most alive when alone

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

 Martin Amis

a freight train bearing down

“The blues don’t jump right on you. They come creeping. Shortly after my sixtieth I slipped into a depression like I hadn’t experienced since that dusty night in Texas thirty years earlier. It lasted for a year and a half and devastated me. When these moods hit me, usually few will notice—not Mr. Landau, no one I work with in the studio, not the band, never the audience, hopefully not the children—but Patti will observe a freight train bearing down, loaded with nitroglycerin and running quickly out of track. During these periods I can be cruel: I run, I dissemble, I dodge, I weave, I disappear, I return, I rarely apologize, and all the while Patti holds down the fort as I’m trying to burn it down. She stops me. She gets me to the doctors and says, “This man needs a pill.” I do. I’ve been on antidepressants for the last twelve to fifteen years of my life, and to a lesser degree but with the same effect they had for my father, they have given me a life I would not have been able to maintain without them. They work. I return to Earth, home and my family. The worst of my destructive behavior curtails itself and my humanity returns. I was crushed between sixty and sixty-two, good for a year and out again from sixty-three to sixty-four. Not a good record.”
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run 

We are a nation of immigrants

We are a nation of immigrants and no one knows who’s coming across our borders today, whose story might add a significant page to our American story. Here in the early years of our new century, as at the turn of the last, we are once again at war with our “new Americans.” As in the last, people will come, will suffer hardship and prejudice, will do battle with the most reactionary forces and hardest hearts of their adopted home and will prove resilient and victorious.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run 

First, you write for yourself

We honor our parents by not accepting as the final equation the most troubling characteristics of our relationship. I decided between my father and me that the sum of our troubles would not be the summation of our lives together. In analysis, you work to turn the ghosts that haunt you into ancestors who accompany you. That takes hard work and a lot of love, but it's the way we lessen the burdens our children have to carry.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

First, you write for yourself... always, to make sense of experience and the world around you. It’s one of the ways I stay sane. Our stories, our books, our films are how we cope with the random trauma-inducing chaos of life as it plays.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

Antidepression medication is temperamental. Somewhere around fifty-nine or sixty I noticed the drug I’d been taking seemed to have stopped working. This is not unusual. The drugs interact with your body chemistry in different ways over time and often need to be tweaked. After the death of Dr. Myers, my therapist of twenty-five years, I’d been seeing a new doctor whom I’d been having great success with. Together we decided to stop the medication I’d been on for five years and see what would happen... DEATH TO MY HOMETOWN!! I nose-dived like the diving horse at the old Atlantic City steel pier into a sloshing tub of grief and tears the likes of which I’d never experienced before. Even when this happens to me, not wanting to look too needy, I can be pretty good at hiding the severity of my feelings from most of the folks around me, even my doctor. I was succeeding well with this for a while except for one strange thing: TEARS! Buckets of ’em, oceans of ’em, cold, black tears pouring down my face like tidewater rushing over Niagara during any and all hours of the day. What was this about? It was like somebody opened the floodgates and ran off with the key. There was NO stopping it. 'Bambi' tears... 'Old Yeller' tears... 'Fried Green Tomatoes' tears... rain... tears... sun... tears... I can’t find my keys... tears. Every mundane daily event, any bump in the sentimental road, became a cause to let it all hang out. It would’ve been funny except it wasn’t.

Every meaningless thing became the subject of a world-shattering existential crisis filling me with an awful profound foreboding and sadness. All was lost. All... everything... the future was grim... and the only thing that would lift the burden was one-hundred-plus on two wheels or other distressing things. I would be reckless with myself. Extreme physical exertion was the order of the day and one of the few things that helped. I hit the weights harder than ever and paddleboarded the equivalent of the Atlantic, all for a few moments of respite. I would do anything to get Churchill’s black dog’s teeth out of my ass.

Through much of this I wasn’t touring. I’d taken off the last year and a half of my youngest son’s high school years to stay close to family and home. It worked and we became closer than ever. But that meant my trustiest form of self-medication, touring, was not at hand. I remember one September day paddleboarding from Sea Bright to Long Branch and back in choppy Atlantic seas. I called Jon and said, “Mr. Landau, book me anywhere, please.” I then of course broke down in tears. Whaaaaaaaaaa. I’m surprised they didn’t hear me in lower Manhattan. A kindly elderly woman walking her dog along the beach on this beautiful fall day saw my distress and came up to see if there was anything she could do. Whaaaaaaaaaa. How kind. I offered her tickets to the show. I’d seen this symptom before in my father after he had a stroke. He’d often mist up. The old man was usually as cool as Robert Mitchum his whole life, so his crying was something I loved and welcomed. He’d cry when I’d arrive. He’d cry when I left. He’d cry when I mentioned our old dog. I thought, “Now it’s me.”

