Loose Leaf Notes

1. “The bottom line is a circle,” says my Dharmacratic friend Will

2. Will’s late brother A’court referred to himself as a “butterfly mystic.” I called him the Lao Tzu of Floyd. See HERE. 

3. I call this “Ingredients for an Enjoyable Afternoon in the Sun.”

4. Joe calls the below a “Handburger,” instead of a hamburger. The burger was so big that the bun was useless and the hand did all the work holding it.

5. I searched the word “line” on this blog, and these are just some of the headlines that came up: Headlines, Hot Lines, Fault Lines, Drawing the Line, Cash Only Lines and Lines Not Meant for Fishing. The below is the line to toss a beer keg or watch someone else do it. (Story coming soon.)

6. I just pulled a baked potato out of the oven and had to throw it like a hot potato.

7. “Natural systems inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind by a process called morphic resonance, with the result that patterns of development and behavior become increasingly habitual through repetition. There is a continuous spectrum of morphic fields, including morphogenetic fields, behavioral fields, mental fields, and social and cultural fields.” Rubert Sheldrake

8. Rupert Sheldrake talks about morphogenetic fields (or M-fields) as invisible organizing patterns that act like energy templates to establish forms on various levels of life, eg: when Sir Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, he created a new M-field. The belief system prevailing in human consciousness had been that the 4-minute mile was a limit of human possibility. Once the new M-field was created, many runners suddenly began to run sub-4 minute miles. This occurs every time mankind breaks into a new paradigm, whether it’s the capacity to fly (an M-field created by the Wright or something else. Once an M-field is created, everyone who repeats the accomplishment reinforces its power. Once it’s created, it exists as a universally available pattern throughout the invisible universe.  More HERE.

9. Across the Way – a poem for A’court after he died in 2013: Every death is a pearl / in a rosary of prayer / And tonight you are the moon / smiling at the center / A trail of clouds has parted / into rows of unbroken lines / An I-Ching hexagram / makes a bridge to cross the way.

10. “Are you mentally dragging the heavy, exhausted husk of your 30s and 40s into a totally new era? Are you still trying to measure your daily worth by the outdated metrics of physical youth, endless productivity, and how much attention you can pull from a crowded room? As long as you demand that the universe treat you like the person you were, you will remain in a state of constant, agonizing friction with reality. You are trying to wear an expired identity, and it is choking your spirit.” The Mindful Walk

11. Garrison Keillor’s Rules for Aging Include: “Enumerate your benefits, enjoy inertia, get out of the way, don’t fight with younger people; they will be writing your obituary, and ignore rules you read in a book. Do what you were going to do anyway.”

12. I start with a bird / and wait for a song / I tap a nerve / and blur a crossed line / I recite the alphabet / give up logic / open my notebook / as if lifting a veil.

13. I don’t believe / everything I’ve heard / I write firsthand / in my own words / I wait for an opening / to let a habit drop / I track an emotion / and name a new thought.

_____Thirteen Thursday