4319. “whom I hopelessly love”
he looks like my best friend my constant lover
hopelessly loyal tawny and apt and whom I hopelessly love
Frank O’Hara, “Cantata”
First he’s talking about his cat and then his best friend, and then both. That’s the great thing about praising. Once it really starts, there’s really no stopping it.
Note: disposto a salire a le stelle—“ready to rise to the stars” (Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XXXIII, trans. Charles S. Singleton).
4324. Midlife Morning
They had received their unlooked-for happiness as a free gift
from their Creator’s hands, and they submitted to its loss, not
without sorrow, but without impious and stubborn repining.
Hazlitt, “On Shakespeare and Milton”
Sometimes it’s as easy as falling asleep after the longest day. Other times, it’s as hard as waking up after some endless fight. And then, every once in a while, it’s one of those mornings where you get up and, though you’re not really sure why, you’re just ready: you’re good to go.
Note: “Through Eden took their solitary way” (Milton, Paradise Lost).
4327. “my dreams are not calm”
One memorial of my former condition nevertheless remains:
my dreams are not calm; the dread swell and agitation
of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that
encamped in them are drawing off, but not departed.
De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Neither have mine, and I hope they never do. (It’s lonely enough around here, as it is.) Those dream-remainders: they’re like houseguests or expectant glances: I always worry I won’t be up for them when they come, but, really, where would I be without them?
And where would we go, but with them?
Note: “My sleep is still tumultuous … like … Paradise to our first parents, when looking back from afar” (De Quincey).