I told my doc I could not live like this. I earned my living doing shows, giving interviews and being closely observed. And as soon as someone said “Clarence,” it was going to be all over. So, wisely, off to the psychopharmacologist he sent me. Patti and I walked in and met a vibrant, white-haired, welcoming but professional gentleman in his sixties or so. I sat down and of course, I broke into tears. I motioned to him with my hand; this is it. This is why I’m here. I can’t stop crying! He looked at me and said, “We can fix this.” Three days and a pill later the waterworks stopped, on a dime. Unbelievable. I returned to myself. I no longer needed to paddle, pump, play or challenge fate. I didn’t need to tour. I felt normal.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

 “The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That's when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.”
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

Jamie Oliver's Spaghetti With Red Onions, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Balsamic Vinegar And Basil

1lb dried spaghetti, the best you can get
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
Olive oil
2 handfuls of sun-dried tomatoes in oil, chopped
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 handfuls of basil, torn
1small handful of Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese, grated

While cooking the Spaghetti in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente, slowly fry the onion in a couple of glugs of olive oil, for 5 minutes until soft and tender. Stir in the drained tomatoes and vinegar, and throw in your drained pasta. Season and serve.

It's a stormy night and we didn't want to face the grocery store. I used a pound of frozen spinach and I added 2 cubes of my frozen homemade pesto and I chopped sun dried tomatoes and added the infused oil that came with them, then I grated some frozen cheddar cheese, I added splashes of Chianti too (and it all worked out well.) I am writing this so I'll do it again. This will be my green sauce versus a red sauce.

Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

Life spent in cars affects the act of seeing. Through a moving window, everything seems fleeting. Now you see whatever, now you don't. By force of habit, those who spend their lives in cars tend to glance, rather than really observe. Their eyes slide off you like a freshly cracked egg slides out of its shell.

— Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto (p.239)

Stepping Out

Stepping out on a downtown walk with my dog Romeo, I saw a man wearing a yellow hard hat blowing his nose into the air, alternating nostrils. A man with a scorpion tattoo covering the left side of his face was driving an orange asphalt paver. Men in blue hard hats were straddled on top of steel gray beams bolting them together. Other men nearby were awaiting the crane to lift a pile of steel beams. A curvy hipped woman in bell-bottoms and platform shoes was running across the traffic. A big yellow school bus was idling at the corner. A detective was entering a gray truck that had dark tinted windows.

Robert G. Ingersol

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn. The less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.

― Robert G. Ingersol

“As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.”
― Robert Ingersoll

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.
― Robert Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child 

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Christian Religion: An Enquiry 

Robert G. Ingersoll

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child 

When it rains

Creativity is an act of magic rising up from your subconscious. It feels wonderful every time it happens, and I’ve learned to live with the anxiety of it not happening over long periods of time.

― Bruce Springsteen

All I do know is as we age the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier . . . much heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run 

We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down. By fighting and taming the demons that laid them low and now reside in us.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run  

 I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

― Bruce Springsteen 

If you're an artist, you try to keep an ear to the ground and an ear to your heart.

― Bruce Springsteen

I leave pansies, the symbolic flower of freethought, in memory of the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, who stood for equality, education, progress, free ideas and free lives, against the superstition and bigotry of religious dogma. We need men like him today more than ever. His writing still inspires us and challenges the 'better angels' of our nature, when people open their hearts and minds to his simple, honest humanity. Thank goodness he was here.
― Bruce Springsteen 

 

When it rains, the moisture in the humid air blankets our town with the smell of damp coffee grounds wafting in from the Nescafé factory at the town’s eastern edge. I don’t like coffee but I like that smell. It’s comforting; it unites the town in a common sensory experience; it’s good industry, like the roaring rug mill that fills our ears, brings work and signals our town’s vitality. There is a place here—you can hear it, smell it—where people make lives, suffer pain, enjoy small pleasures, play baseball, die, make love, have kids, drink themselves drunk on spring nights and do their best to hold off the demons that seek to destroy us, our homes, our families, our town.
― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run 

Ocean Vuong

I think that's why I became a writer. Because when you're a writer, within a single sentence, a city can rise or fall. It could be daylight or nighttime. And if you write it, it's true. A couple seconds later, there it is.  

Ocean Vuong

and books

“I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds 

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

I realized that searching was my symbol

I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses.
  ― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

I touch your mouth. I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger. I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you.
 
You look at me, from close up you look at me, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look closer and closer at one another and our eyes get larger, they come closer, they merge into one and the two cyclopses look at each other, blending as they breathe, our mouths touch and struggle in gentle warmth, biting each other with their lips, barely holding their tongues on their teeth, playing in corners where a heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence. Then my hands go to sink into your hair, to cherish slowly the depth of your hair while we kiss as if our mouths were filled with flowers or with fish, with lively movements and dark fragrance. And if we bite each other the pain is sweet, and if we smother each other in a brief and terrible sucking in together of our breaths, that momentary death is beautiful. And there is but one saliva and one flavor of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon on the water. 

― Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch (ch7)

She would smile and show no surprise

“She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.”
― Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch 

All profound distraction opens certain doors

“All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds 

Julio Cortázar

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda’s, “My creatures are born of a long denial,” seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge… It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it.

Julio Cortázar

Ante Meridiem and Post Meridiem

This morning at 4:30 AM we heard a group of people talking. Then I heard police radios. I looked out the window and there were four police SUV's in the street. Two of them drove down the dead end next to the cemetery with their overhead search lights on.

I bet it was a robbery of the smoke shop but that's just a guess.

*

"They're not supposed to have a dog," he said. "They told me they got rid of it."

"It's still there. I saw it on the porch this morning."

*

When I was downtown I saw Jay. "Jay, you look regal today." He looked like his Alaskan Tlingit ancestors with his straight black hair pulled back. It accentuated his forehead, broad shoulders and brown skin. 

"I punched a framed picture and broke the glass at the hospital. I was so angry," he said 

"Did you hurt your hand?"

"No."

"Just remember you're a writer. Next time you are at the boiling point write down what you are angry about. You don't even have to keep it. You can crumple it up and throw it away. It's very therapeutic. I do it all the time."

*

"I told the priest I'd smash rocks in the hot sun for days, months, years, if I had to," Greg said.

"You're devoted."

"Yes. Say what you want about the Catholic Church but it gave me faith, gave me tools. I now have an overflowing toolbox. So I completely trust it."

"I understand."

Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood.
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto 

Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

I am not crazy now, but forced to act like a nonloner for an extended period, I might go crazy. Forced to deny their orientation, cut off that way from reality, loners could lose their minds. As deep-sea fish die in a shallow tank. They are fine at the bottom of the sea, strange as it might look down there, inhospitable though it might be to whales and jellyfish and skin divers. As deep-sea fish that is where they have to be. Dead in shallow tanks. In the deep-sea not dead. Loners left alone, sane. Loners manipulated, loners not allowed to be alone, perhaps insane. And we are forced to live in their world, aren't we? Their shallow tank. Made just for them. 

—Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto (p.177)

William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

Shouldn't the divine hear a lone voice as clearly as it hears a chorus? If, in fact, it is divine, its ears ought to be good.

—Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto (p.145)

Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

For loners, discussing the mystical deflates it like air escaping a balloon. Faith is a private matter—at least, by loner logic it is. Praying in public, worshiping while rubbing elbows, seems uncouth, like French kissing on a commuter bus.

—Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto (p.142)

Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

Painters and sculptors now and then hire models. Writers, on the other hand, have no use even for hired company while writing. Even the hint of human beings distracts—a doorbell, a phone, shouting in the street. Appointments scribbled in a daybook. And distraction kills. It slices the heads off of fictional characters just as they open their mouths and begin to speak. It lops their limbs off as they try to walk. It pours acid on poems in utero.  —Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto (p.124)

there is space around it

“A woman in her thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could sense the pain behind her polite and superficial smile. She started telling me her story, and within one second her smile changed into a grimace of pain. Then, she began to sob uncontrollably. She said she felt lonely and unfulfilled.

There was much anger and sadness. As a child she had been abused by a physically violent father. I saw quickly that her pain was not caused by her present life circumstances but by an extraordinarily heavy pain-body. Her pain-body had become the filter through which she viewed her life situation.

She was not yet able to see the link between the emotional pain and her thoughts, being completely identified with both. She could not yet see that she was feeding the pain-body with her thoughts. In other words, she lived with the burden of a deeply unhappy self. At some level, however, she must have realized that her pain originated within herself, that she was a burden to herself. She was ready to awaken, and this is why she had come.

I directed the focus of her attention to what she was feeling inside her body and asked her to sense the emotion directly, instead of through the filter of her unhappy thoughts, her unhappy story. She said she had come expecting me to show her the way out of her unhappiness, not into it.

Reluctantly, however, she did what I asked her to do. Tears were rolling down her face, her whole body was shaking. “At this moment, this is what you feel.” I said. “There is nothing you can do about the fact that at this moment this is what you feel. Now, instead of wanting this moment to be different from the way it is, which adds more pain to the pain that is already there, is it possible for you to completely accept that this is what you feel right now?”

She was quiet for a moment. Suddenly she looked impatient, as if she was about to get up, and said angrily, “No, I don't want to accept this.” “Who is speaking?” I asked her. “You or the unhappiness in you? Can you see that your unhappiness about being unhappy is just another layer of unhappiness?” She became quiet again. “I am not asking you to do anything. All I'm asking is that you find out whether it is possible for you to allow those feelings to be there. In other words, and this may sound strange, if you don't mind being unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness? Don't you want to find out?”

