From Leonard Cohen’s acceptance speech for the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2011:

For today's #BlueSkyArtShow - #Background Boogie "We like to Boogie on a Saturday night" .

Remembering Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his birthday today. "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." .

Milan Kundera (Immortality) “The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.” .

Bob Kaufman - from Jail Poems (Written in San Francisco City Prison, Cell 3, 1959) 26 I sit here writing, not daring to stop, For fear of seeing what's outside my head. .

Homage by Leopoldo Maler, 1974.   Hess Collection, Napa .

Fernando Pessoa - I Am The Escaped One I am the escaped one, After I was born They locked me up inside me But I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley, I hope my soul Never finds me. .

For today's #BlueSkyArtShow - #Horizonal Jane Hirshfield "Today, my hope is vertical. Tomorrow it will be horizontal. The next day, cloudy." .

Rene Magritte "Nothing is confused, except the mind." . Duane Michals - Rene Magritte in Bowler Hat (Multiple Exposure), 1965

Mervyn Peake (extract from 'Is There no Love Can Link Us?') Is there no love can link us – I and they? Only this hectic moment? This fierce instant Striking now Its universal, its uneven blow? There is no other link. Only this sliding Second we share: this desperate edge of now. .

These Black Dog Days .

G.K. Chesterton “The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.” .

T. S. Eliot - from East Coker (Four Quartets) "...old stones that cannot be deciphered."

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass “Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.” .

Henry Miller - Black Spring (page 14) "...everything moves on shifting levels - our thoughts, our dreams, our actions, our whole life." .

Jorge Luis Borges - The Moon (for Maria Kodama) There is such loneliness in that gold. The moon of the nights is not the moon Whom the first Adam saw. The long centuries Of human vigil have filled her With ancient lament. Look at her. She is your mirror. .

John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley: In Search of America “I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.” .

George Carlin “There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” .

Iris Murdoch (from The Message to the Planet). "Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream." . Picasso - Guernica, 1937

Robert Walser From ‘Too Philosophical ‘ (translated by Daniele Pantano) How ghostly my life in its fall and rise. Always I see myself waving to myself, floating away from the one waving. .

For today's #BlueSkyArtShow - #Texture Textured seascape (The Bay of Biscay)

The late & great Raymond Carver: "My bowl is empty. But it's my bowl, you see, and I love it."

Haiku by Billy Collins Moon in the window the same as it was before there was a window. .

Leibniz “…every feeling is the perception of a truth...” .

Alexander Calder “My circles aren’t perfect – and I don’t want them to be” .

Paul Simon - America “So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine And the moon rose over an open field "Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping I'm empty and aching and I don't know why” .

Lenka Clayton 'Half a Dozen Eggs, Quarter of a Dozen Raisins' (2018) .

Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life “What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon'...” .

from 'Not Dawdling' by James Broughton "At every crossroad be prepared to bump into wonder." .

Daniel Kramer’s photograph of Bob Dylan & Joan Baez at Newark Airport, 1964. Protest Against the Rising Tide of Conformity .

Jean Rhys "All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.” .

What We Want - Linda Pastan "We don't remember the dream, but the dream remembers us." .

David hockney - Dark Mist, 1973 (from The Weather Series) “there is no such thing as bad weather.” .

Jenny Diski “Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.” .

Georgia’s sister, Ida O'Keeffe (1889 – 1961) got a master's in fine arts from Columbia University and squeezed in creating and exhibiting art while working a series of jobs that included teaching art at schools and working as a nurse. . Spring Lethargy Texas, by Ida O'Keeffe

Robertson Davies "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.“ .

Joni Mitchell - A Case of you (live, London, 1983) “Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling And I would still be on my feet” . youtu.be/f_OtHVLAF4o Photos: Jack Robinson for Vogue magazine, 1968.

Lorna Crozier - from Packing for the Future: Instructions Mistrust no one who offers you water from a well, a songbird’s feather, something that’s been mended twice. Always travel lighter than the heart. .

Paolo Ventura "I use photography not to describe reality but to tell a reconstructed story, an imaginary world.” Ventura makes images of what he calls “invented worlds” or “ir-realities,” . 'Dubliners' (featured in an article in the NYTimes)

Gertrude Stein “You look ridiculous if you dance You look ridiculous if you don't dance So you might as well dance.” .

Langston Hughes – The Dream Keeper Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamers. Bring me all of your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too rough fingers Of the world. .

e e cummings – 'in time of...'

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham - Pen and ink ‘linear meditations' "lines for the pleasure of themselves..." . Seven Lines No.2 (1982)

A.A. Milne "Pooh, how do you spell love?' 'You don't spell love Piglet, you feel it.” .

Federico García Lorca - A Sailor, 1934. The inscription reads: “Only through mystery do we live, only through mystery.” .

Laurie Anderson "And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them. We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow. We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out. But we are reaching for them. We are reaching for them.“ .

Kimono design by Ueno Seiko, c1902 .

Sudden Waves - June Tabor (lyrics by Les Barker) "There are waves sudden waves over me There are days when the way that I want is not to be And I am lost There are days broken days when the gales we sail have blown And the sea carries me on a course that′s not my own" . youtu.be/WInkIkig5Ys .

Samuel Beckett - Endgame (1957) Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon?   Clov: (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated) What in God's name would there be on the horizon? (Pause.) .