A reader of the Toads writes:
“Hi Joe, I have been reading your travel posts . They seem familiar like maybe I’ve seen them before . The photos are recent , though , so I must be wrong about that.”
personal correspondence
That is precisely the problem with writing, with, indeed, life, the feeling we’ve been here before, Déjà vu, been there – done that. Yet we continue to imagine our future, awake and asleep, waiting for something new.
“I pity the poor immigrant
“I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” Bob Dylan, from John Wesley Harding, 1968.
Who wishes he would’ve stayed home”
“Make it new,” Ezra Pound said, over and over again. But if you make it too new, who will recognize it?
HAMM: Go and get the oilcan.
“Endgame,” Samuel Beckett, 1957.
CLOV: What for?
HAMM: To oil the castors.
CLOV: I oiled them yesterday.
HAMM: Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday!
CLOV (violently): That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody awful day. I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.
(Pause.)
A Google search of “Yaquina Head Lighthouse” will bring up over 300,000 results (in .78 seconds, no less). Click on “images,” and you’ll see more than 500 pics of the lighthouse. Nevertheless, I now double back and offer readers of the Toads these entirely original never seen before pics of the lighthouse, freshly taken about a month ago:
from the lighthouse, looking back toward shore 
The Coming of the Toads 