Loose Leaf Notes

1. Yes!

2. The Floydfest night light shows with headliner acts were spectacular.

3. But I was mesmerized by the feet.

4. Speaking of feet. One of my favorite Floydfest pictures is of me and my sweet friend Sudha playing footsie. See HERE.

5. After events that I cover for the local paper, I like to see pictures of me working. Here is one. Not sure where I got it.

6. Yes, I could pick him out in a crowd.

7. At Floydfest Maggie Rose sang a song with a singalong chorus of What are We Fighting For. Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes spoke about the dangers of ICE and Trump, and the Original Wailers’ “Everything’s Going to be Alright” brought a healing dancing party, something we all needed.

8. “I am in the midst of whatever I am thinking of. There are fires in California, they have returned. I am burning. Am one of the trees that’s disappearing in the fires. My body black and grey becoming ashes… And yet there is something else beyond the cinder of the thinking-mind, some vaster consciousness in which the crests and troughs of being and not-being merge into the continuous sine wave of what is, ruffling the oceanic surface of timelessness…

9. …I need to simplify my thinking: to come to the roots of the olive trees I have planted on my island, sit close to them, look at every leaf… stop thinking… just be, and for many hours in a row, merge with this vegetal and metallic kind of consciousness which is so overpowering… I wait for those lights, I know some of you do too, wherever you are, I mean when you are standing by an ocean, alone, within the calmness of your spirit. Be planetary. The day is blustery, one more day following an infinity of days. And this one on its way out, according to its fate. If everything is alive, this day is too, a life independent from mine, and still interdependent.  Etel Adnan (February 24, 1925–November 14, 2021) poet, painter, novelist, and philosopher.

10. When I say ‘I bumped into so and so,’ I literally mean I did, which is why I’m currently seeing a PT.

11. If life was rain and evaporation was death, we would surely pour again.

12.  Cockney rhyming slang involves making up a rhyme phrase for a thing then dropping the rhyme, so that “plates of meat,” which means feet, becomes plates, as in “I’ve been on my plates all day” or  “yank,” which is “septic tank” in Cockney rhyming slang becomes “septic,” as in “The septics across the pond have another terrible election on their hands.”

13. If life was a pupae and death was the shedding of skin, we would surely have wings.

_______Thirteen Thursday