Small Steps or the Beauty of Ordinary Things

I was thinking about the cathartic and gestalt effects of journal writing. Sometimes when I write toward the pain it feels released, like massaging a sore muscle. Maybe my notebook and blog are my wailing wall.

As a child I wrote down my worries and confessions on scraps of paper, and brought them in to Mr. Brown, the psychologist I visited once a week. I called them my black spots. What black spots, what prayers will I fold and slip into my wailing wall today?

Dear God help me to keep on painting and writing and playing music.

I need help mustering the courage and stamina to sort through my dusty piles of paper, organize my studio to function better. The mess haunts me and it is now an overwhelming task. Why do I save things? I am sentimental. It feels cruel to throw away old cards and letters, so I avoid doing it. Now it is ridiculous.

In receive-mode the little things in life can have a huge impact. A shower or a walk can change my outlook for the better. It is profound and subtle, like moving a boulder a quarter of an inch. I try not to skip over the little things. Routines are grounding. As a child I often wondered if my mother would have been grounded, fulfilled, even kind, if she hadn't had everything done for her by her maid.

Don't discount the little things. Newly washed sheets on the bed. A walk in the sunshine. A smile exchanged with a passerby. Little is big.

Last night I had to raise the glass shelf in the fridge, the one we had lowered to fit the turkey. I took it out and washed it with hot water before replacing it at the usual level. The glass was so sparkling that I cleaned the other shelves. I was surprised by my resulting happiness.

Yesterday I ran into J who told me he loves to wear ladies stockings. "It feels great doesn't it, to wear squeezy clothing sometimes," I said.
"Yeah" he said, "Especially down there."

I have seen J with lipstick and eye makeup wearing a dress, stockings and lady shoes, with his hair braided in two pig tails. No matter, we always delight in a little chat. He writes science fiction and usually carries his writing notebook with him. He told me one day that he had been a fetal alcohol baby. He is one of my favorite local characters. I am glad it is safe for him to be himself and live in our beloved city.

In receive-mode my morning walks can resonate with me all day. Time moves slowly, replaying the little chats in my head. Everything is poignant, precious, and fleeting, like leaves floating down a river.

I hope my stubbed toe heals fast. I miss my long walks. They are necessary for grounding and balancing.

I'm listening to WCRB classical radio during their current fundraiser rather than have silence. Even the fundraising is a companion.

Luciano Pavarotti: Devotion and Fear

People think I'm disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference.
― Luciano Pavarotti

Am I afraid of high notes? Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?
― Luciano Pavarotti

Mesmerized

I have been completely mesmerized by the new book HE WANTED THE MOON The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him
by Mimi Baird.

Korey Riker

I just caught this tune on WICN Jazz radio station and it stopped me in my tracks. I had to look it up on the station's play list.

Korey Riker “About a girl”
composed by Korey Riker
from Recognizance (Self-Produced Jon Gaines Music 2015)

Milan Chapman

In jail, Ms. Chapman decided to make serious changes to her life. She stopped doing drugs. She met a yoga instructor who encouraged her to reignite a passion for art.
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The Liberace Bird

...brilliant indigo head, yellow shoulders shading to chartreuse to green, with scarlet-orange underparts.

A painted bunting in Brooklyn!
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Dream

I dreamed we were lining up for a parade and I didn't have my saxophone with me. I'll just sing the notes, I said.

Starting is Winning

The only way for me to approach painting is to say to myself, "Just do ten minutes," and really mean it. The same is true for other things like swimming and practicing my saxophone. Being kind and gentle versus fierce and commanding is the only way for me to work through my fears and high expectations. I have to start off with an achievable goal. Hurray for showing up and trying. Starting is winning.

Forgiving Mistakes

I accidentally smacked my foot getting into the shower. The top of my left foot is badly bruised but it will heal. I accidentally cut myself shaving a month ago. There's a little scar reminding me. It's very hard to forgive myself when I make a mistake. Suddenly I become a mathematician, counting my errors. Which is just another opportunity to torture myself.

