Loose Leaf Notes

1. I like to ponder sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as coined by John Koening, author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

2. Is that why I find the practice of people watching so interesting?

3. Artist Megan Altieri has an art exhibition called The Art of Empathy Through Eavesdropping. She also has a book of the same name that features a photo collection of overheard conversations, of sonder moments, that she prints on clothes. See HERE.  

4. After writing about the unintelligible din at the pool that turns words into a hum of sound until a recognizable phrase breaks through like a loud speaker announcement, I started writing down what I was overhearing: “Has it stopped bleeding?”  “My brother got me one of those.  His was chocolate.”  “Do not do this.” “Count down to three.”  “It’s too close.”

5. At the Little River Poetry Festival, we were asked in a workshop to write the first sentence of your life story. Mine: She got a bathing suit for her May birthday but had to wait till summer to wear it.

6. I led a workshop at the LRPF on instructive poetry with a prompt title “How To,” like THIS one. The workshop resulted in poets sharing on-the-spot poems with titles like How to Say Goodbye (Zeina Azzam) and How to Write a Poem while a Spider is Staring at You (Trevor Huffman) and How to Make Art with the beginning line of “Turn your pain into paint.”

7. Later, a LRPF attendee who was at the “How to” workshop sent me a poem titled “How to be Perfect” by Ron Padgett. Here are some excerpts: Get some sleep. / Don’t give advice. / Take care of your teeth and gums. / Don’t expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to. / Don’t be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even / older. Which is depressing / Answer letters promptly. Use attractive stamps, like the one with a tornado on it. / Do not go crazy a lot. It’s a waste of time. / Take out the trash. / Love life. / Use exact change.

8. On Father’s Day we had brunch at Outer Space and heard live music by a musician who fittingly goes by the name Big Papa.

9. Don’t Forget to Write – Put a pen in my hand / before you lower the casket / and plant me like a kiss goodbye / Put a pen in my hand / so I can write Dear John letters / to everything on earth I have loved / And if the afterlife is boring / I can take up writing fiction / I can work on crossword puzzles / and doodles to pass the time

10. I posted the above poem on Facebook and a friend commented: “You can’t write without a thin dark line.” I answered, “The dark is fertile. It comes from the ground and later hits the sun.”

11. I once had a job where I had to do case notes. They weren’t accepted unless they were written in black ink.

12. According to Koening, onism is the awareness of how little of the world you will experience in your lifetime, as you are limited to one body that can only be at one place at one time.

13. Here is an excerpt from the book I am reading, “Sea of Tranquility,” that is mostly set in the future and is boggling my mind: “Think how holograms and virtual reality have evolved, even just in the past few years. If we can run fairly convincing simulations of reality now, think what those simulations will be like in a century or two. The idea with the simulation hypothesis is, we can’t rule out the possibility that all of reality is a simulation.’ __________Thirteen Thursday