An open apology

I know that I said I would send the check today, but that was before I knew that I would sit on a bench in a park reading Keats to a frog croaking in the creek.

There was chocolate.

The sunshine was warmer than the breeze and the only other people in the park were pleasant and headed to a bench to be with not me, just themselves.

This morning brought work, this evening brings more, and I am content.

If this is what my life leads me toward, this self-scheduled mess of cleaning and eating and reading and writing and Keats and Strunk & White and tater tots and cool water and work that makes sense to me - then it is good to keep working to live it.

I do not think you will be angry.

I saved some birdsong and some of the frog's croaks for you. I have put them near the dappled sun you saved for me so many miles ago.

This evening I may venture out again and see about evening mists in the trees down the street. You never know what bench may need a reader, or what reader I may need to be.

Much love,
Me

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time
by John Keats

My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an indescribably feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.

Also - This is the funniest thing I have read in a very long time. If we ever hang out, remind me, and I'll read it aloud.