Standard Time

Outside, the neighborhood smelled like imitation grape candy. So this is the new scent of laundry?

They said four, we're fashionably late, Brian said, pushing open the gate.

All set, Sylvia said, fluffing her hair checking her lipstick in the visor mirror. She climbed out of the passenger seat holding the bottle of wine with a red ribbon tied at the neck.

Every shrub and lawn was manicured to perfection. To lunacy. New England's version of Beverly Hills. Is this what they want? It's a mask, she told herself. I grew up in a town like this. I hated it. I still hate it. Give me urban walk-able colorful noisy diverse, give me ghetto!

Sylvia, come join us, Vanessa said, trying too hard. We're talking about breathing. The book I'm reading is amazing. It's called Breathe! How to become wealthy successful well-rested and stay young by breathing right.

Eh, I always sleep with my mouth open, Sylvia said, dipping the broccoli floret into the baba ghanoush.  I drool too. Vanessa's husband Marvin snickered, sipping his scotch. Ah yes the dirty mind. Sylvia always got there first.

Just duct tape your mouth closed! Vanessa suggested, pouring more sangria into her own glass. She slipped an orange slice in, splashing a little wine onto the white tablecloth. It will force you to breathe through your nose. Her silver bangles clanked against the blue blown-glass pitcher. Vanessa wore a turquoise mu-mu print dress imported from India. Her arms were tan.

Sylvia pictured herself in bed with Marvin, her mouth covered in silver duct tape. The room illuminated by moonlight. No thanks she thought. That's violent. That's insane. This is why she hated parties. The hostess thinks she's a genius. Sylvia thinks she's rude. One year Sylvia arrived came on time and was handed a vacuum cleaner. She was never on time again after that.

On the drive home Sylvia asked Brian, did you hear what she said about the duct tape?  Well, she's always been a little psychologically violent raising her daughter, Brian said. This is how she thinks.

And she's just a genius because it's her flagstone patio and her guacamole.

You can always have your own party, Brian said

I hate parties! Sylvia said as they turned off the highway. The digital clock in the car glowed. 

It's 1AM she said.

Standard time, it's actually midnight.

Desperation or Revenge

She [Elizabeth Hardwick] told our class that there were really only two reasons to write: desperation or revenge. She told us that if we couldn’t take rejection, if we couldn’t be told no, then we couldn’t be writers. DARRYL PINCKNEY

I don’t trust an abstract painter unless I know that he can do hands.

The writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it “vow-of-poverty prose.” No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike. Anthony Burgess said there are two kinds of writers, A-writers and B-writers. A-writers are storytellers, B-writers are users of language. And I tend to be grouped in the Bs. Under Nabokov’s prose, under Burgess’s prose, under my father’s prose—his early rather than his later prose—the English sentence is like a poetic meter. It’s a basic rhythm from which the writer is free to glance off in unexpected directions. But the sentence is still there. To be crude, it would be like saying that I don’t trust an abstract painter unless I know that he can do hands. 

MARTIN AMIS

I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to teach me how to write. That’s my own taste. I prefer to stumble on it. I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Games

This guy who is a social worker, coach and fitness instructor brings fun games for the residents of this nursing home. These games  would work for kids too!

Krishnamurti on Passion

Love for most of us is passion and lust. And so for us, love goes. Not only is there fire, there is also smoke. The smoke destroys the flame – the smoke of jealousy, hate, envy, greed, ambition, and all the rest of it. But where there is love, there is beauty and passion. You must have passion. Don’t immediately translate it into sexual passion. I don’t mean only that, I mean passion, to burn, the passion of intensity, that energy that immediately sees things clearly. Without passion, there is no austerity.

J. Krishnamurti, From Public Talk 9, Paris, 24 September 1961

and then no one wants the person

Is it weird to make a person and then have the marriage fall apart and then no one wants the person?  Ben asks.

A.M. Homes THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE  p284

Nagi's Lime Chicken & Asian Slaw

https://www.recipetineats.com/lime-marinated-grilled-chicken/  Excellent!!!

https://www.recipetineats.com/asian-slaw/  Excellent!!

another option from another Chef...

https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/asian-slaw-with-ginger-peanut-dressing.html

Feigning Death

Matt, my Tuesday mailman, told me our regular mailman died in his sleep three months ago. I just thought he had a new route. He was young and sweet and I'd hear him talking and laughing on his phone as he was on our front porch delivering the mail. Oh, how sad.

*               *               *

When I arrived at the YMCA pool there were nine beefy men in the water. Some were wearing scuba wet suits open at the chest, revealing tattoos. Others were fully suited up, wearing masks, fins, and tanks. Are these guys firemen? I asked the lifeguard. Yup! This is a training.

Their trainer was on the pool deck at the shallow end with long, thin, yellow ropes. He worked with teams of three men at a time. The team wore blindfolds over their masks (they looked like sleep masks) and were instructed to find the body of a plastic dummy at the bottom of  the pool. Their task was to bag the body while blind. This was their ocean and pond rehearsal. 

