The Rose — Charlie Smith.

I’m looking everywhere for new ways,
poking, selecting, looking everywhere,
turning the trees over, rummaging among skirts
and stars. I’m so lonely and intense, so
tense and energetic, I’m getting up early
to touch the slick habit of ice on the windowsill,
to touch dust and the dried blue berries of juniper.
I’m shaking and scared of life,
and of the absence of life, childless, love
buried out in the prairie far from here
under the shifty grass; I’m watching the white birds
drift up from the south, reading the last lights
in the tall buildings like lines of white type
spelling the future, I’m into everything
haphazardly and wholly, revenant and pilgrim,
I’m looking as I go and I go formally and
rapidly, moving through gales of solitude,
through crowds and the cries of young children;
I’m tasting, I’m smelling everything, I’m
stooping in Chinatown to lick the boots of
the Buddhists, I’m pressing my bare skin
to the ancient stone designs of artisans lost
to the world; I’m looking everywhere, I’m alert,
I’m open like a child’s blue coat as he runs,
I’m ready for bronze and happiness, I’m gamely
adjusting the water level, I’m forgiving it all,
telling it all, hearing it all, I’m ready
for fake silk patches spilling from envelopes,
I’m ready for a “vague splintering of rain,”
ready—I’m looking everywhere—for a delicate means
of transition, I’m stumbling against
beauty and not apologizing, I’m almost naked here,
skinnier than I used to be, almost helpless
or maybe I’m completely helpless as the religious
say is the way to heaven—all right I’m helpless—
I’m swaying on the platform, I’m tenderly
toasting the bread, I’m placing the saucer,
the spoon on the tray, I’m arranging the rose,
I’m pulling the curtain, I’m letting light flood the room.

Charlie Smith

Happy Holidays, eh?

24 things I'm grateful for: a list.

1. That I work in a place where my name is occasionally replaced with ‘punkin.’

2. When I can make my mom cry her eyes out and know it was because I did a good thing.

3. Sometimes being able to talk to the interesting sorts around the nation, share their stories with others and even get a regular paycheck for doing so.

4. Pumpkin. Great gourdy gobs of sweet-tasting, autumnal-spiced pumpkin.

5. Being able to do four unassisted backbends.

6. Getting remembered by someone I truly enjoy, then talking for an hour, until we both run out of words.

7. Luz, the waitress who gifted us with a free tiramisu, even though it was about four-and-a-half months past my birthday. Sometimes free tastes better.

8. The fact my “I’d really like to see if I can and I really want to” comes out as “I can totally do that.” Sometimes (and that’s enough).

9. Discovering continual inspiration in a friend I already admire.

10. DayQuil.

11. Being able to comfort a friend without knowing at all what to say. Sometimes it just takes a couple of ears and three hours sitting impossibly close in a van for things to feel better than they once felt.

12. Having a friend help me, too, without even so much as knowing it.

13. Feeling raindrops on my face during yoga in Nicaragua.

14. Coconut and pineapple shrimp curry. Land sakes.

15. Getting to hear fishermen singing in Spanish before they dive and go about their work … you don’t need to speak the language to understand the feeling.

16. Nina Simone singing to me in the nighttime (okay, anytime, really).

17. Open hearts.

18. Being able to notice an open heart, in myself or others.

19. When it’s cool enough to live with an open window at night, I sincerely wish I could locate Mother Nature, just so I could high five her.

20. For a next-door neighbor who neatly piles my collected newspapers on my porch when I skip town for a few days.

21. Remembering what it feels like to hold someone close.

22. Surviving a wayward GPS leading a rental too far up a mountain in the Dominican Republic (a very specific thank you and answer to a plea).

23. Dancers who’ve a true sense of rhythm.

24. Crumbling walls.

Wordless Wednesday.

thanks, PASTE.

"Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" — My Morning Jacket.

I can't say I felt especially wonderful at the My Morning Jacket show last night, at least not right away. After about 10 days of back-to-back travel and cramped flights and some all-too-brief nights of shut-eye, a night of being on my feet at the Hard Rock wasn't exactly what the doctor ordered. At least, that is, until this song came on. Pardon my shaky hands, and go ahead and close your eyes if you have to ... but just put your life on pause and let this song wash over you. It'll do your body good (as it did mine).

Wordless Wednesday.

thank you, louisiana. thank you.

I still love you, New York.

I don't try very hard to stay away from New York. And, every time I go there and spend a few days, I get to taste and do more than I did the time before. This time it was famous old delis and Jewish pastries I still can't pronounce and wandering around during the day and night, even risking both life and limb on an ice skating ring (no, not Rockefeller ... it was far too crowded). I could list everything out, maybe, but that one moment I like to relive this morning? It's simple, but it comes down to discovering a woman on the street, happily peeling mangoes, cutting them up and placing them in tiny plastic bags. I'd never seen such a thing, so I had to try it out. I bought one of them off of her and continued on my way, but not before she added a generous amount of hot sauce, salt and lemon juice. It set me back just three dollars, but the taste was worth far, far more. New York, if nothing else, is incredibly, impossibly, undeniably delicious.