Loose Leaf Notes

1. I told my grandsons that being afraid can be a good thing, a signal to pay attention to something that could be dangerous.  Then Liam (6) told me that the characters in a movie that are too brave are usually also dumb. So, we talked about the difference between being brave and being cocky.

2. He said he might be a banker when he grows up. Not surprising, since he likes to play store and control the money when we play Monopoly.  “It might be kind of boring but I’m still gonna do it,” he said.

3. The more clothes I have / the less places I go to wear them / and my poems are like house clothes / that nobody sees – Read Poem Shopping in its entirety HERE.

4. I’ve reached the age where I don’t edit out repeating words in my poems, like birds and dreams and Pandora’s Box, I just consider them life themes.

5. “Be a student, not a teacher, even when you teach. Don’t bullshit yourself. If you believe the good reviews, you must believe the bad. Still, don’t hammer yourself down. Do not allow your heart to harden. Face it, the cynics have better one-liners than we do. Take heart: they can never finish their stories. Enjoy difficulty. Embrace mystery. Find the univer­sal in the local.” – From Letters to A Young Writer by Colum McCann

6. I recently heard someone describe a restaurant like this: It’s the kind of place where you can turn the menu into a hat.

7. Everywhere I go on the internet, videos start talking or music starts playing. It kind of reminds me how shocked I was when I started babysitting for my grandsons and discovered almost every toy they owned “talked.”

8. I’m fascinated by keyholes and doorknobs like I want to unlock the meaning of dreams. I’ve always been an explorer of the hidden and think Pandora’s Box should have a happy ending.  See HERE.

9. More proof that truth is stranger than fiction HERE.

10. Trump has ruined the word Triumphant for me, and I can’t even look at the word tower without hoping the hobbits will come save Middle Earth.

11.  Every time I see Trump sign away an environmental protection with all his accomplices standing around him smiling, all I can think of is Lex Luther and his minions.

12. “Transcend the personal. Have trust in the staying power of what is good. We get our voice from the voices of others. Don’t write about what you know.  Write about that which you want to know. Better still, write toward that which you don’t know.” –  Colum McCann

13. “Seeing is believing but feeling is the truth.” Thomas Fuller

___________Thirteen Thursday