Loose Leaf Notes

1. “Awakening to one’s inner story and finding life-long initiatory paths comprises the “real work” and genuine opus of our lives. The problem is that the exact paths of awakening are blocked by received ideas, early life traumas and over-adaptation to the needs of others. In the long run however, genuine transformation is the secret aim of all the tensions and troubles we encounter.” – Micheal Meade

2. A wise woman’s wilderness / at the bottom of a cup / rises like a lost continent / to foretell the last sip – Read Tea Oracle in its entirety HERE.

3. Alexa hosted the Oscars. Or was that disembodied voice introducing the presenters from behind the scenes Siri?

4. A Documentary about menstruation, called “Period. End of Sentence,” won an Oscar.

5. I call Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s Oscar performance “an Adelle moment.”

6. I’m a nerd about the news, thrift shopping, taking pictures and writing poetry.

7.  I’m also a nerd for research: The first documented appearance of the word nerd is as the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss’s book If I Ran the Zoo (1950), in which the narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect “a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too” for his imaginary zoo. The slang meaning of the term dates to 1951.  That year, Newsweek magazine reported on its popular use as a synonym for drip or square in Detroit, Michigan. By the early 1960s, usage of the term had spread throughout the United States, and even as far as Scotland.  At some point, the word took on connotations of bookishness and social ineptitude – Wikipedia

8. Turning people away from trusting reliable news sources with terms like “liberal elite media” reminds me of when abusers control their victims by isolating from family and friends.

9. The Michael Cohen Congressional Hearing: It’s like the Republicans spent the whole hearing discrediting the hit man to protect the person who called for the hits.

10. I’ve been reading about how doctors can now diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by brain abnormalities that show up on an MRI.  Here’s how one doctor involved in the breakthrough aptly describes the disease: “Healthy people do tasks A, B, C, D and E, then go to bed. CFS sufferers do task A, then recover, task B, then recover, and so on, making sure they have intermittent recoveries so that they don’t exacerbate their symptoms. I also learned that the brain abnormalities in CFS cause cognitive symptoms like Visuospatial dysgnosia, a function of the right side of the brain used for solving puzzles, figuring out maps and taking part in any type of construction or engineering project.  It’s loss of the sense of “whereness” in the relation of oneself to  one’s environment and in the relation of objects to each other, which explains why I rarely drive outside of Floyd and the few other familiar places.

11. Someone posted THIS picture of a harpy eagle on Facebook and I was so unsure that it was real that I had to look it up.

12. Not only does the very real harpy eagle look like a person wearing a mask, it comes in red. See HERE.

13. I’m saving 13 for a rainy day.

________________Thirteen Thursday