Cast iron owls, heads turned;
unintell'gibility
   of their double gaze.
Earth & Moon as seen from Mars:
one peaceful, one living seems.

Another soldier-blogger in Iraq. (via Metafilter)

Song of Innocence, Song of Experience. How much sadder & more profound
is the late version of Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow" on her live at
Carnegie Hall record; & i feel almost the same about Stevie Nicks's "Rhiannon"
as sung at the televised reunion concert awhile back. Perhaps with the ageing
of the Baby Boomers, music will lose its fixation on the highschool age bracket...

I may have reference to this again in future blog-entries, but for now i will just
state without argument my doctrine of moments of choosing which is,
humans don't have free will except at long intervals & for brief moments, & they
mostly let them go by; but for that time, it is possible to make a more free or
a less free choice, with ramifying consequences thereafter. Thus, it is wisdom
to develop sensitivity toward such moments, & to learn what to do with them
when they are here. My favorite picture of this is a haiku by Gary Snyder:

  "After weeks of watching the roof leak
      I fixed it tonight
  by moving a single board"

[Why did it take weeks? Answer that, & you will be
on the way to making the Next Big Breakthrough...]

"Bush's attempt to revive the Age of Empire would be as comical
as Don Quixote's effort to revive the Age of Chivalry, were he
not so much more heavily armed than the don."

Listening to: Coleman Hawkins.