Loose Leaf Notes

1. “Is it gonna rain?”

2. The picture above was taken at Floyd Yoga Jam, where we had some torrential downpours, but more sunshine than rain over the long Labor Day weekend. It’s actually a hacky sack that they’re waiting to see fall.

3. My grandsons were Super Hero campers at the Yoga Jam. And not only did they enjoy camping by the creek with us, they did some floss dancing to one of the main stage bands.  See HERE. 

4. I had a dream recently that I was at an impromptu talent show at Floydfest-like scene.  It was my turn to perform on stage. I had nothing planned to do, so I decided to balance a ball on my head.  It was a large red foam rubber ball and I got it balanced so well that I decided to keep it on top of my head.  As I went around the rest of the day and my life with the large red ball on my head, some people noticed it and others didn’t.

5. I wonder why agnostics are looked at as non-believers when they are actually open-minded to the possibility of all kinds of beliefs, while also accepting that no one really knows or can prove the existence of God, Heaven, Hell etc.

6. ‘Dying isn’t the end of the world,’ my mother liked to joke after she was diagnosed as terminal. There are so many things worse than death: old grudges, a lack of self-awareness, severe constipation, no sense of humor, the grimace on your husband’s face as he empties your surgical drain into the measuring cup…” – The beginning of Nina Riggs’s book that I’m currently reading, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying

7. “We have so much human anxiety about where we’re going, and what we might be when we’re no longer here. But I think art can be a beautiful inverse of that: Instead of here and then gone, it’s nowhere and then concretely here. When you look at a final copy of a book, or a painting, or listen to a song, it’s just amazing to think how there was just a blank space in the world where it didn’t exist before. But now it does. Because someone dreamed it, and then made it, and now it’s here—hanging on a wall, or in a bookstore. It’s beautiful. And it isn’t going anywhere. – From The Powerful Practice of Writing by Hand: The author Laura van den Berg on what inspired her newest novel, The Third Hotel, and how she accesses the part of the mind that fiction comes from. – More HERE.

8. The days of life scatter / like the goldfinches / on Woods Gap Road / The closer I get / the faster they go / in a fleeting ripple of beauty / that won’t be seen up close… More from The Golden Years HERE. 

9. Poets Rhyme Sugar with Teacup and Saucer.  They alliterate Morning with Mug. My friends Katherine and Chelsea and I were recently asked to read our tea poems at a Ladies Tea, held at the Manor House Teas in Floyd. There were savories and sweets, sips of wine and tea, along with our poetic brews. – More from Poets Three for Poetry and Tea HERE.

10. “I think writing, or any form of art-making, is a way to prepare for not being here.” – Laura van den Berg

11. Hula or Hoola Hoop?  When I search on my blog I have 26 posts with the words “hula hoop” and only 6 for “hoola hoop.” Watch some Yoga Jam Hoopla HERE.

12. Who can guess what THIS is?

13. Witches Yoga HERE.

____________Thirteen Thursday