Posts
“A promise is a promise, yet, in the end, it is only that.”
― Afterparties: Stories
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Frivolous Torment
“The last thing I want is to feel the frustration, the frivolous torment, of being around a person who can’t see past her own suffering.”
Anthony Veasna So
“Here I was! Living in a district that echoed a dead San Francisco. Gay, Cambodian, and not even twenty-six, carrying in my body the aftermath of war, genocide, colonialism. And yet, my task was to teach kids a decade younger, existing across an oceanic difference, what it meant to be human. How absurd, I admitted. How fucking hilarious. I was actually excited.”
Artists Should be Free to Express
“The kind of art that we believe has a value means artists should be free to express their own thoughts, not under dictatorship or censorship,” said Sahraa Karimi, the filmmaker. “Those artists will not easily be able to work as freely as they used to. And they were so free.”
Even as some artists take great risks to protect their creations, many have fled the country, while others are self-censoring to avoid the wrath of the Taliban.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/afghanistan-taliban-arts-culture/2021/09/29/c58c79bc-1b0a-11ec-bea8-308ea134594f_story.html
Dream
I dreamed I decided to return to illustrating children's books. In the dream I said, "What else am I going to do?" This was not a dream, it was a nightmare.
Then later I dreamed was painting an oil painting collaboratively with another artist. He started the painting using acrylic paints and then I continued painting using oil paint. He said he loved my brushstrokes and handling of the paint. This was a good dream.
Dry Air
To prevent and cure sinus headaches.... I found that drinking extra water and taking a hot shower when the pain starts can get rid of it. Athletes and older folks need extra water. As we age we don't feel thirst as strongly. Yesterday I drank 6 pints of water spread throughout the day. I must remember that coffee tea and allergy/sinus pain medicine can be dehydrating too.
Radio Classique
When our local classical station is having fundraiser I tune into Radio Classique and listen to the French spoken in between the classical music.
The Largest Autocracy on Earth
“Facebook is a lie-disseminating instrument of civilizational collapse.”
The Largest Autocracy on Earth
Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way.
Albert Einstein
Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.
Albert Einstein
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Etymology of Parakeet
parakeet (n.)
"a small parrot," 1620s, from Spanish perquito; earlier English form parroket (1580s) is from French paroquet, from Old French paroquet (14c.), which is said by etymologists of French to be from Italian parrocchetto, literally "little priest," from parroco "parish priest," from Church Latin parochus (see parish), or from parrucchetto, diminutive of parrucca "peruke, periwig," in reference to the head plumage.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/parakeet
Stephen De Staebler
Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.
Stephen De Staebler
l’esprit d’escalier
My former writing teacher, the essayist and cartoonist Timothy Kreider, explained revision to me: One of my favorite phrases is l’esprit d’escalier, ‘the spirit of the staircase’ — meaning that experience of realizing, too late, what the perfect thing to have said at the party, in a conversation or argument or flirtation would have been. Writing offers us one of the rare chances in life at a do-over: to get it right and say what we meant this time. To the extent writers are able to appear any smarter or wittier than readers, it’s only because they’ve cheated by taking so much time to think up what they meant to say and refining it over days or weeks or, yes, even years, until they’ve said it as clearly and elegantly as they can.
HARRY GUINNESS
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
From Athletics to Med School
Building an Athletics-to-Med-School Pipeline for Black Men
Focus, teamwork, grit: High-performing athletes possess many of the attributes physicians need — and could be the key to getting more Black men into medicine.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/black-men-athletes-sports-medicine/
Molly Jong-Fast
The Restriction of Reproductive Rights In this Country Is a Five-Alarm Fire—But How Do We Fight It?
Word Dream
I dreamed of the word paramedic, realizing it's a mashup of para and medic.
What does the prefix para mean?Para- (prefix): A prefix with many meanings, including: alongside of, beside, near, resembling, beyond, apart from, and abnormal
. For example, the parathyroid glands are called "para-thyroid" because they are adjacent to the thyroid. ... The prefix "para-" comes straight from the Greek.
