“Green Apples”, Ruth Stone

This is really pretty. The ending reminds me of a Dermot line, like you’re saying, I’m here now, which precedes the wonder that is the original homely version of “Without Fear”. Have a listen! Probably my favorite piece of his, if I had to choose one, and one that made me fall in love with him.

I was thinking today about how the question, so to speak, is less is this thing free?, but rather am I already paying for it?, which is likely the case with a lot of things like Facebook, Google, emotional damage, having parents/a family, loving anyone, and on and on and on. And then this quote from Emily Dickinson, Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it, and I read this in the frame of life as buying into things. And how easily I fall out of that, and how much I’d like to buy in hard once again.

I watched a Pablo Neruda movie on the plane yesterday, and several times the actor recites the following poem in such a beautiful and compelling voice. And how beautiful.

“Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)”, Pablo Neruda

And somehow, this seems like such a universal poem. It hits me where it ought to. I think that was supposed to be Neruda’s thing though, weaving everyone through his poetry somehow. As a poet myself, I think I’ve a ways to go with that, and really, it’s probably mostly a matter of being able to engage more with people and with more people. The life I lead these days is very self-centric, perhaps necessarily, but it’s very easy to take the world as me and then other stuff floating around me. Which is to say, it’s awfully easy at times to get lost in my own head and experiences and feel like I am all that exists. Which is bad.

I read a chunk from Joan Didion’s On Keeping a Notebook, which seems interesting and worth a more complete read. Seems to be a good forum for thinking on how we interact with ourselves, with our own thoughts and past thoughts and such.