Happy Birthday, Brother!

My brother Jason on the Pacific shore in Monterey, Cali, 2008. I'm taking him out to dinner today.

"As I wend to the shores I know not,

As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd,

As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,

As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,

I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift,

A few sands and dead leaves to gather,

Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift."

- excerpt from "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life", by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860