thank you for the email. It had all kinds of new things, new music, new books, new collections, some great prices and all. I saw a group of books and clicked on the link:

Seriously iTunes? We’ve known each other since Day One of iTunes. I was there when you were announced and we all stood around and tried to figure out what music wasn’t on iTunes. I’ve kept you updated and moved my library from computer to computer, just for you.

So what’s up with this business, every single time you send me an email advertising your wares. Oh iTunes, you could have been the coolest kid on the block…

things lost are revealed
in the dark morning lateness
i can’t keep looking

if I don’t miss it
is it really lost at all,
or just when noticed?

in the absence then
we find what we are seeking
or from that, freedom.

I close the front door
still morning lays all before
lost and found within.

Step out of the house
dim morning cold, snow-dusted
the lost remains lost.

I did find what I’d found lost this morning. Not on the first look (and I did go out to the car and look, but not in the right place, but after I’d given up the search and gone on to plan B. When I got back in the car, there was the “lost” object, in plain view.

I blame the gnomes. I would swear I heard giggling on the other side of the car.

My good pal Naomi gifted me with the four books of Evangeline Walton’s telling of the Mabinogian. The fourth book was slower going but not because of anything in the book. Droopy eyelids on my part! I loved how she kept the feeling of a great mythic tale while fleshing out the original telling. I loved that I could pick up my classic translation of the Mabinogian and find exactly the place in the story. She made the characters, god-like as they were, very real. In between the dramas both large and small, were wonderful ideas, images and insights. Thanks Naomi! It’s going into my regular re-read list!

That leaves just one question: what to bump up to the top of the to-read pile? Could be the new Tolkiens or it could be one of the fairy books… how to choose?

I went back and re-read this last night and was still thinking about it today, so I think it’s worth noting here. From The Island of the Mighty, by Evangeline Walton (Chapter 2 of The Loves of Blodeuwedd: The Coming of Goronwy Pevr)

… and they were happy there.

It is a small word, “happy. For one it may mean a kind of pleasant quiet under a lukewarm sun, untroubled by many waspish thoughts or by the ache of great griefs, and never fired by ecstasies. That is a good state, and better than most of us get, but no great thing grows out of it.

Or to be happy may mean to eat life healthily and with gusto, as a hungry man eats a good meal, heedless of the depth or shape of the dishes or of how they were invented, not complaining overmuch if occasionally the meat is tough or over-dry or over-juicy, because the most of it is good, solid nourishment.

Or again, happiness may be a rhythm that sets all the days to music, and makes a dance of movement, a brighter brightness of the sun, a wine in the air and a wonder in the world. As of a veil of glamor thrown suddenly over all things, or the lifting of a curtain that has hid beauty…

yep. IT’s true that I’m not all that big into football so I’m watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while dicing up what I sliced up recently.

at least my path hasn’t been crossed by the shadow of evil…