“Throwing away the alarm clock my father always said, ‘early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ It was lights out at 8PM in our house and we were up at dawn to the smell of coffee, frying bacon, and scrambled eggs. My father followed this general routine for a lifetime and died young, broke, and, I think, not too wise. Taking note, I rejected his advice and it became, for me, late to bed and late to rise. Now, I’m not saying I’ve conquered the world but I’ve avoided numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some common pitfalls, and have met some strange, wonderful people, one of whom was myself, someone my father never knew.”

 

 – Charles Bukowski

 

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Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

 

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

 

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1. Reepicheep (from C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Last Battle)
2. Stuart Little
3. Algernon
4. Mickey
5. City Mouse (Aesops’ Fables)

 

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Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This at Home (2003)

 

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“Let’s not forget, while we’re on the theme, Anthony Hecht’s ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ series — accompanied by Leonard Baskin engravings — in The Hard Hours (1967). My notes indicate the series was initially published by The Gehenna Press.”

 

[Baskin also did woodcuts to accompany the Hecht book Flight Among the Tombs, 1998. – E]

 

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The average American house size has more than doubled since the 1950s; it now stands at 2,349 square feet.

 

 

 

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And it wouldn’t be a house issue without Falling Water:

 

 

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Bonus midterm election fact:

 

The new senator from Rhode Island is named Sheldon Whitehouse.

 

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Fruityland, California

 

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Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs call the House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs.
Nature for the primal
Pleasure She bestows.

 

Sex is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.

 

Lifted off the potty,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.

 

Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Crosswords have been solved there)
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.

 

All the arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers’ lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-narcissus-ized en-
During excrement.

 

Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter boxes
Built in their fa