Nothing is how I want it...but what can one expect from someone who just took down her Christmas tree?

I will never be a motivational speaker...alas...a year and a bit ago, I was with a group...talking...the final task...my creation...that each person send herself a Christmas card with a significant question...to be mailed by me a year later.

I am not good at mailing stuff so it was more than a year later that I mailed said cards.

I knew the question on my card: Have you let it go?
I knew the answer: No...I still chew...on stuff!
My friend asked me in passing if I knew anything about the Christmas card she had gotten in the mail with her own handwriting on it!
She'd forgotten the task completely.
She couldn't understand why she had sent herself a card with the question: Are you still making Moroccan dips?
That wasn't the point of the exercise....the question was supposed to be profound...
But I did let go! I actually laughed. I didn't try to explain.
I have officially resigned as motivational speaker!

I'd rather like to be at the sea.

I think my next question will be: Did you get to the sea? There's more hope for that than letting it go!

I remember years ago hearing someone protest that he thought as he aged, he would become a senator. Alas, he was beginning to understand that he had become a dinosaur. I sat with a group of women tonight as we shook our collective heads in dismay over what the world was coming to...No one talks anymore. It's all twitter and tweeting and texting...
    One woman described baby sitting her grandchildren and being given a set of rules as to how to proceed.
      Do not let the one year old climb the stairs.
      Do not leave the pool whilst the children are swimming.
      Do not leave any knives around for them to play with.
      Do not answer the door to strangers.
      If they cry, you may pick them up and rock them.

      By then it was difficult to hear her over the laughter....
      But...she obeyed and did not question her son lest she not be allowed to baby sit again.
                                                                         This despite the fact that both she and her husband are medical doctors and she has a specialty in pediatric psychiatry...or perhaps it is because she and her husband are medical doctors and she has a specialty in pediatric psychiatry and her son is insecure!

I'm still looking for the red thread! And I'm reading Bridge books and Louise Erdich both of which offer startling mysteries...another red thread?!

What is a poem? a friend asked.

I stumbled and mumbled...a poem doesn't have to rhyme...that much I do know...and there's something about line structure...that is important...but mostly a poem is about breathing...one breathes differently when reading a poem than when reading prose!

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

Dickinson

DEAR MR. CHIHULY

I'M SORRY...IN SEARCHING FOR RED LINES, I COULDN'T RESIST!

In Dutch, one speaks about "the red line" of a composition...that which holds the composition together whether it be a narrative or a photo and since learning this, I've been obsessively going through my photos and tossing those without a red line!

Call it hubris but I really like my photos...mind you I play it safe...how can one go wrong with a flower?
 This has been the week of cafes!

A friend sent me the following:

Under cover

I am joined at my table
In the cafe
By a man I don't know
Even though there are many
Available booths
He could enjoy alone.

Why are you sitting here?
I ask, annoyed. He shrugs
And moves on.

I have forgotten
That it is -20 outside.

I didn't notice
He hadn't bought anything.

He wanted to stay here,
Warm and invisible, for once,

As though he belonged here,
But I blew his cover.

 Gordon

To which I replied with a Brautigan poem: 

 In a Café

                I watched a man in a café fold a slice of bread

as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking

at the photograph of a dead lover.

           

Richard Brautigan

 

And there is more.

A definition of heroism and intelligence...
My friend's young boarder was alone when the fire alarm went. He realized that the most important thing in the apartment was her two cats. He searched the apartment for their cages; he put said cats in the cages (felines do not go easily) and he walked down 24 flights of stairs with said cages (one cat weighed over 20 pounds) The fire alarm was false but that doesn't affect the narrative...