Give Thanks

Remain conscious and reasonably aware and undemanding, and life delivers unsought gifts. Here is some of what Wednesday brought:

Art Pepper’s “Blues In” and Paul Desmond and Jim Hall’s “When Joanna Loved Me” on the car radio.

Another chilly, overcast day with an abrupt explosion of sunshine late in the afternoon – enough to coax the morning glories open.

A mural in a neighborhood bakery with these words from William Cobbett, author of the wonderful Rural Rides, painted on it: “Without bread all is misery.”

Rereading Basil Bunting and finding these unremembered lines:

“Wind shakes a blotch of sun,
Flatter and tattle willow and oak alike
Sly as a trout’s shadow on gravel.”

Penne lisce with pesto.

This passage, marked during a previous reading, in The Autobiography of Charles Darwin:

“…and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”