"......No longer the core of each other’s waking (or sleeping) hours." ~ from here

... and so the days are given to a travelogue of insignificances - that they were born, that they lived in that house once, loved and were on occasion loved back - none of this a cause for a tragedy - barely a squeak under the great whirling wheel of time (or as revolutionaries would have it, Historical Imperative) - yet

how would it be, if the arts of memory were denied to them? And they couldn't mourn those faces that must have changed, or all those completely forgotten? Or even worse stay up late in the nights, not able to hear loved voices, in the far distance, singing softly, what appear to be dirges or lullabies?

These past few lovely summer days, Africa on my mind: first there was Salif Keita's dazzle in a Brooklyn dusk, and last evening, Orchestra Baobab's Senegalese spin on Cuban rumba, by the shores of Hudson River.

And to complement such musical feasting, two writers, previously one known and one not, inflaming an old scabby hunger (grown passive with time etc) for literature: this past week witnessed consumption of two novels from the roof of the world, Halldór Laxness's "The Fish Can Sing" (from Icelandic) and Knut Hamsun's brilliant "Growth of the Soil" (from Norwegian)

Cottonwoods send white gowned emissaries to the grass - where I try To overhear the word that passes Between the nodding stalks of berries And the wind - now embroidered by The flight of skylarks, and dragonflies