Loose Leaf Notes

1. “Q: I want to be an author when I grow up. Am I insane?” Neil Gaiman: “Yes. Growing up is highly overrated. Just be an author.”

2. “In winter, we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.” -Thoreau

3. The location of Scrabble’s humble origin, a church basement in Queens, is today commemorated with a creative street sign that includes the Scrabble value for each letter of 35th Avenue. See HERE.

4. Literally, the coolest concert ever? Hear ice instruments play beautiful music HERE.

5. January – If ice is a fool’s diamond, then I am a fool because I’m attracted to all that glitters, and water is more valuable than any cut gem. February – A wise woman’s wilderness at the bottom of a cup rises like a lost continent that foretells a last sip. March – Writing is like flying a kite. You need the muse like you need the wind for it to take off… More from the 2019 Rear View Review HERE.

6. I have big poems and little poems and big dreams and little dreams. I recently told Joe that I just wrote “a big poem,” after writing THIS, adding “It was worth five years of therapy.”

7. “Big dreams,” coined by Carl Jung, are those often “remembered for a lifetime that frequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience,” Jung said. He saw Big Dreams as emanating from a subliminal resource of dream-imagery known to psychologists as the Unconscious: a significant region of our psychical powers that does not regularly contribute to our matter-of-fact daily pattern of awareness, and is seen by Jung, to constitute a deep well of intuitive cognizance—‘felt-thoughts that can influence the course of one’s usual ego-directed, five-senses response, to the world and its happenings.

8. In other words, The Force.

9. Returning to TM mantra meditation after years of doing passage meditation is a little like going back to school wearing whatever you like after wearing a Catholic school uniform for years.

10. The little girl on Spring Street / wore over-sized boy’s clothes / with none of her own / she pretended to sleep / so her aunt who carried her / wouldn’t put her down / She learned to like red spaghetti / and ride the Red Mill at Paragon Park / She might have had ice cream / and joined the circus / but wasn’t allowed on stage… Read the entirety of Away From Home HERE.

11. Meme seen on Facebook about the period between Christmas and the New Year: Today is the most Saturdayest Sunday Wednesday ever.

12. What is a contronym? A word that is its own opposite, like hold up can mean “to support” or “to hinder.” When you dust are you applying dust or removing it? It depends whether you’re dusting the crops or the furniture. Screen can mean to show (a movie) or to hide (an unsightly view). – More HERE.

13. Making New Year resolutions? In the tradition of Jungian Depth Psychology, the focus of that practice would be less on the creation of new imperatives, goals or intentions, and more on clearing, catharsis, understanding and ultimately the assimilation of what has been the year or years before, by giving expression not only to events in the outer world but to your inner life. This includes practicing the art of confession, a creative and artistic endeavor focused on finding the language, images, associations to give form to your inner life… In other words, writing poetry.

__________Thirteen Thursday