From Notebooks

A foray into my Evernote to-read list

From Design to Street Art: Great Creator’s Notebooks - The Atlantic

My Dark California Dream - New York Times

Buried in the Sky - Nautilus

From my dead-tree journal

  “Let’s have music!” said Rudy grandly. “Let’s have
  music!” He reached over Paul’s shoulder and popped a
  nickel into the player piano.

  Paul stepped away from the box. Machinery whirred
  importantly for a few seconds, and then the piano
  started clanging away at “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
  like crazed carillons.”

     K Vonnegut - Player Piano

  thisisalinethisisalinethisisalinethisisalinethisisaline

    The Mockingbird
    by Mary Oliver

    All summer
    the mockingbird
    in his pearl-gray coat
    and his white-windowed sings

    flies
    from the hedge to the top of the pine
    and begins to sing, but it’s neither
    lilting nor lovely,

    for he is the thief of other sound–
    whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
    plus all the songs
    of other birds in his neighborhood;

    mimicking and elaborating,
    he sings with humbor and bravado,
    so I have to wait a long time
    for the softer voice of his own life

    to come through.  He begins
    by giving up all his usual flutter
    and settling down on the pine’s forelock
    then looking around

    as though to make sure he’s alone;
    then he slaps each wing against his breast,
    where his heart is,
    and copying nothing, begins

    easing into it
    as though it was not half so easy
    as rollicking,
    as though his subject now

    was his true self,
    which of course was as dark and secret
    as anyone else’s,
    and it was too hard–

    perhaps you understand–
    to speak or to sing it
    to anything or anyone
    but the sky.

Plato’s Cave 04: Polyhedrical Romance