WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28THIS BOG ENTRY doesn't have to make sense. It is a tribute to one of my favorite writers, John Updike, who died yesterday. I have loved Updike since the time when I first met the very real character in his novels... Rabbit Angstrom... and especially since I got acquainted with his David from his Olinger Stories. I met Updike twenty-something years ago in Albany when he was doing a reading of his work at SUNY. That was as good a day for me as this day after his death is a sad one. The photograph for the day has less to with Updike himself than with the dreams and the imaginations of both Rabbit and David. The two "Stop" photographs, one just stop and the other a self portrait, seem to fit. I shot all three of the photographs today, but the anthropomorphic tree is the photo du jour.
WITHOUT TELLING US WHY

Above all things I like 
the idea that there are things
I don’t yet know
maybe will never know
but don’t have to close
off the avenues of my mind
to not knowing 
or wanting to know.

God, big G or little g god,
at the top of the list
of things I can live 
without knowing 
but can’t live without
wanting to know 
and hoping to know,
is the ultimate mystery.

And the thing is...
John Updike died
just like everybody
else dies at one time 
or another but mostly
totally unexpectedly he
disappeared from sight
without telling us why.