My Brother's Book by Maurice Sendak

"Answer my riddle and I will give you my life! A sad riddle is best for me," says Guy, stranded in
Bohemia and desperately trying to keep from being eaten
"Catapulting Jack to Continents of ice- A snow image stuck fast in water like stone"
"Dropping down and down / On soft Bohemia" p. 12
"Eclipsing the moon, scorching the sky..."
"...February it will be / My snowghost's anniversary..." p. 18
"Give it quick in mine ear!" p. 16
His poor nose froze p. 10
"Into the lair of a bear / Who hugged Guy tight..." p. 14
Jack slept safe, enfolder in his brother's arms...
Ken, John, Bob... I am truly and deeply blessed
"...Love often takes the form of menance, and safe havens are reached, if they are reached at all, only after terrifying adventures." ~ from the forward by Stephen Greenblatt
New York Times review: "A Farewell, Whispered and Roared" click here
"On  a bleak midwinter's night / The newest star! - blazing bright!
"Posthumous new book...written in memory of his brother, Jack, who died in 1995. This lovely if evanescent book — it deals with the great Sendakian themes of loss, danger and flight — also feels on an unspoken level like an elegy for his companion of a half-century, Eugene Glynn, who died in 2007." source
Q
R
"echoes of Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale,”...Shakespeare's late romance are absorbed, redistributed, and
"...Transformed into something rich and strange." ~ Forward by Stephen Greenblatt
"Unsettling potency"
Verses in an elegiac meter...Visionary worlds --
Widely recognized as among the greatest imaginative creations of our age..."
"eXquisite pictures in the manner of Fuseli or Blake.. eXpression of longing to be reunited with his dead brother, Jack..."
"Yet it’s a book that rewards repeat readings. Its charms are simmering and reflective ones. This moral fable may find its largest audience among adults." source
Z

Listening to these Songs, I want to write more

"A Thousand Miles From Nowhere" by Dwight Yoakam YouTube
"Breathe" by Faith Hill YouTube "Believe" by Brooks & Dunn
"Carefree Highway" by Gordon Lightfoot, "Colour My World by Chicago" and "Close to You" by the Carpenters always reminds me of Joh Joseph Law born 1963
Dave Matthews "The Space Between" and "The Maker"
Elton John's "Your Song" reminds me of Kevin Higgins and Jay Grills
  Friends from way back, but I heard this song recently and don't recall every hearing it previously
"From A Distance" Nanci Griffith on Letterman, August 30, 1988 YouTube led to a Nanci Grifftin song I'd never heard of before "There's a light beyond these woods, Mary Margaret. YouTube 
"Georgia on My Mind" by Willie Nelson here reminds me of Grandpa T and "TheGreatest Discovery" YouTube reminds me of Robert James Law born 1965
"Help Me Make it Through the Night" Sammi Smith's version here
"I Go Crazy" by Paul Davis and "I Think I Love You" by the Partridge Family will always and forever make me think of Robert James Law singing it as a little kid :) 
John Denver's "Perhaps Love" - 1982 live at the Apollo, "just" John, with an extremely touching intro... He recorded it with Plácido Domingo released Oct 11, 1981 - but oh the heartache when I listend to it the following year... 1982 live at the Apollo
Kansas - Dust in the Wind (Official Video) - YouTube and "Keep Your Eyes On Me" Tim McGraw & Faith Hill from The Shack: Music From And Inspired By The Original Motion Picture
"Love's the One and Only Thing" Willie Nelson YouTube
Maverick's version of "The Air That I Breath" YouTube
"Never My Love" by The 5th Dimension makes me think of 9th grade gymnastics comes to mind, so I'm fairly certain this song is also connected to Kevin 
"Oh Baby I love Your Way..." by Peter Frampton 10th grade gymnastics and Grace Zurcer 
Paul Stokey's "Wedding Song (There Is Love)" 10.16.1971 listen here
 and see "V" below
"Quittin' Time" by Mary Chapin Carpenter YouTube when I knew...it was time
"The Rose by Bette Midler YouTube and her version of "From a Distance" here
Springsteen's "Human Touch" and "Letter to You"
Supertramp "Goodbye Stranger" I wasn't a fan of this one back in 1979 when it came out, but when I  heard lyrics recently, it struck a cord: "Goodbye stranger it's been nice / Hope you find your paradise / Tried to see your point of view / Hope your dreams will all come true" YouTube
Turn The Page" by Bob Seger" always brings Michael Morrone to mind
"Unchained Melody" by Willie Nelson
Video of Caroline and Andy's Wedding Day 2014 
"Weary Traveler"- Jordan St. Cyr (10 September 2021, wow)
Xavier Rudd - Follow The Sun [official music video]
"You're Gone" by Diamond Rio led me to "One More Day" by same group 
Zendaya - Rewrite The Stars (from The Greatest Showman) [Acoustic]

