“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of
matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints,
of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”
“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may
call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not
foolin’ a soul.”
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of
the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and
boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got
unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just
one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”
―
Neil Gaiman,
A Game of You
“[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in
paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there
for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for
buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or
borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read
the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was
bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people.
The most important thing is that people read...”
“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”
―
Neil Gaiman
“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you
versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the
blank piece of paper wins.”
―
Neil Gaiman
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good
madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks
you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or
build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next
year, you surprise yourself.”
―
Neil Gaiman
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that
dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
―
Neil Gaiman,
Coraline
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with
illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your
demons will cause your angels to sing.”
―
August Wilson
“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I
come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”
―
August Wilson,
The Piano Lesson
“You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.”
―
August Wilson
I was feeling nauseous for the past few days so I decided I needed to return to my regular soul foods.
I just made a turkey soup using smashed and peeled whole bulb of garlic cloves, one small head of chopped cabbage, the whole bunch celery chopped, two Spanish onions chopped, four huge carrots diced, chopped leftover turkey slices, small blob of leftover stuffing, slices of fresh ginger root, turkey wing, drumstick, olive oil, kosher salt, water, Adobo, bits of skin and some leftover black beans thrown in for color. It came out FANTASTIC
I sauteed onions and celery in olive oil until translucent then I added water and then everything
else except I held back the cooked black beans until after it was done.
I pressure cooked the vat of ingredients for 30 minutes in the Instant Pot.
I added more water, more Adobo and more salt.
Then I threw in the black beans for color.
“Everybody thinks
this is a tough man’s sport. This is not a tough man’s sport. This is a
thinking man’s sport. A tough man is gonna get hurt real bad in this
sport.”
-Mike Tyson
“I don’t understand why people would want to get rid of pigeons. They don’t bother no one.”
whew how many people do you miss not because they were particularly good or special or kind, but because you miss your idea of who they could be to you?
"Pick foods from a range of food groups to maximize your energy. Choose fruits; vegetables; low-fat milk, yogurt or cheese; whole-grain
bread, cereal, pasta or brown rice; and lean meat, chicken, fish, eggs
or beans for your meals."
I
attended a Thanksgiving dinner several years ago where the hostess,
without warning family and friends, broke with tradition and served
salmon instead of turkey, roasted potatoes instead of mashed, raspberry
coulis instead of cranberry sauce and … you get the idea.
While
a few guests mustered the politesse to say the meal was “something
else,” most reacted with undisguised dismay. Some seethed. Others
sulked. One young guest actually cried. No one had seconds.
It
wasn’t that the meal itself was bad. In fact, the meal was outstanding.
The problem was that it wasn’t the meal everyone was expecting.
When
there are discrepancies between expectations and reality, all kinds of
distress signals go off in the brain. It doesn’t matter if it’s a
holiday ritual or more mundane habit like how you tie your shoes; if you
can’t do it the way you normally do it, you’re biologically engineered
to get upset.
This
in part explains people’s grief and longing for the routines that were
the background melodies of their lives before the pandemic — and also
their sense of unease as we enter a holiday season unlike any other. The
good news is that much of what we miss about our routines and customs,
and what makes them beneficial to us as a species, has more to do with
their comforting regularity than the actual behaviors. The key to coping
during this, or any, time of upheaval is to quickly establish new
routines so that, even if the world is uncertain, there are still things
you can count on.
First, a little
background on why we are such creatures of habit. Psychologists,
anthropologists, neuroscientists and neurobiologists have written
countless books and research papers on the topic but it all boils down
to this: Human beings are prediction machines.
“Our
brains are statistical organs that are built simply to predict what
will happen next,” said Karl Friston, a professor of neuroscience at
University College London. In other words, we have evolved to minimize
surprise.
This makes sense because,
in prehistoric times, faulty predictions could lead to some very
unpleasant surprises — like a tiger eating you or sinking in quicksand.
So-called prediction errors (like finding salmon instead of turkey on
your plate on Thanksgiving) send us into a tizzy because our brains
interpret them as a potential threat. Routines, rituals and habits arise
from the primitive part of our brains telling us, “Keep doing what
you’ve been doing, because you did it before, and you didn’t die.”
So
the unvarying way you shower and shave in the morning, how you always
queue up for a latte before work and put your latte to the left of your
laptop before checking your email are all essentially subconscious
efforts to make your world morepredictable, orderly and safe.
Same
goes for Tuesday yoga class, Friday date night, Sunday church services,
monthly book clubs and annual holidays. We may associate these
activities with achieving a goal — health, friendship, education,
spiritual growth — but the unwavering regularity and ritualized way with
which we go about them, even down to our tendency to stake out the same
spot in yoga class or sit in the same pew at church, speak to our need
to minimize surprise and exert control.
Routines
and rituals also conserve precious brainpower. It turns out our brains
are incredibly greedy when it comes to energy consumption, sucking up 20 percent of calories while
accounting for only 2 percent of overall body weight. When our routines
are disrupted, we have to make new predictions about the world — gather
information, consider options and make choices. And that has a
significant metabolic cost.
Dr.
Friston said that our brains, when uncertain, can become like overheated
computers: “The amount of updating you have to do in the face of new
evidence scores the complexity of your processing, and that can be
measured in joules or blood flow or temperature of your brain.” That
exertion, combined with the primordial sense of threat, produces
negative emotions like fear, anxiety, hopelessness, apprehension, anger,
irritability and stress. Hello, Covid-19.
Our
brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by
the pandemic. Not only is there the seeming capriciousness of the virus,
but we no longer have the routines that served as the familiar
scaffolding of our lives. Things we had already figured out and
relegated to the brain’s autopilot function — going to work, visiting
the gym, taking the kids to school, meeting friends for dinner, grocery
shopping — now require serious thought and risk analysis.
As
a result, we have less bandwidth available for higher order thinking:
recognizing subtleties, resolving contradictions, developing creative
ideas and even finding joy and meaning in life.
“It’s
counterintuitive because we think of meaning in life as coming from
these grandiose experiences,” said Samantha Heintzelman, an assistant
professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Newark who studies the
connection between routine behavior and happiness. “But it’s mundane
routines that give us structure to help us pare things down and better
navigate the world, which helps us make sense of things and feel that
life has meaning.”
Of course, you can
always take routines and rituals too far, such as the extremely
controlled and repetitive behaviors indicative of addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various eating disorders. In the coronavirus era, people may resort to obsessive cleaning, hoarding toilet paper,
stockpiling food or neurotically wearing masks when driving alone in
their cars. On the other end of the spectrum are those who stubbornly
adhere to their old routines because stopping feels more threatening
than the virus.
And
then there all those hunkered down in a kind of stasis, waiting until
they can go back to living their lives as they did before. But that,
too, is maladaptive.
“You’re much
better off establishing a new routine within the limited environment
that we find ourselves in,” said Dr. Regina Pally, a psychiatrist in Los
Angeles who focuses on how subconscious prediction errors drive
dysfunctional behavior. “People get so stuck in how they want it to be
that they fail to adapt and be fluid to what is. It’s not just Covid,
it’s around everything in life.”
Luckily,
there is a vast repertoire of habits you can adopt and routines you can
establish to structure your days no matter what crises are unfolding
around you. Winston Churchill took baths twice a day during World War II, often dictating to his aides from the tub. While in the White House, Barack Obama spent four to five hours alone every night writing speeches, going through briefing papers, watching ESPN, reading novels and eating seven lightly salted almonds.
The
point is to find what works for you. It just needs to be regular and
help you achieve your goals, whether intellectually, emotionally,
socially or professionally. The best habits not only provide structure
and order but also give you a sense of pleasure, accomplishment or
confidence upon completion. It could be as simple as making your bed as
soon as you get up in the morning or committing to working the same
hours in the same spot.
Pandemic-proof
routines might include weekly phone or video calls with friends, Taco
Tuesdays with the family, hiking with your spouse on weekends, regularly
filling a bird feeder, set times for prayer or meditation, front yard
happy hours with the neighbors or listening to an audiobook every night
before bed.
The truth is that you
cannot control what happens in life. But you can create a routine that
gives your life a predictable rhythm and secure mooring. This frees your
brain to develop perspective so you’re better able to take life’s
surprises in stride. You might even be OK with salmon instead of turkey
for Thanksgiving — as long as there’s still pie for dessert.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but
air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of
your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.”
―
Mary Karr,
Lit
“There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch
between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into.
There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an
instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest
there.”
―
Mary Karr,
Lit
“In terms of cathartic affect, memoir is like therapy, the
difference being that in therapy, you pay them. The therapist is the
mommy, and you’re the baby. In memoir, you’re the mommy, and the
reader’s the baby. And—hopefully—they pay you. (“No man but a blockhead
ever wrote for any cause but money,” Samuel Johnson said.)”
In his new memoir, Eat a Peach, he writes about his struggle
with bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts — and explains how cooking
and his restaurants have helped save his life.
And as terrible as things have been, I'm weirdly, strangely grateful,
because I don't think at any other juncture or any other scenario, I
would have been able to spend this much time with my family. And it's
made me reevaluate so many things — being a dad, being present and
realizing that no matter how hard I work or whatever, it doesn't matter.
All you want for anybody ... is just unconditional love. You don't die
with anything, and I want to be present.
Cooking
at home and actually cooking for my wife while she was expecting Hugo,
like when he was in the womb, that's when I realized, "Oh, this is
cooking." Cooking for restaurants is great ... but a lot of it was to
feed me, ultimately.
... for
me right now, cooking at home, it's not a job. It's something I want to
do.
“Let’s not make happiness and success about the size of our homes, but
about the size of our hearts; let’s not make it about gratification but
gratitude.”
Our washing machine makes wild noises. My husband the physics teacher calls it the cylotron. Now I love the noise.
A cyclotron
is a type of compact particle accelerator which produces radioactive
isotopes that can be used for imaging procedures. Stable,
non-radioactive isotopes are put into the cyclotron which accelerates charged particles (protons) to high energy in a magnetic field.
I purchased 10 pounds of potatoes 2 weeks ago and am panicked since I have not used them. Perhaps I will try making oven fries and freezing them.
UPDATE: I will grate them and but them in ascorbic acid bath to keep them from turning brown, then drain and freeze them for potato birds nest, potato stix waffles.
To freeze potatoes for hash browns, shred potatoes; hold in a bowl of cold water until all potatoes are shredded.
Drain and blanch in boiling water about 3 minutes. Drain, rinse in cold
water, drain again and pat dry. Pack into freezer containers or
resealable bags.
I looked for
a man who knew the temperatures
of stars; one
who
could draw rings around Saturn with a fine pen
and would sleep with me
as if a shower of meteors was a common occurrence
around the bed each night.
But love
and science — they are both gambles;
and if you try to win
the sun’s light,
you must be prepared also
to lose every
day.
*****************************************
PS from Phoebe:
It reminds me of something my mother told me
that her mother said when one of the daughters was dying
of typhoid.
My Russian grandmother wasn't much of a mother.
When the older sister was dying, she
didn't want to see their mother. She didn't love her.
Grandmother said:
What never made you laugh, will never make you cry.
Keil and his team have tracked "pulses" of food ingredients that enter the sound during certain holidays.
For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving,
cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during
weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and
caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.
There was a knock at the door. Bill the paver hired to pave several neighborhood lots needed water to fill his paving drum. We said sure, and as thanks he filled our driveway pothole. We recommend them.
Nothing goes under the rug. We can't hide in our highness any more
than we've hidden in our unworthiness. If we have finally decided we
want God, we've got
to give it all up. The process is one of keeping the ground as we go
up, so we always have ground, so that we're high and low at the same
moment - that's a tough game to learn, but it's a very important one. So
at the same moment that if I could, I would like to take us all up
higher and higher, we see that the game isn't to get high - the game is to get balanced and liberated.
Traditionally, Matt and I get Chinese takeout for Thanksgiving, a
holiday I actively dislike. Despite its name, Thanksgiving is really the
Family Holiday. Even Christmas pales beside it: that day's focus is on
giving and receiving even more than togetherness. Strangely though,
being alone on Christmas is to be almost hauntingly empty; you feel like
a ghost. But being alone on Thanksgiving is rather wonderful, like not
attending a party that you didn't want to go to and where no one will
realize you're not there. At Thanksgiving, you gather with your family
and stuff yourself with food as if it were love—or the next best thing
—then stagger back to your regular life, oversatiated and wrung out.
Christmas, however, creates expectations that are never met, so you
leave hungry and depressed, with an armload of things you didn't want
and can't imagine why anyone would think you did.
-John Thorne
“I hate to say it, but I think a default posture of human beings is fear.”
“What it comes down to — and I think this has become prominent in our
culture recently — is that fear is an excuse: ‘I would like to have done
something, but of course I couldn’t.’ Fear is so opportunistic that
people can call on it under the slightest provocations: ‘He looked at me
funny.’ ”
“One of the things that bothers me, is that
there are prohibitions of an unarticulated kind that are culturally felt
that prevent people from actually saying what they think.”
“Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could
ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”
―
Marilynne Robinson,
Housekeeping
"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness
of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden
after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it
needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it."
Pumpkin Pie re-posted from my blog The Insomniacs Kitchen March 2012 adapted 10/27/2021
I just made pumpkin pie for the first time and it came out great! I put
it in front of the tiny fan so it would cool off fast so we could eat
it. I am so excited. I think pie is my new friend.
This is a delicious whole wheat crust and the pie is light like Indian
Pudding and not too sweet. This is an adaptation of the Libby's Pumpkin
pie label recipe and the One Pie brand label recipe. I love pumpkin pie,
pumpkin muffins, pumpkin ice-cream pumpkin
everything!!
Ingredients
1/2 or (1/4 cup) granulated sugar (I like 1/4)
1/8 cup of dark molasses
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt (half if using regular salt)
1 teaspoon ground ginger (I used freshly finely grated frozen ginger root)
2 large eggs
1 small can of pure pumpkin (15 oz.)
1 can of evaporated milk (12 fl. oz.)
1 home made nine inch pre-baked whole wheat pie shell (4-cup volume)
Directions for making the pie:
Mix sugar, dark molasses, cinnamon, salt, ginger and eggs in large bowl. Whisk in pumpkin puree and evaporated milk.
Pour into pre-baked (5-10 minutes) pie shell.
Bake pie in preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to
350° F; bake for 40 to 50 more minutes or until knife inserted near
center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.
Some bakers use sweetened condensed milk so I tried it but I discovered
that it is cloyingly sweet and drowns out the pumpkin taste compared to a
pie made with evaporated milk and 1/4 cup sugar. The evaporated milk
pumpkin pie is much more like Indian Pudding and tastes like a food!
Pie Crust
1 cup of whole wheat flour
4 Tablespoons corn oil
3 tablespoons white or brown sugar (the sugar is the glue, holding the crust together)
2 Tbs cold water or milk (if needed to moisten) sometimes I use a spray bottle.
1 teaspoon Kosher salt (less if using regular salt or white flour)
Mix flour and oil with fingers so it is pebbly then add a little bit
more so it becomes like Play-Doh consistency. Press into pie pan with
fingers. Prick dough with fork and make pressed fork pattern on edge. It
is very sticky and hard to handle but hang in there, it will be
delicious. Pre-bake at 350 for 5-10 minutes. Then let it cool.
Tip from Once Upon a Chef Jenn Segal and The Salty Marshmallow : A great tip is to press the crust into the bottom of the pan with the
back of a measuring cup. This will make sure the crust is in the pan
nice and firm, so that it won't fall apart when you cut this for
serving. Another note is that it's best to let this crust chill for a
good 30 minutes before adding the filling! (not sure I can do the latter beyond 10 minutes.)
Smoked kielbasa sausage from Krakow Deli around the corner with slices of red onion and brown mustard and my multigrain sourdough with slices of smoked turkey. My husband and I shared a Goose Island wheat beer. A pub dinner at home.
Have a low overhead. Don’t live with anybody who doesn’t
support your work. Very important. And read a lot. Don’t be afraid to
read or of being influenced by what you read. You’re more influenced by
the voice of childhood than you are by some poet you’re reading. The
last piece of advice is to keep a paper and pencil in your pocket at all
times, especially if you’re a poet. But even if you’re a prose writer,
you have to write things down when they come to you, or you lose them,
and they’re gone forever. Of course, most of them are stupid, so it
doesn’t matter. But in case they’re the thing that solves the problem
for the story or the poem or whatever, you’d better keep a pencil and a
paper in your pocket. I gave this big advice in a talk, and then about
three hours later I told a student I really liked his work and asked how
I could get in touch with him. He said he would give me his name and
address. I looked in my pocket, and I didn’t have any pencil or paper.
"The great secret of doctors, known only to their
wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better
by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning."
If the Democratic party wants to avoid losing
millions of votes in the future it must stand tall and deliver for the
working families of our country who, today, are facing more economic
desperation than at any time since the Great Depression. Democrats must
show, in word and deed, how fraudulent the Republican party is when it
claims to be the party of working families.
And,
in order to do that, Democrats must have the courage to take on the
powerful special interests who have been at war with the working class
of this country for decades. I’m talking about Wall Street, the
pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, the fossil fuel
industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industrial
complex and many profitable corporations who continue to exploit their
employees.
If the Democratic party cannot
demonstrate that it will stand up to these powerful institutions and
aggressively fight for the working families of this country – Black,
White, Latino, Asian American and Native American – we will pave the way
for another rightwing authoritarian to be elected in 2024. And that
president could be even worse than Trump.
Joe
Biden ran for president on a strong pro working-class agenda. Now we
must fight to put that agenda into action and vigorously oppose those
who stand in its way.
The world has much to learn from a culture that has made art its
antidote to authoritarianism. From behind the barbed wire and guard
towers, my old professor has reminded us that we must not stand silently
while that culture is annihilated.
(Appeared in the American Poetry Review Vol. 33/No. 1, Jan/Feb 2004 pg 31; and is also in The Soup of Something Missing.)
The Woman Not Wearing A Hat
by Rick Bursky
For two dollars you could run your hands through her hair. That’s what the cardboard sign between her hands said. A hat at her feet collected the money. Wind pushing against her hair forced it to sway. I dropped my two dollars in and grabbed the hair at the back of her neck. I closed my eyes; she closed hers. (I don’t recall whose eyes closed first.) It was the middle of the afternoon. Perspiration dampened her hair. I could feel people looking at me. For years I told people I only did it so she didn’t feel like she was taking charity. That’s not exactly true, for years I wouldn’t tell anyone. I ran my hand to the top of her head, turned and left before she opened her eyes. There’s no telling what a man is willing to pay for.
My mother and a cousin decide to go to The Seaport Diner, my father’s favorite, for a cup of coffee on New Year’s Eve. Though he’s been dead for six years, they take him along. The black marble box that holds his ashes is placed in a shopping bag, then on their table next to a window. On another night the waitress might have asked about the box. But tonight the diner is crowded, she doesn’t notice that two women asked for three cups of coffee. There are many ways to suck the marrow out of time’s bones. This is my mother’s. No one’s seen the inside of the box. Though at times I’ve thought all of heaven was within. By refusing to bury it my mother is unwittingly hiding my father from the devil. At a small table in the center of the box, my father sits. Ashes piled to his knees, he remembers flames and fears he’s in hell. If he walked forever he would discover the wall and on the other side of the wall my mother’s hand holding the spoon she stirred coffee with.
An author troubled by war invites veterans to ‘Write Peace’
Maxine Hong Kingston came up with the idea for The Veteran Writers Group
after she had a devastating month herself in 1991. More than 800 people
have answered her call.
“Think of a traumatic memory as something hot,” Capps says. “If you touch it, you get burned.”
When writing, art, dance or music is put “into the mix, it’s like
putting a glove on,” he says. “We can pick up, hold, shape, manipulate
the memory rather than having it control us. I got my stories out of my
mind and onto the page as a way of gaining control of them. I do the
work with the VWP as a way of giving those skills to others."
It was thundering and lightning so we all had to stop swimming this morning. I didn't mind and Margo offered to give me a lift home. When I arrived I ran up the front stairs in my wet bathing suit and bright yellow swim bag wearing only flip-flops, and a purple towel. I hope my neighbors were not looking out of their windows.
Now I am cooking pinto beans and black beans combined in my electric pressure cooker. When they are done I'll make a pot of basmati brown rice. Today might be a good day for cabbage rolls or stir fried broccoli. I love knowing that good food awaits me.
Slowly imploding, I pause to feed the cat. Sometimes, as you catch fire, routine helps. I can't pine for what I could not have, that way madness lies. Or more of it, anyway. I take comfort in knowing that stars made these atoms, and I am of the sky.
I trace the steam clinging to the bathroom mirror, melting with it as I go. Tiny beads crystallize to hold all the grime and grit and glory and trickle down to water my feet. Where will we go next, I wonder, and I look to the water for answers.
What the Gypsies Told my Grandmother while She was Still a Young Girl
by Charles Simic War, illness and famine will make you their favorite grandchild. You'll be like a blind person watching a silent movie. You'll chop onions and pieces of your heart into the same hot skillet. Your children will sleep in a suitcase tied with a rope. Your husband will kiss your breasts every night as if they were two gravestones. Already the crows are grooming themselves for you and your people. Your oldest son will lie with flies on his lips without smiling or lifting his hand. You'll envy every ant you meet in your life and every roadside weed. Your body and soul will sit on separate stoops chewing the same piece of gum. Little cutie, are you for sale? the devil will say. The undertaker will buy a toy for your grandson. Your mind will be a hornet's nest even on your deathbed. You will pray to God but God will hang a sign that He's not to be disturbed. Question no further, that's all I know. -Charles Simic, Walking the Black Cat by Charles Simic. Harcourt Brace & Company.
Our performance hadn’t brought us closer together; it made us feel even
lonelier than we already did. What we needed was not a passable
performance of gratitude but the acknowledgment of the pain we were all
silently holding inside of ourselves.
We all wish we’d spent that Thanksgiving
creating a new version of the holidays that matched our emotional
landscape. We could have watched the Marvel movies in chronological
order or even just laid face down on the kitchen floor for a few hours.
I
wish we’d had the guts to say out loud how bad we all felt, how
terrible it all was. I wish we had simply opted out of that year’s
holiday season, had pretended it just wasn’t happening instead of
pretending it was all OK.
“In the United States, for example, there has been an increase in
the number of people wanting to treat funerals as celebrations rather
than sad or mournful occasions. In a 2010 survey, 48 percent of people
said they preferred a “celebration of life” compared with 11 percent who
wanted a “traditional funeral.” One-third of all respondents said they
wanted no funeral at all. This idea of celebration may seem evolved and
selfless at first, but the monks believe it deprives people of the
experience of processing a death for what it is.”
―
Priya Parker,
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
“In a group, if everybody thinks about the other person’s needs,
everyone’s needs are actually fulfilled in the end. But if you only
think about yourself, you are breaking that contract.”
―
Priya Parker,
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
“Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”
―
Isaiah Berlin
“We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss.”
―
Isaiah Berlin
“Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by
human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is
death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not
compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the
less gifted.”
―
Isaiah Berlin,
The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
“To understand is to perceive patterns.”
―
Isaiah Berlin
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
―
Isaiah Berlin
Having a mental illness and seeking help means facing some of the darkest parts of ourselves and learning to co-exist with them. I see no weakness in that. I only see strength.
Cooper later confided in Natasha Lyonne, the show’s director, who is also the star and creator of hit Netflix drama Russian Doll.
“I said, ‘I don’t know how you do this, I don’t know how you constantly
put yourself out there like this, because this is really hard.’ She
sent me a series of emojis, which I love. She said, ‘This will be your
life from now on. Feeling sad, feeling sick, feeling crazy, feeling like
a star, celebrating, feeling good about yourself, feeling like you’re
in love, feeling cool then feeling sad again, then feeling sick, crazy,
like you’re a star again. It’s just this rollercoaster, over and over
again.’”
When we do
not share our painful stories, they begin to take up space inside us,
forcing us to cross their paths, like cemetery ghosts, even when we
least expect to see or recall them. Our stories, bottled up with dirt
and buried, grow larger, form little mausoleums around them, and then
begin to sprawl and roam inside us. We begin to live with a palatial
necropolis of the past in us, where such silent stories live without
living. The stories occupy more of our plots until we open up and let
them out, yet even then, a piece of their trauma remains, clinging, as
it may always, to us. Trauma needs ventilation, even when we think we
are doing fine by bottling it all up. A heart we don’t air out becomes
filled with our ghosts, until we have no more room in us to put them,
and we begin to fail and fall under all that invisible, silently howling
pressure.
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity. —André Gide
It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward. —André Gide
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. —André Gide
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. —André Gide
Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change. —André Gide
Sin is whatever obscures the soul. —André Gide
What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable. —André Gide
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. —André Gide
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to
restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. —André Gide
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company. —André Gide
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all. —André Gide
It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle. —André Gide
Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly. —André Gide
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. —André Gide
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome. —André Gide
The color of truth is gray. —André Gide
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. —André Gide
"Image is an international language. The first writing of the
human being was drawing, not writing. That appeared much before the
alphabet. And when you draw a situation— someone is scared or angry
or happy— it means the same thing in all cultures. You cannot draw
someone crying, and in one culture they think that he is happy. He would
have the same expression. There's something direct about the image.
Also, it is more accessible. People don't take it so seriously. And when
you want to use a little bit of humor, it's much easier to use
pictures."
We hope to appeal to the Governor to keep the pools open. We are basically swimming in sanitizer and socially distant. Finger's crossed that the pool stays open.
Tonight just as I was about to bake the sourdough I held back some dough and added olive oil and made a thin crust pizza in my 12" cast iron skillet. I defrosted some homemade tomato sauce and added Asiago and pepper jack cheese. So good. We had it with 2 glasses of Rioja in our Christmas wineglasses.
Today we learned that there are only 7 more swim days until our local YMCA pool is closed for 2 weeks or more. We are all sad about this because it is our lifeline.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the
divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by
human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often
in our art, the art of words.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin
“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or
imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our
understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants
and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.
Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of
the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible
boredom of pain.”
―
Ursula K. LeGuin,
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution.
You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin,
The Dispossessed
“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin,
The Left Hand of Darkness
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin,
The Left Hand of Darkness
Something that most people don’t appreciate is that the eyes are
actually two pieces of brain. They are not connected to the brain; they are
brain. During development, the eyes are part of the embryonic
forebrain. Your eyes get extruded from the skull during the first
trimester, and then they reconnect to the rest of the brain. So they’re
part of the central nervous system.
My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually
look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of
talking to myself. The need to think on paper is not confined to
notebooks. It spreads onto the backs of envelopes, menus, whatever
scraps of paper are at hand. And I often transcribe quotations I like,
writing or typing them on pieces of brightly colored paper and pinning
them to a bulletin board.
“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming
they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the
reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live
longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're
going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear
goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe running helps you to
do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits:
that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me,
for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
The best advice came from my agent, when I was a year or so
into my career. I was dithering about a future project, saying that
there was a way to do it that would be accessible and commercial, and a
way to do it that would be smart but unpopular. He said, “Just write as
well as you can.” That advice has saved me years. I never again asked
the question, of myself or anyone else. It’s the only way to work—don’t
write to what you perceive as a market. Don’t write out of anyone’s need
except your own. Don’t try to cater to an audience you think may not be
keeping up with you—find the audience who will. I have amplified the
advice in my mind: just serve your subject. Each book makes different
and fierce demands. Each one uses up all you can do. Later you may be
able to do more.”
“From this crooked branch, no straight thing will ever be made.” Immanuel Kant said this referring to the future of humanity.
Her mytho-poetic works show a cogitating, unpredictable
journey through marks and strokes; visiting forests, mountains, history
and drama in exaggerated perspectives as if on a small trip around the
world on a fragment of canvas. Hypnotic scenes are unresolved as in a
gypsy folk tale. Her work explores a crooked path through memory and
history that cannot be predicted or controlled.
Improve writing and communication skills Writing, like anything, improves with practice. When you
journal every day, you’re practicing the art of writing. And if you use a
journal to express your thoughts and ideas, it’ll help improve your
overall communication skills.
Reduce stress and anxiety Sometimes negative thoughts and emotions can run on a loop in our
heads. This can be stressful when you’re dealing with a challenging
situation — it can even make your present situation feel worse. But if
you stop and put your emotions down on paper, it can help you release
negative thoughts from your mind. As you write, you may even come up
with a solution you hadn’t thought of before.
“One writes to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me. I had to create a world of my own, in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That is the reason for every work of art.”
You’ve got to work on something dangerous. You have to work
on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt
yourself. You shouldn’t feel safe. You should feel, “I don’t know if I
can write this.” That’s what I mean by dangerous, and I think that’s a
good thing to do. Sacrifice something safe.
Unexpected
drama pops up in your social life as Mercury opposes Uranus. You’re
surprised by what you hear, but a breakthrough is also likely to take
place today. You’re reconnecting with your emotional needs as the moon
enters your sign. source
The Scapegoat
is the truth teller of the family and will often verbalize or act out
the "problem" which the family is attempting to cover up or deny. This
individual's behavior warrants negative attention and is a great
distraction for everyone from the real issues at hand.
forest bathing “helped me have these epiphanies about this land,” he
says. “I have now fallen in love with the human artery that cuts through
the park. I have realized, humans cannot overcome the Earth. The forest
cannot be destroyed or defeated. Humans might be, but for now we’re
part of this, and we can’t escape it.”
If anyone reads this book, they will think they know what kind of
person I am... It will make me appear to be the kind of person who is in
the position to write about orgasms, who knows all about orgasms: their
songs and dances and secret languages... Like her topic, Nin
Andrews' virtuosic collection is as equivocal as it is evanescent, with
unpredictable gaps and surges. No poem/orgasm stands alone--the
collection is richly (and hilariously) associational, mythically
postmodern, a twinkling synaptic map of contemporary and historic poetic
correlations.
--Claire Bateman, Scape
In The Last Orgasm,
Nin Andrews creates an indelible character: the orgasm, with a
sensibility by turns light-hearted, witty, despondent and, finally,
transcendent. In giving voice to the orgasm and with Nin, the writer, as
her intimate and foil, these poems allow us entry into the female
psyche at its most complex and vulnerable. With linguistic subtlety and
sharp insight, they illuminate, yes, longing and desire, but also the
creative impulse, as we age and are transformed by time. These are poems
of deep intelligence and aching beauty.
--Carol Moldaw, Beauty Refracted
I have long loved Nin Andrews' poems--prose and lineated, alike--for
their wit, intelligence, and heart, their mastery of image and tone,
their insights into an array of subjects, including our culture's
disregard for women's bodies and lives. Her latest collection, The Last Orgasm
is no exception and a tour-de-force. In it, Andrews moves between the
ordinary and profound, the spiritual and visceral, the real and absurd,
never faltering. Her poems surprise, delight, enlighten, and sadden,
often within the space of a few lines. While her homage to various poets
plays in the background (and her engaging "Notes" provide the sources,
in case we miss the echoes or wish to (re)read the tributary poems), The Last Orgasm is all
Andrews. What's more, it's Andrews at what might be her very best, most
virtuosic performance yet--though hopefully not her "last." This is a
collection not to miss.
Shara McCallum, Madwoman
Of course, I would praise The Last Orgasm.
And the first, second, middle, next, next to last. For the sake of
everything true and holy (although Andrews would say there is nothing
holy) please read this outrageous book! In these smart, raucous poems of
one orgasm after another, Andrews climaxes at the pinnacle of social
commentary--the G-spot of social change: the change being, give us more
orgasms/the orgasm is dead. Indicting the writer, the book, the poetry
mafia, and, of course, the orgasm, Andrews writes: When I was sixteen, I woke one night and saw Our Lady of the Orgasm singing. Read this book if you want to sing again. Jan Beatty, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems
About the Author
Nin Andrews’ poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Agni, The Paris Review, and four editions of Best American Poetry.
The author of six chapbooks and seven full-length poetry collections,
she has won two Ohio individual artist grants, the Pearl Chapbook
Contest, the Kent State University chapbook contest, the Gerald Cable
Poetry Award, and the Ohioana Prize for poetry. She is also the editor
of a book of translations of the Belgian poet, Henri Michaux, Someone Wants to Steal My Name. She lives on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband, cows, coyotes, and many bears.
For supper I diced and sauteed a huge grapefruit-sized Spanish onion in olive oil, then I added a 1/2 pound of chopped frozen spinach, 1-2 cups of leftover kidney beans with their thick syrupy bean liquid, and a cup or two of cooked leftover brown basmati rice. I added Adobo seasoning.
In separate pan I scrambled 8 eggs in olive oil and then added them to the bean veggie rice mixture. The eggs stay YELLOW this way and it looks pretty when everything is combined. Delicious.
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