"Hold on, Hold on"

She told him a story about a man and woman. And a note scrawled onto a photograph. And the lesson she learned: the secret to making a decision is to make it at the right time. "It must be made in the precise moment that you already know the answer because you've already decided. Then, simply do it. Otherwise the decision makes itself."

Perhaps it was also like this.

“Yet to die. Unalone still.”

By Osip Mandelstam
 

Translated By John High and Matvei Yankelevich

 

Yet to die. Unalone still.

For now your pauper-friend is with you.

Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains,

And the dark, the cold, the storms of snow.

Live quiet and consoled

In gaudy poverty, in powerful destitution. 

Blessed are those days and nights.  

The work of this sweet voice is without sin.   

Misery is he whom, like a shadow,   

A dog’s barking frightens, the wind cuts down.   

Poor is he who, half-alive himself   

Begs his shade for pittance. 

January 15-16, 1937

Source: Poetry (April 2009).

Poetry takes over your dreams

“It is difficult to imagine the degree to which people lived then in the shadow of poetry. It was a frenzied passion, another way of being, a fireball that went everywhere on its own. We would open the paper, even the business section or the legal page, or we would read the coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup, and there was poetry waiting to take over our dreams.”

~ Gabriel García Márquez, from Living to Tell the Tale

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

WHEN YOU ARE OLD
by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

HEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

 

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

 

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

"When You Are Old" is reprinted from The Rose. W.B. Yeats. 1893.

Happy Birthday to Stephen Fry

Thank you for being so adorable!

Surrender

There is no painless path to soul consciousness.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

(260)

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know! 

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –   

To tell one's name – the livelong June –  

To an admiring Bog!

~ Emily Dickinson

I will be away. I will be here: In a dream.

I can’t take my eyes off of you, though I know your beauty destroys me. Your virtual presence presses me into this page where I can only exist as an abstraction, words on a page, with no context to frame this sense of recognition. We do not know each other. And yet, there is this strange sense of familiarity, of knowing the same thoughts, seeing the same shapes, and sorting together the same pieces in the construction of a frame of meaning. At least, I think, I saw this in a dream. It might have been the Borges, we pored over pages, and pints of porter. I am still lost in a kind of dream. An impenetrable fog of literary interpretation surrounds me and I must, for a time, dwell alone in this dream.

You will not miss me. My thoughts cannot touch you.  

I will be reading. Reading endlessly of the dreams of others. Sorting through nightmares. Searching for Yeats in a fog.

And yet I continue to sing... More Rilke

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas,
I sing to you, almost fatal birds of the soul,
knowing what you are. Where are the days of Tobias,
when one of your most radiant stood at that simple doorway,
dressed for travel and no longer frightening
(to the youth who peered out curiously, a youth like him).
Were the archangel now to emerge from behind the stars
and take just one downward step this way:
our own thundering heart would slay us. Who are you?

~ Rilke, from "The First Elegy"

More thoughts on beauty

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic
orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
 
~ Rilke from "The First Elegy"

As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness. By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents dramas in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot grasp the core of June. Everything Henry has said about her is true.

I wanted to run out and kiss her fanatastic beauty and say: 'June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existance. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childlike pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses."

~ Anaïs Nin from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1: 1931-1934

Adventures in the Teaching of Writing

Let's face it, this is frequently a thankless job fraught with political and ethical challenges, but sometimes we get small reminders of why we do it.

One of my former students was published in this year's writing program student guide. I'll take that as a sign that I'm at least doing something right. And my student just sent me an email saying, "thanks again, I couldn't have done it without you." So cute!

What if...

the following day, Molly Bloom met Oliver Mellors?

Molly Bloom, Lady Chatterley, and Lady Ashley walk into a bar. Molly Bloom leaves with Oliver Mellors. Oh yes and yes and yes!

"The tongue continues to confess"

You are left with the ache of lost love. You'd just gotten off of the Baz Bus, after a long bus ride, after sitting on a curb in Jo'burg, after visiting the Apartheid Museum, and needed a moment to catch your breath. The bus took you back to Durban. You arrived at the backpackers' once again. New people were there. A group from Milan had arrived while you'd been traveling. A week to Jo'burg and back via the Ampitheatre in the Drakensberg Mountains and Lesotho. A friendly couple and their friend: a blond man whose beauty is so striking it's almost painful to look at him. You lock eyes and a tacit understanding is exchanged. At least it seems that something is silently understood between you, but you're never quite sure what it is. You drink wine, smoke, and talk, in broken Italian, Spanish, and English, as much as the language barrier will allow. The couple frequently leaves the two of you alone and you're never quite sure what to make of it. If only you spoke the same language! He teaches you phrases in Italian and chides you for not knowing more Spanish. His eyes seem to accuse but it's your own voice in your head: you grew up in the American Southwest, how are you not fluent in Spanish? His eyes meet yours and you know you'd have green-eyed children, if it came to that. But you look away. You only have three days left in the country. All too soon it'll be time to go home. Back to America, to your studies, and the boyfriend you've left behind.

