Loose Leaf Notes

1. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” -Leonard Cohen

2. I swing from nostalgia to novelty, the old or the new.

3. It’s kind of sad how much novelty humans need. I think my need for novelty is part why I write poetry, to create something new, see something and say something in a new way.

4. We’ve been walking on thin ice since Trump became president and the pandemic made it even thinner.

5. “Somehow we weathered and witnessed / A nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished / There is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it / if only we’re brave enough to be it.” —Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history

6. “And four years after Mr. Trump spoke of “American carnage” in his Inaugural Address, Mr. Biden seemed to offer a direct rebuttal. “Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” he said. “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.” -NYT

7. Break down or crack up?

8. Don’t be a falling star / without a wish / Don’t pull the rug out / from under someone / and call it musical chairs… Read Hit Publish in its entirety HERE. 

9. “I admit that when I hear the word “impeachment” I think of fruit, and “censure” makes me think of dentures, which is a sign that I’ve been watching too much news: time for a break. How often can you look at the man with the tattooed pectorals and the horned helmet and what understanding do you gain from it? So you make the screen go dark and do other things…” – Garrison Keillor

10. In to it or intuit

11. Intuition May be the Highest Form of Intelligence. So, if you’re thinking, intuition has nothing to do with intelligence, then you’re not alone. Because intuition is so difficult to measure and observe. The dictionary definition of intuition is as follows: “1. the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” your intuition often knows what your conscious mind does not. More HERE. 

12. Life is Better Now that Joe Plays Scrabble with Me -After not playing with me for 30 years and then being mostly home for nearly a year, it was a pandemic adjustment well made. We also did a crossword puzzle together on Parkway Grille fish and chips newsprint and finished the whole thing! See HERE.

13. When Mud is the Canvas and Ice is the Paint. See HERE. 

____________Thirteen Thursday