Loose Leaf Notes

1. Over the weekend, I had to phone in my poem to my husband who was driving to New York to lead a retreat.

2. I dreamt I was eating from a traditional Greek buffet. I woke up with reflux.

3. It’s late October, so I drove up to the Blue Ridge Parkway looking for fall colors. The trees haven’t turned here much, but I did find a sundog rainbow in the sky.

4. I put off reading to the end of The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying because I was thinking that the author was going to die. The problem with reading memoirs is that when someone dies, they really die.  It’s not like when someone dies in a movie or a novel, you might cry, but you know it’s not real.

5. I braced myself and read the ending in the sunshine. It was one of the best books I’ve ever read.

6. Books are like clothes. I’m very particular about both and no one has much of chance of picking out the right ones that I’m going to like.  I just have to do it myself.

7. When Joe and I were recently at the new pub in town, I joked that drinking beer at the pub was going to be my new “practice…” I love good craft beer, even though I usually can only handle a half pint.  The whole pub lifestyle brings out the Irish (the best) in me, so much so that my new ambition is to become a pub regular.  Scrabble anyone?  – More from While Others are Taking Yoga Classes I’m Drinking Beer at the Pub HERE.

8. After I posted the above on Facebook people started sending me pictures of their drinking “practice.”

9. While digging potatoes with my hands, I tore one side of my thumb nail too low. Now it looks like a crooked haircut with the dark roots of soil showing.

10. Reaching down deep / into the musty dark soil / mounded up like swollen bellies / I feel around for the curve/ / of their bodies / wiggle them loose like teeth / Born into my hand / without the sharp edge of a shovel / more than twins / more than quintuplets … More from A Sweet Labor HERE. 

11 Whenever someone links to me by name on Facebook, I feel like I’m being called into the principal’s office.

12. Adapted by Vera Morris from Rudyard Kipling’s stories, the story of a boy raised by wolves came to life on the June Bug stage with drama, memorable song and dance performances, and a bit of monkey frivolity. The twenty-three young actors, directed by Emily Gruver, played their characters with personality, sass and star quality.  The audience responded in a roar of applause when the man-eating tiger Shere Khan, played by Lenora Williams, made a dramatic entrance to the Rocky theme song, Eye of the Tiger… More from Jungle Book Sells Out Opening Night HERE.

13. “I am too young to be this old.”  – Steven Tyler

__________Thirteen Thursday