She had a great diminutive Cuban grandfather by adoption. If something went wrong, ie, a knife breaking while cutting the illustrious bird, or the hose kinking, he would get a faraway look + reach for the ceiling (or sky) reciting Shakespeare. He could pull out, by heart, the appropriate character + speech for any situation. 

-Chance Neglected 23/24 

Speak on, but be not over tedious. - Shakespeare 

this is -Tyberious Laughing.

The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.  -Orhan Pamuk

Listen through your screams to the wind still whispering: Don't give up -- Surrender!  -Eric Ganther

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.  -Oscar Wilde

You’d think that after so many years of yoga i could put my boots on standing up + not fall over. i obviously have not been consistent. 

i am comforted by Maude’s observation, Consistency is not a human trait. 

Regrets sent. Regrets all kinds. Just another human condition. We often regret not having done something, more than if we had. 

e.g.

-When i left for good, not taking the wobbler from the pressure cooker just to drive him crazy.

-Another time, when i left for good, not stopping w/ she looks just like you, but needing to add ...only younger. 

-Never having a lost decade. Off center, off base and slightly skewed. Actually, would i remember if I had? Well, something about purgatory, suspended animation, + time spent in Limbo. Leave it to Latin America to make purgatory into a dance. 

Aye, Sometimes there is a need to sum up a conversation, to find a point, which seemed important at the time. Go figure, we all did. 

Drew: Do they have a class where they teach you how to change into another animal your own size?

Me: No shape-shifting. But, they have martial arts.

Drew: Oh, that sounds good.

Full Flower Moon. 

Inch by inch, row by row, gonna to make this garden grow...

That has been the kids goodnight lullaby since their beginning. Having sang that every night for ‘Drew's first 6 years Chloe's 4, i’m thinking i don’t know another song by heart.

That really just could not be.

We are grooming ‘Drew as a silent gardener. No gas machines -only hand tools, + push propeller mowers. A garden about growing rather than cutting. + always, later, about the process of decay.

It’s hard to imagine that w/ all of the safety gear kids are suppose to wear these days that they may actually get through an entire childhood without a skint knee. It’s just unnatural.

We do spend a lot of time protecting our kids. i reckon there are different buffers found at each generation. But why not give them the full catastrophe?

165 It was requisite to see Niagara falls on our road trip. We ended up hitting the state line in the middle of the night + all the fancy lights had been shut down. We smuggled W.S.Trax into Canada. By that time she was very use to ‘lie still’ on the floor in the laundry bag. After seeing the big deal we walked up to the part where the water was calmer + belied no threat. It seemed like an nice swim around. i thought how easy it would be if you had a death wish to ease yourself into that lovely water. Fifty feet along the drift you’d get caught up in the here after. It’s not something you’d be able to change your mind about. You’d need to have set your resolve. 

Last night, lying in bed, i began thinking how real that danger would be if one of the children slipped through the space between the grass + cement into that water for a little swim. The kind of realization that makes your heart race even though the danger is ten thousand miles away + ten years past. i had to mentally reduce Niagara to a harmless puddle to get back to sleep.

i often wake up + not know where i am. i don’t recognize the orientation of the room. The window being THERE, the door THERE.  But some inner prompting lets me to know. It doesn't make it sunny to know this is simply the human condition + limitation working.

from -Script For a Practicing Artist + an Unfinished Life.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.  -Mark Twain

There are lots of reasons to cry.
It would fill 4 or 5 books just to list the why's.
-Chloe Mae

Those Groucho glasses ... are they used to see through the humor or to see w/ humor. Why do i worry about these things? i just cant make these things go away.

Not trying to try to be difficult.

i don't like to talk to cops. i feel compelled to confess something i didn’t do. + they may feel obligated to pull me in for questioning.

i like mental fleeing. + the other kind. Where-to Pilgrimages ... a variety of travel that  falls outside the threshold of your adventure boundaries.

Vacation of mystery, where you pay your money + get on the plane. The only clue to where you are traveling to is the list of what you were asked to bring.

• Two ripped tee shirts, a copy of Bound for Glory, floss, wipes, a wing + a prayer.
- theme might be, Boxcars and Croissants.

• Loose belt, tweed cap, cushion, old newspapers, lined moleskine, favorite pen.
- genre would be; Castle and Pub Crawl.

• Diaphanous dress, night glasses, large canvas bag, water purifier, band-aids, air sickness pills.
- probably be, Under Bridges and Over Rainbows.

Vacations titles, would be more even more fun to think up than, say, the names for new nail polish colors. + who wouldn’t want that job?

Take the wrong turns toward the uncharted; find something new.

Oh, for writing out loud!

second wind...
Nothing awakens the heart or stops it cold more than dirtying pages. To me, writing is much like gardening. Carrying my tools out, i turn to a place looking as though it needs a bit of tending to. i have a sit. Before long, using a word dragnet, i’ve raked in + set up a few pages, + weeded through verbosity.

i heard KR will be writing an autobiography. Good thing. I hope it’s full of lies. He’s one of my heroes.

