From Notebooks
A foray into my Evernote to-read list
From Design to Street Art: Great Creator’s Notebooks - The Atlantic
My Dark California Dream - New York Times
Buried in the Sky - Nautilus
From my dead-tree journal
“Let’s have music!” said Rudy grandly. “Let’s have music!” He reached over Paul’s shoulder and popped a
nickel into the player piano.
Paul stepped away from the box. Machinery whirred importantly for a few seconds, and then the piano
started clanging away at “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
like crazed carillons.”
K Vonnegut - Player Piano thisisalinethisisalinethisisalinethisisalinethisisaline The Mockingbird by Mary Oliver
All summer the mockingbird
in his pearl-gray coat
and his white-windowed sings
flies from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing, but it’s neither
lilting nor lovely,
for he is the thief of other sound– whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
plus all the songs
of other birds in his neighborhood;
mimicking and elaborating, he sings with humbor and bravado,
so I have to wait a long time
for the softer voice of his own life
to come through. He begins by giving up all his usual flutter
and settling down on the pine’s forelock
then looking around
as though to make sure he’s alone; then he slaps each wing against his breast,
where his heart is,
and copying nothing, begins
easing into it as though it was not half so easy
as rollicking,
as though his subject now
was his true self, which of course was as dark and secret
as anyone else’s,
and it was too hard–
perhaps you understand– to speak or to sing it
to anything or anyone
but the sky.