She looked puzzled briefly, and after a minute or so of sitting silently, I suddenly noticed a significant shift in her energy field. She said, “This is weird. I 'm still unhappy, but now there is space around it. It seems to matter less.”

This was the first time I heard somebody put it like that: There is space around my unhappiness. That space, of course, comes when there is inner acceptance of whatever you are experiencing in the present moment.

I didn't say much else, allowing her to be with the experience. Later she came to understand that the moment she stopped identifying with the feeling, the old painful emotion that lived in her, the moment she put her attention on it directly without trying to resist it, it could no longer control her thinking and so become mixed up with a mentally constructed story called “The Unhappy Me.” Another dimension had come into her life that transcended her personal past – the dimension of Presence. Since you cannot be unhappy without an unhappy story, this was the end of her unhappiness. It was also the beginning of the end of her pain-body. Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.

When our session came to an end, it was fulfilling to know that I had just witnessed the arising of Presence in another human being. The very reason for our existence in human form is to bring that dimension of consciousness into this world. I had also witnessed a diminishment of the pain-body, not through fighting it but through bringing the light of consciousness to it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose 

Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

We care. We feel. We think. We do not always miss the absent one. We cannot always come when called. Being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike. 

 Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

The Humans

Someone in the apartment house across the street bought a little dog and locked it on the porch. People do this, they think putting a dog on the porch is the equivalent of walking it. Of course it barked last night until they finally let it back in and early this morning they put it out again waking and disturbing the neighborhood. The owners were hoping it would pee and poop too which is lazy and disgusting considering the urine and feces will also affect the people on lower levels of the porch. 

Some folks in my neighborhood love to chuck bacon grease out of their kitchen windows and the grease always stains the house which forever looks like projectile vomit on the vinyl.

If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.

Ram Dass

did these images choose me?

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which, to look ahead. I say ‘one chooses’ with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who—when he has been seriously noted at all —has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me? It is convenient, it is correct according to the rules of my craft to begin just there, but if I had believed then in a God, I could also have believed in a hand, plucking at my elbow, a suggestion, 'Speak to him: he hasn’t seen you yet.'

—Graham Greene The End of the Affair (1951) opening paragraph

the Now

“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment 

Acknowledging the good

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose 

Give Up

“Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose 

None of these is you

“The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.”
― Eckhart Tolle

The one who sees

“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose 

Walking in Blackstone

Today walking in Blackstone we came upon a two-story colonial house with a small cement fountain centered on the front lawn, a slender statue of the Virgin Mary next to the bushes in front and a huge black treadmill was mounted on the top of the front stairs facing the front door. A support stand had been placed on the bottom cement stair to keep the machine level. Two white twin busts of Victorian women were at the base of the stairs, one on either side, in front of the shrubs. A round old lady was seated in the sun on a bench on the back patio. I waved and she waved back smiling. I stood and took a mental photograph wondering what the story was.

Then we continued walking and came upon a man smoking a cigarette at his side door. His shadow was big and dark against the pale yellow house. "Man and his shadow," I said to my husband. The front of his house had a gigantic hand-made spider web made from orange string with half a dozen two foot long purple, silver and black hairy spiders dangling. In his yard there was a 15 foot headless skeleton. His skull was on the ground at his feet.

Americans try to Pronounce Massachusetts Towns

We've been discussing accents and regional pronunciations the past few days.  

Here's a fun video. https://youtu.be/AckzNzbF5E4

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.

 Lewis Thomas

I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.

 Anne Frank

Cerebral Cortex

 “Everything's weird if you stare at it.”
― Sam Lipsyte 

“Judging by your face, the what-the-fuck nodes in your cerebral cortex must be a real light show.”
― Sam Lipsyte, The Ask 

Sam Lipsyte

“One of my big revelations was that nobody cares whether you write your novel or not. They want you to be happy. Your parents want you to have health insurance. Your friends want you to be a good friend. But everyone’s thinking about their own problems and nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘Boy, I sure hope Sam finishes that chapter and gets one step closer to his dream of being a working writer.’ Nobody does that. If you want to write, it has to come from you. If you don’t want to write, that’s great. Go do something else. That was a very liberating moment for me.”
― Sam Lipsyte

The world needs you

The world needs you. There is large work to be done, good work, and you can make a difference. Whatever your life work, take it seriously and enjoy it. Let’s never be the kind of people who do things lukewarmly. If you’re going to ring the bell, give the rope one hell of a pull. I wish you the fullest lives possible—full of love and bells ringing.

David McCullough

When people talk listen completely

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

Ernest Hemmingway

Knish without the ish

I sauteed about 8 cloves of garlic chopped and salted adding it to sizzling olive oil with one dried red chili. I added a diced 4 pound green cabbage and stirred. I added cooked garbanzos and the aquafaba, leftover cooked kidney beans, dried sweet cranberries and salt. Then I chopped 4 tiny yams and pressure cooked them for 4 minutes in some aquafaba and added them to the pot. It was fantastic. It tasted like a knish without the ish.

