September 20, 2022
Gleanings
- And here’s the sticking point, at least for me: While I did hold the late Queen in high regard, and felt sincere affection for her as an individual, I also have profound ethical misgivings about the system of government she represented, namely an inherited constitutional monarchy that is rooted in a legacy of profoundly corrosive inequity. Many of its conventions are, to my mind, risible and frankly indefensible.
- Due to a lack of “going out,” we haven’t cleared out and reorganized the front coat closet in a few years. This is going to require music. And wine, maybe.
- Nope. I’ve had enough. It’s partly a me thing – the amount and intensity of therapy I’ve had over the last few years has helped me accept and understand things about myself and the end result is…I’m too awesome to deal with your bullshit.
- Oh Adi, how I wish I could just give you the danged blue horse. Somehow make it all okay. But the truth is that it wouldn’t help. Wouldn’t teach. Wouldn’t prepare you for all the inescapable blue horses to come.
- For them (and for us all) each fresh start offers new lessons, new discoveries and new experiences. Children have an unfettered joy in the new and unfamiliar and can quickly make a game out of anything thrown at them. They love to explore and are constantly and easily amazed at their findings. That’s the spirit I’m trying to foster within myself and for myself.
- What I’ve found uplifting is that libraries persist.
- Blogging can be a vulnerable thing (as is any form of writing and expressing yourself), in that you allow others a glimpse into your interior life. And that interior may be messy and chaotic, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes rich and meandering. You are allowing others to form opinions and judgements on that interior life. Writing is a solitary pursuit. But once you launch your words into the yonder, not knowing where they may land, you expose yourself. You throw out thoughts and words, reach out a hand, inviting people to simply read, or read and engage, not knowing what may return to you.
- I don’t know how to write poetry, but I do know how to stop and notice all of the ordinary moments in a day. And this in itself has become my poetry. For I no longer wish or live for what’s next, but find myself fully grounded in the now, and this too, I pause to notice.
- In terms of books that made a mark, The Westing Game is one of the most perfect novels I know.
- I am trying—to read, to write, to be—but it’s hard and uncomfortable and often I would rather not. Turning away is easier.
- I’ve been swimming daily since the middle of May and I don’t want to let the lake go, my relationship to it, with it. The way it’s held me buoyant for months, even when I didn’t feel particularly light.
- Maybe the greatest lesson of all is that I have no control, and any illusion that I do is what lands me in the hole to begin with.
- I know it’s hyperbole but when Cardi B. says “I gotta stay outta Gucci/I’m going to run outta hangers” I always think well you can BUY MORE HANGERS.
