Film Critic and I are sitting on the lawn, at an outdoor concert, listening to the BSO and Emanuel Ax play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22.
My feet and my ears are in heaven.
Category: journal entries
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May You Have Peaches
Freeboarder and his girlfriend brought home a big basket of fresh Georgia peaches, the best I’ve ever tasted.
He is all in all to me, as is his brother, and their girlfriends and friends are dear to me too. I can only glimpse one tiny portion of the grief, the total collapse, that the parents in Norway are now experiencing.
And the mothers in Somalia, whose children are dying of hunger–a woman whose goats had died said, “I am doubly cursed, because I gave birth to twins during a drought.” Her son Emmanuel lived, but baby Miriam died. During the video report on CNN, she was feeding her two surviving children leaves she had found on the scorched earth. They ate the paste she made for them out of her hand.
The very least I can do is dedicate these peaches to the mothers and fathers who have lost their children. My gratitude is tenuous, and I cherish my ability to feel it.
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Daily Reading
Today I see a baby whale smiling at me. The giant tail fin could also be a ponytail. If so, she’s a cartoon whale. What she might be trying to tell me is to find the cuteness in life.
Maybe I need to find some Hello Kitty stickers.
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Practice
In an effort to work my way back to a daily writing practice, I’ve started sketching in my journal. It’s very relaxing because I have low expectations of the results. Drawing is a way for me to “rest on the page,” as Julia Cameron suggests in The Artist’s Way.
Another good writing book is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. She practices Zen meditation, and she said one of her teachers suggested that maybe writing would be her ‘practice,’ as in a meditative practice.
She describes her daily writing as a focused free-write, not stream of consciousness. I’ve come to realize that my daily writing will not necessarily result in a poem or a story, but the practice itself if important to keep myself open to the world. Even when it’s as hot as a pizza oven in my city and I only like to go out in the evening.
Philosopher told me what he learned from his poetry teacher: if you sit down to write every day your creativity will come to you.
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Road Trip Signs
It’s happening from one moment to the next.
We try to keep it under lock and key, but it happens anyway.
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Peaceful Storm
Red and Duffy shivered from the thunder and lightning, but I gathered them in my lap while I knitted a slip cover and watched Simon Schama’s documentary about Van Gogh.
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Zoot Suit
I’m in the kitchen with a bunch of secret service men and children. Barack and Michelle Obama enter, dressed for a state dinner.
Michelle wears a red gown, and Barack is in a longish blood-red coat and a matching fedora. Somehow his hair has grown to his shoulders.
Barack: Should I wear this coat to the party?
Me: yes.
But I think I’m hurting his feelings, so I change my mind and say why not?
Secretly I think the press will pillory him, just like Seth Myers ridiculed Trump’s fox pelt hair.
Barack to his daughter: What do you think? Should I wear this outfit?
Daughter whispers: no, and shakes her head.
Barack: I knew you’d tell me the truth! There’s no way I’m wearing this ridiculous get up.
Balanced On the Edge 