Loose Leaf Notes

1. I wonder why Scrabble fun is so much work.

2.  A friend who came by to say ‘hi’ during a particularly animated game at The Floyd Country Store nailed it when he called us ScRABBLE Rousers.

3. My first early birthday present: a miniature wooden rolling pin from my friend Mara. “Let’s make little cookies,” I said.

4. Her birthday is in May too. I gave her this miniature wrapped present from my dollhouse.

5. I call it “Be Present.” The present is the present. It doesn’t open up.

6. I dreamt my life was a swinging rope bridge that I was happily traversing. Then a sign appeared warning of a steep incline. I thought I could do it and began to ascend, but the climb just got steeper and I started to slip back. I looked up and realized that I might not be able to make it to the top, but I didn’t go back and I didn’t jump off into the shallow river. I stayed where I was and the dream ended there.

7.   These are the kind of headlines that I can’t resist clicking on: Is Our Universe Just an Expanding Bubble in a Hidden Dimension? Study Says 
 8. Is this a spectator’s sport?

9. “I love the way Scrabble gives me a context to be social, and yet, I don’t have to be sociable in a direct way,” I told my friend Mara. Mara and I have a lot in common. We both experienced a traumatic loss of a loved one 4 years ago (and in my case 2 losses), we’re both writers, we’re both from Floyd and have lived alter-native lifestyles,* we both worked at “Seeds of Light” bead shop for many years, we used to make jewelry, and we both love Scrabble… Read more from Scrabble is Sanity, a 2005 blog post HERE. 

10. Mara to Jayn: You can’t keep getting scores in the  ‘20s and ‘30s if you want to be “The Biggest Loser.”

10. “Any critique of Taylor Swift’s work that doesn’t consider her role as one of the most prominent narrators of our time—and certainly anything that critiques her work as one-dimensional when she’s playing a kind of 4-D chess—will fail to speak to even the most casual of her fans.” – The New Yorker, Why Normal Music Reviews No Longer Make Sense for Taylor Swift

11. The Tortured Poets Department,” or “T.T.P.D.,” is nothing short of a Rorschach test. The tepid music reviews often miss the fact that “music” is something that Swift stopped selling long ago. Instead, she has spent two decades building the foundation of a fan universe, filled with complex, in-sequence narratives that have been contextualized through multiple perspectives across eleven blockbuster installments. She is not creating standalone albums but, rather, a musical franchise.” The New Yorker

12. Without craziness there is almost always never brilliance and we’re often just impersonating other people.” David Whyte

__________Thirteen Thursday