#uncoffeed...

My craving for wood furniture colluded with my need to optimize minimal space in my Tiny Cottage, and I found this table on craigslist.  It looked steampunky-gorgeous, and the seller thought it would clean up nice. He told me I'd hit one out of the ball park.He'd dug around on the internet for some history on this piece, maybe underbid himself a bit. IDEAL was a popular typewriter company. Sherman and Manson were both bicycle manufacturers. BICYCLES. If you've known me for a long time, you know I'm crazy about bicycles as an art form, just as much as I love chairs.  What are bicycles but chairs on wheels, right?  In high school I rode 25+ miles a day regularly, and did all my own maintenance on my Schwinn.  When I lived in California, I bought my Motobecane at a church sale; an old French guy actually stopped me on the street to look it over.  At the moment I'm a terrible bike-mom to a Bianchi.  I had to let someone else change a tire because...

This is one of my cruelest demons: the nagging feeling that somewhere, somehow, I've done something wrong and it's coming back to haunt me. That I've hurt someone with my obliviousness, and  I should punish myself for knowing better. For doing it yet again. I'm practicing Mindful STFU, but it's slow going. I'm used to regret. When things are too calm, I start waiting for the other shoe to drop . I wait for the secret pleasure of that moment when I find out what went wrong, and I can say Aha! There it is - that place where I failed to hold up my corner of the universe. There is no math to support my belief, but if I wait long enough, I'll be able to draw an inaccurate conclusion, congratulate myself for missing the mark. We are pattern extractors, and the worst pattern is the one where we spend every minute it takes, all the way to a lifetime, creating reasons for what fascinates us, amazes us, unsettles us . There must be reason, we tell our...

For Michael, Proper My friend, My son, Confidante, Sometimes-secret soul: On your day Everybody passes hearts Like a telephone game Hoping to get one in pocket With its message Still recognisable. It looks like fun, sometimes, But nobody seems to read The secret words of hearts. I put my heart in your pocket Knowing it's safe there While I wait for my can to ring.

Well, this is awkard.  I was mentally prepped to be excited about living here at Tiny Cottage for two years, and then it happened.  Rolled right by.  Last week.   Here's the win, though:  it didn't register.  That's how comfortable I am in life right now. Remember that first time you forgot it was payday because you weren't desperately hanging on until it arrived? No, seriously, I've done that.  Not quite there at the moment, but I remember.  That's how I feel right now. Very Adulty.  In a way, I did celebrate.  I cooked a lot of things, including a stellar rhubarb-pear pie with smoked almonds, and my signature dish: Shepherd's Bhai.  This is the traditional shepherd's pie with an Indopak twist to it - the meat is seasoned with Shan's spice pack, and the potatoes are mashed with butter, garlic/ginger paste, turmeric and yogurt.  I layer mint, cilantro, and this time tomatoes between the queema and the potato t...

These are myriad "things" that are easy for us to recognize, point to, love or hate, and, in many cases, manipulate or even create." - Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: the Evolution of Minds We build archetypes without even thinking about it:  you visualise your dreams, your goals, your friends, your self.  You make decisions based largely on the mental models  you've created with data you collected to build those archetypes. If you're emotionally invested in the advice you've lent someone, you may take their failure worse than they do. If your knowledge is currency and you need to keep ledgers on where you spend it, then do that before spending, not after. Give without strings attached, and that includes advice. If you love someone, let them fail.  If you can't afford to clean them up after the fall, tell them.  Let them know you love them but you can't afford it right now.  Answer their questions honestly. That's all y...

I miss you Saturdays...  while busy people shuttle back and forth  on busy streets and the laundry van honks loud and the radio summons us to other things nobody stops to offer a good word here or there late at night with just the moon and the may-beetles I breath a sigh and grin Saturday is almost over and Sunday will begin again... - for Richard Robert Erdmann on his graduation from CMU

Life is to be celebrated.  There is nothing else.  Do that.  You are here, and that's all that matters. Seriously.

It all started with a bottle cap. In those days I worked at the Holiday Inn on Sprinkle Road. I used to meet coworkers at Bell's Brewery about once a month; we called it a Front Desk Meeting even though I worked in housekeeping at the time.  Tim could no longer work or play guitar, so he spent a lot of time watching TV.  He'd usually have thoughtful questions for me by the time I got home.  This is how I could tell what he'd been watching. "If you could take any person out of history - and it can't be someone easy, like Hitler - who would it be?" He looked at me placidly, waiting for an answer. "Just a second," I said, looking at my hands still full of things brought in from the car. "I have to think. Any other clues?"  His face remained static so I went to the kitchen and put things down. I heard him respond from around the corner. "For me, it would be the guy who invented bottle caps ." So it was the History Channe...

