Loose Leaf Notes

1. I may use a computer more than ever before, but paper and pen is still my first language.

2. “Fundamentally, the story of God is a story about the human imagination, the human capacity to take seriously the sense that the world that we see before us is not all there is of the world.” -Hidden Brain NPR

3. Looking at the Webb telescope photos of stars and galaxies located in an area the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length makes me think of Horton Hears a Who.

4. Someone said: “I don’t think you can catch Covid in Outer Space.”

5. This morning my mantra was a stand-in, something like a hologram that I knew wasn’t real. I imposed it and thought, ‘this is the reason I quit meditating.’ But I’ll try again tomorrow.

6. Let It Be: Now I have to learn to nap / and wake up three times a night / Now I have to talk to bag boys / at the grocery store / who don’t know who wrote Let It Be… Read Let It Be in its entirety HERE.

7. Driving down Route 8 in the town of Floyd, going 50 miles an hour, I hit a cow.  I was in my ’87 Honda with the license plate that says “Let it be.”  That’s the name of the song we sang to Danny the morning of his death.  For though we may be parted… there is still a chance that we will see….There will be an answer….Let it be.  It was night and the cow was black.  I never saw it coming, the way Jimmy never saw the machine part that pinned him against the wall until it was too late.  The impact of the cow’s body shattered the windshield and dented the hood, but the car still ran.  Sort of like breaking a leg and not like losing the function of a liver, like Dan did.  I remember Dan’s liver doctor talking to me about using kidney dialysis to help Dan’s failing kidneys kick back.  “It’s like putting new brakes in a car when you really need a new transmission.  Don’t get your hopes up,” he said…From The Jim and Dan Stories 2002

8. “Although the nation is done for, I find new flowers.” from “Election Year” by Donald Revell 

9. I talk to the flowers in my garden / I call them ‘my beautiful girls’ / I hang out with butterflies and bluebirds / and hang up on the automated voices / that tell me how the menu has changed.

10. Penelope Notes on the Power of Hope -Tucked deep within the emotional spaces of our psyche, between the dreamy head-in-the-clouds and the dug-in head-in-the-sand sides, humankind’s greatest asset, motivator and reason for living resiliently flickers.

11. No one in this Mustang is named Sally.

12. “Our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.” Naomi Klein

13. I think I love you.

_______Thirteen Thursday