Loose Leaf Notes

1. “We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility.” – Ursula Le guin From the Preface to “Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014”

2. Peony rhymes with Poetry: They bulge then pop / like bread in the oven / In spring’s sprinkled sweetness / they explode with vibrance / Then bow their petaled heads / top-heavy with joy.

3. I didn’t grow up exposed to much literature. The literature available to me was nursery rhymes, jump rope songs, fairy tales and oral family stories.  One book saved my life or woke me up to it:  Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytales, 1949 addition.

4. I spent a lot of time looking at the few images in the book. They were menacing but intriguing, woke and spoke to dark fears and mystery.

5. Times are changing. Until recently, we never had coyotes howling on our property or light show displays of aurora borealis. See HERE.

6. (Ursula LeGuin on beauty): “…There’s something about me that doesn’t change, hasn’t changed, through all the remarkable, exciting, alarming, and disappointing transformations my body has gone through. There is a person there who isn’t only what she looks like, and to find her and know her I have to look through, look in, look deep. Not only in space, but in time. There’s the ideal beauty of youth and health, which never really changes, and is always true. There’s the ideal beauty of movie stars and advertising models, the beauty-game ideal, which changes its rules all the time and from place to place, and is never entirely true. And there’s an ideal beauty that is harder to define or understand, because it occurs not just in the body but where the body and the spirit meet and define each other.”

7. “The sailor cannot see the north but knows the arrow can.” Emily Dickenson

8. I like to rhyme / but not on cue / I like a relationship of lyrics / that are interchangeable / and poems like make-up / that no one knows you’re wearing / Aged like wine and honey / poured from the psyche / I like stand-out stanzas / that hold up without a prop / and words that show up / where you least expect them – More from A Poem that Looks Good for its Age HERE. 

9. They say it’s your birthday:  For my birthday this year, I want to be able to eat cake and not hurt after recovering from a painful dental tissue graft that gave me 46 stitches. Believe me it has not been a piece of cake

10. Friends with flowers and soup to the rescue.

11. In 2019, I posted:  The weekend was all about the birthday cake, eating cake, trying not to eat cake, taking care of the cake, taking pictures of the cake and sharing the cake.

12. Best birthday posts over the years Let Them Have Cake, Little River Birthdays, It Happens Every Year, Prime Time, Any Way You Slice It.

13. How sweet is your slice of life?

__________Thirteen Thursday