Jackson considered

Sometimes it takes a crudely drawn anthropomorphic toy animal to sum it all up:

“When your Elvis dies, so does the private lie that someday you will be young
once again, and feel at capricious intervals the weightlessness of a joy that is
unchecked by the injuries of experience and failure.”

(Via Tim Blair)

Little lake to appear

Frankly, it's the most compelling news item I've come across today:

According to deputy mayor of Kyiv Ihor Dobrutsky, not only Kreshchatyk Street, but also Zankovetskoy and Horodetskoho Streets will be blocked at week-end. A little lake will appear on Horodetskoho Street. Alive carps will live in the lake. “Japan carps koi, algae and lilies will exist there. Sponsors will assist us”, statesman tells, ForUm informs, referring to MIGnews.

Karajan conducting Ravel's Bolero

Sometimes, while sifting through the mountains of junk on YouTube, you run across the right clip at the right time. This was it for me tonight. Sound and video are slightly out of sync, but it doesn't matter. Glorious.

The last day of school

As we hang out on the playground waiting for the one-hour "day" to begin, I notice my youngest daughter seems a bit melancholy. I ask her if she is happy that the summer is about to begin. She says: Yes, but I'll miss my teacher. I tell her to be sure to go to her teacher and tell her how much she has enjoyed having her, and how much she will miss her.

A few minutes later, she starts looking around the playground for her "fifth grade buddy," Mashay, who she also feels very fondly toward. She doesn't see her; I tell her to feel free to walk over to where the buses drop kids off to see if she can find Mashay. She heads over in that direction, milling about and looking, and comes back seeming a bit disconsolate. No Mashay. Maybe, she says, Mashay is just late. I assure her that she will probably see her after school, and be able to say her thanks and goodbyes.

Well, maybe Mashay will be there, and maybe she won't. As I watch my daughter standing twenty feet away scanning the playground for this girl she has come to know and care for, I think: there she is, learning one of those lessons about life that even we older and supposedly wiser adults must learn over and over again. Even life's joys and pleasures can be tinged with sadness. Even the prospect of a summer free and clear of the usual obligations and responsibilities carries with it a pang, or maybe more than a pang, of regret.

What a world we live in! Would we change it, if we could, so that all pleasures and joys were unalloyed, so that nothing we loved ever changed? I don't know. It's not the best world, to be sure. But it's the only one we've got.