Opening new doors

A morning on which one thing led to another, link to link and now I know of people and things that were outside my scope when I woke up.





With vinyl crackles for nostalgia, Eric Satie from Yusef Lateef.

October 27

Wayne Thiebaud's "Cut Cakes"

To do today:

Celebrate son's birthday, savor and delight in the gift he is, has always been.  Appreciate the way in which his gentle nature, his humanness, his forgiving inclinations, his loyalty to friends, his questing mind remind me of what I value in this world.

Trust that all is well.

Find the joy in this moment, the present conditions.

Begin The Longer Piece, even if just a working title and opening paragraph.  Do not mess about.  This is important.

Let's get over ourselves for 2 minutes and collapse in gratitude to ART

Any feelings of dreariness cannot coexist with the discovery of Joanne Harper's Frida Kahlo In A Garden finger puppet.  At least not at my house.

Original stitched art by Joanne Harper.

Button debut

The Rubbermoon Co., under Kristen Power's new ownership, has just started producing pin-back buttons.  Today she released one of my dolly face designs and said, for a short time, the buttons will be given with a stamp purchase from her etsy shop.  The etsy shop is not the same as the Rubbermoon website, for anyone interested.  Newer and featured items and a button.  There is a contact link at Kristen's etsy page for inquiries.  I've wanted buttons almost forever.  Happy dancing indicated.

Clarity - not as easy as you might think

For all that YouTube offers, could there not be an original album version of Bob Dylan's "Oh Sister?"  Could the covers perhaps be categorized separately?  No disrespect to those musicians, just the sincere yearning to hear, on demand, the song as it plays in my head.

So having said ix-nay to that morning jukebox tune, and wherever it was taking me, I landed instead on a Van Morrison original in which my favorite part, and they are all grand, is the spoken-word segment..."I didn't know you stayed up so late..." and "...gotta play this Muddy Waters..." and more.   The surely not-by-chance encounter he depicts stirs personal memory of a late-night caller in another century, another incarnation.  A Dorianne Laux poem, "Antilamentation," posted by Elizabeth a few days ago, begins with the admonishment to "Regret nothing..."  It is some piece of writing, enhanced by her inclusion of a recorded reading.  I saved it as an ideal, the exercise I practice in hope of coming close.  I took as its message that I must pay even more attention, make (and write down) the connections of this to that, not settle for anything less than the perfect word, the searing image, the truth.  I've learned that, even in conversation before it becomes writing, clarity is my most reliable sidekick, a precision about what was, the straight razor cut that leaves nothing befogged.   There is my assignment for today, for the rest of my days.  And before the mail is collected tomorrow, I also have an art commitment to be completed with the same fervent intention.  Not doing things by half-measures take a lot out of a girl.  Let me rest a while in the music.

Say yes to dancing stars

Corita Kent's art, Friedrich Nietzsche's quote

“Our lives unfold in ways that we cannot fathom beforehand. That condition of not knowing produces a sense of wonder and openness to what may come.”  Roger Housden

(The Housden quote is from an audio series called Teaching What We Need to Learn, hosted by Raphael Cushnir.  As of Oct. 16, the programs were still available for listening or downloading here.  The link will take you directly to the recorded talks but there you will find a link to the HOME page which will give you more context.)

As evidence, which I gather on all topics because it seems wise to have as much proof as one can amass, on the morning I began writing this I found a link on FB to a new Pema Chodron title about change and uncertainty, obvious indicators of chaos.


If we are dancing stars born from chaos, then it really IS all physics, which I had begun to suspect.  But in a human and not a celestial body, as sentient beings, comfort and the awareness of chaos make difficult playmates.  Being part of a naturally-occuring process does not quarantee a quiet mind.

However, chaos as an antonym for complacency and not comfort takes on the aspect of quest, seeking/seeker, more of my favorite metaphoric rocket fuel to propel us beyond settling, being stuck.  We all know the water needs to boil to cook the noodles.

We churn, suffer our gastric juices.  We yearn and fidget, dream and try to foresee how we might map our lives as dancing stars, knowing we have not been endowed with such vision.  We reread the contract, looking for the loophole that permits explosive miracles to be born from tranquility, a sure passage to our hopes of greatness without the need for volcanic shenanigans.  Chaos, what an unexpected new best friend.

When it has to be the Supremes or nothing

"You Can't Hurry Love" was the second single from the Supremes' album The Supremes A' Go-Go. It reached the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart in the United States, and #3 in the United Kingdom. The Supremes' version of the song is honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's permanent collection of 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
The Supremes also released their own Italian cover of the song: L'amore verrà (Love will come).

There is an aspiration: sit down and listen to all 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.  Let the games begin.