graduations and weddings

conratulations, eric! (future pulitzer-prize-winning author)
congratulations twice, sam! (soon-to-be husband and future leader-in-world-affairs)

i will be missing both. meanwhile, the record is coming along, tour stuff is coming together, i finally have real shampoo, not sure about glastonbury but looking at a calendar of boeing 787s nonetheless, and man, somebody's gotta do something about this full moon! ;) its insane.

but this is for the graduate-rs, and the wedding-goers, and all the june rush:


"'tis five years since, `an end,' said i;
`i'll march no further, time to die.
all's lost; no worse has heaven to give.'
worse has it given, and yet I live.

i shall not die to-day, no fear:
i shall live yet for many a year,
and see worse ills and worse again,
and die of age and not of pain.

when god would rear from earth aloof
the blue height of the hollow roof,
he sought him pillars sure and strong,
and ere he found them sought them long.

the stark steel splintered from the thrust,
the basalt mountain sprang to dust,
the blazing pier of diamond flawed
in shards of rainbow all abroad.

what found he, that the heavens stand fast?
what pillar proven firm at last
bears up so light that world-seen span?
the heart of man, the heart of man."

poem by a.e. housman, a shropshire lad



john hunter said that to me and some other people on an important day a long time ago.





but also:


"humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it"

ee cummings, tulips and chimneys