As I swam laps I could see the men underwater, dark figures with long black fins in the deep end. They were moving together slowly, at the bottom of the pool, like a demented tea party. I felt like I was swimming in a lobster tank.

I thought of the parable of the blind man and the elephant. 

The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what an elephant is by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience, and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience. They ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. The parable originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant)

Slowly the blind swimmers maneuvered the dummy into a yellow mesh body bag, zipping it up then strapping it into a harness. When they were done they blew air into a day-glow green bag that rose to the surface as a signal and marker. Then everything and everybody came up and out of the water. The beige dummy was dismantled into a strange yogic posture with water flowing out of its knee joints, and the yellow bag was folded up. 

*               *               *

Later in the afternoon, on my dog walk on Milton Street in Blackstone, a nine-year-old girl we often see told me about crickets in China. The Chinese saw them as pets who would bring happiness and good luck, and often kept them in small cages over their beds to listen to their music. 

 Back home, curious, I researched crickets and praying mantises.

Female praying mantids do cannibalize their partners. In some instances, she'll even behead the poor chap before they've consummated their relationship. As it turns out, a male mantid is an even better lover when his brain, which controls inhibition, is detached from his abdominal ganglion, which controls the actual act of copulation. Cannibalism is variable across the different mantid species. It occurs among praying mantids between 13–28%
of natural encounters in the field. (https://www.ashchurchprimary.co.uk/serve_file/643930)

*               *               *

While at my desk I could hear and see four boys running around the parking lot playing tag at dusk. One boy was shooting a toy gun that lit up glowing red. The other three boys when shot were collapsing onto the asphalt, feigning death.

They climbed onto the roof of the attached shed in back of the neighboring apartment house. I watched them use an abandoned chain link fence gate as an impromptu ladder. I knew that the building's fire escape, now in easy reach, could be next. Instead, the boys elected to climb down. One boy was afraid and wanted to just jump off the roof. Another boy offered a hand while standing on the fence gate and helped him down. 

They came running around the lot again and climbed back onto the roof  but his time it was dark out. I didn't want them to get hurt. I texted the landlord.

The moment you say you are free, you are not free, because you are conscious of yourself being free from something. Therefore you have the observer asserting that he is free, and therefore he has created a space, but in that space he breeds conflict.

Krishnamurti

Freedom can only come about when there is immense space – not the space one knows exists between the observer and the observed.

 Krishnamurti:Public Talk 10, Saanen, 31 July 1966

family narrative—the story we were told (or sold) about who we are and what we believe.

I’m drawn to characters who are very different from myself. As a writer, and in my own life, I want to understand people whose experience and point of view are other than my own whatever it might be. That combined with my desire to unpack what was going on in this country made it useful to spend time with these men and this particular family.

For me each character is an individual and we are all flawed. I don’t think about characters as good or evil or whether or not I like them. Ultimately, I am always writing about human behavior, what compels someone to act the way they do, what drives their perceptions and needs.

The novel is a braid of a large scale social/political novel and an intimate/domestic story about a family. A major thread is the coming to consciousness story of a mother and daughter, a multi-generational view of the female experience. Importantly, the Big Guy, also begins to understand more about the impact he’s had on the women in his life.

***

For me it always comes back to the characters and inhabiting the story from the inside out—organically.  When we first meet Meghan, she is naive, a kid who has grown up in a bubble, with great privilege and protection from reality. As she comes into her own, she goes through a period of waking up which is something we all do as we prepare to separate from our families and move into the larger world.

This is a time when many of us look at the family narrative—the story we were told (or sold) about who we are and what we believe. Meghan begins to realize there’s an enormous amount she doesn’t know, an enormous amount she’s taken for granted and that despite being told that women can do whatever they want—it’s also not true. Her awakening is also the beginning of her empowerment— the opportunity to set her own course and to give the rest of us hope for a better future.

https://lithub.com/a-m-homes-on-being-for-better-or-worse-a-very-american-writer/

he'd removed himself from the world

“He lay there realizing how thoroughly he'd removed himself from the world or obligations, how stupidly independent he'd become: he needed no one, knew no one, was not a part of anyone's life. He'd so thoroughly removed himself from the world of dependencies and obligations, he wasn't sure he still existed.”
― A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life 

as if a donut could have curative powers

“He looked at Richard and the donut with great intensity, as if this were the donut that would fix Richard, as if there were certain donuts that were better for certain ailments, as if a donut could have curative powers.”
― A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life: A Novel 

Hello, suffering, I am here with you.

“Suffering is normal. Pain is normal, it is part of life... What is its texture, the weight of our suffering? What is its meaning? Begin by touching it, by coming close to it, accepting it: Hello, suffering, I am here with you. I am beside you, one with you, I am you. I am suffering.”
― A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life 

I believe in staying open to possibility. What is the point of not believing, closing the door? Just leave it open, see what comes in.