Monday, September 27, 2021
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, power and grace."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Baker's Banana Bread
And a few more uses of sourdough discard....
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/my-top-3-leftover-sourdough-starter-recipes/
My hodge-podge version: I had 3 ripe bananas and an overripe peach and some leftover brown rice all of which I added to the banana bread recipe. We'll see what happens. The batter tasted good...
UPDATE: I should have followed directions and kept the original proportions and added them in the right sequence, but it's delicious especially toasted. I will make it again the right way!
At least I'm not alone...
https://www.mashed.com/202396/mistakes-everyone-makes-with-banana-bread/
Uitwaaien: Dutch word for spending time in the wind
In the Netherlands, people have been seeking out windy exercise for more than a hundred years. Today, the practice is so common that it’s known as “uitwaaien.” It “literally translates to ‘outblowing,’” explains Caitlin Meyer, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Dutch Linguistics. “It’s basically the activity of spending time in the wind, usually by going for a walk or a bike ride.” Meyer has lived in the Netherlands for more than 20 years and has come to specialize in the language, despite being a non-native speaker. She says uitwaaien is a popular activity where she lives—one believed to have important psychological benefits. “Uitwaaien is something you do to clear your mind and feel refreshed—out with the bad air, in with the good,” she tells me. “It’s seen as a pleasant, easy, and relaxing experience—a way to destress or escape from daily life.”
uitwaaien
[ out-vahyn ]
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/uitwaaien
Doris Lessing
“Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.”
― The Golden Notebook
Barbara Kingsolver
“What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.”
― Animal Dreams
Lao-Tzu
“If a person seems wicked, do not cast him away. Awaken him with your words, elevate him with your deeds, repay his injury with your kindness. Do not cast him away; cast away his wickedness.”
―
Sunday, September 26, 2021
John le Carré + Richard Price
“Having your book turned into a movie,” John le Carré, a spy novelist, once complained, “is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.”
John le Carré
This is the immutable law of the business: The only screenplays that aren’t tampered with are the ones that aren’t made. A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit. Everything else — just tear that motherfucker apart.
Richard Price
Crazy Camaro
I was walking my dog with the traffic on Clinton Street 30 minutes ago and I heard crazy honking behind me almost like a guy's horn was stuck. They were long lean-on-it honks. When I arrived at the intersection I saw a Woonsocket police officer stop at the light. The honker, driving a souped up Camaro, pulled up right next to him. When the light changed the Camaro turned right onto Cumberland Hill Rd. I was glad to see the officer turned and followed him. Then the Camaro gunned it. The officer threw on his police lights and chased the Camaro. I am worried though, that a guy who is baiting the police might have even worse intentions. I hope our officer is not harmed.
Maybe we have just one message
“Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.”
Paulette Jiles
“Life was not safe and nothing could make it so, neither fashionable dresses nor bank accounts. The baseline of human life was courage.”
“Laughter is good for the soul and all your interior works.”
― News of the World
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Haunted
I repeatedly glanced at the weather forecast as if it could predict my mood. I made black coffee and sipped it out of my thermal mug. It was like drinking through a raincoat but it stayed hot so I stopped noticing the scent of the plastic lid.
I took a walk and ran into a lady I know from the pool who was taking too long to tell me a story with too many boring and irrelevant detours. I was standing in the sun with my dog. It was hot. I wondered when I could get moving again. I tried to be an attentive listener.
"I read a book and fell in love with the author," she said. "So I'm going down there to buy a house."
"Be careful," I said. "Maybe go there first before you buy anything."
I said goodbye and I was relieved to continue walking home in the shade.
***
In this mood I can only say I am haunted, my leaves are falling. I should rake them up and jump in them. Put them in bags on the curb. Burn them. Or just get a good nights sleep.
George Sand
We cannot tear out a single page from our life, but we can throw the whole book into the fire.
George Sand
Larry McMurtry
“He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”
― Lonesome Dove
Jan Grue
“At some point or another I stopped thinking about myself as someone who needed repairing.”
