Account for your days
“So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom” -Psalms 90:12 Flinging oneself into a new year is an easier jump if the past is accounted for, the ledger closed. I’ve written some 175,000 words on 37days this year. That’s a lot of …
Be still, or at the very most, swing slowly
“The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels.” – Georg Trakl This week, the same message came to me from four places: on a table, while driving up Hillside Street, by a bonfire, and watching a tree swing trace its lazy arc. On the table She opened the door. …
Signal your turns
“People change and forget to tell each other.” – Lillian Hellman My sweet, old Ford Bronco II has 172,000 miles of history in it, a broken driver’s side door that has to be opened from the outside, a passenger window stuck in one position not quite all the way up …
Claim your A
“More grows in the garden than the gardener knows he has sown.” –Spanish Proverb Three stories circling one theme: The first story When my older daughter Emma was 5 years old, she admired the bracelet of a family friend—“I love that bracelet!” Emma told the woman excitedly one afternoon. “That’s …
Do or do not do
"Do or do not do. There is no try." – Master Yoda Something floated to the surface of my consciousness recently, vying for frontal lobe space, squeezing into precious real estate needed for phone numbers, due dates for 8th grade science projects on water pollution, and the first verses of …
Follow your desire lines
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson In the park where we play, there are nicely laid out concrete paths, leading from the swings to the picnic tables, from the castle to the soccer field, …
Always carry a pencil
“What writing is all about is what happens on the page between the reader and the page…What I want is a collaboration, really, with the reader on the page where the reader is also making an effort, is putting something of himself into it in the way of understanding, in …
Leave your base camp
“Money often costs too much.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson Last Tuesday, I found myself in the unusual position of being at the very top and very bottom of Maslow’s Happy Hierarchy of Needs at exactly the same time. I can’t recall ever being in two places at one time like this, …
Frame your storyboard
“Not equal to Not metaphor Nor standing for Not sign.” – Minor White Imagine Beetle Bailey’s surprise. As Aldous Huxley said, perhaps Earth is another planet’s Hell. And maybe on that other planet, gargantuan people sit down with their oil drum vats of coffee, butter their big-as-car bagels, and open …
Put your own mask on first
“I cannot live without my life!” – Emily Brontë I fly a lot. And even so, it’s a lot less than I used to fly. Me and my Delta -Ultra -Flying -Too -Much -Not -Living -The -Life -on -the -Ground Super Platinum Card, that sad testament to life way too …
