Our days are just a quilt of the random, aren't they? But if you strip away the laundry, the making of dinner, the paying of bills, there are some beautiful things in there.
1) This snippet about Maurice Sendak and Terry Gross from her interview in the NY Times, this Sunday. It moved me to tears and I've been thinking about it ever since.
On ‘‘Fresh Air,’’ we listen to Gross grapple with the most complex questions of existence — racial prejudice, faith, family, illness, morality, betrayal, gratitude. In 2011, when Maurice Sendak was 83, Gross called him at his home in Connecticut. What was meant to be a short conversation about his new book, ‘‘Bumble-Ardy,’’ became a meditation on his nearness to death. You feel Sendak looking over into it from his living room.
Sendak: Oh, God, there are so many beautiful things in this world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready. You know, I have to tell you something.Gross: Go ahead.
Sendak: You are the only person I have ever dealt with in terms of being interviewed or talking who brings this out in me. There's something very unique and special in you, which I so trust. When I heard that you were going to interview me or that you wanted to, I was really, really pleased.
Sendak is scratchy and emotional, and Gross is gentle with him. ‘‘And almost certainly, I’ll go before you go,’’ he tells her. ‘‘So I won’t have to miss you.’’
2) Kiln-washing the shelves: heavy, messy and necessary.
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| Detail of our rotting pergola, which I find strangely beautiful. |
3) A walk in the woods.
4) The good, practical advice from Stewart O'Nan to carry around the last sentence you wrote, so you can ruminate at the water cooler, in the car, on line at Shop Rite.
5) Finding inspiration up, down and all around.
6)"The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools." -- Henry Beston
