Loose Leaf Notes

1. “A lifetime can zip by in what feels like a few turns of a kaleidoscope.” Tina Turner

2. It had been a long time since I or my friends had been in a theater. The movie we went to see last week had unexpectedly changed and was only being shown in the morning because of lack of interest. So the only one showing that wasn’t a horror, super hero or animation movie was “You Hurt My Feelings,” which was okay but not much of a big screen movie.

3. Our feelings were a little hurt when we couldn’t see the movie we chose and we had to wait in the popcorn line to get tickets because the box office was closed.

4. One of the trailers for upcoming movie previews was called No Hard Feelings.

5. Book Club: The Next Chapter, just for fun. Funny thing though, You Hurt My Feelings got better reviews by the critics than The Book Club did.

6. THE WALL: Cigarettes and a bottle of beer / This poem that I wrote for you / This black stone and these hard tears / Are all I got left now of you / I remember you in your Marine uniform laughing / Laughing at your ship out party / I read Robert McNamara says he’s sorry… Bruce Springsteen

7. The Moon Blinked: An eyelash of new moon / warmed to a shine / when the moon broke its gaze/ and the night went blind

8. I posted the above poem last week and someone commented, “Now that is far too subtle and sophisticated (for all its simplicity) for AI to have crafted it!”

9. The theme of that poetry prompt was to write about AI. I commented on one poem about AI writing poetry, “Such a lure but not much allure.”

10. This is an excerpt from my AI poem, titled If Robots Wrote Poetry:   Let the billionaires share / what never was theirs / Let robots cure cancer / and climate change / But don’t let them ban / or cancel the artists / Don’t let poets become / the jukebox nostalgics  – More HERE.

11. “It’s a process of subtraction. There’s no test to pass. There’s no higher level to ascend to. There’s only the clutter of the mind — which can fixate on spiritual topics as easily as on baseball scores or shopping lists — to face.  So when your to-do lists number more than the fingers of one hand, when your practices get busy with rituals and instructions, when you start looking to the Internet or other people for answers that can only exist in your body, it’s time to go the opposite direction and do less with your day, not more.” -Paul Weinfield

12. “We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” -Thoreau

13. hurt feelings: tossing and turning in a turbulent half-sleep / moon-tides pull my eyelids open / emotions pressing like a too-full bladder / wake me at night with the urge for relief.

____________Thirteen Thursday