Some time ago, I told a dear friend that I’d made a list of my favorite things — those great symbols and images that I find beautiful. The things that make my soul sing in a kind of sympathetic vibration — call it frisson perhaps.

Crumbling abbeys, gates, bridges, birds, stars, thunderstorms, distant trains, the flash of a mockingbird’s wing taking flight, windmills turning slowly on the horizon, black and white footage of ticker tape parades…

And when I had finished, she said, (and I am paraphrasing)

“You are the only one, the only person where these disparate things come together. And when you’re gone, all those things will be separate again.”

So that’s what this is.