I think the doctors & nurses miss my quick wit & droll platitudes. I'm going back in for surgery. Hells bells.

“How to Kiss” Life Magazine, 1942 (#HappyValentinesDay, all)

Hilled on four sides, my frozen home, cradled between them wakes me each morning. A cup of coffee. Cocooned in fleece. I peer outside through the bay window. A dog walks with a man who's trundled up in layers upon layers upon layers. A storm approaches from the west. These are my sounds of winter.

Years ago I came across a website of old photographs. They had a contest each month for the best caption. I tried my hand at this one and won. For the prize they framed the photo and put my caption in. My head was the size of two balloons afterwards. Here it is.

"My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature." -Claude Monet This is a quiet corner for me. I am standing in the bed of a river where I can walk while the water level is low. I spend a great deal of time here A wish you a day of peace #eastcoastkin #forestfriday

What I'm reading. (When the museum is closed)

What I read.

Laurie Anderson is a muse for many of us who have always been off kilter. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTS...

Proof of life: Hike near the house with friends. Not bad for a man just nine months out of the hospital.

Each week needs a day of rest. No galumphing to the grocery store where an ancient of days ties up the line going over his receipts. No waiting at a turn with a truck-blocked turn with the driver daring me to honk in his big-ass-truck direction. No trips for gas, takeout, or the mall. Today I rest.

Daily Peanuts!

Today I learned that the Hungarian director, Bélla Tarr, had died. I'd never heard of him. After watching his Werckmeister Harmonies I'll never forget him.

This PEANUTS comic strip was published #OTD on December 30, 1983.

I bought a rotisserie chicken. I brought it home & sawed off a thigh. Bones popped from joints. What were the chicken’s last thoughts? Was he confused? Did the chicken greet Death as a friend whom he’d been expecting? Did the creature feel the blades that severed his small head from his tiny body?

Why Apple still makes magic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-avO...

New Reality: I take meds to counter act meds that keep my body from rejecting my new lungs that are stuffed like grapes into the cavity where my old lungs once bellowed. I can no longer enjoy food the way of once upon a time. I'm tired of being exhausted. But I do love, even cherish, sunrises.

Worth sharing every time I stumble across it youtu.be/rfUEstWJUkA?...

I feel like the pope being an American cinephile is God finally rewarding Scorsese for a lifetime of devotion

"Sphere": Photo taken during a perambulation through my hamlet.

Music for Tonight: ‘Where To From’ by Hildur Guðnadóttir

Japan Happiness blog.hirokoyoda.com?r=22p6o&utm_...

Prince's sound checks were better than most concerts.

I inherited a small ionized NASA plate from Mom & Dad. It shows a straight line through our galaxy, that of a satellite or a spaceship’s voyage with a red dot as an endpoint. We can only travel so far, both in space travel & in our lifetime. Our accomplishments end when we arrive at the red dot.

A night out at the Mingei Museum's new exhibition: The San Diego Modernist Movement of the mid twentieth century. Here I am being quite dapper. (Laura Andreson created the ceramic art shown here in the 1950's.) Such a charming evening.

He was a good boy

Artist of the day: Irma Boom. I’ve always had a gravitational pull towards exquisite tomes. Each page is an aesthetic design poem. In an article I read Mark Smith introduced me to Irma Boom. She said, "What I realized is that you make books not for the past or for the present… but for the future."

Last night I watched the La Jolla Playhouse's musical, 'The Heart'. In it a woman receives a heart transplant from a young man. She writes to his family her gratitude as I did to the wife of my donor. I'm a recipient of a pair of lungs from a man whose family I'll never meet, yet he lives inside me.

The joke is always how medication commercials spend half a lifetime disclaiming how patients might grow a second head. I would prefer they get right to the warning: “Snake Oil”. YOU WILL DIE. (Must be old enough to vote. Do not take with embalming fluid.)

What I'm listening to: David Bowie’s version of Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf pulls me back six decades ago to our parent’s living room floor where my sister & I listened to it on a mono stereo. David Bowie’s narration charms, capturing the wonder of a child in small Russian village from long ago.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” -Oscar Wilde #AI #Synthography #Nature #Quotes #Philosophy #Mimicry

I killed a mud dauber wasp today. A desert breeze had pushed this beautiful creature into my house. No matter my attempts she wouldn’t be coaxed out. With night's arrival I had to kill her. All of the artistry twitched on the floor, broken like a porcelain plate. Death held her & gently took her.

If you are in a bad mood, cook If you are still in a bad mood, cook for someone you despise. Socrates If you are in a bad mood, clean If you are still in a bad mood, stop cleaning. - Socrates It’s the name, Socrates, that makes the platitude sound so august.

Noting all the appropriate content advisories, this 1939 film of The Mikado is ridiculously delightful, and I'm pretty sure you're getting a pretty good look at what it looked like onstage in 1885. And Kenny Baker is great, go figure.

My Garden of Earthly Delights... Fall edition: Tomatoes, Chives, Lettuce, Bell Peppers, Scallions.

My American Gothic Revisited

I’d like park bench plaques to be more interesting. “In memory of all the women who are glad Robert's dead,"would be nice. Or, “Elma took her famous rhubarb pie recipe to the grave, Jen.” Or “John's family dedicates this bench to their father's estate lawyer, may he burn in hell for all eternity.”

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it.” Shawshank Red.

Although I’m not a Dead Head, the world's a better place because of them. All too soon they'll have descended into a curious counterculture bookmark in Americana, but that doesn’t diminish their relevance. I admire their pacifism, their loyalty to a vague natural order, their tie-dyed existence..

Six months after my double lung transplant I hike my first trail. This is me out of breath & thrilled to be alive. It's a whole new world.

“The rest of the world has something important to learn from Japanese hospitality. Details are not just details in Japan — they’re everything.” —Beniya Mukayu, a traditional 'ryokan' inn

I frequent our Japanese Friendship Garden. Yesterday, as I wended down the paths of maples, stone lanterns, koi ponds and a large irascible Buddha, a Japanese woman emerged from the trees. She’d been cleaning the leaves. My look said “I see you.” Her reply look was “I’ve been seen.” This is the way.

Zen & the Tossed Towel. After the museum floor, the doctor’s office, the pagoda’s entryway have been washed down, scrubbed, and polished visitors will only remember the unwashed hand towel carelessly tossed in the corner.

What I’m listening to: Jóhann Jóhannsson’s, Drone Mass. Describing music eludes me. Yet a piece like Drone Mass reverberates from crystal caves unsuitable for daylight. It echoes the songs of the druids hunkered in underground enchantments, guttural rivulets of sound. I know... pretentious. I tried.

Today’s dish... Garlic Roasted Endive. Ingredients: an assault of chopped garlic & walnuts, drawn & quartered endive, a blush of sesame seed oil, a misting of salt & pepper, & a whisper of shaved parmesan. Bake first, broil after. Served with cold black tea with squidged lemon. Would you join me?

Today I made Jyoya Nabe, a healthy Japanese soup with a kombu broth, spinach, shaved pork, shiitake mushrooms, & tofu dipped in ponzu sauce. I’m convinced that a hay stack of spinach would, when steamed, fit into a tea cup along with tempests, kittens, & socks. Care to join me for dinner?.

David Byrne came to my band’s show at a gay bar in Bed-Stuy and sang This Must Be The Place with us and I still haven’t processed it

Would pay to have this forever. Beautiful. Via @goodnews_movement #inspiration #inspiração #beautiful #beauty #life #love #instagood #photoftheday #art #mom #dad

’Tis time to deprogram the programming that pisses down on the unwashed from the specious pundits.