From David Foster Wallace’s commencement address to the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005…  If you don’t know anything about David Foster Wallace, be sure to ask me the next time you see me.  If you are interested in reading the text of the entire commencement address, you can find it online:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

At the beginning of his commencement address, Wallace includes the story you may have heard:  There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?”

The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water." "This is water."

Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: education really IS the job of a lifetime.

Today's pictures: eclectic is the word that comes to mind... from Sophie and Justus and Dkmy's Hong Kong painting to the Ming vase and jade horse and the leaf and the orchid and the ancient Chinese pot and finally the Chinese characters for LOVE...  Life is Good!