Happy 2nd Birthday

I missed this baby's second birthday earlier this month. The blog, not the little one in the picture who has long since grown.

Ah, there have been overextended days: writing 1,500 words of paid articles, a day, working elsewhere... It's lighter now. It can be hard, when I haven't blogged in a while to decide what's that one worthy thing that I most want to put up. I frequently have my 'evening nigh reflections' and yet there are times when it is difficult to post. There's something about critical mass. f I post regularly, I don't have this "It needs to be something momentous feeling". But the most important motivator, for me, is the sense of being read. Blog posts can be siphoned off into emails...

But: Moving into this third year with ENR, I have, for the first time, a little digital camera. That makes online writing easier. A couple thousand words a day is feeling less intimidating. Snookums has an external keyboard and needs to be plugged in, but Toto is on the go. There's still a lot of writing to do... too much at times. But this blog is still my baby... grown now to toddlerhood.

Reflections: Beautiful Minds

Beautiful minds? you're thinking. But that's a pair of... feet. Yes, and those are confident feet, many would say. (I'll tie this together in a moment.)

I'm still doing readings each week on a Blog Talk Radio show, and an interesting theme came up this week. I don't really like the term, erotic capital, but the concept makes sense. There are a mixture of traits that together go a long way to creating interpersonal attractiveness. The host brought up something interesting: He said it really came down to confidence. I would surely agree that the purely physical was only a small part of this nebulous thing, that the charisma and mystique were created more by the things a person did: how they dressed and otherwise 'put themselves together', how they carried themselves, how they interacted. I would surely agree that those things are often associated with confidence. But it doesn't mean they equal confidence.

I'm thinking back to the movie "A Beautiful Mind" which I saw nearly a decade ago. That woman... oh, she had that nebulous thing. The way she blazed into his office -- the fictionalized John Nash's -- when he was an up and coming professor. At first, I didn't like that woman; she seemed shallow. But, oh, did I like her as the movie progressed. I talked on and on about her that evening: the woman who dug both feet into ground when things went crazy.

Is there a biological reason for people for people to be attracted to confidence? I daresay there is. What about associating that blaze with standing one's ground? Ah, perhaps there is. The problem is that a lot of the things on the it list -- the erotic capital list -- have as much to do with polytropism as they do with confidence.

Reflection: Still Here

Signing a lease one more time. Moving into a second year in an under-200 square foot studio that has been better to me than its larger predecessor. My favorite apartment/unit ever, if you go back a bit, was an attic. But this little room with the corridor and the separate bathroom: It's of a scale that's easy to decorate. And putting it online motivates me to do just that. My problem has never been finding the wherewithall to function; it's finding the motivation. It's hard for me to do things because they feel comfortable or because they create aesthetic pleasure. It doesn't click; it doesn't connect. The question has already been: But who will see it? Who will it please? I can't live life as a tree in a forest. If no one hears, I don't make a sound. If no one watches, nothing is tidy. There's this great need to be observed by loved ones. And the great motivator has always been: for you. Living my life online makes me live it brighter and more according to custom.

So, understanding that, maybe it wouldn't come as such a surprise to persons from long ago co-op days that one of the niche topic areas I have moved into, on Squidoo and elsewhere, is designing small spaces. This is the recent Squidoo page that has gone the highest: Shabby Chic Studio Apartment

Memory: After All These Years

Something I will never forget: the sight of Brazil nuts -- those really huge ones -- working their way slowly down into the fingers of a food handler's glove.

It was a dozen years ago. We were on our way to a potluck hosted by one of the members of our poetry group. He was scooping edibles out of the bins at Ray's Ranch Market. I called his attention to the fact that, well, most things made it into baggies, but he was scooping the Brazil nuts into something else... like maybe a glove out of the box on the counter.

He realized, hey, I was right. "Well, we can't let this go to waste," he said. "That wouldn't be environmental of us." He got a twisty label and wrote the bin number on it. He used the twisty to seal the wrist of the glove up neatly.

Something else I will never forget: the look on the face of one of the poetry group ladies when he sat the Brazil nut glove down on the coffee table amidst the other hoers d'ouvres.

I repeated the story the other day. "That was in my manic days," he said. "I don't do things like that any more."

"Mellowed?" I asked.

"Medication," he said.

Ah! I remember how he arrived in the woods for a camping trip, coincidentally, on the first day of hunting season. He briefly had the idea of playing his guitar real loud and scaring the bears away. "Would I give my life for a bear?" he'd asked.

I repeated that story. The bears deserved it, he said, but he didn't have the guts.

He has talked about visiting a couple times over the years. And finally did. He was here for a week recently. We went out to the beach at Discovery Park. He climbed over a little log fence so he could see better over the cliff. I called his attention to what the sign said about staying this side of the fence. "I didn't see it," he said, "Well, don't tell Seattle parks."

Oh , there's a few things maybe to not tell Seattle. He likes to press flowers see...

It ain't a bad thing, though, is it? Still crazy after all these years

photo credit

In Between: Tunes our Minds Play

I never know what song I will hear in Walgreen's -- or what my ears will tell me I heard. I have located the song now on Youtube, and the refrain is "Burnin' for you". Ah, but what I heard (over and over and over) there in Walgreen's was "I'm done running, I'm 32."

Reflection: The Writing Life

I am making (kind of) a living writing these days, but it's not quite the type of writing I might have imagined once upon a time. For those of us who do write for wages, that is often the case. I have a friend who makes his living -- really -- writing articles about women's clothing.

In these parts, though (in my studio apartment studio, I mean) the theme is, "You look in an associate's, but you'd look better in a doctorate. Oh, too large? We have that in a bachelor's and a master's as well. "

It may not be my adolescent image of the writing life, but I like writing articles about nursing. I believe in the cause, and there's endless information. (To think, less than a year ago, I didn't know the difference between an ADN, a BSN, and a DNP. Now I can distinguish the AACN, the AANP, ANA... And, ah, I have a talent for locating white papers and project proposals and endless lists.)

But it's nice to do those other types of writing, too, the ones from the days of once upon a time -- and the ones I picked up along the way. I am slowly pulling them back in.