Jan Grue, I Live a Life Like Yours (a memoir)
Film: Controlling Britney Spears
The new documentary film "Controlling Britney Spears" contains new bombshell allegations from whistleblowers who were among those in the inner circle.
Never Stop Looking at the World
Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.
JENNIFER WEINER
Shel Silverstein
"If you want to find out what a writer or a cartoonist really feels, look at his work [...] If your work is weak and lacking so that it needs explanation, it isn't enough, it isn't clear enough. Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation."
Shel Silverstein
Focus
When you focus on just one thing at a time, without rushing or procrastinating, you cultivate a sense of timeless awareness that creates feelings of calm and well-being.
Deepak Chopra
Friday, September 24, 2021
Jan Grue
I began to write because I needed a different language than the one I was offered.
Jan Grue, I Live a Life Like Yours (a memoir) p74
Thursday, September 23, 2021
The Voices
Leni Sorensen
“The first time I ever came across somebody that said something about eating clean, I almost had hysterics,” she said. “People are so frightened of food and they’re frightened of their guts and they’re frightened of their poop, and they’re almost always deeply narcissistic people who have never grown a [expletive] tomato.”
She moved to Canada, and in 1974 placed a personal ad in Mother Earth News, then a new journal of self-sufficiency. “I’m 31, Black, tall (5’9”) and sorta freaky for around here,” it read. “I’m a hell of a good cook and am skilled at gardening, canning, raising rabbits, sewing and minor carpentry (have also begun to handspin wool) so favor a man with a country lifestyle over a city-minded dude.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/dining/leni-sorensen-food-scholar-historian.html
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Alan Watts
Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.
ALAN WATTS
The Sound
The sound of neighbors violently smashing wooden kitchen chairs to fit into their blue dumpster.
It was Raining
It was raining. I closed the windows. I heard a booming noise. My dog climbed up onto the couch. I followed the sound to the parking lot in back of my house. A dark gray Honda sedan was blasting music. The driver's side door and trunk were wide open. I saw a woman exit the garage. She seemed nervous. It's not her garage. It's not her neighborhood. She was making a sound aura to protect herself. Musical cologne. She wheeled a cobalt blue motorcycle out of the garage into the rain. She was looking around. She had no helmet. She wheeled it onto the street and rode off. A few minutes later I heard the nearby revving of the motorcycle and lots of chatter from the apartment complex next door. It was still raining. The motorcycle woman returned, revved the blue motorcycle one more time, then wheeled it into the garage and padlocked the door. She climbed back into her gray Honda and blasted the car radio as she prepared to leave. All of her windows were tinted black. I stood in my yard with my dog and watched as she drove away. It was still raining.
Balthus
One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.
Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings.I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.Very early on, I understood that I secretly and mysteriously belonged to the world of cats.— Balthus
Stephen DiRado Photographer
The powerful documentary "WITH DAD" chronicles the work of MA. photographer Stephen DiRado during his father’s decline from Alzheimer’s disease. Watch 9/21/2021 on GBH 2 at 7:30pm, or stream for free all month long here: to.wgbh.org/3hPVxPa
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Dream
I dreamed we lived next to another small house in the city and we shared a driveway and tiny garden. The neighbor had a donkey and chickens and we had dogs. We kept the gate closed so the animals could roam safely in the yard. In the dream I was on the back stoop smoking a cigarillo. It smelled like pipe tobacco. I woke up. (I can't remember ever smelling a scent in a dream!)
Transformed
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
— C.G. Jung
Monday, September 20, 2021
Annie Proulx
You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different worlds on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
ANNIE PROULX
Livio De Marchi
"Noah's Violin", a giant floating violin by Venetian sculptor Livio De Marchi, journeyed through Venice's Grand Canal on Saturday. De Marchi, who has sent many wooden works into the water, came up with the idea during last year's pandemic lockdown.
