Today's subject line comes from William Carlos Williams's translation of Nicanor Parra's "Piano Solo," which appeared in Mary Karr's column yesterday, which was mentioned by a friend who was sharing "Young Poets", which -- I almost didn't read it because of the title, and that would have been a shame, because the ending --!

Also, Parra was a theoretical physicist. This is not germane to anything but will pique the interest at least two other readers.

And at least two other readers will be amused by Anna Belle's knitting pattern translated into PHP...

Anna Belle also recently wrote about What Goes Into a Successful Ministerial Search... which I mention here not because of the specific event she discusses, but because her point about how much not-readily-visible work goes into what-comes-across-as-done-deals-to-the-outside-world really resonates with me right now. As I've mentioned to some of you elsewhere, Brasington's Ninth Law is in full reign here even at the best of times ("A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned one will take only twice as long") and -- well, I meant to head up to bed hours ago, and look at the time, such that almost every thing I'm working on right now depends on so many other things not quite happening on schedule or as planned, and in the grand scheme of things, it will all turn out okay and I know that, but saints is it frustrating right now.

But to lope back to Anna Belle's point - it helps me when I manage to remember that there is so much more going on with other people and their projects than I see in the ten or twenty minutes that our lives intersect, and when I'm able to recognize that it's not personal or even carelessness (or, worse yet, me screwing something up without knowing it) when the centers of our universes don't quite overlap and my priorities didn't stay on their radar that particular week.

I don't think I'm explaining this well. Let me try another articulation: Many things that matter are more complicated than they seem. [Well, duh. And yet...]

Or, there's the observation on performing Mozart [by I forget who] where, if you're doing it properly, it glides swan-smooth to the listener's ear -- with no hint of how you're paddling for dear life beneath the surface.

Or, instead of distracting myself with thoughts that want to become more profound than my mental horsepower can handle, I could just actually head to my invitingly soft and warm bed. Good things earlier today included the burger my husband delivered to me for dinner (and the memories it evoked -- he used to bring supper to me when I worked evenings at a computer lab), making some progress on the project that had me at the office tonight, and writing some notes I'd been wanting to get to. I'm sipping a cup of Wu Wei tea, and I'm going to deal with a few bills and type one more note...