Dear driver from Florida
You cut me off by turning left onto rt 20 where it’s 55 mph by the town justice’s office and then drove 35-40 mph in a very lost fashion until where rt 20 hits 22 south at the blinker.
There, instead of turning right from the left hand lane as I expected, you stopped under the blinker making the person behind me pass us both on the right while everyone else watched me frantically wave at you.
Two postcards and one from the Capital District Food Pantry. All good stuff.
Tonight’s message from Robert and Sara Genn is about the role of ritual in the creative process. I know there are certain things I do whether I need to or not, clean the machine before starting, hang the quilt up at the end of the night… etc.
PS: “The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is a formal order
The dance’s pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.” (W. H. Auden)“Keep your shop and your shop will keep you.” (Benjamin Franklin)
Esoterica: For Auden, ritual meant rising at 6, making coffee, taking a pass at the crossword and beginning work. After lunch, he went back to his writing desk. Cocktails began at 6:30 sharp — vodka martinis, then dinner with wine, friends and conversation, then into bed by 11 o’clock. Brooklyn writer Mason Currey, in his 2013 book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, compiles the routines of 161 artists. “You owe it to all of us,” wrote W. H. Auden, “to get on with what you’re good at.”
And from the quotebox:
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed. — Michael Pritchard
Thanks everyone for a great month! Postcards may still arrive and will be gleefully received!
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