116 Having just spied Keith Richards on the cover of the Rolling Stone, i ran back to the studio to ask who would go get it for me. Someone joked, It’s just like porn, after the first time you buy, it’s no big deal.

A kind soul left + came back with the tabloid. i ran into the oval office showing off the cover image. A universal grimace, Jayne, I just had lunch!

...the river is flowing, rolling and flowing. the river is flowing, down to the sea...

i’m guessing we had the last snowfall of the year a few days ago. We drove home after dark + experienced the spaceship phenomenon of entering another dimension. When driving against the wind + the large snowflakes are lit up in the headlights angled directly toward you, it resembles passage in hyper space.

The Ship Sails On. Bravo! After standing in the wings of a performance my sides ache from holding my breath w/ the opera singers. i knew a singer in Maine who would open the door + sing out Daisy! She wouldn’t dare hurt her voice by screaming for her dog. There must exist a book of singing voice etiquette to look up the correct operatic way to call out.

The designer David Walker said, in answer to a college trying to get him to commiserate,
No, we choose what we want to be, and we pay for it.

i remember asking David if he thought in British accent. He said he never took curtain calls. i always wondered if that was true. 

The best would be at a restaurant table full of professional singers on your birthday. Or, best ever, would be if they mark + sing Happy Birthday off key. Half way through kick it into full opera crescendo expression to the end.

i Went into a posh market today where they put the fresh ground coffee right next to the gourmet chocolate so the aromas mingled to make magic. i appreciated that.

Traveling on the highway, one new it was good Friday because there was a boroboro looking fellow w/ a full size crucifix dragging it annoyingly w/ a roller skate strapped to the base. i reckon he wasn’t expecting the good Samaritan.

Once + again the seasons move like the slow breeze where you can catch them. It’s then you see all of the space between then + now + cant possibly describe all that went on in between.

Melancholia vs. echolalia, w/ accordion.
Enlightenment comes with a headache.

When one is thoroughly practiced in something, it is not necessary to look deliberately. -Yagyu Munenori

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.  -Mark Twain.

i am not afraid.

Dream of shuffling the scripture.

Sign on the pearly gate, We have the divine right not to serve anyone. i’m thinking ...Who’s sign is this anyway?

A sputter. Religion largely assumes we exist + that we are spiritual beings w/ a direct propose.

Questioning belittles faith. i do believe on a sanctified level we are not at all that different + so to put much energy into worrying about the hereafter life may be time not well spent + possibly wasted. Being spiritual about the herenow plane, though, has benefits. Spirit creator, spirit redeemer, all spirit w/in us. 

words & excuses / loop knot / slip knot...ooops!
A question crawls out of the question before. 

Ask the kids and they will answer:
i don't think Jesus is in heaven anymore, that was a long time ago.  -ANHH

Maybe we cant remember what heaven was like before we were born because it’s the same as here.  -CMHH

Birds keep hitting the window pane / pain. Story of an asylum, but which kind; forgiveness asylum, or, insanity asylum. Noun or adjective.

117 Break. A loaded word. Breakable, breakaway, breakthrough, breakup, brakes, broke, broken. Again + again i revisit breaking into a boarded up insane asylum near New London. Mark had taken in tobacco, + i prayer ties, as gifts to Spirit in trade for the inconvenience. We needed to be prepared if we bumped into a troubled shadow along the way. We scaled the brick facade up the three story institutional building to the open window + lowered ourselves into the industrial kitchen. We jumped down to the worn tile ground floor rivaling monkeys w/ the aid of steel armature. Room after enormous room was hauntingly empty. The floor was covered in a mixed rubbish of leaves, dust, + animal droppings. From door to door there were cleared trails made by prowling animals on a mission w/ a quickest bee line through the room. There was a laboratory, used to study brain function + perform lobotomy. Shoe boxes were scattered in disarray throughout the clinical rooms. These were full of glass slides w/ images of sliced brains. The rubber rooms were littered w/ metal cots + telltale handwritten letters to the outside. Having never been delivered, these reports must have been patient’s therapy. A way for the inmates to feel in control of their destiny. There is an image burned in my mind of a water flooded room w/ a metal seat resting in the middle of the floor, it’s stagnant reflection in the water. The far brick wall suffered a chest high opening. The stone wall is crumbled in as though someone barreled through battering ram style getting into this room. The set makings for something sinister + very sad.

Sleeping under a pall for a quilt bed spread. i had the distinct feeling someone was leaning over + peering down into my face from the darkness — seeing if they recognized me — but no one was out there.

So it is in the world, when you go into the depths of the mountains, if you want to go farther, you will again come out of the mountains.  -Miyamoto Musashi