Dreaming about rain

Longing for an island, surrounded by an ocean, in the rain.

You are there, you show me these things. Things I've never seen. We drink coffee from chipped mugs and you quietly speak of my dreams. I am enraptured, like a child, at your ability to see so clearly this core truth: my heart speaks the language of dream.

Insomnia

Noche Del Amor Insomne


Noche arriba los dos con luna llena,
yo me puse a llorar y tú reías.
Tu desdén era un dios, las quejas mías
momentos y palomas en cadena
Noche abajo los dos. Cristal de pena,
llorabas tú por hondas lejanías.
Mi dolor era un grupo de agonías
sobre tu débil corazón de arena.
La aurora nos unió sobre la cama,
las bocas puestas sobre el chorro helado
de una sangre sin fin que se derrama.
Y el sol entró por el balcón cerrado
y el coral de la vida abrió su rama
sobre mi corazón amortajado.

~ G. LORCA

 My version:

The Poet’s Sleepless Night

for Federico García Lorca

You never know what you want of love.

Is it the moon?

They lie in sleep;

you writhe in discontent.

Awake they caress and cajole;

you wish to work, or sleep.
You want them to see
something more than
the shape of your face;

to see the shape of your poem.

They cannot,
or will not.
You hate them then.

Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn

Reading The Day of the Locust

Listening to the low hum

of cicadas

throbbing in my ears

Blood rushing in the sound

like a seashell
in the end

“only blood would serve”

thinking of Aurora

darkened theater

bullets hit the bodies

oh, god, this feeling

this feeling

this blue sky

this dread

I think you'll find that this was your first mistake

It started as a sort of ruse, a game to keep one entertained. She was looking for an intimate ally, a partner in crime, a co-conspirator, a co-combatant on the field of wild desire... you get the idea.

But where to search? How to find that certain someone who embodies the rare characteristics of heart, soul, body, and mind that the task requires?

***

She drove too fast, chain smoking, trying to keep the engine humming in time to the music. She didn’t know where she was going. She just drove. The desert highway was empty and the black tarmac glittered in her headlights as if embedded with shattered diamonds. She laughed to herself at the thought. She thought of carbon and the nature of the universe and realized that she didn’t know what any of it meant. She wasn’t even sure that it needed meaning. It just was. She glanced at the .45 on the seat next to her. “Oh shit. I’ve got to get rid of that thing. Got to… find… Shit.” An image of the bodies flashed through her mind; contorted, clasped together, to remain in that final embrace for eternity. Or at least until the coroner gets there. No. It was best not to think about it. Not now. It was far too late for regret. What’s done is done, there’s no taking it back now. She turned the music up and drove in time to the pulsating beat. She’d always felt like an outlaw, but what does an outlaw do in this situation? She tapped her fingers to her forehead. THINK! Right, get rid of the murder weapon. Manufacture an alibi. Get out of the country for a while.

To be continued...

* Yes I am aware of the irony. I sit at the writing desk to compose an elegy to victims of gun violence and what comes out is a short story about gun violence. When you figure out what's wrong with me, let me know. Thanks.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The man makes me laugh and cry and nod my head ecstatically "Yes!" through the tears. They just don't make them like this anymore.

I, too, didn't choose to become a poet. I wanted to paint. To sculpt. To write ANYTHING but this. Yet every day I sit at my writing desk and these words come out of me.

Still a work in progress

But this is where my head has been for most of today.

