Loose Leaf Notes

1. I forget the real name of this IPA, but I call it the “Infinity Pool Beer.”

2. Shopping list needs: Pens. And I have to find a pen to write that down.

3. I only like books that make me want to underline lines and write in the margins. Two books I’m reading right now that seem made for me: The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit and The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman: It’s our constant effort to eliminate the negative that causes us to feel so anxious, insecure, and unhappy. And that there is an alternative “negative path” to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid. It is a subversive, galvanizing message, which turns out to have a long and distinguished philosophical lineage ranging from ancient Roman Stoic philosophers to Buddhists. It’s a witty, fascinating, and counterintuitive listen that turns decades of self-help advice on its head and forces us to rethink completely our attitudes toward failure, uncertainty, and death.”

4. I call this picture “Barbed Wire and Ice.”

5. Is “cold” the mutant past tense of “cool?”

6. “Sometimes the key arrives long before the lock. Sometimes a story falls in your lap. Once about a hundred pounds of apricots fell into mine… Two summers before the apricots, my mother had begun to get confused, to get lost, to lock herself out of her own house, to have serial emergencies that often prompted her to call me for a rescue… She had memorized my phone number decades before; my three brothers lived no farther away, but they had other area codes and newer numbers, and she had always hidden her  troubles from them. They were the audience for her best self… One day I asked her why she always called me and not them. “Well, you’re the girl,” she said, and then added, “and you’re just sitting around the house all day doing nothing anyway.” That was one way to describe the life of a writer.”  From The Faraway Nearby.

7. I Could Have Written This: “It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all. There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything.” — Mary Oliver

8. In Answer to: When Did You Start Writing Poetry? / First, I had to get out of school / I had to find my soul in Motown / and hear Leonard Cohen / sing Suzanne on the radio / I had to smoke my first joint / Remember Macbeth / and Romeo and Juliet / Hear a poetry reading / at a coffeehouse in Boston / and think / I could never do that… Read more HERE.

9. Joe on the go in the snow.

10. “I thought about calling it The Death Card Tour but thought that might be a bit heavy for those who don’t do Tarot.” -Colleen from the Grief and Relief Soulful Aging Tour library reading on Sunday, which included a poem called “How to Die.” More HERE. 

11. I also thought about calling it Growing (G)old but that would be hard to convey through pronunciation.

12. Abysmal or dismal?

13. “Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

___________Thirteen Thursday