Tom Nichols: T****'s obsession with these vulgar memorials to his own vanity is a reminder of the darkness around him, of his hostility to democracy, his loathing of honor, and his disordered mind.

Perhaps the president is looking ahead to the day he is no longer the most powerful man in the world, and it pains him to think that he would be reviled—or, worse, forgotten. If so, he seems determined to leave his mark on America’s capital even if it requires scarring it with militarized obscenities.

Tom Nichols 

the mind is formed by struggle, not by tranquility.

 

One electrical pole is not enough to cause a spark; it takes two. The single word “acts” only when it encounters a second that provokes it out of its usual tracks to discover new possibilities of meaning. Where there is no struggle, there is no life.

This is due to the fact that the imagination is not some hypothetical faculty separate from the mind: it is the mind itself in its totality, which, applied to this or that activity, always makes use of the same procedures. And the mind is formed by struggle, not by tranquility.

[…]

A certain distance between the two words is necessary. One must be sufficiently strange or different from the other, and their coupling must be fairly unusual, for the imagination to be compelled to set itself in motion to establish a relationship between them and construct a (fantastic) whole in which the two elements can coexist.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/06/07/gianni-rodari-the-grammar-of-fantasy/

Sad Pierre's Shoes

Sad Pierre was given a pair of beautiful shoes. These were not ordinary shoes. These shoes laughed and laughed. Pierre was horrified and annoyed. He couldn't make them stop laughing.

So finally after many days he decided to bury them in his backyard. 

He spent the day digging and digging until the hole was very deep and he dropped them in and covered them with dirt and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally he had some peace and quiet.

The next day his dog dug them up and carried them back to him and the laughter kept him awake all night.

So in the morning he borrowed his neighbor's axe and chopped up the shoes until there were very small pieces the size of grains of rice. Then he sprinkled them into the adjoining rose garden. 

The crows  and blue jays heard the laughter and brought the pieces back to his door and the shoes magically became whole again, laughing even louder.

Pierre held his hands over his ears and screamed.

The next day Pierre gathered a bunch of stones and filled the shoes dropping them in the well that night. Then he went to sleep.

The next morning laughter woke him up! 

A farmer had found the shoes floating in his well and left them at Pierre's door. 

Pierre decided to put on his shoes even though they were wet and walk in a circle. Everything became very quiet except for the squishy noise the shoes made from being soaked. 

Then he heard a whisper: You can't kill me. I am laughter. If I die you'll die with me.

And Pierre laughed and laughed and danced and smiled for the first time in his life wearing his magic shoes.

Mouse Trap

The humane mouse trap advises that we read the mouse a few Billy Collins poems while taking the mouse for a drive in an old blue Pontiac. We must drive for at least two miles before setting him free. Otherwise he'll know his way back to our peanut butter.

So we decided to drive the mouse across the country.

I've heard that all the east coast mice get taken to the west coast and the west coast mice are driven to the east coast. This is called Democracy.  In fact we've determined that this mouse is from San Francisco so he'll be happy to be returning home. He liked my sour-dough bread crumbs, but was pining for the real thing.

Autumnal Equinox

The Agonies

Fifty-degree weather combined with autumn outdoor mold can cause some of us sinus headaches.

I call them anvil headaches. Luckily taking a hot shower and sinus medicine coupled with walking and swimming can help take away the pain.

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”
― Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine

You must never be afraid to go there. Harlan Ellison

 “The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine...

And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective

 “Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― Harlan Ellison

I talk about the things people have always talked about in stories: pain, hate, truth, courage, destiny, friendship, responsibility, growing old, growing up, falling in love, all of these things. What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads. I try to go into those places in me that contain the cauldrous. I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.

HARLAN ELLISON

 Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances.

 Aristotle

 "... it is interesting to note how any randomly chosen word can function as a magic word to unearth those fields of memory that had been resting under the dust of time."

 Gianni Rodari The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories p37

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories by Gianni Rodari

An experiment in invention is a beautiful thing when children have fun with it even if rules get broken in the process, because it is the children themselves who are the goal.

 Gianni Rodari The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories p107

 “Reality can be entered through the main door or it can be slipped into through a window, which is much more fun.”
― Gianni Rodari, The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

For the past forty-seven years I have devoted most of my time and energy to writing. It has been a vocation in the original sense of the word, that is a religious calling, one I was helpless to deny. For me writing has never been about self-expression. Writing has been about tending the spirit and making real the soul.
- Julius Lester

 To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?
- Julius Lester

Hashtag Muffins in a Waffle Iron

I didn't want to heat up the kitchen so I made my bran muffin batter and made small hashtag waffles.