This morning a raven - maybe a rook - was walking on the parking deck railing I can see from my cube window. He had something in his mouth and he seemed very pleased about it. He hopped down behind the wall, like he wanted to hide his prize from other corvids nearby, or maybe find a place where he could crack it open. He looked up over the wall, and then hopped up again, and then lost his footing on the ice.  He slid a few paces, scrambled a bit, then hopped up to the pipe railing and down again - the metal was probably colder than the concrete.  All the while he held that round thing in his mouth.  I wonder whether it was something to eat, or something to covet. The sun is trying to melt the world, but it's just too cold. I felt disappointment that you weren't here - I wasn't able to get your attention so you could see for yourself.  That corner is an empty space of hope.  It was a flying spell, our pocket-magic, I tell you. How is your world today? ...

The most adorable thing happened today - my landlords sent me a postcard. They're away in warmer climes, and I'm feeding the cat, tending the plants, raiding the liquor cabinet once in a while. Okay, once. I was bored. I don't have a return address, so I'm responding to them here. Things are fine; it hasn't snowed much at all, really.  I had one big day where I shoveled from my door to the car , and then from the big tree to the road, and then shoveled the road.  The foxes laid tracks all over the yard. I stayed home from work today but I won't have to move snow at all.  Today we had what must be called sun-snow.  Either there were secret clouds or it was so bitterly cold that the snowflakes had drifted gently and intact onto leaves and were thence lifted by the wind.  I couldn't capture the effect by camera. Let me know when you open the whisky from Holland. Tigger's been good; Barb left him catnip and I will bring him some more later in the we...

Let's see your Shelfie. "Meet it is that thou shouldst learn all things; as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth as the opinions of mortals, in which is no true belief at all." - Parmenides I really love waking up to stuff like this in emails.  The Venn diagram of my social circles would look like a bubble bath, but if you consider the whole bathtub you'll see I collect diverse and well-read people. Together our book collections could rebuild Alexandria . A young girl who called herself Stencil Fox suggested I read The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie .  I was amazed.  How could Salman Rushdie be world-famous?  Could it really be that other people in the world, enough other people, like the same things I like?  Do readers not only follow complex sentences but relish them?  Sure, there was that fatwa-thing...and the hot wife with the cooking show.  But really, are there enough lovers of words to redeem humanity from my judg(...

I've been living where I am for 2 years on February 1.  The timing was very intentional:  Joshua Bell was playing the Kennedy Center on February 11th.  I was still married until February 27th and I didn't want to go see my favorite violinist with a guy who was on his way out the door. I didn't want to have to come home and put on my game-face after such a wonderful evening. So I moved. The first year was like a jon boat at sea; sometimes the waters were calm, but in all cases the sides of the boat are unnervingly low and it's difficult to find faith in that flat bottom. I mean, even the Titanic sank, right?  After the one year mark I felt more confident, like getting out of the boat and hiking up into the trees. The idea has been, I think, to enter the jungle alone.  Sometimes I feel like I'm back in the boat, sailing for the New World with no shore on the horizon. For as long as I've lived in Tiny Cottage, the oven hasn't functioned properly.  I ne...

pocket-magic I never believe people should ask what the artist was thinking. For one, I want the receiver to preserve the personal experience. I don't want to give the impression anyone was wrong, or actually didn't find a connection with the artist. Also, I'm afraid the truth is going to be disappointing. I'm good at  extrapolating scenarios from very little fact.  I can start with one thing someone says or does and, if my mood is right, build a world around that.  This is where art comes from.  If I am writing or drawing in the first person, so to speak, it would be folly to assume the message is autobiographical. Even if it is about me, it  might not be about just me but my assessment of humanity; prove me wrong.  It might be AlternateTimelineMe, a story about something that never happened but could have had I taken one more or one less step down a given road.  It could be what I think is going on in someone else's mind.  I wrote a s...