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/20/1038931060/violin-boat-venice-grand-canal-artist-italy-pandemic
Colette Maze: Angle of Joy
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/20/1036622670/107-year-old-french-pianist-colette-maze-new-album
Maze, born on June 16, 1914, says her mother was severe and unloving. So she turned to music for the affection she lacked at home.
"I always preferred composers who gave me tenderness," she says. "Like [Robert] Schumann and [Claude] Debussy. Music is an affective language, a poetic language. In music there is everything — nature, emotion, love, revolt, dreams, it's like a spiritual food."
Maze says she believes there is a guiding force in our lives. The fact that she grew up just steps away from Paris' prestigious Ecole Normale de Musique, is one example. She auditioned for, and was granted, a spot with its director, legendary pianist Alfred Cortot. Maze's other early instructors included virtuoso pianists Nadia Boulanger and Jeanne Blanchard. (She remembers Blanchard had tiny hands, just like her).
You have to look at life from all sides, she says, and there's always an angle of joy.
"Youth is inside us," she says. "If you appreciate what's beautiful around you, you will find a sense of wonder in it."
Samuel Beckett
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Gene Wilder
So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.
My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
My wife and I water color, paint water colors.
Gene Wilder
Raúl Juliá
We tend to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a meditation.
Maybe it's like becoming one with the cigar. You lose yourself in it; everything fades away: your worries, your problems, your thoughts. They fade into the smoke, and the cigar and you are at peace.
My parents thought, 'Oh, my God! What's wrong with him? He's possessed or something.' All of a sudden, I stood up and started saying my lines. From then on, that was it. I knew there was something special about the theater for me, something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.
Thank God for the theater.
Raúl Juliá
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/raul-julia-worlds-stage-documentary/12522/
Sunday, September 19, 2021
Experiment
Usually I make waffles when I feel happy, it's a way of celebrating a good mood. Today, feeling blue I made waffles because I had sourdough starter and buttermilk that needed to be used and I wanted to do something weekendy. They came out good and my mood lifted.
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Exploratory
Writing should always be exploratory. There shouldn’t be the assumption that you know ahead of time what you want to express. When you enter into the dance with language, you’ll begin to find that there’s something before, or behind, or more absolute than the thing you thought you wanted to express. And as you work, other kinds of meaning emerge than what you might have expected. It’s like wrestling with the angel: On the one hand you feel the constraints of what can be said, but on the other hand you feel the infinite potential. There’s nothing more interesting than language and the problem of trying to bend it to your will, which you can never quite do. You can only find what it contains, which is always a surprise.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON
A purpose of human life
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― The Sirens of Titan
Congratulate Librarians
“I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― A Man Without a Country
Kurt Vonnegut
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― A Man Without a Country
To love at all...
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― The Four Loves
Thursday, September 16, 2021
Tom Shaker Interviewed
https://www.pbs.org/video/black-heritage-tour-part-i-6psnkl/
Heritage Tour – Black Baseball and The Celebrity Club Clip: Season 2 Episode 237 | 20m 13s |Rhode Island PBS Weekly tours Providence’s Black Heritage sites. First, an in-depth look at Black baseball played at what was once Kinsley Field, home to the Providence Giants. Then, Weekly visits Randall Street to explore the history of the Celebrity Club, which saw some of the greatest Black artists of all time perform for an integrated audience in a segregated 1950’s Providence.
Ian Flemming
My favorite food is scrambled eggs. In the original typescript of Live and Let Die, James Bond consumed scrambled eggs so often that a perceptive proof-reader suggested that this rigid pattern of life must be becoming a security risk for Bond. If he was being followed, his tail would only have to go into restaurants and say “Was there a man here eating scrambled eggs?” to know whether he was on the right track or not. So I had to go through the book changing the menus.
IAN FLEMING
Swimmer Kim Chambers
Kim Chambers, a marathon swimmer in San Francisco, became the first woman to swim from the Farallon Islands back under the Golden Gate Bridge in 2015.
