Loose Leaf Notes

1. “Sun is blue like water and water is yellow. Clouds are white, so clouds are black.” – 7-year-old Liam drawing a “reverse” picture after seeing the art of M.C. Escher.

2.  Last night I dreamt that I went too far out in a boat with my grandsons on board.  We eventually found land, but it was an unknown, unnamed shady town where we didn’t speak the language.  The whole rest of the dream was about me trying to contact the boys’ dad to let him know we were alive.

3. “We carry our families like anchors, rooting us in storms, making sure we never drift from where and who we are. We carry our families within us the way we carry our breath underwater, keeping us afloat, keeping us alive.” ― Erika Swyler, The Book of Speculation

4. My Asheville potter son Josh is still Building Community in “monumental” ways.  Check out THIS excellent newspaper story on how he’s doing that.

5. “…From day one, Copus explains, the Building Community Project has been free for anyone to participate in… For Copus, everything — the chimney, the jailhouse, the documentary, the brick project — is connected by the guiding principle of community. “The ultimate resolution in my mind is that a child comes and makes a brick, and then that brick becomes part of [the jail’s] property,” he says. “And then, 30 years from now, that child is an adult, and they always have that connection to their hometown…”

6. On the day of Josh’s Chimney Monument dedication, I got the message below in a text.

7. Our bed is the new couch.

8. I recently went to the closest thing Floyd has to a circus and saw a fantastic magician, Lucy Riccardo and a tiny dog play the ukulele. Watch HERE. 

9. The first presentation of Floyd Varieties, included comedy skits, an animal act, an aerial silks acrobat, a female impersonator and a professional magician. The vaudeville-inspired show, which also included a kazoo and a rubber chicken, was organized and emceed by Mim (Audra) Jeppson as a fundraiser for The June Bug Center, where the event was held. – More HERE.

10. The latest optical illusion to sweep the internet isn’t about a dress, a wall or a street. It’s THIS palette of colors. But stare at the center of the image below long enough, and you might not be so sure there are any colors there at all. See HERE.

11. The Unwritten Dream:  I left the dream / to finish the poem / Now the dream has dissolved / like a memory that was stolen / like a lesson that wasn’t learned / like a life returned to dust

12. Sometimes, writing a poem is to enter into a magical place from a specific point in time. It’s like taking a subway ride from Quincy into Boston. It has a route, a speed, and a destination. You can go back the next day and take the same ride, but it won’t be the same. The things you saw out the window one day probably won’t be there the next. –  From What’s Up with Thirteen Thursday, written in 2006

13. In the end, our stories remain longer than we do, so we might as well document them and set the record straight.

___________Thirteen Thursday