― A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life 

it's hard to know

 “The strange days of summer. There is no here, no there, the days are incredibly still, the light is brightly muted--it's hard to know if that's the passing of the season or poor air quality.”
― A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life

Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie. Jean Rhys

streets that are friendly, streets that aren't

“My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight  

I am a stranger and I always will be

“I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.”
― Jean Rhys, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography 

Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.

 ― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

 ― Jean Rhys, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography

Tina Turner

“At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Don’t worry if you think you’re the only one facing challenges. If the people around you don’t seem to have problems, that just means you don’t know them well enough to see their troubles, or they’re very good at hiding them. Problems are inescapable for all living beings. As Nichiren said: “No one can avoid problems, not even sages.” Living a joyful life, I’ve found, is not about trying to avoid the unavoidable. Joy comes from summoning a strong life force to overcome problems, from the smallest irritation to the biggest disaster”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“If you are unhappy with anything - your mother, your father, your husband, your wife, your job, your boss, your car - whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”
― Tina Turner

“If a negative thought arose, I’d repeat a positive one eight times in a row to counteract it. Soon, I began loving myself, imperfections and all. I stopped comparing myself to others (never compare yourself to others), and at last I started to look good to myself.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have problems of one sort or another. If we find ourselves without any problems, it’s just a matter of time until something pops up. That’s life!”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“All along, I kept this encouragement from Daisaku Ikeda close to my heart: “One thing is certain: The power of belief, the power of thought, will move reality in the direction of what we believe and conceive of it. If you really believe you can do something, you can. That is a fact. When you clearly envision the outcome of victory, engrave it upon your heart, and are firmly convinced that you will attain it, your brain makes every effort to realize the mental image you have created. And then, through your unceasing efforts, that victory is finally made a reality.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“If you’re not certain of the value of mentorship, think of how many elite athletes or professional sports teams train without a coach. Zero. How many of your favorite films are made without a producer or director? Zero. How many of the best schools in the world function without teachers? Zero. It’s safe to say that every great leader, in any field, first had a great mentor. Finding a mentor who inspires and guides your growth is a life-changing experience. Mentors help us to transcend the limits, or perceived limits, of our abilities. A mentor can be anyone who teaches us and helps us to grow in ways we couldn’t have on our own.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“I have always seen great value in practicing kindness. Although I had no money to buy gifts as a child, I gave my friends the gift of song to cheer them up. Depending on the situation, I’d sing to them and make up melodies and lyrics on the spot about whatever was going on in their lives. If a girlfriend was lonely or heartbroken, I’d make up a song about the handsome and adoring boyfriend I imagined coming into her life. Or if a friend felt deprived or neglected, I’d make up a song about a gift of a shiny new doll, or a velvet party dress, that I knew would make her happy.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“I believe we each hold within us what I call a “coin of God,” a piece of the eternal energy of the universe, the essence of Buddha nature. A coin is a minted piece of value from the greater system to which it belongs, and each living being is a priceless treasure piece, molded from our greater universe. May we each cherish ourselves and extend this kindness to all living beings with whom we share this blessed planet.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“I’m often reminded of Nichiren’s words: “Life itself is the most precious of all treasures. Even one extra day of life is worth more than ten million coins of gold.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Rising from the ashes of my earlier life, I learned that our thoughts, words, and deeds are unified through spiritual practice. They are made whole within us. And when our thoughts, words, and deeds are aligned with our most positive intentions, magic happens.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Jazz music itself is an example of changing poison into medicine. African Americans created jazz, a great medicine for people’s hearts, out of the poisonous experience of slavery. Jazz developed from African culture, gospel music, and blues to lift up the spirits of oppressed people, and now it brings joy to people the world over.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“In 2014, my friend Herbie Hancock was invited to give the prestigious Norton Lectures at Harvard University, where he shared great insights on the topics of mentorship and changing poison into medicine. Herbie related lessons from his jazz mentor, Miles Davis, who taught him that “a great mentor can provide a path to finding your own true answers,” and to always “reach up while reaching down; grow while helping others.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“By honoring each other’s ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, we become stronger and happier, brightening the cosmic masterpiece of artwork that is our world. Rather than emphasize differences, we should be looking for similarities. Our differences are ultimately superficial, and the best thing to do is celebrate them.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“My heartfelt wish is that you and I, and everyone around the world, will continue expanding our hearts and minds while celebrating our differences and ridding ourselves of any form of discrimination. This, I believe, is a basic requirement for peace, both within ourselves and in our societies.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“People can only live fully by helping others to live …
Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions.
And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist. —DAISAKU IKEDA”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“The religious faith that we are born into is largely determined by the region where we live and the ethnic background of our family. In my case, I was born to an African American family in the southern region of the United States. Like most families of our description, we embraced the Baptist religious tradition. Although I went from Baptist to Buddhist, I’ve honored my family’s heritage and cherish the similarities between these two paths. Baptist teachings encouraged me to work toward attaining admission into a heavenly paradise, while Buddhism inspires me to attain the enduring and enlightened life condition of Buddhahood. Although the goals of these two spiritual paths may sound somewhat different, both focus on creating a state of indestructible, eternal happiness. To me, that is an important similarity. I’ve met people from all over the world, from many cultures and faiths, and I believe that all religious traditions share the same basic aspirations at their core—to experience everlasting joy by aligning with the positive forces of the universe. We may describe this ultimate reality as Jehovah, God, Allah, Jesus, Hashem, Tao, Brahma, the Creator, the Mystic Law, the Universe, the Force, Buddha nature, Christ consciousness, or any number of other expressions.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“More valuable than treasures in a storehouse are treasures of the body, and the treasures of the heart are the most valuable of all. —NICHIREN”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“I call something a miracle when an ordinary person achieves something extraordinary. We all have the potential to create miraculous changes. It is my hope and my prayer that you will become a miracle maker, a “human revolutionist,” too.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“The reward is not so great without the struggle. —WILMA RUDOLPH”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“What really matters is not whether we have problems but how we go through them. —ROSA PARKS”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“The best way to attain Buddhahood is to encounter a good friend.
How far can our own wisdom take us?
If we have even enough wisdom to distinguish hot from cold, we should seek out a good friend. —NICHIREN • Having good friends and advancing together with them is not half the Buddha way but all the Buddha way. —SHAKYAMUNI • To not advance is to retreat. —TSUNESABURO MAKIGUCHI”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and philosopher, alluded to this when he said, “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Physical strength in a Woman... that's what I am”
― Tina Turner

“Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed. —MAHATMA GANDHI”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“No matter what accomplishments you achieve, somebody helped you. —ALTHEA GIBSON • A mentor is someone who allows you to see the higher part of yourself when sometimes it becomes hidden to your own view. —OPRAH WINFREY • Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had positive influences in his or her life…. A mentor. —DENZEL WASHINGTON”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Difficulties are not necessarily unfortunate.
It depends on your attitude.
You can either let difficulties crush you, or you can use them to build your strength. —INDIRA GANDHI”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“Take your broken heart, make it into art. —CARRIE FISHER • Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. —HELEN KELLER”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“As German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse said, the more we mature, the younger we grow. What a beautiful sentiment!”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“And you know what I say to people who ask, “What do you do when all the odds are against you?” I say, “You keep going. You just don’t stop. No matter, if there’s one slap to the face, turn the other cheek. And the hurt you’re feeling? You can’t think about what’s being done to you now, or what has been done to you in the past. You just have to keep going.”
― Tina Turner, My Love Story

“So that’s what I did. I just kept going. I never said, “Well, I don’t have this and I don’t have that.” I said, “I don’t have this yet, but I’m going to get it.”
― Tina Turner, My Love Story

“I never felt loved, so I decided it wasn’t important. Not to me. I think I put up a kind of a shield against it. I told myself, “If you don’t care about me, that’s okay, I’ll go on. If you don’t love me, I’ll go on.” I’ll go on was my mantra before I ever knew what a mantra was.”
― Tina Turner, My Love Story

“However you must do it, to truly understand. When you say ‘Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ it will slowly remove all of the bad decisions you have ever made. The more you repeat the words the more you make your life clearer. The more you chant it the closer you get to your true nature. Your true nature is the right way of thinking and the right way of acting. The longer you go on this path, the more you avoid making wrong decisions. The Lotus Sutra helps me in my daily life. It is indeed mystical! And my life has proven this!”
― Tina Turner

“You take your problems to a god, but what you really need is for the god to take you to the inside of you.”
― Tina Turner

“What good comes from complaints? Grumbling only brings you down. Find a way forward, smile, shake it off, love yourself. Use your challenges to become stronger. This is how you can transform your karma and open your heart.”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

“What an endless chain of unhappiness prejudice forges. —LENA HORNE”
― Tina Turner, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good

Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

 ― Jean Rhys, Quartet

You must keep feeding the lake.

All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

― Jean Rhys

Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes

 ― Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.

 ― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

The good life is not one immune to sadness but one in which suffering contributes to our development. Alain de Botton

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

 Oprah Winfrey

When you’re happy you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad you understand the lyrics. Frank Ocean

There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence. Alexander Dumas

Nobody can read like a writer

 ― John Updike, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

 ― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

don’t worry about it if you write out of sadness or hate or love—fear—or fascination

You mustn’t assume that aesthetic expression is the prime motive for writing; it is really only a means to the more profound end. So don’t worry about it if you write out of sadness or hate or love—fear—or fascination, the important thing...is to write.

—Ralph Ellison

So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down?

 So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?

― Ralph Ellison

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

 ― Ralph Ellison

And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.

 ― Ralph Ellison

Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.

 ― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers

I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

 ― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages. Alain de Botton

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

 ― Alain de Botton

The Pomodoro Technique

interesting!

more

A Meaningful Silence

“The only joy in the world is to begin. And never give up” — Cesare Pavese 

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”- Albert Einstein 

“Whatever you do, do it well.” — Walt Disney  

“What we think, we become.” — Buddha 

“I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending” — Maria Robinson 

“Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time”, is like saying, “I don’t want to”- Lao Tzu

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Steve Martin 

“Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” — Samuel Beckett  

“Yesterday you said tomorrow. Just do it.” — Nike 

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” — Ken Hudgins 

“This life is like a swimming pool. You dive into the water, but you can’t see how deep it is.”

 — Dennis Rodman 

“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” — Dalai Lama  

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius 

“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” — Buddha  

“Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. It means they learned it by reading.” — Unknown  

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain 

“Take time like the river that never grows stale. Keep going and steady. No hurry, no rush.”- Rumi

 “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” — Voltaire 

 “Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.” — Gustave Flaubert 

 “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy 

 “People do not lack strength; they lack will” — Victor Hugo

  “There is no subtitle for hard work” — Thomas A. Edison 

 “Determine your priorities and focus on them.” — Eileen McDargh  

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” — Stephanie Perkins  

“Someone once asked me, “Why do you always insist on taking the hard road?” I replied, “Why do you assume I see two roads?”  

“To do two things at once is to do neither.” — Publilius Syrus  

“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.” — Robert Schuller 

 “Pain changes people, it makes them trust less, overthink, and shut people out.” 

 “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”  

“If it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes getting angry about it.” 

 “Hurting someone can be as easy as throwing a stone in the sea. But do you have any idea how deep that stone can go?” 

 “A meaningful silence is always better than meaningless words.”  

“Believe in yourself, take on your challenges, dig deep within yourself to conquer fears. Never let anyone bring you down. You got to keep going.” — Chantal Sutherland  

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein  

“Hard times always lead to something great.” — Betsey Johnson 

 “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” — Khalil Gibran  

“The biggest mistake you could ever make is being too afraid to make one.”  

“Never regret something that once made you smile.” — Amber Deckers  

“Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.” — Sir Winston Churchill  

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” — Pablo Picasso  

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” — Bruce Lee

  “Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.” — Dalai Lama  

“You don’t deserve what you don’t respect.” — Unknown  

“Take the risk or lose the chance.” Unknown  

“If love appears, boundaries will disappear.”- Osho  

“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” — Napoleon Hill  

“Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.” -Theodore Roethke 

 “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

Woodie Guthrie's Guitar

“This machine kills fascists.”
― Woody Guthrie

You got to ride it like you find it.

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”
― Woody Guthrie

Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple. Woody Guthrie

Then I got a little braver

Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in the country was thinking. And this has held me ever since.
― Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

All of my words, if not well put nor well taken, are well meant. Woody Guthrie

All of this talking about what’s up in the sky, or down in hell, for that matter, isn’t half as important as what’s right here, right now, right in front of your eyes. Things are tough. Folks broke. Kids hungry. Sick. Everything. And people has got to have more faith in one another, believe in each other. There’s a spirit of some kind we’ve all got. That’s got to draw us all together.
― Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

Whiskey, Ribs and Whipped Cream

She knew what Jackson's family would serve at the graduation picnic. Whiskey, ribs, and whipped cream. Nobody in his family ever had a gall bladder attack or a problem with lactose intolerance. God bless 'em they were lucky. Bacon, sugar and butter were the holy trinity, preferably together at every holiday meal.

She didn't want to appear rude or go hungry, so she made her favorite buttermilk coleslaw,  a pot of beans and her multigrain sourdough bread, and put them on the buffet table. Even if nobody else was going to eat the foods she brought at least she'd be able to have something that she loved.

 ***

And beverages? She rarely drank because it wasn't fun when she was down and not necessary when she was feeling fabulous. Occasionally hot black coffee was her party drink but iced water was about all she could manage during the allergy season. She drank pints of it to counter the effects allergy medicine.

Woody Guthrie: I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
― Woody Guthrie

full of nuance and contradiction

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialogue, actors are drawn to that. PAUL SCHRADER

Writing is visual—it catches the eye

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual—it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read.

WILLIAM ZINSSER

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Lao Tzu

Dream

A black cat was outside my 2nd floor window. There was a man trying to retrieve his cat. I opened the storm window to reach the cat for the man and then other people arrived. A woman and a big dog showed up and climbed into my window. The woman opened my refrigerator. I became angry and asked her to leave.

A.M. Homes, The Mistress's Daughter

I am an amalgam. I will always be something glued together, something slightly broken. It is not something I might recover from but something I must accept, to live with- with compassion.

― A.M. Homes, The Mistress's Daughter

When a name is given to a child, it is believed that they will encompass and embody the meaning of that name in their lifetime.

In Hawaiian culture, the tradition of naming is important. When a name is given to a child, it is believed that they will encompass and embody the meaning of that name in their lifetime.

