Not Quite Ready -- Scenes from the Journey v22 No. 16

Due to tech problems, this Scene is being sent out by Dean Tudor. If you wish to respond, please do so to 

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Please note that the July booklist is at the end of this email and not as an attachment.

----- Forwarded Message -----

To: deantudor <deantudor@yahoo.com>

Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2025 at 10:33:24 a.m. EDT

Not Quite Ready

Well, is anyone ever ready?
No matter what it is,
are we ever ready for it?
Perhaps that's a good thing.
Who wants to live perpetually expecting
the next thing,
whether it is catastrophe
or an occasion of elation?

Oh yes. I forgot.
The instruction
we might want to follow is:
Be. Here. Now.
And that pretty much precludes
making yourself ready
for the next big hit.

Thus we return to "not quite ready"
with its implication of an awareness of
"something to be ready for"
and at the same time that
"not quite"
keeps us from obsessing about what's next.
Keep it simple.

Just be here now.

cAnn Tudor 2025

BOOKLIST July 2025

Of the 28 titles I started in July, either print or audiobook, these are the ones I recommend.

Leslie Manville  Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Claire Keegan   Walk the Blue Fields   AB
Claire Keegan   Foster    AB
Claire Keegan   Small Things Like These   AB
Clalire Keegan   Antarctica

Nicole Upson   The Death of Lucy Kyte   AB
Nicola Upson   An Expert in Murder
Nicola Upson   Angel with Two Faces

Jean-Luc Bannelec  Murder on Brittany Shores   AB
Jean-Luc Bannelec  Death in Brittany    AB

Fred Vargas   The Ghost Riders of Ordebec   AB
Fred Vargas   An Uncertain Place*   AB

Ian Rankin   Rather Be the Devil
Ian Rankin   Saints of the Shadow Bible
Ian Rankin   Standing in Another Man's Grave   |AB

Ruth Rendell   Murder Being Once Done

George Saunders  Tenth of December

Jeanne Mardrell  All Things Move

Robert Galbraith  The Running Grave

Ngaio Marsh   Death at the Bar   AB

Martha Grimes   Vertigo 42   AB

Scenes from the Journey -- Gardens Vol22,#15 Sunday July 27/25

Subject: Scenes from the Journey -- Gardens Vol22,#15

 Gardens

My own barely counts as one. Voltaire might be appalled that this is the best that comes when I tend my own garden. Perhaps (I can only hope) he wasn't being literal. He didn't mean my timid raised bed with limited sun, sown with last year's seeds then poorly thinned, with the result of a total crop of one mess of salad greens and enough green beans for a light lunch for two. Hardly worth the water it took to irrigate them through the summer.

It's time to face the sad truth: my garden is elsewhere. Not physical, not earth-bound, and certainly not in my own back yard.

Each garden has its own delights, only some of them earthly. Other people's gardens are just like other people: each one different. The yield from my backyard garden is scant. But you should see what's growing in my elsewhere garden.

Copyright (c) 2025 Ann Tudor

Virus-free.www.avg.com

One Rickety Answer; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 22, no. 14

Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2025 at 10:21:42 a.m. EDT

Subject: Fwd: One Rickety Answer; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 22, no. 14

One Rickety Answer

Answers are a sham solution,
sought by the cocksure, by charlatans,
by those seeking to be on the winning side.
Let go of answers,
which are rickety at best,
contrived or duplicitous at their worst.

Let's hear it instead for questions and queries,
for expressions of doubt,
for open and inquiring minds.

Especially for the eternal questions,
there are no answers.
There are assertions of knowing,
pretensions of truth.
But not answers.
Ah, those eternal questions:
Why are we (am I) here?
What will come after?

Actually, those two are just about it.
Cogitate on these and you'll be busy
for the rest of your time.

Or don't cogitate at all.
Spend your time living it up,
taking adventurous leaps
into the wilderness.
Just be.