Loose Leaf Notes

1. I recently dreamt that I had a tick stuck on the back of my neck. I woke up wondering if a dream tick can be infected with Lyme.

2. While reading blogs last week, I came across the word “empyreal,” which means the highest part of heaven, but which I think makes a good quantum physics word to express the duality of empty and real, the fact that matter is really mostly empty space.

3. You could say the dream mentioned in #1 “ticked me off.”

4. Joke on Just for Laughs, a comedy show hosted by Howie Mandel that really did make me laugh:   Am I the only one who gets The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and the Bible mixed up?

5.  I get Tilda Swinton and David Bowie mixed up (see HERE) and when I first saw A River Runs Through it, I was sure that Brad Pitt was related to the movie’s director Robert Redford.

6.  Over the weekend we ate dried papaya from Thailand and poured hot water over green tea that opened like blossoms.  We played with swords and soldiers replicated from the Terracotta Army and picked out scarves and art from the suitcase full of gifts that my Asheville Potter Son Josh brought home from his 3 month trip to China, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

7. There was also a family viewing of Star Wars and THIS epic snowball fight.

8. I call the photo below Greeting Uncle Josh.

9. I’m looking for a chapbook publisher for the poetry collection I’m putting together.  It’s called Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife and asks how much does the essence of a psyche weigh?  Is the soul the one carry-on we can actually take with us?  What do we value enough to embody and what do we let go of in the end?

10. What does it say about modern medicine that the ads for pharmaceutical drugs on TV are equal to the ones for lawyers that want to sue the pharmaceutical companies for the side effects of these drugs?

11. Personally, I’d rather have a notebook and pen around my neck than THIS.

12. I recently saw Siri on the Meredith Vieira Show.  It was actually the woman who does the voice of Siri (iPhone operationg system) and I was surprised that she looked nothing like what I thought.  Terry Gross also looked nothing like I expected when I met her in 2006, see HERE.

13.  In my house if you hear someone say ‘I’m just not feeling the Bern,’ it means that it’s cold outside and the fire in the woodstove just isn’t cutting it.

________Thirteen Thursday