Now I am discovering this and this to try next. I LOVE CABBAGE.

Picture This

Then she realized that those two creases in her sister's forehead were remnants of the seven year old who was traumatized when her father abandoned her. And later when her step father and mother beat her. As an adult she was still the seven year old girl saying don't leave me, don't hit me!  

She thought maybe it was best to picture every badly behaved person as a mistreated seven year old.

Humility is the essence of love and intelligence; it is not an achievement. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. 

C. S. Lewis

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.

Jesse Jackson

Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.

Thomas Moore

To lead the people, walk behind them.

Lao Tzu

A Pipeline

The hardest thing about writing, in a sense, is not writing. I mean, the sentence is not intended to show you off, you know. It is not supposed to be “look at me!” “Look, no hands!” It’s supposed to be a pipeline between the reader and you. One condition of the sentence is to write so well that no one notices that you’re writing.

James Baldwin

Back to School at 92

Article

Dopamine in many Disguises

Digital dopamine

Loretta LaRoche's take on it. 

ice bath

Loretta LaRoche

Thanksgiving

Posted on November 25, 2015

It’s a good time to work on being more grateful

In a few days, millions of people will gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. It, like Christmas, is a holiday that causes mixed emotions. It can stir up old grievances, grief over loved ones who are no longer present, and stress over the “work” it takes to cook and clean up.

I remember the cast of characters that used to come to my grandmother’s house. She would alert me in advance about their idiosyncratic behaviors, and the Sicilian nicknames she gave them definitely resonated with who they were.

Her idea of a traditional Thanksgiving meal was a turkey with sausage stuffing, lasagna, arancini, vegetables, salami and all kinds of cheeses. Cannoli and a rum cake followed. By the time you’d finished eating, you felt like you’d been inflated with helium. Thanksgiving lasted all day and into the evening, and it was always loaded with drama. There was also a lot of laughter. Looking back, I realize that those gatherings would rival any reality show on TV today.

Unfortunately, my grandmother would spend time throughout the day sighing and weeping over who wasn’t there because of choice or death. It was her nature to be a martyr. My mother had many similar characteristics. I have realized over the years as a result of my training in stress management that some people are habituated to what’s missing rather than what they have. I know now that some of this can be explained by the fact that they may be depressed. But being thankful or appreciative for what you have is also a practice. We become what we think about.

Studies have shown that our moods improve and our stress levels drop when we’re grateful. But like any behavior that can help us feel better physically, mentally and spiritually, it needs to be integrated into our daily lives. Here are five ways you can increase being grateful after Thanksgiving is over.

1. Try to think of a few things you’re grateful for before you get out of bed in the morning or while you’re drinking your coffee. You may even want to do this with your family. It only takes a few minutes and helps start the day on the right note.

2. Write a letter of gratitude to someone who really made a difference in your life. If possible read it to them in person. The benefits are immeasurable.

3. Before you go to sleep at night, think about what went right during your day. Our minds have a tendency to continually remind us of what we didn’t do or what someone else did to annoy us.

4. Focus on what you have rather than what’s missing.

5. Remember that the words “thank you” are simply words without action. Become the message.              

--Loretta LaRoche

12 Loaves Baking

 The scent is magnifi-cent.

Because this is a crowded, mainly extroverted world. And if you're an introvert or have social anxiety, being intensely pressured to socially engage can make the holiday season excruciating.

Anneli Rufus

“We do not require company. In varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't understand.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just sitting thinking, ‘Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,’ but it’s really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.”
― Anneli Rufus

“We care. We feel. We think. We do not always miss the absent one. We cannot always come when called. Being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“The whole world is a personality cult.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Writing is done alone. People do not talk about the things they do alone.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Because loners are born everywhere, we end up living everywhere. We do not, have not, tended to single ourselves out as special, elite, requiring rarefied environments. Too often we have done the opposite; lived where we lived because our jobs were there, or families, or because we'd heard the schools were good there, or that we would love a place with changing seasons. Then, no matter what, we put our noses to the grindstone. We take living there as a fait accompli, a fact. Too often we are miserable somewhere without realizing why. We blame ourselves for not buckling down, settling in, fitting in. The problem is the place, but too often we do not see this, we will not allow ourselves to see this. It's the same old thing: This is a friendly town, so what's your problem?
...To the non-loner, or the self-reproaching loner, the fact of being a loner is not comparable to those other determinants. It is not a matter of life and death, we tell ourselves. It its not a matter of breathing or of execution by stoning. But home is the crucible of living...So how can living not be a matter of life and death?”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Not that I was incapable of friendship. 'Don't be shy', the teachers coaxed. I was not shy, only extremely choosy. And Denise shone like a diamond. If you had to ask me to define paradise, I would have said a desert island which Denise could visit, on a boat.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“And as experienced as I am, it still summons an act of bravery from me, and I like that. I like the idea of setting an example - proving that it is acceptable to be alone in a public place where everyone else is in groups, and to just be sitting there eating, not having to be engrossed in anything else.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Written works do not produce fast reactions as pictures and sculptures and music do. it takes no effort to see or hear. but to read - to grasp what the writer has done - requires commitment. engagement. as is the case with most art, the relationship between the maker and the audience is remote in time and space. the writer is nowhere to be seen when the reader takes up the book, or even dead. but most often, books go unread...thus the writer, knowing this as writers do, is even more alone...yet writers write. and knowing what they know makes their isolation almost a sacrament.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close, the truth is revealed. Running or walking away, chased or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect I don't need you.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“I don’t hate my relatives or those whose names fill my address book. But I do not want to have lunch with any of them. It is not personal. I am not angry. Nor is this about being afraid. I am not shy. I do not have terrible manners.

