quiet in the middle of the day

"Give a man a duck, and you've fed him for a while; teach a man to duck, and you've helped him keep his head attached" -New Mexican proverb

he describes himself as a container of words and images deposited by a vanished race, an interior landscape out of Bosch or Bruegel where the figures of Delveaux and Kokoschka play out a mannequin war for the spoils of merz. He doesn't need your language, only your silence, a real silence - not just the negligence of connection, not just the damming up of response. Real silence touches the heart. In the middle of John's Apocalypse there is an hour of silence, like an operatic great pause. Such silence looks a person in the eye and extends a bond of kindness. In the midst of the futility of human existence, there may be a sabbath, an abstention from the common stupidity of resentment, fear and anger that fuels our commerce.

Me: I like being Maestro, being Reverend Maestro is even better: a sign of distinction.

Jami: Or pretension.
Me: No. My blood pressure's always been low

we are all trapped, caught in a frenetic whirl, where the stillness required for perception and reflection meets with interference, intrusion, and judgment

every summer I pretend I'm Odysseus washed up on shore; I bounce among the swells whistling the sailor's hornpipe; I read Blanchot sitting on a sand bar; I watercolor in the shade. I carry thirty some books of poetry, philosophy and theology with me and enough paint and paper for a month; I take hundreds of photographs and encumber even more sand in my camera. At some point there will be the temptation to do something, which may or may not be successfully fended off

he describes himself as a creature, an inhabitant, a quasi-revenant orphaned among forgotten machinery, cogs gears wheels, fastened in stasis beneath crumbling celestial arches, whose space swallowed story breathes the vacuum whole

he describes himself as floating in a lake of magma amid ice bergs from the Sun spelling out the secret of the universe like letters suspended in a jungle canopy above the classroom of the dry lecturer

Jami and I, talking about our five year age difference: 
Me: Do you remember Jack Benny?
J: No.
Me: Do you remember Red Skeleton?
J: Oh sure, on Sanford and Son. 
[hilarity ensues]