Two factors determine what constitutes a lifetime supply of anything:
1. how much you’ve got
2. how long you’ve got to live

Of course there are no other things that are not part of the universe.  So there is not “the universe and other things”; there’s the universe and that’s it.  There’s nothing else to talk about.  Anything we discuss is part of the universe, and a very small part at that.   For instance, the solar eclipse…

The solar eclipse looks like a big deal from here.  But universally speaking, it’s not a notable event.  There are stars forming, solar systems developing, galaxies exploding onto and off the scene.  Our solar eclipse is a tiny footnote in the intergalactic news of the day.   So as the moon comes moseying in front of the sun, try to keep things in perspective.

It didn’t take us long to find our niche…

The importance of unwritten rules.

          NOW

Things seem to keep happening
faster and faster.
That’s the nature of now.
The present zips by
at the speed of time, in a blur
that does not resolve itself until it’s too late
to do anything but watch it recede
into the layered still-lives of memory.
Nothing is as swift as the present.
The future keeps you waiting.
The past keeps you wondering.
The present doesn’t keep at all.
It has no shelf-life, no duration, nothing but its own immediate mortality.
It is and was in one unlasting sentence.
So there you are and were.

(Mike Cohen – Apr 2016)

Ancestry by the numbers.

     HERE COMES THE MOMENT

the sky leans so close
you can hear the high clouds whisper
a secret you knew all along.
It isn’t the message that strikes you
but the clarity of it.  Suddenly
the mud and the dust and the mist
are dismissed and the sky leans so close
you can hear the high clouds whisper,
“Here you are.”

(Mike Cohen – Oct 2015)