Loose Leaf Notes

1. “Later today you are going to do something, something you don’t know about yet. Yet somehow, it’s already happened. Somehow, it’s already affected you…” So begins an article about the work of one of the most respected, senior and widely published professors of psychology, Daryl Bem of Cornell, who has just published an article that suggests that people — ordinary people — can be altered by experiences they haven’t had yet. Time, he suggests, is leaking. The Future has slipped, unannounced, into the Present. And he thinks he can prove it… HERE.

2. “When you get ready to ask why people are just now coming forward. We’re not. You are just now hearing us.” – Posted by a Facebook friend.

3. When I was in my early ‘20s, I liked to take long walks in the neighborhood where I lived in, like people jog today.  But I was regularly harassed.  I couldn’t walk without cars beeping, men shouting out or pulling over to proposition me.  Later, a few worse things happened.

4. I like Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side more than Aerosmith’s Walk This Way.

5. The roots of my interest in writing go back further than reading my first poems to my sister Sherry and has something to do with the songs of the 40’s and the nursery rhymes that our father taught us. It has something to do with my childhood play in the tall grass by the blackberry bushes. Talking to myself then, out in nature, my writing mind was born through the monologues, lectures, and soap box speeches I gave when no one was there. I was especially eloquent when the swampy land surrounding the bushes filled in with water and froze in the winter, and I had my ice skates on. Talking while gliding felt especially important. I don’t know what I could have known then. I don’t remember what I said. But I recognize the way writing happens for me now is similar to what happened back then. – From Walking on Furniture HERE.

6. My favorite part of THIS video, from a special event I attended last week, is probably when everyone jumps up and down while loudly singing RED, RED, RED, RED.

7. “The world is our front yard,” said the driver of the two-story bus, which he referred to as a pop-up gallery.  There was art on the outside and inside.  He showed me how an elevator took them up into the second bus where they slept. – More from Hop on the Bus, Gus HERE.

8. I like Dire Straits Walk of Life more than the Bangles Walk Like and Egyptian.  

9. Over the years, I’ve been to a lot of concerts but regret never seeing Tom Petty in concert.  I recently decided that in his honor, instead of calling out “Free Bird” at concerts (which I’ve been known to do for the fun of it), I’m going to call out “Free Fallin’ from now on.

10. My poem “The Storm of 2016” was chosen for the New River Valley Voices fall juried writing competition.  I’ll be reading with other writers and poets Sunday, December 3 at 3:00 pm at the Blacksburg Library.

11. I walk on water / But I ain’t no Jesus / I walk on water / But only when it freezes … – Eminem

12. The sunlight is bright / I can see to thread the needle / Always moving buttons over / to make something fit … I don’t make something new / but make do with what is / I sew backwards to go forward and feel every prick…  More from Sewing on the Porch HERE.

13. “Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.” – Patti Smith, from Devotion.

_______Thirteen Thursday