January

Overturned urns
Along an ice grim roadside
Swelled geese
Sleek and gourd-taut

Nashi

Morning Snow on Knox Hill

So Proud of My Sister

Some 200 guests attended the highly-acclaimed "Front Lines of Hope" Discussion Series at Scripps Florida in Jupiter on January 21, featuring Dr. Claes Wahlestedt, Professor and Director of Neuroscience Discoveries at Scripps Florida and Patty Doherty who founded with her family The Unforgettable Fund. Dr. Wahlestedt and Mrs. Doherty discussed the devastating effects of Alzheimer's and the hopes for combating it in the future at this invitation-only event sponsored by the Scripps Florida Council.
Patty McNally Doherty is one of seven children whose father, Richard McNally, died from Alzheimer's in 2006. She spoke to the audience about her families personal experience embroiled in her father's 11 year battle with Alzheimer's. Mrs. Doherty and her family founded The Unforgettable Fund, to honor their father's memory and raise money for Alzheimer's research. The Fund's three-pronged mission is to raise money dedicated exclusively for Alzheimer's research, to be a voice for the Alzheimer's community, and to serve as a collective memory bank for families affected by the disease. To date, The Unforgettable Fund – www.unforgettablefund.com - has raised $50,000 to aid in the work being done in the Scripps Florida research laboratories to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

Unmistaken Child

Watched a great movie this weekend. “Unmistaken Child” documents the four-year search of Tenzin Zopa, a gentle, baby-faced 28-year-old Nepalese monk, for the reincarnation of his Tibetan master, Geshe Lama Konchog, who died in 2001. The young monk’s journey, on foot, by mule and by helicopter, begun at the request of the Dalai Lama, takes him through some of the world’s most spectacular high country, as he travels from village to village, seeking a very young child, 1 to 1 ½, who shows signs of being his reincarnated teacher.The film, written and directed by Nati Baratz, is a real-life examination of the same rituals and traditions observed in Martin Scorsese’s “Kundun.” Like Mr. Scorsese’s movie, it stands in awe of its subject. The beauty of the landscape and the monk’s sweetness, humility and good humor evoke a plane of existence, at once elevated and austere, that is humbling to contemplate."

Context

The imprisoned
Given charcoal and paper
Draw the bars of their cage

KC

Fernando Pessoa

(Portugal, 1888 - 1935)It is sometimes said that the four greatest Portuguese poets of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. The statement is possible since Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos who wrote in styles completely different from his own. In fact Pessoa wrote under dozens of names, but Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. He dubbed them ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms, since they were not false names but “other names”, belonging to distinct literary personalities. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry. Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis also signed dozens of pages of prose.

The gods by their example
Help only those
Who seek to be nowhere
But in the river of things

* * *
I have no ambitions nor desires.
To be a poet is not my ambition,
It's simply my way of being alone.

* * *
I am nothing.
I will never be anything.
I cannot wish to be anything.
Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.


Fernando Pessoa

Twenty Ten

Thinking about the spring and gathering books to read...ordered Better, In Praise of Shadows, Committed and Drive.