The Road’s Wisdom

The difficult thing is to not get ahead.

Don’t buy tomorrow’s trouble with today’s new coin.

The path may ramble, or become choked up

With snaring hindrances; you may turn back,

But only to find a better path behind.

Don’t stride ahead with both feet at one time;

Keep one shoe grounded in the bolstering earth;

Don’t look beyond horizon-lines for boons,

Or blights, or better days to come,

But let them come to you, like wandering dogs,

Who always seem to find their way back home

The minute you stop searching, just as you will find

Your way to what you’re seeking, when it’s time.

Encounter on Water Street

 

ME: That's a beautiful dog.

 

OLD MAN WALKING HIS DOG: They were going to kill this dog the day after I got him. He was scheduled for termination.

 

ME: Really? He's lovely. What kind of dog is he?

 

OLD MAN: He's a Belgian Malinois.

 

ME: Belgian Malinois.

 

OLD MAN: It's the same dog they used to get Bin Laden. The same breed.

April Shower

Today was all blossoms and blowing snow –

A marriage of winter and spring.

It went the way marriages often go:

Heart-breakingly brief, but a beautiful thing.

A Strange New Kind of God

He was a god you could have dinner with,

Even if it wasn't always a blast.

He was a god who ate and smiled and talked,

Instead of sitting on a thundercloud,

Sending down plagues and testing fathers

By killing and torturing daughters and sons.

In fact, it was we who tortured him,

Because he was a god you could nail to a cross,

Who would bleed and moan most pleasingly,

If you were into that kind of thing.

But he was also a god who rose again,

As if to show you how small you were,

With all your brightly armored Roman strength,

And thinking killing him would slow him down.

Instead it only made him bolder, and

His followers put crosses round their necks,

Which was, you felt, entirely missing the point –

But try explaining that to them.

In the end, it was the slaves who won.

There were more of them, and they outlasted you.

It's not a world for emperors anymore,

And all because that brash carpenter's son

Would not stop talking, even after death,

And people listened, and the world was changed.

April

Life is bursting yellow
Out of the limbs of trees;
The days are growing mellow,
Though still with a cutting breeze;

Deep in a million burrows
Two million eyes awake,
And through once-frozen furrows
New shoots begin to break.

The human heart is a lonely,
A complicated thing,
But something grateful only
Will warm it come the spring.

Mort Drucker

Feels like I've been doing way too many of these lately.

Mort Drucker was one of the greatest caricaturists of all time, an inspirations to generations of artists, and a delight to generations of MAD fans. His work was deft, goofy, and seemingly effortless – but you don't get that good without an incredible amount of work.

Also, this (from his New York Times obituary) is amazing:

"Mad’s 1981 parody of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, THE EMPIRE STRIKES OUT, prompted the Lucasfilm legal department to send a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the issue be recalled. Mad replied by sending a copy of another letter they had received the previous month — from George Lucas, offering to buy the original artwork for the EMPIRE parody and comparing Mort Drucker to Leonardo da Vinci.”

Thank you for living, Mort Drucker. You were the best of madmen.

Adam Schlesinger

Adam Schlesinger was one of the best pop songwriters in the history of the medium. Fountains of Wayne is an all-time great rock band, "That Thing You Do" is a modern classic, and even the deliberately stupid "Pop! Goes My Heart" (from "Music and Lyrics") is inspired. The man just couldn't seem to write a bad song. His loss is an incalculable blow to the world of music, but he leaves behind a legacy that will last and last and last.

Thank you for living, Adam Schlesinger. You really had it going on.

Pandemic Talk

Social isolation, Day 11.

Devin: I feel like this day has just been hours of waiting to eat ham.

Albert Uderzo

I basically learned to read French from Asterix comics. Uderzo's illustrations were fluid, masterful, and brimming with humor and life.

Thank you for living, Albert Uderzo. You made the world a little more cheerful.

The Sleeping Tree

The tree had lain down like a slumberous giant –

Lain down, one might have thought, to die –

But sap is wily; wood is pliant;

Bountiful still are soil and sky.

The boughs not bowed below its body

Raised up like flowers after snow,

And on its length, once tall and haughty,

A dwarflike forest seemed to grow.

Our thriving takes a thousand forms,

And some of them look like defeat;

But while the sun still gently warms,

The earth still teems beneath our feet,

We have enough to make our vigor show,

For all to witness, and a few to know.

Kenny Rogers

 

"The Gambler" is one of the first songs I remember loving. It remains an all-time great song, and it'll be sung and listened to for a long, long time yet.

Thank you for living, Kenny Rogers. Hope you felt you broke even and then some.