Art is felt life.

On page 24 of the June 2012 Harper's magazine is a reproduction of "Twin Peaks," a photograph by Ralf Brueck recently exhibited in the so what gallery, Dusseldorf. Roughly opposite it on page 25 is the poem "Unholy Sonnet No. 1" by Billy Collins from the Winter 2012 of Raritan:

Death, one thing you can be proud of

is all the room you manage to take up
in this Concordance to the Poems of John Donne,
edited by Homer Carroll Combs and published in 1945.

Mighty and dreadful are your tall columns here,
(though soul and love put you in deep shade)
for you outnumber man and outscore even life itself,
and you are roughly tied with God and, strangely, eyes.

But no one likes the way you swell,
not even in these scholarly rows,
where from the complex fields of his poems
each word has returned to the alphabet with a sigh.

And lovelier than you are the ones that only once he tried:
syllable and porcelain, but also beach, cup, snail, lamp, and pie.

Jehovah Witnesses, Wenzen Germany, 2001

Higher ed salaries in Texas

10 Highest-Paying Texas Colleges & Universities
Institution Full Professors Associate Professors Assistant Professors
Rice University $159,500 $106,000 $86,600
University of Texas at Dallas $142,400 $104,100 $93,700
University of Texas at Austin $140,700 $89,900 $83,900
Southern Methodist University $136,900 $91,700 $92,600
University of Houston-Main $128,800 $84,500 $81,000
Texas A&M University $120,000 $83,100 $72,800
Texas Christian University $119,500 $87,200 $71,100
Baylor University $115,900 $88,300 $75,000
University of Texas San Antonio $115,300 $80,600 $71,000
Trinity University $114,400 $75,400 $60,400
10 Lowest-Paying Texas Colleges &Universities
Institution Full Professors Associate Professors Assistant Professors
East Texas Baptist University $87,800 $52,900 $45,400
McMurry University $65,100 $51,800 $50,800
Hardin-Simmons University $66,800 $56,600 $50,200
Lone Star College System $67,800 $51,800 $51,200
University of Dallas $67,900 $61,700 $57,600
Austin Community College $69,100 $53,100 $45,700
Sul Ross State University $70,100 $53,900 $47,600
Texas Lutheran University $70,500 $58,200 $51,400
Our Lady of the Lake University $70,900 $61,300 $57,000
Austin College $74,600 $65,400 $57,300

Sonnet 66 (condensed version) by William Shakespeare

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry

Tired cry,
As born,
And jollity,
And forsworn,
And misplac'd,
And strumpeted,
And disgrac'd,
And disabled
And authority,
And skill,
And simplicity,
And ill:
Tir'd gone,
Save alone.

Day 2 of my fast

9 am--Disappointment. After 33 hours of fasting, my weight this morning is 151, a loss of one pound. My hunger continues after a restless night, sleep for an hour or two, awake for an hour or two. Feeling limber, slightly light headed. A cold is complicating my condition...sneezing, sniffling. Maybe this is poor timing for a fast. Also I am 77, Hendricks' account of his 19-day fast dodged the problem of people of my age (77) undergoing this, although there is some evidence in rat studies that fasting in old age has minor benefits at best.
As I awakened this morning, images from Steve McQueen's film Hunger (2008) emerged in my reverie. Michael Fassbinder played Irish republican Bobby Sands in a hunger strike in Northern Irish prison. Details of hiss physical deterioration are riveting. Fassbinder starved himself during the making of the film.
A friend of LaVona's said fasting is dangerous after hearing about my plan, which reminded me of my parents' belief that one would die after 10 days without nourishment.
BP 136/74

Day I of my fast

Friday, Feb. 17

Starving Your Way to Vigor: The benefits of an empty stomach
by Steve Hendricks

3 p.m.--“Two weeks after the Fourth of July at the end of reconstruction, a doctor in Minneapolis named Henry S. Tanner resolved to end his life.” With that opening sentence, Hendricks begins an account of his fasting experiment published in the March issue of “Harpers.” Now a third of my way through the 10-page piece, I have decided to fast for several days in a row, not sure how long, but probably not as as long as Hendricks’ 19 days.

At day one, 16 hours after my last food:
152 lbs @ 5’ 6” height
Blood pressure
152/82 63 pulse
145/82 60
138/24 59

Walked 5 miles @ 4 mph at midmorning.

18 hours--LaVona just fixed herself a fried egg on toast while I described to her how I was feeling...hungry but clear-headed and not prepared to back out of the fast. Reminded of quitting smoking some 25 years ago: The physical sensations of both were not painful, but the need to be control of my desire for a cigarette (now food) was annoying, knowing that the frustration of keeping in control would go away if I merely lit up.