Apparently I am riffing away on Tara’s 4-part series; maybe because the content of the series– “The Deconstruction of Ennui” — is like my own personal gospel choir Hallelujah-ing behind me while I work. Consumption is one of those things I’ve written about before, but I don’t think I’ve ever connected it to boredom. When…
Category: Ponderings
On thoughts, and the thinking behind them
Laundry, and Love
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I get to feel superior to socks when I am conquering a load of laundry. That is sort of cool, isn’t it? There’s a swathe of the backyard that is leaf-free. Just one corner. (Well it was yesterday). I did that. I own that. Housework is menial work. Which is to say “humble” or “lowly”…
Everybody’s got a darkness…
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The fog and the mugginess this morning reminds me of London. Previously posted on Jan 16, 2006 Everybody’s got a darkness They’re not going to show it to you. It’s Monday and grey again in London. I dreamed of you last night. I sat in a cafe over cappuccinos with some friend. He told me…
Lullaby for a Head Injury
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Mr. Blue, you did it right But soon comes Mr. Night, creepin’ over Now his hand is on your shoulder Never mind, I’ll remember you this… I’ll remember you this way… — Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra After the sound of the skull cracking, and after the soft sound of my flesh finding…
Whispers in My Ear
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Or, Distinguishing Random Life from Serendipity People keep giving me things to read that are telling to SHUT DOWN. Books about Machu Picchu. Books about moving to the country in Vermont. It always seems so hard to distinguish between what is the universe whispering in my ear and what is just an act of random…
An (Fantasy) Island of My Own
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Today I was talking to some friends whom I haven’t seen much of over the summer. I shared with them a bit of the details of the roller coaster of our last few weeks. You know, just your average roller coaster of life. When I finished rolling out the 4-11, the friend circle was just…
Striving for Balance
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A Guest Post by ‘Shiny Bits’ blogger, Paul Merrill I love quirky products. It’s fun to cruise our local Whole Foods Market on a Saturday and taste samples from a variety of sometimes local small companies. Occasionally I take the plunge and buy one of their toothpastes or boxes of cereal. But for the most…
On Being Brand New
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Only once do we have the chance to ACTUALLY be brand new. We arrive on the earth, sticky and discombobulated, completely unprepared for all this light and noise. From then on, we are experienced. We’ve seen it all. So we have to do all manner of contortions to reinvent ourselves. The book I am reading…
The Monochrome Summers
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Shopping at Target for school supplies takes us into the arms of August, summer’s last great hump. I smell the Ticonderoga pencil shavings already and summer’s great keening begins. The season is nowhere over, yet it is aging. Surrounded by the lemon-yellow-forest-green-cornflower-burnt-sienna colors swirling around me in the all-new-all-same-mass Crayola aisle. Even as I buy…
Untangle Me
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My desire to untangle runs deep right now. In savasana last night, I imagined myself going “technology free” suddenly. Saying goodbye to the phones and the televisions, the blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts that hang on me like screeching monkeys. I imagined what an evening would look like– the savanna of night time from washing…
Minivan Seeks Same for Meaningful Relationship
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On the road, so that means many hours enclosed in our van as a group. Somehow I keep thinking that the more time we spend on the road in this Odyssey, the more it becomes a part of us. Sort of like growing roots only with no chance of growing vineyard vegetables any time soon.…
On Being Midwestern: Nice
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While I’m traveling around Canada and New England, I’ve put together some thoughts on HOME. Here’s today’s installment, ON BEING MIDWESTERN, Part 1. Nice. In my scan for ideas, I stumbled across this Columbus, Ohio message board, where a fair number of Midwesterners in that area of the country give their thoughts on what happens…
All These Distractions
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I recently joined a Facebook group that is a group and a game where points are awarded for posts, pics, links and comments, based on their wittiness and hilarity. The group’s moderator however, really prefers somewhat crude jokes, so I have to dip deep down in the barrel of my wit repertoire to get points.One…
Time, Sculpted and Consumed
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We have time, and we use it up. It is the ultimate commodity in a temporary life. In a creative space, it seems to waiver in form: great gaping hours of fearful emptiness, or ultra-thin slivers of panicked release. Between reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Wherever you Go, There You Are” and Scoutie Girl’s latest post on…
Venice and Other Temporary Places
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The copy of John Berendt’s “The City of Fallen Angels” that Heather gave me is water-logged. It looks as though it made it here by water taxi. The book, which I am halfway through, wanders through this old city, meeting real Venetians and asking them: “How do you feel about Venice?” It’s a series of…