"If you think you can't do something, or you're afraid of doing something, that's exactly when you should do it."
http://www.kimswimsfilm.com/about
Swimming With Sharks: In May of 2011 I was the only woman on the first ever relay team to swim to the islands, and I fell in love with the place. Call me crazy but it was a spiritual connection like nothing I have ever experienced. Since then I have been obsessed with being the first woman—not to compete with anyone—but to have an achievement for myself that is very personal. Each of my swims has been a unique and transformative journey. But this one was the swim, so risky, so scary, and that's really why I had to do it. I wanted to see what I was made of.
Fear Can Make You Grow: Human nature is to say no to things that scare us, but I’ve found that’s where the growth is. But using fear to learn about oneself is not about having a death wish. I love my life and I feel so full of life when I’m in those scary moments. Everybody is afraid, but it’s in those moments that you jump in (literally and figuratively), that you learn what you are capable of.
Your Body Is a Vessel: Your body can be an amazing tool. It brought me across the English Channel and through 30 miles of shark infested waters. I went from a 119-pound ballerina to a 180-pound open water swimmer. My body’s muscle, and yes even fat, is essential for endurance, warmth and buoyancy. The ballerina never would have made it.
Adversity: After my injury, I thought that my life was over. I was shattered not only physically, but also emotionally. But the injury led me to swimming and that has changed my life. I won’t say I’m happy I got injured, but it did change my life in many ways, most for the better.
Have a Goal: I like having big, scary goals. The anticipation of attempting something that you have prepared weeks, months or years for adds richness to life. Life can thrive in the presence of big goals and it can nourish the heart and soul.
Deep Thoughts: It does take a while to settle into a long swim. But after that, for me, making it through my long swims is all about surrendering to the moment and trusting everything that has got me here. I do try to replay positive experiences with family and friends to energize me and keep me going.
The Next Challenge: I love the feeling of anticipation that comes from having a huge, scary event on the horizon. In fact, that’s when I have a sense of living life to the fullest. Right now I’m looking for another challenge and it may involve rowing across a large body of water.
On Expectations: I recently realized that, instead of trying to fit my life into a mold of expectation—find a husband, have kids—I needed to do what truly makes me happy. I’m not ready to settle down, and right now my path lies in a different direction.
Brittany Burgunder
Soon, when all is well, you're going to look back on this period of your life and be so glad that you never gave up.
Brittany Burgunder
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Rapunzel
"We call her Rapunzel because she's always at the window watching her kids from the fifth floor. Her hair is down to her waist. And she has several men climbing the tower," he said. "Yes, mostly teen boys who do her dirty work. They peddle the junk and bring home the cash to mama. It's like a bed and breakfast. Yeah, Rapunzel's bed and breakfast."
He poked at his teeth with a toothpick and walked over and poured himself another cup of coffee.
"We have to find the guy who is supplying Rapunzel."
Richard Rhodes
If you’re afraid you can’t write, the answer is to write. Every sentence you construct adds weight to the balance pan. If you’re afraid of what other people will think of your efforts, don’t show them until you write your way beyond your fear. If writing a book is impossible, write a chapter. If writing a chapter is impossible, write a page. If writing a page is impossible, write a paragraph. If writing a paragraph is impossible, write a sentence. If writing even a sentence is impossible, write a word and teach yourself everything there is to know about that word and then write another, connected word and see where their connection leads.
RICHARD RHODES
Nick Cave
You see, The Red Hand Files are not just about answering the enquiry, they are first and foremost about listening to the question. I get about fifty to a hundred letters a day and part of my commitment to the project is to read each question carefully, and be alert to what each person is trying to say.
This practice of reading the questions is, in its way, a form of prayer, because prayer is primarily about listening. It allows the necessary space to experience the subtle intimations of the divine, and to acknowledge God’s divine need — what is required of us. In the questions that come into The Red Hand Files I feel this same want echoed in my own need, the speaking of one’s pain into the pain of another, the toing and froing of our mutual desire for simple affirmation. So, here I am, and there you are, and happy third birthday to us all.
