Drunk on impressionist echoes . . .

Thursday, April 30, 2026. It's Odin's day . . . forecasts for Green Country and TulseyTown indicate a near Xerox copy of yesterday. Moderate Northerlies, mostly cloudy, and upper 60's after noon.

The genuine path of unminding is not a religion for the immature – Zen Master Fen-yang.

Annie Dillard is 80 today. Born in 1945 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she's the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek which won the Pulitzer Prize.

The controversial Danish film director Lars von Trier is 70 today. He was born in 1956, Copenhagen, Denmark

Today is also the birthday of Alice B. (for Babette) Toklas in 1877 San Francisco, California.

And the painter whose works were seminal to the mergence of impressionism, Édouard Manet, born today in 1832, Paris, France.

How to cope with a spiritual meltdown. – Mirabai Starr

Buddhism may seem to be mostly about fighting the ego, about nonself, about emptiness, but the Buddha said in the beginning, ‘Become friends with yourself, because it is your ego that will have to walk the path.’ To be able to do that—and then to develop deep understandings—we must be friends with our ego. – Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo inWomen in Love with the Divine, by Erica Bassani. Shambhala, 2026.

In each mind, winds stir up a different madness.

Give me the madness of the crazed, selfless lover,

pouring Love's wine, filling everyone's cup.

…

Wherever you go, you are with me.

Lead me where you wish.

...

The world is our holy mountain.

We are seekers like Moses.

One glimpse of the divine

and the mountain shatters.

…

If you want to see God

gaze at the mountain.

We are drunk on the echoes in the valley.

--Rumi, “Here We Are Today,” in Water, translation by Haleh Liza Gaforia, The New York Review of Books, 2025.

Truth is a pathless land. – J. Krishnamurti