Try to get a little writing done every day--it will help you know and forgive yourself, which is why we are here. Earth is forgiveness school. What you are looking for is already inside you. There is no way to achieve, date, buy or lease anything that will fill up the Swiss cheese holes within.
-Anne Lamott

Punishing

"You have a past due, over thirty days," she said.
That was from the annual boiler cleaning.
"We will pay you, but we have a car in the shop," I said.
"Okay, I'll let you have 100 gallons," she said.

Lucky

Last night I was in the locker room getting dressed after my swim. A woman told me about her daughter. "She's anorexic it's so bad she lost her large intestine. They stretched the small intestine and stapled it. She has to always be near a bathroom. Her teeth are gray. She used to be beautiful." I just listened. "She's bipolar, and she won't take her meds. Her father is a crack-head. I've had bulimia, and I've been addicted to Oxy after my back surgery, but I over came it," she said. "You decide and you just do it."
"You're lucky, very lucky," I said.

George Saunders

I think I was a really good reader in the sense that I was a desperate reader, desperate to find out what was good, what was true, how a person should live.
- George Saunders, Writer's Almanac

Promote Philanthropy

I have been hoping there would be a new trend for this generation, for the billionaires to become philanthropists. I hope it continues to catch on.
Article

Dream

I dreamed we were moving from our old apartment on Hammond Street in Providence to another apartment on the west end. The new place had a glass ceiling and glass walls. The walls and ceiling were covered in our cats paw prints. The apartment was on the second floor. Each surface of the interior stairs were covered in a piece of mirror. Bill was cutting out a six inch space on each stair so we could tread on wood. The apartment was facing south so we knew we would be warm in the winter and broil in the summer. There wasn't a pool on our street like we have now.

Dave Navarro

“I happen to have one of these conditions where if I’m afraid of something, I have to do it,” Mr. Navarro said
[...]

Mr. Navarro said the meeting had not played out as he had anticipated: “I wanted it to make me feel scorn and anger and rage, and it just didn’t.” There was no confrontation, no screaming, just “an awkward exchange,” he recalled.

But there was an emotional intensity to it. “A lot of things came flooding back,” Mr. Navarro said. “And I almost was watching myself as an outside observer, so it took a minute to get my body and mind and emotional and spiritual stability all back in sync.”

Ultimately, Mr. Navarro came to a powerful realization about Mr. Riccardi: “He’s just some old dude dying in jail.”
[...]

For his part, Mr. Navarro said it felt as if he had found his mother. “After my mom was killed, I had always focused on the death, on the murder, on the tragedy, on the loss, on the trauma,” he said. “I’m way more in touch with who she was as a person now than I was before we made the film.” He added, “I had to dig into the trauma to get to the beauty of my relationship with her.”

Mr. Navarro said he now felt better equipped to tackle life’s other challenges: “The next time I have to step onstage in front of a festival audience, maybe it’s a little less scary because I’ve already faced my mother’s killer.” He laughed and added, “It kind of makes things right-sized.”

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Upton Sinclair

It is the music which makes it what it is; it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little comer of the high mansions of the sky.
― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

John Cheever

I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.
― John Cheever

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.
― John Cheever

The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.
― John Cheever

John Cheever

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.
― John Cheever

Cheever

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly that we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come to nothing.
― John Cheever

John Cheever

Then there was a fine noise of rushing water from the crown of an oak at his back, as if a spigot there had been turned. Then the noise of fountains came from the crowns of all the tall trees. Why did he love storms, what was the meaning of his excitement when the door sprang open and the rain wind fled rudely up the stair, why had the simple task of shutting the windows of an old house seem fitting and urgent, why did the first watery notes of a storm wind have for him the unmistakable sound of good news, cheer, glad tidings?
― John Cheever, The Swimmer