Loose Leaf Notes

1. Remodeling – I’m a discombobulated / arrangement of cells / running askew / I need a screw / to tighten my grip / because I’m loose at the hinges / Or maybe I’m under construction / expanding my own dimensions / and I need a level to keep it straight / until the changes fall into place

2. Joe and I spent Friday night in a room at EcoVillage’s Berm Lodge because our kitchen cabinets were being repainted and the fumes were affecting us negatively. The first thing I noticed when I went in the lodge room was these two framed pictures on the wall. They are pictures I took years ago, sold to the owners of the EcoVillage and never saw what they did with them till now.  Some of my writing about Floyd was also in a bed stand album.

3. The Windmill at the EcoVillage sounded more like a whine than a whoosh and like the trees in the woods outside our home rubbing against each other in the wind.

4. This week I went back and forth from reading about Baba Hari Dass and Taylor Swift.

5. Yin

6. Yang

7. “Lao Tzu only wrote a single sentence about Yin and Yang, but it changed philosophy forever… Yin-Yang argues that there is a great harmony to be found in the contrast between things. The symbol does not feature a fully black side set against a fully white side. The white has a bit of black, and the black a bit of white. Contrast, yet harmony… The wisdom of the Yin-Yang is to see how a world without light would be hellish but so too would one of constant day. The symbol has proved so powerful because it is a constant reminder to us that life is all about finding that harmony out of opposition…” Big Think

8. I drove to Blacksburg yesterday for a dermatology appointment enjoying the foliage and the candidate for elections signs. One person running had the last name of Couch. There was also a Glass, a Winkle and a Scary.

9. I feel at home on a couch, but I really miss magazines in waiting rooms.

10. “Doppelgangers share similar genetics, habits and behaviors, a recent study discovered… analyses revealed that 9 of the 16 very similar pairs shared over 19,200 SNPs in more than 3,700 genes, and that these similarities were not due to any shared ancestry… Using facial recognition software, the scientists analyzed headshots of the so-called “human doubles” and computed a score to quantify similarities among their faces. They compared the scores to those of identical twins and found that the software had awarded twin-like scores to exactly half of the doppelgänger pairs.” Big Think

11. I voted early. After showing my license to the election official said, “Oh you’re the one who writes for the paper.” Not anymore,” I answered. “They cut the budget.”

12. “I’ve always felt my freelance work is better than a free education because it’s an education I get paid for.” A Blogger friend

13. “How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen… Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” -Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

_____________Thirteen Thursday