Loose Leaf Notes

1. “Now write” or “No write?”

2. An unfocused gaze / sees two of everything/ Whose voice is in my mouth? / What poison aches in me? – Read The View From the Floor in its entirety HERE.

3. It’s not always a pretty sight, but THIS is the honesty of living with CFS and THEN not getting enough sleep.  I suspect everyone has felt like this before. It just happens to me more often and more easily.

4. According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, research has shown that THIS is the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date.  In fact, listening to that one song — “Weightless” — resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety.

5. I’ve been reading a biography on Joni Mitchell from throughout the ‘60s and beyond.  It made me wonder if any musicians today have written protest songs about Trump.  I looked and discovered THIS by Barbara Streisand and THIS by Amiee Mann.

6. Spiritual Bypass is a thing:  Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating judgment about one’s negativity or shadow elements, devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.  – From Spiritual Bypassing: Avoidance in Holy Drag.

7. I told my grandson that I’m not a dog person, so then he thought I must be a cat person, but I said no.  “What’s your favorite kind of pet?” he asked. “Birds. The ones I feed at the feeder,” I answered.

8. My grandmother had a parakeet named Petey and I had one named Pisces.

9. I try to get all the stinkbugs out of the house before my grandsons come over because they freak them out.

10.  Did you know that you can rewire your brain with birdsong?  Listen HERE.

11. It’s like being in Europe with the wrong kind of money / My plugs don’t fit into outlets / I have a car but the keys are locked in it / I don’t speak the language / and my cell phone won’t work / It’s like French class in elementary school / and there is no French translation for my name / So my teacher uses my middle name / I’m embarrassed to be called Ann … From What it Feels Like Not to Be Writing – More HERE.

12. “Unlike some of my peers, I haven’t really hit a writer’s block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.” – Joni Mitchell

13. Below is the kind of oddity that catches my eye and makes me stop in my tracks to take a picture.