Do birds hate lips? Do Fijians detest snowplows? Being a loner is not about hate, but need: We need what others dread. We dread what others need.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“People say the desert is desolate. Yet for me it's very much alive, full of surprises. As soon as I see those wide-open spaces, I can breathe,”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Loners can play well with others-the right others.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“They say isolation drives you crazy. Sure it does-when you can't get enough of it.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Some of us have spent our whole lives committing suicide. And some of us survived.”
― Anneli Rufus, Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself

“Our true selves are the selves we were before we twisted, bent, and beat ourselves into the shapes we had to take in order to please others: the shapes that we hate. Our true selves are the selves we would have been had no one tried to break or shame or change us. Our true selves are what those who actually love us see in us. Our true selves are who we have always been, even if they have been in hiding all this time. Our true selves are who we will, in that sheer blue zone above self-loathing, always be.”
― Anneli Rufus, Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself

“Some in the outside world might call our traumas trivial. Were you gang-raped? Sold into slavery? Imprisoned in a concentration camp? Did you accidentally tweet a naked picture of yourself to twenty million strangers? No? Then stop whining! They would not understand that it is possible to be annihilated by a smirk, a scowl, an empty threat.”
― Anneli Rufus, Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself

“The mob thinks we are maladjusted. Of course we are adjusted just fine, not to their frequency. They take it personally.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Is socializing all that great? Riots are socializing. Arguably, more damage is done and time wasted in company with others than alone.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Alone, we are alive.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Often the circumstances in which we lost our self-esteem were relationships distinguished by a steeply unequal power balance.
Our spellcasters were parents. Teachers. Bullies. So-called friends. Strangers. Romantic partners. Cliques. Coworkers. Your spellcaster was the mean first grader. Or the psycho in the dark. Or the town, school, Scout troop, spiritual community, family, neighborhood that did not understand your type, whatever that type was. Your spellcaster could even be society at large, that nameless, faceless "them" with boundless power and a thousand biases.
And it became unbearable to be the bullied one, the hounded one, the outcast and excluded one. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, the old saying goes. Others hated us, or appeared to. We joined 'em.”
― Anneli Rufus, Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself

“And yet what has been learned can be unlearned.”
― Anneli Rufus, Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself

“The most horrifying thing about art is its honesty,”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Writers' closest companions are inside their heads.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

“Yet introverts and loners are not one and the same thing.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation. Don Delillo

rage and complaint

“He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise 

They are also in the ground

“The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise 

The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise 

that’s all it takes

“Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking. We’re talking now about the earliest writing I did and about the power of language to counteract the wallow of late adolescence, to define things, define muddled experience in economical ways. Let’s not forget that writing is convenient. It requires the simplest tools. A young writer sees that with words and sentences on a piece of paper that costs less than a penny he can place himself more clearly in the world. Words on a page, that’s all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.”
― Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo

“How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature.”
― Don DeLillo, The Names 

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges

 “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges: Interviews by Roberto Alifano 1981-1983

Sentimentality is the anti-heart, a heart substitute, and nothing terrifies me more than tipping into it.

 Kimberly King Parsons

Louis Wain

Artist

Last Night

Yesterday at 2pm I was walking home with Romeo and I spotted a group of people off in the distance up on the Governor Pothier Monument. They were wearing pointy witches hats and line dancing. It looked like they were being filmed.

Scacciata Siciliana

A sheet of fragrant bread dough enclosing pork, olives and broccoli: the Sicilian scacciata is a traditional dish that has never left this magical island; to taste it, you’ll need to head for the home of a genuine Sicilian family, set amidst Sicilian donkey carts, works of art and citrus groves; or you can make it with this recipe!

