourg again, and I bought an ungodly number of little, red, spun-cotton mushrooms for mercerie packets. The city is so luminous: it shines with lights, with three or four languages being spoken at once, with whitewash between blackened boards. If I could live in France again, I would choose to live in Strasbourg. Who knows--maybe I will.

Beauty here, too, and here, and here, and here, and here. And here. And here. And here.

And thank you again for your compliments on the poem.