An episode inspired by two Dalton Day poems: "Love Poem" and "An Understanding" (from the chapbook Overlay). All poems referenced in the episode (in order of appearance):   YOU SEE I WANT A LOT You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything: The darkness that comes with every infinite fall And the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgments But what you love to see are faces That do work and feel thirst… You have not grown old, And it is not too late to dive Into your increasin ..read more

An episode inspired by two Wendell Berry poems: A MEETING In a dream I meet my dead friend. She has, I know, gone long and far, and yet she is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: "How you been?" She grins and looks at me. "I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees." EXCEPT Now that you have gone and I am alone and quiet, my contentment would be complete, if I did not wish you were here so I could say, “How good it is, Tanya, to be alone and quiet.” -- LINKS: Jack Black's Peaches Bie ..read more

An episode inspired by Noor Hindi's poem ? The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song ? The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song & Other Confessions I won’t make metaphors out of fish. If I have to die, I choose the ocean. If I have to live, I choose you. You: Everyone I’ve ever mourned. I believe less & less of sunlight these days. I won’t die alone. To awaken crying is to awaken displaced. Ghost of your joy in the bathtub. A face in the mirror. Your nephew’s painting in the foyer. My mother cried in bedrooms growing up. I would study her for hours. In a study, rese ..read more

Primarily an excuse to play you Tindersticks' gorgeous "Travelling Light", but also an attempt to unravel in 15 minutes the world of referential delusions, where ordinary events assume personal significance in ways that cross the boundary between quirky beliefs and mental disorders. Meet, my ex-client 'Eric' and his unshakable notion that love signals are being played to him, and him alone, from a DJ's playlist who professes to have no romantic interest in him at all. The poem mentioned in the episode is this one by Elizabeth Bishop: One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many thi ..read more

Parallels drawn between Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, with a nod to the Philosopher King’s son, Commodus (“a bit of a shit” - Cassio Dio, History of the Roman Empire). Also, some late Wallace Stevens, doing "The Work”. The Plain Sense of Things After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the ..read more

Our desire for meaningful communication with an inner or outer You in W.S. Graham's What Is The Language Using Us For, and Maureen McClane's Open Sky. OPEN SKY open sky— what you want? what you want I want for you, want whatever you want when you say you want everything under the sky— is that what everyone wants never to die— what you want? what you want I want for you, want what you want when you say you want never to die except when you want nothing— what you want? nothing's something to want, something annihilating, something beyond want that stops at nothing— ravenous want ..read more

An exploration of Rilke's poem "⁠Du im Voraus verlorne Geliebte⁠," ("You Who Never Arrived"), alongside Leon Russell's "⁠A Song for You⁠," and Martin Buber's book ⁠I and Thou⁠, delving into themes of elusive love, the intricacies of human connection, and the profound nature of both inner and outer I-You-ness.  (00:00) "⁠You, In Advance, Lost Beloved⁠”  (01:30) Only You (1994 Romantic Comedy - ⁠watch on YouTube⁠) (03:39) The "Mission" of Rilke's "Du Im Voraus" & The Duino Elegies (07:52) Learning Rilke on Walks in the Kent Countryside in 2019 (09:19) Rilke's De ..read more

On the 1st of May 1889, the young (33 year old) psychoanalyst-on-the-make Sigismund Schlomo Freud took on the case of a “a lady of about forty years of age”, a Frau Emmy von N., who we now know to be the Swiss noblewoman Baroness Fanny Louise von Sulzer-Wart.  Baroness Fanny had married 29 years previously at the tender age of 23 the 65 year-old Swiss watchmaker and industrialist Heinrich Moser, who died 4 years after the marriage from a heart attack. In the minds of Moser’s five children from his previous marriage, the idea got around that Fanny might have toe-tagged their father after h ..read more

An exploration of The Tower via Frost's Fire and Ice. The Tower is an archetype which invites us to explore and consider sudden change, upheaval, and chaos in our lives, as well as a kind of revelation or awakening sometimes associated with the word "enlightenment" as it is sometimes linked to personal transformation.  This particular exploration of The Tower, we make together via the following cultural stepping stones:  Irene Solà's novel When I Sing, Mountains Dance Nichiren and his Soka Gakkai chums chanting of Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Rober ..read more

Accepting the mixed-bag Now of our lives. Hard. -- THE THING IS to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I wi ..read more