Last night I finished listening to all the lectures on Melville’s Bartleby for my Coursera on The Fiction of Relationship.
I woke up early this morning with the birds tweeting and took photos of the Saturday clouds. After breakfast I finished Melville’s Benito Cereno and started listening to Professor Weinstein’s lectures on it.
Intermittently, I’m reading Thomas Aquinas, A Portrait by Denys Turner and Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss, Meditation of a Modern Believer.
Mrs. Abstract handed me Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs which she finished reading. She proceeded to tackle “The Emperor’s Children“.
Certain things stir ambition. Certainly the presence of Lake Tahoe, nearness of the forest, and the altitude usher in the excitement in reading.
IMAGINED PLACES
How are we to arrive at imagined places?
Everyone is capable of choices.
Heavy October vines, you can’t wander
Frantic measurements, walking the vineyards
You observe the canopy of leaves
Sudden jolts of heat
Ascending the stairs unhurriedly
Each step containing surprises.
Can you learn differently
And be invisible?
You hold terroir sacred,
The source of all goodness.
Do you remember your dreams
After your first taste of wine?
You fill the glass
Swirl its full sensuality
You want your palate to find poetry
Garland of praises
With each sip you imagine
The places, your arrival.