This process of naming can also be a spiritually powerful one. When a mother is pregnant, she, a family member, or both may choose a name based on:

• Inoa pō, a name that comes in the form of a dream
• Inoa hō‘ailona, a vision that usually occurs in nature
• Inoa ‘ūlāleo, a name believed to be spoken directly by a mystical voice

The process of naming can also include a family name or location. 

In keeping with local culture, NOAA partner organizations have engaged Hawaiian cultural practitioners and community members in the naming process for the past several years.

Some stranded seals are brought to The Marine Mammal Center’s Hawaiian monk seal hospital and visitor center, Ke Kai Ola, on Hawaiʻi Island for rehabilitation. A cultural practitioner from the area where the seal was rescued names the animal, according to Lauren Van Heukelem, Response and Operations Coordinator at the Center. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/how-hawaiian-monk-seals-get-their-names

“We know things about ourselves that we don’t want to know,” she said. “My books are about our private selves…I have a desire to talk about things that are not easy to talk about.”

Homes has made a life of creating stories, because, as she declared, “If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.”

A. M. Homes

source

Feed your Inner Life

I used to have a little studio in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks from my house — no telephone, not much else. The only thing I ever did there was work. It was perfect. I was like a draft horse with a conditioned reflex. I came in ready to sit at my desk. No television, no way to call out. Didn’t want to be tempted. There’s an old Talmudic belief that you build a fence around an impulse. If that’s not good enough, you build a fence around the fence. So, no amenities. (But for a refrigerator!)

NORMAN MAILER

Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours. JANE KENYON 

 Sometimes I hear a line in a poem and see a painting.

My wife whose shoulders are champagne

Free Union 

by André  Breton

My wife whose hair is a brush fire
Whose thoughts are summer lightning
Whose waist is an hourglass
Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the teeth of a tiger
Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the fragrance of a star of the first magnitude
Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white mice over snow
Whose tongue is made out of amber and polished glass
Whose tongue is a stabbed wafer
The tongue of a doll with eyes that open and shut
Whose tongue is an incredible stone
My wife whose eyelashes are strokes in the handwriting of a child
Whose eyebrows are nests of swallows
My wife whose temples are the slate of greenhouse roofs
With steam on the windows
My wife whose shoulders are champagne
Are fountains that curl from the heads of dolphins over the ice
My wife whose wrists are matches
Whose fingers are raffles holding the ace of hearts
Whose fingers are fresh cut hay
My wife with the armpits of martens and beech fruit
And Midsummer Night
That are hedges of privet and resting places for sea snails
Whose arms are of sea foam and a landlocked sea
And a fusion of wheat and a mill
Whose legs are spindles
In the delicate movements of watches and despair
My wife whose calves are sweet with the sap of elders
Whose feet are carved initials
Keyrings and the feet of steeplejacks
My wife whose neck is fine milled barley
Whose throat contains the Valley of God
And encounters in the bed of the maelstrom
My wife whose breasts are of night
—
And are undersea molehills
And crucibles of rubies
My wife whose breasts are haunted by the ghosts of dew-moistened roses
Whose belly is a fan unfolded in the sunlight
Is a giant talon
My wife with the back of a bird in vertical flight
With a back of quicksilver
And bright lights
My wife whose nape is of smooth worn stone and white chalk
And of a glass slipped through the fingers of someone who has just drunk
My wife with the thighs of a skiff
That are lustrous and feathered like arrows
Stemmed with the light tailbones of a white peacock
And imperceptible balance
My wife whose rump is sandstone and flax
Whose rump is the back of a swan and the spring
My wife with the sex of an iris
A mine and a platypus
With the sex of an alga and old-fashioned candles
My wife with the sex of a mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes that are purple armour and a magnetized needle
With eyes of savannahs
With eyes full of water to drink in prisons
My wife with eyes that are forests forever under the axe
My wife with eyes that are the equal of water and air and earth and fire 

-— 

Translated by David Antin

Taken from The Poetry of Surrealism: An Anthology, ed. Michael Benedikt (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1974).

more about the poem here. (note the different translation on their page)

Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are. André Breton

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.

― André Breton, Mad Love 

Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.

— André Breton, Anthology of Black Humor

Peculiar Mormyrid Surrealist Journal

https://peculiarmormyrid.com/

We are surrealists. Both elephant and fish: against the established order, our aim is the revolutionary and poetic reclassification of life itself. Through our journal, we publish to find comrades across the world who seek by new and poetic means to expand the bounds of reality, challenge the status quo, and confront the marvellous wherever and however it appears. “Poetry must be made by all, and not by one.” In solidarity with the many groups and individuals that make up the International Surrealist Movement today, we draw upon the results of previous research to insinuate ourselves into the Mad Tea Party as open and reinvigorating participants.

article on dreams

The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.