Here

Grounding

Yesterday I washed the blankets. This morning I am baking granola. I just set up a multigrain sour dough to incubate. Next I will walk Romeo. These are things that ground me.

To Sew

“To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.”
― Louise Erdrich, Four Souls 

Things which do not grow and change are dead things.

― Louise Erdrich

witnessed as a person

“Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortunate who feels witnessed as a person, outside relationships with parents by another adult.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year 

sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape

“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves 

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace 

Sharon Olds

"Whenever we give our pen some free will, we may surprise ourselves. All that wanting to seem normal in regular life, all that fitting in falls away in the face of one's own strange self on the page. [...] Writing or making anything — a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake — has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up." ― Sharon Olds 

“After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like a map, laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York”
― Sharon Olds 

The Pilgrims did not add marshmallows to their sweet potatoes

 Article

Reinvent

The most vivacious person I know enthused about spending Christmas Day sitting in an overstuffed chair next to a fire, with a good book and a glass of wine.

Try it - especially if you have never done it before. Try it, even if the thought makes you a bit uneasy - no, especially if it does. You never know what you might discover about people you only thought you knew, or what you might learn about yourself. Try it because Americans are all about reinvention. Even our "traditions" don't stand still.

Article

Spaghetti with Sauteed Garlic Broccoli & Sundried Tomatoes

 and for dessert: pumpkin pie, figs and almonds. A delicious supper.

to know where you are

“The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

Downtown

I saw Grandma Pauline pull out of the post office parking lot today. I only met her once or twice and she died when I was 11. But there she was. I recognized her immediately by her egg shaped chin and baggy neck which fascinated me as a child.

Then the Tasmanian Devil drove by. Whenever I see her I imagine she has bowls of candy, plush toys and Disney movies playing in her office.

I already know that Mr Testosterone drives a black truck. Of course he does. He wouldn't be caught dead driving a sedan, those are for girls. I bet he was always called a sissy by an alcoholic father. He has to continually assert his power on everyone around him. Not funny. Never funny. Always boring.

The lady with the fake tan and the widely-spaced Jack O Lantern teeth is heading back to Florida. She seems not to be afraid of skin cancer even though she's had it before.

An interview with Jonathan Goyer

Nothing changes if nothing changes

An interview with Jonathan Goyer, recovery community expert, talking about how we missed an opportunity to align an OD epidemic response with a COVID-19 pandemic response

Don't taunt the alligator until after you've crossed the creek.

 Proverb quoted by Dan Rather

Beautiful Article on Rebecca Solnit

It was Solnit who suggested that we simply walk from one point to another for our interviews, a welcome but unsurprising choice from such a passionate map lover—and the woman who wrote, in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, "I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour."

 Through her writing, Solnit has built a varied network of friends and allies. On her New York trip, she's staying in the empty apartment of installation artist Ann Hamilton, and she has coffee with Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who carried a mattress with her for a year to protest the school's handling of her alleged rape. "Growing up around queer culture in San Francisco, there's a strong sense of 'Make your own family,' " Solnit says, "that your well-being depends on many relationships." Though Solnit says she isn't opposed to marriage, she's never done it, in part because she just doesn't believe in "that pioneer pair-bonding thing where all you need is your husband or wife. It's like a structure built on one pillar, and that pillar can be knocked down."

Solnit describes her younger self as "a weird, rejected, battered kid." Growing up in a middle-class suburb of San Francisco, she was the sole daughter in a "superviolent, misogynistic" family of four children, she says. Her father, Al, was a county planner with a scathing temper: "One summer evening when I was about nine," she writes in A Field Guide, "my father came home late and found a forgotten glass of chocolate milk gone sour on the kitchen counter. Waste enraged him, and since I was the principal drinker of chocolate milk, he rushed into my room, flicked the light on, and dashed it in my face as I slept." As for her mother, based on the labyrinthine portrait Solnit sketches of her in The Faraway Nearby, she'd married the wrong man—and given birth to the wrong daughter, a girl whom she thoroughly resented because of her striking physical resemblance to her mother's younger, more confident sister. Solnit says that she spent much of her youth trying to escape her family; as an adolescent, she attended a Buddhist silent retreat with one of her brother's friends, a 19-year-old gay man she deems "the first really kind male figure in my life." While, for most teenagers, 14 days without speaking would classify as a Herculean achievement, "I'd been silent for 14 years," Solnit says evenly, "so two more weeks didn't really make a difference."

