I'd give the moon if it were mine to give

Settle down there, George Bailey.

Colore di pioggia e di ferro

Colors of Rain and Iron:

You said: death, silence, solitude,
like love, life. Words
of our provisional images.
And the wind rose light each morning
and the season colored with rain and iron
passed over the rocks, over
our mewed-up murmur of the damned.
The truth is distant still.
And tell me, man cleft upon the cross
and you with hands thick with blood,
how shall I answer those that ask?
Now, now: before another wind does rise,
another stillness fills the eyes,
before another rust flourishes.

Salvatore Quasimodo.

Empty, Incomplete, and Searching

Big day for V probes!

First:

A Titan-Centaur rocket carrying the Viking 1 spacecraft launches from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Aug. 20, 1975. Viking 1 touched down on the red planet on July 20, 1976, becoming the first truly successful landing on Mars. Viking 1 was the first of a pair of complex deep space probes that were designed to reach Mars and to collect evidence on the possibility on life on Mars.

Second:

Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, about two weeks before the Sept. 5 launch of Voyager 1. Why the reversal of order? The two were sent on different trajectories, and Voyager 1 was put on a path to reach its planetary targets, Jupiter and Saturn, ahead of Voyager 2.

Both lovely missions, although I've always been more enamored of the latter because it visited my favorite planet, Jupiter.  I guess I was also more aware of the Voyager spacecraft since they launched and started sending photos and data when I was a bit older.

I took a summer astronomy class at the University of Toledo when I was a lad, which was held in the school's planetarium.  Really fun all around (got to see sunspots through a telescope and filter!), but I was most captivated when we watched the Great Red Spot spinning on a huge projector screen, thanks to Voyagers 1 & 2.  That was even before Cosmos.

We live in a pretty cool universe, and at a pretty cool time when we've gotten a chance to know it a little bit better.  Hope we continue to survive as a species so we can learn more...

#throwbackthursday

Sadly, that classic ballcap is somewhere in the Sound thanks to a rude gust of wind on the ferry.  If I ever see an orca wearing it, I'll be so pissed. (2015)

Do I regret the past?

Now I'm tied to the mast.

Actually, It’s Been Kinda Like This for Me Since Fourth Grade

Peekabo, I Almost See You:

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to
    lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes
    are all right but your arm isn't long
    enough
    to hold the telephone book where you      can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go
    to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since
    you said Good evening to his grandfather clock under
    the impression that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP,
    and you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and he
    says one set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and
    Keats's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello
    to strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put
    on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your
    reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because
    without them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an
    ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
    years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Ogden Nash.

PS - Blogger is shit when it comes to certain formatting, and I'm too lazy to figure it out right now, so the text background is weird.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

An insect trapped in amber, I'm a fading pulse

The ecstasy was false.

Oppe på toppen

Up on Top:

After stumbling a long time over impossible trails   

you are up on top.   

Hardship didn't crush you, you trod it   

down, climbed higher.

That's how you see it. After life has tossed you   

away, and you ended up on top   

like a one-legged wooden horse on a dump.   

Life is merciful, it blinds and provides illusions,   

and destiny takes on our burden:   

foolishness and arrogance become mountains and marshy places,   

hate and resentment become wounds from enemy arrows,   

and the doubt always with us becomes cold dry

rocky valleys.

You go in the door.   

The pot lies upside down in the hearth,   

it sprawls with hostile black feet.

Olav H. Hauge.

In your interior castle

You, seven, seven mansions.

Gladly Surrender Yourself to Clotho

Days:

Swift and subtle

The flying shuttle

Crosses the web

And fills the loom,

Leaving for range

Of choice or change

No room, no room.

Janet Loxley Lewis.

Do you know me, my lord?

Excellent well. You are a fishmonger:

Pike Place Market is a public market in Seattle, Washington, United States. It opened on August 17, 1907, and is one of the older continuously operated public farmers' markets in the United States. Overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront on Puget Sound, it serves as a place of business for many small farmers, craftspeople and merchants. It is named for its central street, Pike Place, which runs northwest from Pike Street to Virginia Street on the western edge of Downtown Seattle. Pike Place Market is Seattle's most popular tourist destination, with more than 20 million annual visitors.

The Market is built on the edge of a steep hill and consists of several lower levels located below the main level. Each features a variety of unique shops such as antique dealers, comic book and collectible shops, small family-owned restaurants, and one of the oldest head shops in Seattle. The upper street level contains fishmongers, fresh produce stands and craft stalls operating in the covered arcades.

I generally will eschew the C Line and walk down to the waterfront from the office, often meandering through the crowds of tourists around the market.  The kids and I hung out down there for Thanksgiving last year, too.  It's a neat place, and now that they've closed things off to cars, reminds me of Church Street in Burlington another lifetime ago.

Anyway, happy birthday, Pike Place.

I want to be the one who always gives you shelter

Finds a way to keep you warm.

Love of Our Own Abjection

The Other Place:

The leaves had fallen in that sullen place,

but none around him knew just where they were.

The sky revealed no sun. A ragged blur

remained where each man's face had been a face.

Two angels soon crept forth with trays of bread,

circling among the lost like prison guards.

Love is not love, unless its will affords

forgiveness for the words that are not said.

Still he could not believe that this was Hell,

that others sent before him did not know;

yet, once his name and memory grew faint,

it was no worse, perhaps, than a cheap motel.

It is the love of failure makes a saint.

He stood up then, but did not try to go.

William Logan.

Narcissist-in-Chief

🤦‍♂️

It’s a fucking aircraft carrier, it’s not supposed to be pretty. I don’t understand why the Navy would even entertain this nonsense.

He wants the tower/command center to be closer to the front of the ship. It would cost billions and result in years of delays. https://t.co/x1RQqqZ7vk

— Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) August 15, 2026

Ericka used to do the same sort of shit all the time, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.  It's all part of being a narcissist, exercising control and whatnot to fill the void, etc.

Can't tell you how much time I spent following her directions¹, moving shit around the yard or the living room or whatever (when I was supposed to be working, even).  All just to change something that needed no changing, often making it worse.

And my god, she slathered fucking chalk paint on everything.  For example, Sam's dresser (which was mine before his, and my mother's before mine), lovely antique with a rich finish that showed off the gorgeous wood grain...covered in taupe-ish (I think?) chalk paint with some geometrical designs in muted colors.  Otherwise, generally leaning into lots of grey, lots of black.  Reminds me of Trump's obsession with gold paint.

Anyway, of course none of what our pathological president demands makes sense to us who don't suffer from the same compulsions.  Prolly a good reason not to put a person like that in charge.

Selah.

1 - Always fraught with danger because not only was her emotional regulation eroding, so were her language faculties.  "Put that in the center."  [Puts it in the center]  "You never fucking listen to me, put it in the center!"  [She meant the corner]  3 days later...  "Put that in the center."  [Confirms 'corner' vs 'center', puts it in the corner]  "You never fucking listen to me, put it in the center!"  Rinse, repeat.