Perfecting perfection while deluded . . .

In Tew's day's mailbox, awaiting the heat-hammer . . .

The nature of perfection is always mutating. What constitutes enlightenment today will always be different tomorrow. Even if you're fortunate and wise enough to score a sliver of "enlightenment," it's not a static treasure that becomes your indestructible, everlasting possession. Rather, it remains a mercurial knack that must be continually re-earned. You must not only be willing to change ceaselessly—you have to love to change ceaselessly. Lucky you: All of creation is conspiring to help you live like that. – Rob Brezsney

Birthdays of note today:

Helen Keller was born on this date in 1880, Tuscumbia, Alabama.

It's Lucille Clifton's birthday. The multiple Pulitzer finalist and nominee for her poetry was born Thelma Lucille Sayles today in 1936 Depew, New York.

One of the first African-American writers to gain popular recognition for his work, poet and short story writer Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on this date in 1872 Dayton, Ohio.

And, the poet Frank O’Hara was born today in 1926 Baltimore, Maryland. He was among the leaders of the “New York School” of poets in the 1950's and 60's.

The sense of the loved one seeing themselves through the intensity with which you are seeing them—and the reciprocation of that seeing—is the essence of the mutual, loving gaze. It is not confined to the merely human. Looking intensely at a landscape or the ocean, the give and take of the shoreline where the two meet, we fall in love, and perhaps equally, even find ourselves with a sense of being loved by the tidal essence of the world that we inhabit. – David Whyte