source

Bronx roll and Leg Bail

 jargon

• Hook and book: To arrest someone
• Hooks: Handcuffs
• Hooptee: Automobile (gang slang)
• Hot roller: Stolen car
• California stop: Failure to stop completely at a stop sign (See "Bronx roll")
• Christmastime: To activate the patrol vehicle's overhead lights
•  Bronx roll: Failure to stop completely at a stop sign (See "California stop")
• Brick: Handie-talkie portable radio
• Beaters: Hands
• Big key: Battering ram, used to break down doors during high-risk warrant service
•  Bag: East coast term for police uniform – plainclothes officers or detectives sent back to uniformed patrol are said to be "back in the bag"
• JDLR: Just don't look right; expression used by police officers while viewing a suspicious circumstance on a hunch
• Leg bail: To run from police on foot to avoid arrest
• Amateur night: New Year's Eve
• Ankle jerk: Foot patrol officer
• Roller: Police car
• Squirrel cage: Police headquarters
• Tweaker: Habitual user of methamphetamine
• Tinhorn: A petty criminal from out of town
• Road Soda: driving and drinking (beer). An alcoholic beverage (usually beer or perhaps malt liquor) consumed inside a moving vehicle. This beverage can be consumed by passenger, driver, or both.

Choose not to Participate

          from the Advice column

How do I stop someone playing power games with me?

Put yourself in a position where there is nothing that you want or need from that person. Then when they make a power play they will have no weapon.

You’re absolutely right to want the power games to stop. But you cannot stop someone else from playing them. Only your own actions are in your control. All you can really do is choose not to participate.

This may entail ending the relationship. But I’d prefer to have a relationship with a partner rather than a competitor. If we’re playing games, we’d damned well better be on the same team. Any problems or disagreements we face…those are the opponents.

Jeanette Winterson

Reading books really does take your hand off the panic button, it allows your breathing to return to normal, it allows you to occupy the space isn’t entirely ruled by other people’s demands and by utility. Jeanette Winterson

When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

Having a rich inner life means being in touch with your true self and the vast terrain of your hopes and dreams, thoughts, emotions, instincts, and intuition. It is a private space for imagination and reflection which nourishes your creative spirit and a sense of well-being.

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul. Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.

Angeles Arrien in her forward to Gabrielle Roth’s Maps to Ecstasy: The Healing Power of Movement.

source

Inner Life

Nothing trains you better to write fiction than being really good at writing about your own interiority. When you write in the third person, you get to imagine other people's interiority. Emily Gould

She knew the game and didn't want to play it.

What surprised her was the people known for community charity were the most ego driven, cliquey and annoying. She though they would be inspiring, humble and virtuous. She discovered that the authentic heroes were quiet about it. They were already fulfilled. You don't get paid twice, her friend Sam used to say.

At the local pool Mr. Testosterone was always staring her down during his underwater glides as if she didn't notice. She knew the game and didn't want to play it. So she switched her swim time and her swim lanes whenever possible.

I love Vegetables Dinner

Sauteed a big chopped white onion in olive oil, chopped two heads of broccoli (sauteed and steamed), add homemade Kimchi (napa cabbage garlic carrot), and brine, 2-3 tablespoons tahini + peanut butter, and peanuts. Eaten HOT!

1965: How DELIA DERBYSHIRE made the DOCTOR WHO theme I Tomorrow's World I Music I BBC Archive BBC Archive

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsRuhCflRyg

Dick Tracy's Watch: Dick Tracy, the comic-strip super detective created by Chester Gould from 1931 to 1977. Tracy was a detective who had two-way radio communications to police headquarters via his famous watch, which was decades ahead of its time.

 source

mental health is negatively impacted by the holidays.

Self-care, while always critical for stability, is even more so right now. Taking extra care of ourselves, including applying boundaries, is key to building resilience, which helps us avoid letting external situations affect our internal thoughts and mood.

Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.

  ― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

  “We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.”
― Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions

“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.

We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.”
― Oliver Sacks

each of us is a story

“If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales 

“Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex matters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost nonexistent.”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales 

“Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.”
― Oliver Sacks

Burlesque Skits

“The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same—dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits—the repetition through the ages is comedy.”
― Dawn Powell  

Dawn Powell: Love, dear friends, begins with curiosity.

A novel is like a gland pill — it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person. Dawn Powell

“I cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter.”
― Dawn Powell 

“All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.”
― Dawn Powell

“Friendship in youth represents sympathy without understanding; in age, understanding without sympathy.”
― Dawn Powell, The Diaries, 1931-1965

Compulsive Storytellers

Writing is for compulsive storytellers. So are a lot of things—police work, diplomacy, counseling the needy, etc. Nell Zink

Rebecca Solnit: in service of vision

Talent is overrated, and it is usually conflated with nice style. Passion, vocation, vision, and dedication are rarer, and they will get you through the rough spots in your style when your style won’t give you a reason to get up in the morning and stare at the manuscript for the hundredth day in a row or even give you a compelling subject to write about. If you’re not passionate about writing and about the world and the things in it you’re writing about, then why are you writing? It starts with passion even before it starts with words. You want to read people who are wise, deep, wild, kind, committed, insightful, attentive; you want to be those people. I am all for style, but only in service of vision.

Rebecca Solnit