Here's the secret to my productivity:  almost every blog post starts as an email to someone who is kind enough to tolerate my wordvomit.  I love you guys. Sometimes my emails spill over from one Venn circle to the next, and I wind up filtering ideas through friends who don't know each other. The following wisdom was spawned thus: "...I wrote it because I felt like I shouldn't, and so I stuck with it until it honestly felt constructive. " - Jim McCormick I feel like I should tattoo this on my thigh, though I probably will opt for a raven instead. You know that nagging from between your ears; I know you do.  That moment of hesitation when you aren't really sure if you're on track, whether your thought is being translated clearly from subconscious to masterpiece.  You aren't sure if you're gonna piss somebody off. Forget about that last one. Completely disregard it.  Repeat after me:  someone else's piss is not your problem . Whe...

We need to stop using the word boundary when  defining human relationships.  Maybe not stop, but our society needs a bigger vocabulary.  Once boundaries are established, we need means of getting across them safely.  Your village-of-one scenario is only in your mind. A cell touches its environment.  Your home has doors.  Minds meet.  We use computers to type our messages into the twitterverse, and we anticipate response. If you just said, "I don't care  if anyone responds," you anticipated.  And it isn't what you mean - you do care, but you're preparing yourself for the possibility that you threw a rock over your boundary and nobody threw it back.  Maybe you were hoping they'd throw a rock at you, because that response feels normal. Our society is learning to defy systemic bullying.  We are, in singular form, feeling the authenticity of our true selves.  We're deprogramming the negative self-talk that tried to protect ...

My daughter was born the day before my 27-week prenatal check-up.  Her father noticed at 1:00 AM in a hotel room on Airline Highway in New Orleans that I was literally crawling to the bathroom every half hour because, I said, I had to pee. "No, you are not having that baby now," he muttered into his pillow. But I did. I went by ambulance to Charity Hospital , got stuck with a needle, and held the nurse's hand so she could tell me when to push because I was no longer feeling contractions. By 3:00 AM, Baby Yaya slid out and screamed at the world - not fearful, but annoyed. She was cold and wanted people to stop messing with her. She's still that way. I knew she would be okay despite being early; that she was a complete entity of her own, not a part of me. I was just the vessel. There's a moment like that in the creative process, if I'm lucky. Sometimes I'm focusing so hard on the details of my work that I am absolutely dumbfounded by the final p...

A girl of about 14 came up the driveway and offered to shovel - from my car straight to the road, she specified, not the full circular drive - for $40.00.   I laughed.  That's a $50 job at least, just my side, and she doesn't know about the gravel and the carpet . I had $3 in my wallet;  I gave it to her for taking the time to come up to the cottage. My snow shovel was rescued from the side of the road this summer. It's sturdy and can hold more wet snow than I should lift. I developed a snowplough method of push-and-dump.  I learned that leaves are easier to shovel with snow on top of them.  Also, the carpet in the driveway makes for easy snow removal.  I was happy to see the green moss, but wondered whether it was actually harmful to uncover it and let it be snowed over again. I'll admit I had a little bit of fun. Deer were hiding under the trees, and the foxes ran through the yard too fast for me to take a picture of their frolic. Even the ...

Today was our official last discussion on Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - kind of like an Ozzy Farewell Tour, because we've already agreed to go back and discuss sticking points once we've cleansed the palate, so to speak.  Also, we didn't really talk about GEB's content, but about our group.  We talked about talking about GEB. I'm impressed that after spending 2.5 years reading one book we're eager to go on and tackle another one.  This is a great collection of people who digress well. Excellently, even.  We asked our ringleader, Lee, whether her initial vision of the study group matched what actually happened.  Not so much, but she's pleased with the outcome. We brought to the table - literally - the following books: Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett The Mind's I, Hofstadter & Dennett Kant & The Platypus, Umberto Eco Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli The Great Unknown:...

Being creative is like pursuing the Golden Fleece . It's a challenge to pin down the visions floating in your head, put them into a language that hopefully others can read and discuss. Getting to the end, actually completing the project, is the next trial. Once your ugly is baby outside your body, you have to be brave enough to share with people . If that goes well - if enough people can read your language - you will be asked to talk about yourself . Ouch. But then there you are:   the light came in through your cracks and reflected outward, taking your soul into the world with it.  Jerry Jazz Musician published their first Short Fiction Contest in 2002, with my story Coloring Outside the Lines . In preparation for the 50th Contest, Joe Maita is running brief interviews with previous winners beginning Monday, March 7, 2019. I highly recommend you submit your best short fiction to this online magazine. But that's not why we're here.  We're here to talk about Wynt...