Lange and Ruess - Read, Drink, Tend, Listen...

Lange heard the doorbell ring.  It was almost 6:30pm, so the odds were one of the neighbors or UPS.  Sure enough, he opened the door to see a brown blur of man and machine speed away.  What remained was a large package, taped well, with a familiar name beginning the return address - Ruess.

He opened the box to find a manilla envelope on top of a sea of packing peanuts.  The envelope had the words START HERE written across the top, and so Lange carefully slit the seal with a steak knife and read:
Dear Lange,
This is a little goodwill from me to you.  As I told you early on, I'm a hard mystic and after awhile words and concepts can make me a little loopy.  The popular movie right now is Eat, Pray, Love...well, I prefer Read, Drink, Tend, Listen...sorta the same idea minus Julia Roberts.  Dig through the packing and you'll find 
~an Annie Dillard book - There are times I don't know what in the hell this lady is talking about and other times when a sentence or phrase of her's splices me open.  At one point in this book she writes 'I don't know beans about God'...that's a writer I trust.  This is a wrestling book.
~a planter - As you'd guess, the coyote reminds me of you.  I dare you to plant something in here, doesn't matter what necessarily, and tend it.  It never ceases to amaze me what giving a little attention to small things every day can do.
~a cd - I found this first in album form, as in vinyl.  Chances are good you don't own a phonograph so I copied it to cd for you. This is Brazilian flavored easy listening, a good way to begin or end the day.  Eve might like to be rocked to sleep by it.  I'd be interested to hear your favorite track.
~a coffee mug - If you're a coffee drinker, great.  If you drink green tea or something, lord, don't tell me.  This is what I'd call 'an icon of light.'  You said everything around you feels like weight these days.  That's fair.  Maybe the BOOTAY mug can elicit a grin, always a turn in the direction of not taking everything so seriously.  Sometimes where the face points, the mind will follow.
I was going to keep all this for myself, I like all these items.  But if there's anything I've learned in the last few years, Lange, its that 38 Special was right - 'hold on loosely'...so here you go.  The whole shebang cost me $3.  
Your welcome,
Ruess