Nick Cave
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
leave it in the work
I think there’s a real myth that you have to—I don’t know—live a fucked-up life to write fucked-up music. I’ve had enough artists as mentors who write the craziest shit you’ll ever hear in your life, but then go home to their families. They leave it in the work, and then go home and spend time with their family and make that a priority. You can go there in your work. I play Hamilton every night: I have an affair; I lose a son; I get into duels—I get to work out all that shit on stage, and then I go home, and I’ve got the early shift in the morning with baby boy. And that’s really nice. Your art is a place to work stuff out so that you can prioritize your family.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA
What we Ultimately do with Advanced Technology
“Roomba j7+,” the latest version of iRobot’s popular home vacuum, claims to give customers “even more control over their clean,” with a camera that can identify and avoid pet droppings. Instead of smearing it all over the floor, the device will gracefully avoid the poop and even snap a picture and text it to your phone if you’re out, the company says. source
Rainer Maria Rilke
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Monday, September 13, 2021
Sunday, September 12, 2021
I dreamed about this song last night.
Help!
by John Lennon + Paul McCartney
I need somebody
(Help!) not just anybody
(Help!) you know I need someone
Help!I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)
(And now I find) Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doorsHelp me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me?And now my life has changed in oh so many ways (and now my life has changed)
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure (I know that I)
I know that I just need you like I've never done beforeHelp me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help meWhen I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)
(And now I find) now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doorsHelp me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, oohSource: LyricFindSongwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartneyHelp! lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Downtown Music Publishing, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Octopus and Starfish
As nouns the difference between octopus and starfish is that octopus is any of several marine molluscs/mollusks, of the family Mollusca, having no internal or external protective shell or bone (unlike the nautilus, squid or cuttlefish) and eight arms each covered with suckers while starfish is any of various asteroids or other echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach. source
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Looking out for One Another
If 2020 was agonizing — watching millions of our fellow citizens get sick and hundreds of thousands die — a replay in 2021 is infuriating. Ingenuity and investment have produced a rare medical miracle that could end this brutal pandemic, and yet millions of Americans are snubbing their noses at it, forgetting that being part of a society means looking out for one another.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/opinion/biden-covid-vaccine.html
Friday, September 10, 2021
Clear out Space
“You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself: … by comprehending the scale of the world … by contemplating infinite time … by thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.”
― Meditations
Wednesday, September 08, 2021
Dream
A few nights ago I dreamed I invited Terry to a party. At the end of the night the hostess said help yourself to anything. She proceeded to load up on a tray of sliced pepperoni and loaves of bread. I was embarrassed on her behalf.
Monday, September 06, 2021
Sunday, September 05, 2021
Mood Booster
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200228-the-danish-trick-to-shock-your-body-into-happiness
Many Scandinavians swear by winter swimming, saying that it serves as a mood booster during the long, dark winters. Though science is scarce, enthusiasts say cold water swimming not only heightens happiness but it fosters a sense of community.
“Denmark can be really miserable from November to April. There is hardly any daylight and we often have weeks without seeing the sun. A lot of people (myself included) suffer from mild winter depression,” says Møller, who believes a winter swim can help alleviate winter blues.
“When you throw yourself into the cold water and then into a boiling sauna, it gives you energy and an enormous endorphin kick.”
Cold Water Swims
Nothing better than an ice-cold swim to zap a bad mood and bring on a good one. Thank you Macoll YMCA in Lincoln RI for opening the outdoor pools for us devoted lap swimmers!
I LOVE George Bilgere's Poetry
STRANGE OPERA
by George Bilgere
A dark-haired woman on the third floor
of an apartment building I am walking past
in elegiac September
steps onto her balcony to water the hydrangeas.
And this routine of hers
is inflected somewhat today
by the fact that she looks down
and sees me, and I look up and see her,
and we share a faint nod and smile of acknowledgement.
Acknowledgement of what?
Well, possibly we're acknowledging
the infinite mystery of our separate lives,
so similar here on Earth
but so enormous in their differences,
the separate spheres in which we dwell.
That, and the fact
that our two immense mysteries just happened
to pass very closely on this September day,
they very nearly brushed against each other,
softly and delicately, like amorous galaxies.