Halloween A B C poems by Eve Merriam

Apple, sweet apple...
Bats in the belfry...
Creepy crawlers...
Diabolic demons
Elf: Little, littler, littlest sprite...
Fiend: A fiend with a fiendish glee...
Ghost: More gruesome than any groan...
House: Why do the curtains blow?
Icicle: An icy stabbing so swiftly done...
Jack-o'-lantern, jack-o'-lantern, all aglow...
Key: "Follow me" spells the key that opens a gate that leads to a wood where...
Lair: Lunging, plunging through the woods...
Mask: Guises, disguises, all kinds of surprises...
Nightmare: Nay, nay, nay never get away...
Owl: Who who who did it?....
Pet: A pet to pat, a pal of a pet, a pet the family won't forget...
Question: Write it on the North Wind, bury it in a woodencask; what is the question  that you dare not ask?
Rope: Twist the hemp spin the flax don't fall into the pavement cracks...
Skeleton: Clack clack clack up the stair; run to look -- no one's there...
Trap: Get a trap set a trap trap trap trap...
Umbrella, umbrella, duck under, duck under...
Viper, viper, spiteful sniper, snake in the grass...
Witchery: Which, which which witchery?
Xylophone tones, xylophone bones...
Yeast: Stir it in the brew stir it in the bread rise rise seethe spread...
Zero: Round blank Rpund blan k Only bubbles where it sank...
  

Long Day's Journey....

American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature, Eugene O'Neill grew up down the street
 325 Pequot Ave,New London CT
"Beguiling ne'er-do-well, with a strain of the sentimentally poetic" James "Jamie" Jr. – 33 years old, the older son. 
"...Connected with the sea...I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky!" Edmund *with alcoholic talkativeness
Derisively: in a manner expressing contempt or ridicule.
Eugene O'Neill's boyhood home is just a few house down the street from where we live "
 "Fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost." p. 156
Garrulous: excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters p. 53
Happy Birthday banner at the childhood home of Eugene O'Neill
"belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life,  or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way." p. 156
"Joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams!"
Know it's useless to talk. But sometimes I feel so lonely.”
Long Day's Journey into Night
 

None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.” ~
Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night 
O'Neill posthumously received the 1957
Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Long Day's Journey into Night
Quinine plant cure malarial fever. P. 27
Read during week of O'Neill's birthday 
Stage directions* are "extraordinarily effective " ~ Harold Bloom p. viii
 
"...Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!"*[Edmund] grins wryly.
"Until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.” ~ Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night
Vituperative: bitter and abusive."the criticism soon turned into a vituperative attack"
"What is it I'm looking for? I know it's something I lost... Something I miss terribly. It can't be lost altogether... Something I need terribly. I remember when I had it I was never lonely nor afraid. I can't have lost it forever,  I would die if I thought that. Because then there would be no hope." Mary  pp. 175-177
"...eXperience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning!
Yes, facts don't mean a thing, do they? What you want to believe, that's the only truth!”
Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night
Zen-like to me: