By writing, in other words, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts.

 https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/how-writing-leads-to-thinking-february-2010/

Silence gives answers. Rumi

Lemon and Orange Zest can be made and saved in the Freezer!!

I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense but not irrational or naïve. Art invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here. And if we serve, we last. My faith in art rivals my admiration for any other discourse. Its conversation with the public and among its various genres is critical to the understanding of what it means to care deeply and to be human completely. I believe.

TONI MORRISON

Our mother did not like children. She couldn't be bothered. She hired a string of nannies to be the mother and then she could take off on vacation with my step-father. We did not eat together except on holidays with a large crowd or a weekly Sunday crowd.

I now realize how bizarre this was and the secret as to why my siblings are so damaged.  

"Your sexy boots."

I walked passed graffiti on the side door of the Chester Street Chinese restaurant. White crayon scrawl on a flat mat metal gray door. "Your, sexy!" I wanted to add an apostrophe in your to correct it or add boots to read, "Your sexy boots."

I love signs and there are two in my neighborhood that I must photograph. Hand written scrawl about where to leave packages resembling an assassins handwriting. 

I found a fun article about correcting grammar in graffiti.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/ecuador-graffiti-accion-ortografica-quito-grammar

It all comes down to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good. Helen Keller

I’d rather pluck my eyes out and feed them to the birds. Than go to a meeting of any kind.

Dream

There were new neighbors from Africa sleeping in body-contoured beds of mud in garages. I spoke to a policeman about it. As we spoke he pointed out that a rat was biting my leg.

Seeing strangers sleeping in mud: You worry about others or feel disconnected from people going through hardships.  A dream about a rat biting your leg often symbolizes a hidden worry, a sense of being undermined in your daily progress, or a fear of betrayal from someone close to you. Because the bite targets your leg—the body part that moves you forward—it often reflects an obstacle or anxiety stalling your path.

Folie à deux

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux

Being close-knit is not the same as being enmeshed. A close-knit family cares about each other and stays connected, but everyone still has their own space, opinions, and independence. Family members support one another without trying to control each other’s choices.  An enmeshed family, on the other hand, has very blurry boundaries. Love and loyalty may depend on doing what the family expects, and saying no can lead to guilt or conflict. In a close-knit family, closeness feels supportive — in an enmeshed family, it can start to feel suffocating.*

Control disguised as love

When a family member treats traditions as non-negotiable, it often stems from a deep emotional need for security, control, or connection. However, rigid demands can create heavy guilt, stress, and resentment among other relatives who feel their own time, autonomy, or changing lives are being ignored. Why They Do It: Fear of change: They view alterations to a routine as a loss of family unity or a personal rejection of their values. Anxiety and nostalgia: The tradition represents a safer, happier past or a specific identity they are desperate to hold onto. Control disguised as love: They may use guilt or obligation to keep everyone orbiting around them.

The rainforest also keeps everyone breathing. You are needed and wondrous just as you are.

 https://rainforestmind.com/your-rainforest-mind-the-book/

Josephine "Jo" Nivison Hopper insisted that her husband, Edward Hopper, not use any other female models for the women in his paintings. After they married in 1924, Jo served as his exclusive model and muse for decades, posing for iconic works even into her late 70s.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/apr/25/art1

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-missed-in-histor-21124503/episode/josephine-nivison-hopper-86115823/

The word for a person who reads in bed is a librocubicularist.

Word Origin: Made up by writer Christopher Morley in his 1919 book The Haunted Bookshop. 

Latin Roots: Combines liber (book) and cubiculum (bedroom).

Pronunciation: ly-broh-kyoo-BIK-yoo-ler-ist

Fascinating: Table Manners, Teeth, and Reading in Bed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_manners

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/braces-dentures-history/397934/ 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/reading-in-bed/527388/ 

Talking Points Memo: Reader Supported not Billionaire Controlled

 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/

 

Welcome to poet George Bilgere’s online newsletter. Every day George selects a poem by a writer he’s crazy about and he says a few words about why he picked it.

Here’s a poem for today, August 16, 2026

God Bless the Experimental Writers

by Corey Mesler

for David Markson   “One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with.” —Flann O’Brien from At Swim-Two-Birds   God bless the experimental writers. The ones whose work is a little difficult, built of tinkertoys and dada, or portmanteau and Reich. God help them as they type away, knowing their readers are few, only those who love to toil over an intricate boil of language, who think books are secret codes. These writers will never see their names in Publisher’s Weekly. They will never be on the talk shows. Yet, every day they disappear into their rooms atop their mother’s houses, or their guest houses behind some lawyer’s estate. Every day they tack improbable word onto im- probable word, out of love, children, out of a desire to emend the world.

__________

From Some Identity Problems, FootHills Publishing, 2008, by COREY MESLER.

Photograph: David Markson, whose Wittgenstein’s Mistress was published to critical acclaim in 1988, though the original manuscript was rejected fifty-four times.

Why I Chose This Poem One night a few years ago I attended one of the weekly meetings of the Finnegans Wake book club here in Cleveland Heights. There were eight regular members. A lawyer, a retired history teacher, a newspaper columnist, an actress, a few others. Someone poured a round of Jameson, Joyce’s favorite whiskey, and for the next hour we all puzzled through one single page of the so-called “greatest novel no one has ever read.” The novel is over 600 pages long. The group had been meeting for three years and they were only on page 85. At the end of our discussion nobody had understood a word of what was read or said. We hailed the book as a work of genius and poured ourselves another Jameson.

‘Caligula making his horse a senator'

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-to-order-redesign-of-aircraft-carriers-because-they-dont-look-right

The Table is Sacred

The table is an altar. The table is sacred. When Lucille placed her homemade lasagna on the table people loved it and said so but the Queen Bee had to say, I like more meat and cheese in mine! Luckily David spoke up and said it's perfect this way. I love it. Then hostess Edwina accused Lucille of eating all of the fruit salad. Did you eat all this? Thankfully three other people said, I had some! So Edwina returned to the kitchen and made more. Lucille knew her in-laws had no idea about table manners. They were reinforcing the old patterns of sibling rivalry.