Struck Senseless

Pulled that trigger
Staccato beating dancing
ragepaindeath

and I've been somewhere else
                                                                             anesthetized
                                                                             in drink
Somnambulistic

Aurora and Oak Creek

Far
remote as Mars

wounded                                                        I can't see
                                                                               or feel
words broken
something broken
insideoutsidespinning

Olympic Fever                                                       Gripped                             
                                                                               clinging

the simple joy of a body
moving with poetic grace

Wondering
where and when
the next one will take place

                                                                          Upsidedown

worldwordswounds
spinningspinningspinning
deathandlifeanddeath
                                                                            senseless

This was not written for me

Still it's pretty good.

is this dada (or do i love you)?

by Benjamin Perez

let me make myself perfectly clear:
i am a matador standing on his head reading an almanac printed
upsidedown&backwards

yes, this is both the beginning and the end of song

to exist within this sweet crazed anguish
to exist within this reckless dedication
to exist within this perpetual sunrise of bullfights and propellers

body groaning atop the tender machine gun of ancient fondness

endless corridors of chocolate tigers
endless galleries of lollipop bears

i am a hot whirlwind
i am a wheelbarrow hauling thunder
i am sweet carrion-slow dancing beneath the primordial crime of the vulture's kiss

first: the delicious dangling
then the hot

red

descending

_______

(i beg you
unbuckle my belt)

yes, i am dreaming electricity
let me pour you a sundress of sherbet
let me blow you a nightgown of bubbles

The Noctambulists

Darkness. Darkness always reigns here. Fog. Seemingly impenetrable. We walk for miles. Passing unseen others on this road. Hearing only footsteps. Seeing no light. Limbs heavy, with sleep encrusted eyes, walking unseeing and unseen. The body moves of its own delight.

O Coffee

O coffee, amber nectar, life, being,
Thou without whose presence I but seem dead
Brewed in kitchen cups to keep sleep fleeing,
Best black, slightly pale with milk, drunk from bed,
Warmest love! In this please be true. O thou
With steaming mugs of coffee in my bed,
The outside world seems cold, distant below,
The window, the street noise humming low, until
Our bodies cling to heat from cups, lips blow
Steam to lips blissful dreaming still, to fill
Mouths with sweets, "my love, pass the paper here."

With such lovely living this simple frill.
My wild spirit tamed at last here;
With coffee and paper; love, hear, oh hear!



Writing an ode to coffee is more difficult than it might seem!

Today my heart told me this

I couldn't disagree.

Aphrodisia

By Richard Hoffman
 

Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered,

sibilant similes and promises sotto voce.

It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard,

the form and content clash, create this weird

distortion like an echo or a tape delay.

Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered.

On which do you place emphasis: The words?

Or the breath? The farfetched or the foreplay?

It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard

when objectivity has disappeared

and your lover is getting further carried away.

Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered

vows? It’s hard to take him at his word,

or hers: Speak up! Proclaim! you want to say.

It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard,

hard to admit one sharp as you is stirred.

You need to back off, cool down, act blasé.

Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered.

It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard.

This is going somewhere

I just don't yet know where.

“Last night I dreamed that your fingers were razors. You sliced me open, cut me into a paper doll, and decorated me with ribbons and bows. You used me as a bookmark. I was left there, smashed between the pages of your favorite book and couldn’t get out.”

“Which book?” He asked the question absently as if to suggest that it required no answer.

“A Moveable Feast.”

“Very interesting. Do you remember which page? Which passage?”

“I don’t know the page. I think the passage pertains to an ongoing conversation we always seem to have about life and love and human frailty and the pieces we never seem able to put together.”

And it's also like this...

Two by Borges

Borges and I

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

***

Everything and Nothing

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the astonishment of a friend to whom he had begun to speak of this emptiness showed him his error and made him feel always that an individual should not differ in outward appearance. Once he thought that in books he would find a cure for his ill and thus he learned the small Latin and less Greek a contemporary would speak of; later he considered that what he sought might well be found in an elemental rite of humanity, and let himself be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At the age of twenty-odd years he went to London. Instinctively he had already become proficient in the habit of simulating that he was someone, so that others would not discover his condition as no one; in London he found the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person. His histrionic tasks brought him a singular satisfaction, perhaps the first he had ever known; but once the last verse had been acclaimed and the last dead man withdrawn from the stage, the hated flavor of unreality returned to him. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamberlane and became no one again. Thus hounded, he took to imagining other heroes and other tragic fables. And so, while his flesh fulfilled its destiny as flesh in the taverns and brothels of London, the soul that inhabited him was Caesar, who disregards the augur's admonition, and Juliet. who abhors the lark, and Macbeth, who converses on the plain with the witches who are also Fates. No one has ever been so many men as this man who like the Egyptian Proteus could exhaust all the guises of reality. At times he would leave a confession hidden away in some corner of his work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard affirms that in his person he plays the part of many and Iago claims with curious words "I am not what I am". The fundamental identity of existing, dreaming and acting inspired famous passages of his.

For twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was suddenly gripped by the tedium and the terror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many suffering lovers who converge, diverge and melodiously expire. That very day he arranged to sell his theatre. Within a week he had returned to his native village, where he recovered the trees and rivers of his childhood and did not relate them to the others his muse had celebrated, illustrious with mythological allusions and Latin terms. He had to be 'someone: he was a retired impresario who had made his fortune and concerned himself with loans, lawsuits and petty usury. It was in this character that he dictated the arid will and testament known to us, from which he deliberately excluded all traces of pathos or literature. His friends from London would visit his retreat and for them he would take up again his role as poet.

History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one."

~ Jorge Luis Borges

Because

This makes my heart stop. And start. And stop and start. Again and again and again. Stop.

I'm serious! Stop it. So much beauty is oppressive; in vain I try to cover it with the inadequate veil of my words.

Someone wrote this for me.

"And Joyce said unto them, “Does this Ovid you? The
Wordsworth that I speak is Stevens. Have I not chosen
Twain, and one of you is a Dickens? The world Horace
me, because I Tolstoy, and the works thereof are
Ellison. If any Mailer thirst, come unto me, and
drink. Whoso Breton in me, out of their Beckett shall
flow Rabelais of living Williams. For I am the
Lucretius of the world.”

~ Benjamito Péretz

Yet another poem written for me cause I'm special.

Our Faulkner

Our Faulkner, who art in O’Hara,
Hallowed be thy Neruda.
Thy Kafka come.
Thy Whitman be done,
On Emerson as it is in Hemingway.
Give us this day our daily Beckett.
And forgive us our Tennyson,
As we forgive those who Tolstoy against us.
And lead us not into Trotsky,
But deliver us from Eliot.
For thine is the Kipling,
And the Pound, and the Paz, and the Plath—and the Gore Vidal,
For ever and ever.

Auden.

~ Ben Perez

I wrote this elsewhere for a tangible purpose, but I repost it here for an intangible one.

To me, writing is a mode of discovery. It is a tool that I employ to analyze, and make sense of, the world around me. (I like things that make sense.) It is also a tool that I can use to analyze the world within and, to some extent, make that inner-world visible to others. Oh yes, despite my best intentions, I seek understanding! Or is it controversy? Sometimes I seek that too.

But deeper than that, and perhaps as a function of being an overly intuitive and rational person, I do not see language as being separable from thought. I see action without thought as meaningless (try as I may to question and understand this position that I hold because part of me insists that it cannot/should not be true). So for me, there is nothing outside of the text. Language shapes the world around us because thought (and for me language = thought) is our only way to access it.

Some of this is taken directly from my sociology textbook's definition of culture. Basically each of us knows the world only as we perceive it; however, those perceptions are based on learned interpretations because almost all learning is social. Therefore “culture” is essentially an arbitrary, socially created, construct. Since culture is an arbitrary social construct it is therefore not “Natural” nor is it to be taken as a given. Cultural meaning is conveyed through *LANGUAGE*, symbols, cultural myths, structure and practice of social institutions, and social rules for congruent action. These vehicles of meaning together construct our worldview, our sense of identity, and our ideologies. Selves, societies, and institutions change continually through interaction; therefore, social reality is situational. But even in a situational social reality, context governs our interpretation of cultural meaning. While the “real conditions” of existence are not subjective, they only have meaning through interpretation and that interpretation is learned through social interaction (which is governed by language). Social meaning defines social reality, so the only way to change social reality is through some form of communication. For me, that communication takes the form of text.

Ergo, the pen is mightier than the sword!

The only way, for me, to change "reality" is to communicate my ideas through writing because, in a very real sense, there is nothing outside of the (T)ext.