 —Andre Breton

I tell myself all kinds of stories

 “A game: say something. Close your eyes and say something. Anything, a number, a name. Like this (she closes her eyes): Two, two what? Two women. What do they look like? Wearing black. Where are they? In a park. . . . And then, what are they doing? Try it, it's so easy, why don't you want to play? You know, that's how I talk to myself when I'm alone, I tell myself all kinds of stories. And not only silly stories: actually, I live this way altogether.”
― Andre Breton, Nadja

Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject. André Breton

We Imagine

At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.
― André Breton, Anthology of Black Humor

André Breton

“There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time”
― André Breton

 

Always for the First Time 

Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time

                              ― André Breton 

The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows ― Andre Breton

May night continue to fall upon the orchestra.

― André Breton

Article

Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. André Breton

The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children. ― Andre Breton

  Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.
― André Breton, Anthology of Black Humor

Word

A word and everything is saved.
A word and all is lost.
― André Breton

Words make love with one another.
― André Breton

I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond. ― Andre Breton

Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.

― André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

Johann Christoph Pezel & Philadelphia Brass

TITLE: Dances
COMPOSER: Johann Christoph Pezel
ARTIST: Philadelphia Brass
ALBUM: The Glorious Sound of Brass
LABEL: Sony
CATALOG NUMBER: 63061
HOST(S): Laura Carlo
Johann Christoph Pezel was a German violinist, trumpeter, and composer. He lived at Leipzig from 1661 to 1681, with an interruption in 1672, when he entered an Augustinian monastery in Prague, which however he left soon after to become a Protestant. Wikipedia
Born: December 5, 1639
Died: October 13, 1694, Bautzen, Germany

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

 — Henry Ford 

(make your own bread and it will nourish you twice)

Welcome to Jurgesville

Today Alice wanted her coffee in a clear glass mug. She found a few in the back cupboard that she had bought at the flea market years ago. The mugs reminded her of science beakers where she could see the chemical, black coffee, hot. She pictured it going into her stomach and bloodstream and lighting up her brain like a sparkler. She imagined this as a science diagram with clear plastic overlays of her brain with before and after coffee comparisons.

Alice sat at the window and noticed her neighbor Eva come out in her translucent nightgown and sit on her back steps smoking. Poor Eva. Her only family are Ballard and Baxter her two ancient boxers.

Eva's father used to own the whole town of Jurges. Her mother was carted off to the mental hospital after standing in the front yard with a shotgun one Sunday morning aiming it at anything that moved.

Eva finished her cigarette and stared into space, cackling to herself. Some heritage eh? thought Alice. All the promise and tragedy combined. Welcome to Jurgesville.

J.Krishnamurti

Beauty is not of time. Like love, it cannot be divided as yesterday, today and tomorrow. When one divides it, there are all the problems of love – jealousy, envy, domination, possessiveness, all the problems that are involved in relationship, in what one calls love. And with that beauty, which is not the result of fragmented time, then painting, music and all the modern gimmicks and tricks have no meaning whatsoever, because anything that is of time, that is of the period, of this century, of this modern revolt and so on, the expression of all that, denies beauty. Beauty cannot be translated in terms of time.

  J.Krishnamurti From Public Talk 8, Saanen, 26 July 1966

I wrote because I thought I had nothing to say and writing gave me words, even to express silence.

I don’t know if writing would have become a vocation were it not for my father’s dying when I was twelve, which was like having the scenery collapse on set. I remember getting back on the school bus and picking up conversations as if nothing had happened because I wanted to reassure friends that I was okay. Writing was the opposite of conversation in this sense. It could acknowledge the rift. I didn’t write because I had something to say. I wrote because I thought I had nothing to say and writing gave me words, even to express silence.

SUSAN BARBA

What is Sacred?

All that we have invented – the rituals, the symbols in a church, temple or mosque – are all put there by thought. Thought has invented these things. That is so; you can’t deny that. Is thought sacred or is thought a material process? There is an accident. I learn from that accident. It is recorded in the brain as memory. Memory is the result of experience – knowledge stored up in the brain cells – and from that, thought arises. As knowledge is never complete, so thought is never complete. That is logical, rational. And thought has invented all the things called sacred – the saviour, the temples and the contents of the temples. Thought in itself is not sacred, so when thought invents God, God is not sacred. The question arises then: what is sacred? That can only be understood or lived or happen when there is complete freedom from fear and sorrow, when there is this sense of love and compassion with its own intelligence. Then, when the mind is utterly still, that which is sacred can take place.

J. Krishnamurti From an Interview by Michael Mendizza, Ojai, 20 April 1982

This Morning

This morning Romeo and I were walking down East School Street. A police car passed us and then his lights came on. I could see a man was on the bridge. On top of the wall. The man climbed down and was handcuffed and another cop arrived. The man's red backpack was searched for contraband. Presumably something was found because he was loaded into the back seat of the first cruiser and they all drove away.

I turned and walked into the park. There was a group of elderly folks in the parking lot in the sun using gigantic long orange and blue rubber bands to stretch. There were about a dozen people in pairs. One person would walk a few steps forward with the band wrapped at both of their waists while the partner held on being still. Then the active person turned around and walked back. They switched off. It was like square dancing on Mars.