And for a moment, as if we were in a strange opera,
I want to sing an aria about this to her
as she stands on her balcony with her hydrangeas.
The beauty and the sadness.
And then I realize that, well,
actually, this is just what life is,
a stupendous ongoing index
of all the things that don't get to happen
because of all the other things that do get to happen.
Which is terribly sad,
but if you really think about it,
you can't very well go around singing arias
about the sadness of every unrealized possibility,
every unblossomed hydrangea of existence.
All you'd be doing is singing arias every five minutes.
You'd never get anything done.
George Bilgere, Strange Opera from Blood Pages. ©2018 University of Pittsburgh Press.
Saturday, September 04, 2021
Kate Angus
Kindness to the self is, I think, key. If we focus on feeling blocked, marooned in isolation separate from our creative selves, it’s easy to fall into self-blame or self-hatred. We may focus on the “failure” of not generating new work instead of recognizing that during this quiet period we might be laying down the groundwork for what we will write later; we may simply need to rest and regenerate before our next project coalesces.
KATE ANGUS
Dream
A few nights ago I dreamed I had live goats chickens and miniature sheep on shelves in my garage.
Friday, September 03, 2021
Kimberly Rex
In all the years since, I’ve never found him again. He’s on my mind, of course, during the special moments but also the mundane. I tell stories about him, like the time I woke him up while attempting to hang a bulletin board in my teenage bedroom. I was bending every nail I tried to hammer. He walked in, hair askew, took the hammer from my hand, drove the nail into the wall with two whacks and left without a word. Sometimes, memories like this make me smile. Other times, I want to cry for all that he has missed — for all that I have missed without him. - Kimberly Rex
Bradbury
To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.
You must write every single day of your life.
You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.
You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.
I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.
May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
RAY BRADBURY
Rhodes
If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.
RICHARD RHODES
Theroux
Sontag
Updike
Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. In the morning light one can write breezily, without the slight acceleration of one’s pulse, about what one cannot contemplate in the dark without turning in panic to God. In the dark one truly feels that immense sliding, that turning of the vast earth into darkness and eternal cold, taking with it all the furniture and scenery, and the bright distractions and warm touches, of our lives. Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.
JOHN UPDIKE
Thursday, September 02, 2021
Murakami
[When I write,] I get some images and I connect one piece to another. That’s the story line. Then I explain the story line to the reader. You should be very kind when you explain something. If you think, It’s okay; I know that, it’s a very arrogant thing. Easy words and good metaphors; good allegory. So that’s what I do. I explain very carefully and clearly.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Partnership with Silence
"When I write, I feel as if I am making a partnership with silence. I'll bring what I have to the equation—based on memory, observation, experience, and so on—but I count on silence to supply the larger share. If a poem depended on what I knew I was going to write when I sat down to write, the poem would probably collapse. I count on that settled state of being, and the silence it generates, to lead me into the glowing core of a poem."
David Shumate https://www.eclectica.org/v18n3/holler.html
Custer
by David Shumate
He is a hard one to write a poem about. Like Napoleon.
Hannibal. Genghis Khan. Already so large in history. To do it
right, I have to sit down with him. At a place of his own
choosing. Probably a steakhouse. We take a table in a corner.
But people still recognize him, come up and slap him on the
back, say how much they enjoyed studying about him in school
and ask for his autograph. After he eats, he leans back and
lights up a cigar and asks me what I want to know. Notebook in
hand, I suggest that we start with the Little Big Horn and work
our way back. But I realize I have offended him. That he
would rather take it the other way around. So he rants on
about the Civil War, the way west, the loyalty of good soldiers
and now and then twists his long yellow hair with his fingers.
But when he gets to the part about Sitting Bull, about Crazy
Horse, he develops a twitch above his right eye, raises his
finger for the waiter, excuses himself and goes to the restroom
while I sit there along the bluffs with the entire Sioux nation,
awaiting his return.
-David Shumate, from High Water Mark. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004
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