The Cut-Up

A kind of cut up poem from a list of tag words on the side bar of an e-zine I was reading

OK GO!

aging Backyard Climate Blog bacteria brain cancer carbon dioxide
climate change diabetes diet disease DNA
Environment
fat food gene

genetics global warming
Health
medicine memory nano NASA NOAA
obesity
ocean
perception
physics

pollution psychology robot science

science and technology
news
science article science blog science news sciencentral science video
surgery video

Because I love this man

The New Poetry Handbook by Mark Strand

1 If a man understands a poem,
he shall have troubles.

2 If a man lives with a poem,
he shall die lonely.

3 If a man lives with two poems,
he shall be unfaithful to one.

4 If a man conceives of a poem,
he shall have one less child.

5 If a man conceives of two poems,
he shall have two children less.

6 If a man wears a crown on his head as he writes,
he shall be found out.

7 If a man wears no crown on his head as he writes,
he shall deceive no one but himself.

8 If a man gets angry at a poem,
he shall be scorned by men.

9 If a man continues to be angry at a poem,
he shall be scorned by women.

10 If a man publicly denounces poetry,
his shoes will fill with urine.

11 If a man gives up poetry for power,
he shall have lots of power.

12 If a man brags about his poems,
he shall be loved by fools.

13 If a man brags about his poems and loves fools,
he shall write no more.

14 If a man craves attention because of his poems,
he shall be like a jackass in moonlight.

15 If a man writes a poem and praises the poem of a fellow,
he shall have a beautiful mistress.

16 If a man writes a poem and praises the poem of a fellow overly,
he shall drive his mistress away.

17 If a man claims the poem of another,
his heart shall double in size.

18 If a man lets his poems go naked,
he shall fear death.

19 If a man fears death,
he shall be saved by his poems.

20 If a man does not fear death,
he may or may not be saved by his poems.

21 If a man finishes a poem,
he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passion
and be kissed by white paper.

100 Things Everyone Should Master

From Mighty Girl, who is simply the coolest.


1. Set goals
2. Keep a plant alive
3. Care for a baby
4. CPR
5. Feel confident naked
6. Interview for a job
7. Bake a birthday cake
8. Use a fire extinguisher
9. Use a compass
10. Express condolences
11. Tell a joke
12. Remember names
13. Sharpen a knife
14. Dump a poisonous friend
15. Check your oil and tires
16. Relax/Meditate
17. Apologize
18. Be polite
19. Get a good night’s sleep
20. Dress appropriately for the situation
21. Type
22. Fight fair
23. Read
24. Ask for exactly what you want
25. Trap a rat or mouse
26. Basic stretches and/or yoga poses
27. Heimlich
28. Please a partner sexually
29. Tell your partner what you want in bed
30. Shine your shoes
31. Make your case in writing
32. Tie a scarf or tie (bowtie too)
34. Mix a signature drink
35. Delegate
36. Make a simple meal for company
37. Give a neckrub
38. Drive a stick
39. Ride a bike
40. Swim
41. Use chopsticks
42. Make a new friend
43. Build something simple (ie: shelf, desk, treehouse)
44. Change a tire and put on snow chains
45. Give a toast
46. Make a perfect egg
47. Speak in public
48. Improve your mood
49. Simple mending
50. Travel light
51. Steam vegetables
52. Negotiate
53. Be a good listener
54. Be alone comfortably
55. Select good produce
56. Maintain your weight
57. Build savings
58. Say no/disappoint someone
59. Use a drill
60. Flexibility/equanimity in the face of the unexpected
61. Make small talk
62. Skip a rock
63. Set personal boundaries
64. Organize your home
65. Deliver a eulogy
66. Shuffle a deck of cards
67. Dance socially
68. Know a second language
69. Win the affection of a dog or cat
70. Write a quality love letter
71. Play one card game well
72. Eat healthfully
73. Create a budget
74. Take a decent photo
75. Order the wine
76. Know what makes you happy
77. Flirt
78. Make a good first impression
79. Write a thank you note
80. Find a perfect gift
81. Assertiveness
82. Arriving on time
83. Make a little kid laugh
84. Kiss well
85. Make a good mix tape
86. Tie basic knots
87. Dress to flatter your shape
88. Build a campfire
89. Change the subject
90. Acquire or shed a habit
91. Treat a hangover
92. Be a good judge of character
93. Season a cast-iron skillet
94. Give a compliment
95. Accept a compliment
96. Contribute in group situations
97. Judge yourself by your own yardstick
98. Calculate the tip:
Simple trick to calculating a tip. Move the decimal over one place and double that total. So, if your bill is $100.00, it would be $10.00 x2 = $20. Or if your bill is $5.23, your tip should be .52 x2= $1.04
99. Ask for a raise
100. Build a shelter

The only thing better than sending a manuscript off is seeing it in print.

Writing deadlines met!

Marina

This made me think of you:

A Short Story

My friend wrote this

I think it's pretty good. It makes me want to try my hand at conventional narrative. Maybe.

O Gore Vidal

Your acerbic courage and willful insights will be missed. Rest in peace.

“There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”

How can one not love that man?