As I walked by the warehouse heading home I watched a bright yellow forklift driving on a truck ramp unloading a heavy boxed appliance. I heard a crash and saw the forklift with driver inside fall back. The ramp of the restaurant supply truck had slipped off the loading dock. The forklift smashed into the cement loading dock with the driver. The ramp, forklift and appliance were all now stuck at a 45 degree angle. Luckily nobody was hurt. The driver got off the ramp and called to his coworker in the warehouse.  A few minutes later he came out and they both surveilled the mess.

That's enough excitement for today.

Bandaloop Dance Company

BANDALOOP celebrates the human spirit, nature, and communities through dance that uses climbing technology to expand and challenge what is possible.

https://www.bandaloop.org/

James Baldwin

Sometimes it comes very quickly. Seems almost to come from the top of my head. But in fact, it’s been gestating for a long, long time. Most of the time it’s not like that. Usually it’s a matter of writing, recognizing it ain’t right or it won’t move. You tear it up and do it again and again. And then one day something happens—it works.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Brutal Past and Uncertain Future of Native Adoptions

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 sought to keep Native children in tribal communities. The Supreme Court may change that this spring.

article

Laugh to Tears: Total Landscaping

Laugh

J. Krishnamurti

You tell me what a marvellous person I am. I like it; I have already built the image that you are my friend. You say something I don’t like, and I have formed an image. So the image pattern is built through pleasure and pain, of liking you because you say something pleasant and not liking another because they are not nice to me. This is based on the pleasure principle; please watch it in yourself. I have built an image because you have said something pleasurable or not pleasurable, and I carry that image when I meet you next time. I am that image. Now, can this machinery stop? That is, when you insult me, to be completely attentive at that moment. Attentive in the sense I listen to you totally, without any reaction, neither accepting nor rejecting your insult, just listening completely, which means complete attention. The same when you flatter me: to listen so fully that nothing leaves a mark on the mind. So the machinery that builds the image has no vitality, so the mind, listening to the insult and to the flattery, doesn’t leave a mark, therefore no image. Therefore for the mind that is so sensitive, alert, watchful, the ‘me’ doesn’t exist, because the ‘me’ is the image.

From Public Discussion 2, Sydney, 19 November 1970

Stockade

I have noticed an unsettling trend in the the communities around us. In this age of fear and paranoia people are building walls around their property. It's not enough to have surveillance cameras now people have erected prison walls. It's everything but the razor wire. Perhaps that's next.

Jeans

After decades of finding jeans at the thrift store I decided it was time to buy a pair that really fit me. So my husband and I went to Kohl's and spent time trying to navigate all of the styles. I had no luck in the women's department. I am not build like them. It was the men's section where we started to find possibilities. 

I used to make fun of the assless full chested build I noticed among the older Jewish ladies on the boardwalk. I'd see them kibitzing with Grandma Sophie on Brighton Beach when I visited. About 15 years ago my ass vanished and migrated to my chest. Now here I am, narrow hips in boy jeans with a full top. I wear black tank tops and sweatshirts 365 days a year to downplay my bosom. It's all fine. It's genetics. And now finally my jeans fit.

I have no idea who these people are

It is clear that Stan is still taken with her, obsessed. He asks me about her in great detail. I feel like the child of divorced parents—except that I have no idea who these people are or what they are talking about. What they are most interested in is talking about each other.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/12/20/the-mistresss-daughter

As Stan walks up to the counter, I notice that his butt looks familiar; I am watching him and I’m thinking, There goes my ass. That’s my ass walking away. His blue sports coat covers it halfway, but I can see it broken into sections, departments of ass, high and low, just like mine. I notice his thighs—chubby, thick, not a pretty thing. This is the first time I have seen anyone else in my body. I am fascinated. I stare as he turns and comes back to me. I look down at his shoes, white loafers, country-club shoes, stretched out, fading. Inside the shoes, his feet are wide and short. I look up; his hands are the same as mine, square like paws. He is an exact replica, the male version of me.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/12/20/the-mistresss-daughter 

“I would have liked to take you for a nice lunch if you’d worn something better,” he says when we are in the hallway.

I am dressed perfectly well—in linen pants and a blouse. DNA testing is not a black-tie occasion. I am tempted to say, That’s O.K.—I would have liked you to be my father if you weren’t such a jerk. But I am so stunned that I become stupidly apologetic. I am not wearing what he wanted. I am not wearing a dress. I am not living up to his idea of a daughter.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/12/20/the-mistresss-daughter 

Personal History

December 20, 2004 Issue

The Mistress’s Daughter

Meeting the parents.

By A. M. Homes

December 12, 2004

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

 Wendell Berry

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.

 ―Wendell Berry (2012). “A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural”, p.41, Counterpoint Press

Two Muses

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
― Wendell Berry