Eloise walked an old familiar route with her dog and noticed many of the old and gorgeous trees had been taken down. It's the ogre of Blackridge Massachusetts scaring people into removing their trees. 

Witches Salad: Orange Green Purple

Shredded carrots, frozen peas, chopped red onion, Adobo seasoning, red wine vinegar, olive oil.

Artist peers often become our chosen family because they share a unique creative language and understand the specific vulnerabilities, obsessions, and struggles that come with a dedicated practice.

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

REBECCA SOLNIT

 I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. Carl Jung

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

JOHN UPDIKE

From the time I was nine or 10, it was a toss-up whether I was going to be a writer or a painter, and I discovered by the time I was 16 or 17 that paints cost too much money, so I became a writer because you could be a writer with a pencil and a penny notebook. Frank O’Connor

Pecking Order

The fish eyes and cheeks were a delicacy saved as an honor for the chefs in his country. Yet when Andrew made his signature sesame noodles dish it was ignored by his American sisters-in-law. Andrew ran a restaurant for over forty years, and no matter what he brought to the holiday table they snubbed him, refused to taste his creations. In their minds they were the only ones who could bake and cook.

freshly bagged ends:

You can buy discounted deli meat ends and cheese pieces in the self-serve pre-sliced coolers or bargain display bins right at the Market Basket Deli.

Delicious on homemade sourdough with mustard and home made sauerkraut. 

Reginald lived alone in Blackridge on Montfarm Avenue. His wife and daughter abandoned him last fall. His crazy dog Dagger was still there and his wife's recording on the security cameras still shouted Get the fuck away from my trash, when you walked by. He was the only resident who left his bins out all week as bait, so he could use his wife's voice to shout at passers by. Everybody in Blackridge knew it wasn't just the dog who was psychotic. People suspected Reginald was the Blackridge bomber. 

Summer's Ending, Painting by Jared French 1939

 

Think of many things; do one. Portuguese proverb

Stop NOT writing. Just do it, badly. Just write the thing you need or want to write, that you are avoiding. That avoidance is costing you greatly, isometrically, and in general well-being. So can you find one measly hour, to write, badly?

ANNE LAMOTT

 “When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as 'enemies,' it's time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.”
― Molly Ivins

“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

― Molly Ivins

“Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.”

― Molly Ivins, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. Sigmund Freud

The First Hour after Waking is Sacred Space

The first hour after waking is neurologically distinct from the rest of the day. Cortisol is naturally elevated, the prefrontal cortex is fresh, and the brain is in a state of relative openness before the day’s demands have begun to accumulate. 

Dr. Judy Ho

https://drjudyho.substack.com/p/how-to-focus-when-everything-is-designed 

Whoops!

The other day I was practicing on my saxophone and it was making strange noises. I panicked. The upper notes were fine but the lower notes were not. I examined the horn and was puzzled. And concerned.

The next day I bloodied my reed fighting my horn. I turned the horn upside down to see if there was blood on the reed, and an empty plastic water bottle fell out. I laughed. This bottle was from after the last parade when I had no place to put it on the ride home. So I put it in my horn! What a relief. I would have been even more embarrassed had I driven to the repair shop.

When completely relaxed, we experience the essence of our being, the deep silence that knows everything as it is. Haemin Sunim

Thinking too much can make it difficult to act. If you just do it, then it is done. But if you give in to your thinking, your mind will get in the way, telling you “you can’t,” “you shouldn’t,” “you don’t want to.” In that case, get up early the next morning and just do the thing you’ve been putting off. If you give yourself time to start thinking about it, inaction will take hold again.
― Haemin Sunim, Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection

Vitamin D and Dog Ownership

https://shadowmap.org/learn/the-vitamin-d-advantage-of-dog-ownership-how-your-furry-friend-boosts-your-health

The most important thing in human life for one’s sanity is to be able to be playful or to be able to do things which are sublimely useless. Alan Watts

Much of the secret of life consists in knowing how to laugh, and also how to breathe. Alan Watts 

A man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself. Until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position. Alan Watts

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. Alan Watts

 You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now. Alan Watts

If you make where you are going more important than where you are, there may be no point in going. Alan Watts

Lacking self-acceptance, we are always at odds with our point of departure, always doubting the ground on which we stand, always so divided against ourselves that we cannot act with sincerity. Alan Watts

This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you’re doing in the here and now, and instead of calling it work, realize that this is play. Alan Watts

 We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. […] But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played. Alan Watts

Dream

I was at a big Italian dinner party outdoors. My husband and I were assigned to sit at the kids table. After the meal I gathered up all of the cheese graters and danced around holding them in my hands.

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 HEMINGWAY

Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.

Sarah Orne Jewett

 Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction. Alan Watts