After the storm
It’s Odin’s day and the mail box survived . . .
Sunday night around midnight TulseyTown was hit by a major storm, featuring 100 mph straight-line winds across the whole of the metro and rural surrounds. 500,000 immediately lost power and as of this morning power remains nonexistent for some 100,000 … yers trooley among them. And, if that was not enough karma, temperatures are pushing to the near 100 degree mark during the recovery which is now predicted as this coming Saturday. Friends invited me to use their unaffected circuitry so that I might catch upon the avalanche of flotsam and jetsam in the Mailbox on Watercourse Way.
Usually, I work using a desktop Windows machine hitched to a wave keyboard which makes relatively quick work of the editing of these entries. The backup, in use at this hour and in this a/c cooled space, is a two-year old MacBook Pro — a superb device but with a mind of its own. Not it’s fault, but the keyboard and composition make for a slow slog in the eddies. That all said, herewith a few noteworthy (IMO) leftovers in today’s mailbox.
It is the birthday of French existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, born in 1905 Paris. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in literature, but became one of only two laureates in the prize’s history to decline it.
Edward Snowden was born on this date in 1983 Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
running from our loneliness is the road most traveled
The path on the other side of loneliness
is not about following in the footsteps of the old and dead.
It is about seeking what they sought in your own way.
As a starting point, it is suggested that one gets personal in public,
wears a T-shirt that doesn’t advertise—or say—anything,
learns to sit still; then, sitting still, learn one thing:
it is the past and the future which are illusions.
— 6.21.23 jb
Throwing fits . . .
In the Satyr's mailbox . . .
“Fitting in” is not “where it's at.” AND, we all want to belong. – Laura Belgray
Today is the 141st anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's birth. The controversial composer was born in Oranienbaum, a suburb of 1882 St. Petersburg, Russia. The May 29, 1913 premiere of his ballet piece – Sacre du Printemps ( “”Right of Spring”) — resulted in a riot at the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées, a beautiful new theatre in Paris,
We are not different from the environments we live inside. Our senses open into a world of sensual information that feeds, clothes and coaxes us into joy. As we open to the more-than-human world around us, it will send back messages to us in our own voice. We will open. And, then, we will open. – Sophie Strand
True love is unlike lesser forms of love. ‘True love” is a different story. When it happens, individuals usually feel in touch with each other’s core identity. – bell hooks
Just because you would be good at it doesn't mean you have to, and you don't have to be a “Type A” in order to succeed. Check it out: a Perspective on the “late bloomer” with Laura Belgray, author of “Tough Titties” in a revealing, candid and entertaining interview with Marie Forleo.
Our sense of reality is full of “and.”
It is natural and supernatural,
profane and sacred, matter and spirit.
Once you get rid of the words,
reality is only One – and it is not a “thing,”
and everything “fits.” — jb
Disrupters
In Freya's mailbox today . . .
The status quo will not disrupt itself.
Today is Bloomsday. On this day in 1904, James Joyce and Nora Barnacle went on their first date.
The prolific poet, novelist Joyce Carol Oates was born on this day in 1938 Lockport, New York.
It’s also the birthday of Geronimo , the leader of the Chiricahua band of the Apache people. He was born in 1829 near present-day Clifton, in southeastern Arizona.
If the climate crisis as taught us anything, it is that we are responsible for it – all of it. We are the ones who insisted on fossile fuels for all our transportation including oversized pickup trucks we don't need; plastic everything in the name of “easier;” industrial farms joining in the plastic poisoning of rivers and the seas to save a $ to spend on rare earth materials for our big screens. We've chopped down and burned the lungs of the earth and wonder why its getting so hard to breathe in the middle of horrific fires. We could join nature by attending to the obvious. We continue to insist that nature needs to be controlled, ignoring the reality that it is nature that is in control. It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that we aren't doing it.
The degradation of the environment as a sacrilegious desecration. We need more “love insurrectionaries.” – Rob Brezsney
That Other
Yes — you remember
some things. And
some things did
happen. Except not
that way.
And anyway, not
to you.
– Joyce Carol Oates, Poetry (July/August 2020)