July 29

The last working oil well in Chester, TX.

Thought.

The leaves of the camilla closest to the house are a darker green than the bright green leaves where the sun is shining through. They make a nice contrast to the dark green of the oak tree across the street and to the brilliant blue sky that fills the rest of the scene framed by the window.

It is high noon.

Which raises the question, why isn't it called 'low 6' or 'high midnight' (sorry stupid question–midnight has a time stamp built into its name)? But why does 'noon;' need 'high' attached? And why do only 'the twelves' have names?

Fun fact.

So, at 5 a.m. my semi-sleeping brain asked the rest of my brain how loud two machines, each cranking out 50db, would sound to the naked ear. The rest of my brain replied, 'I dunno. I'm trying to get some sleep here. Shut up.'

The correct answer is 53db, which should be a lot more fun than it actually is.

Stop and think time.

Nikki Giovanni provides STT with the opening lines of her poem A historical footnote to consider only when all else fails:

While it is true
(though only in a factual sense)

While it is tempting to go with the obvious where else truth exists besides facts, I'm a little more interested in the selection process for choosing the historical footnote.

Padding the list.

Certain professions really should see the wizard for a brain. Real Simple provides Exhibit A as they detail 8 Things You Should Never Store in Your Bedroom Closet, According to Organizers.

'Food' is number 4. 'Shoes' is number 1 (apparently shoes should go at the door, creating visual clutter, and a real problem if you have more than one door you use). And three items that you should not put in your closet are—clothes.

Gonna be lots of space in there.

News flash! Rocket scientists take over running major retailers!

For some reason, it was left to Men's Journal to tell us Major Retail Chains Like Walmart Are Reducing Self-Checkouts for Better Customer Service.

Surprise, surprise! Retailers finally figured out that customers didn't like being hectored by the most annoying robot voice possible to 'put the item in the bag.' Instead, customers like leaving the chore of scanning and putting items in bags to professionals. Smiles are optional–nice if you get 'em, OK if you don't.

I'm sure that self-checkout seeming to be a major contributor to 'inventory shrinkage' has ' nothing to do with the decision to go back to cashiers. Nothing! It's all about customer satisfaction. Really!

More sciencey stuff!

The wall Street Journal tells us Scientists have figured out how fast the universe is expanding.

The answer? 46 miles per second, which I will grant you is more precise than my answer of 'very,' but not by much.

Key takeaways:

  • Objects recede faster as they become more distant. Anyone who has lost control of a three-year-old toddler will confirm this observation.
  • The rate is mind-boggling small. It would take a football field a million years to expand by one inch. In other words, objects in an expanding galaxy could not beat a Chevy Corvette in a street race.
  • Anomalies in calculations can be explained by 'dark matter' and 'dark energy,' neither of which we can perceive or measure. We dare you to prove the darks don't exist. So nyaaah!
  • The universe will cease in 46 trillion years. Please excuse me if I'm not at the afterparty.

Misreading it.

I regularly mangle the written word, extracting meaning that is nothing at all like the author intended. For example, I recently 'saw' a headline that said 'Rock legend dead at last.' What happened was I kinda left some words out, like 79 and Last song, so I didn't read Rock legend dead at 79: 'Last song...' Although the way music legends are hanging on these days (see: Keith Richards, Barry Gibb, Grace Slick, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson), it's an understandable mistake.

It also brings to mind this snippet of dialogue from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: 'Bring out your dead!' 'But I'm not dead yet!'

I don't see what the problem is.

For a very short season, Indian mangoes are available in the United States. They are popular and sell out quickly.

One importer complains, The problem is that the mango boxes come and they get sold out.

Or, what other retailers call success.

Random observations.

God does His best work in the gaps and spaces and voids of our lives.

Why is it our visions of hell are excruciatingly detailed, including the tortures we will suffer, even the environment almost to the degree, while our visions of heaven are fuzzy at best?

Another thing about those ghost shows.

I've already mentioned my annoyances with ghost shows. But here's another—why are there never any animal ghosts on these shows?

You know they have to be there, especially in a residence. Why are there no sudden heavy weights in a lap, indicating Mittens' ghost has settled in for a nap? Or a nudge on the knee (or worse, in the crotch) from a spectral Spot, who wants his head scratched? Or the sounds of a food dish being pushed across the floor by a playful phantasm puppy?

Linguistic wonderment.

In English, we have many familials, the names we call parents and grandparents when we are children.

I wonder if the same thing applies in other languages.


word of the week

logorrhea

poetry bonus! recent augie sez

Quoted.

The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It's in here. And happiness is not next week. It's now.

--Marshall Goldsmith

 

Bonus!

Lists of ten.

for writers (and everyone)

I like to read. One popular subject area is writing and creativity. The books are either instruction manuals (do this, then this, then this. These I don't like so much.) or cast in story form where the writing has a source, fills a need, solves a problem or moves us all toward a goal. In all cases, it's tied to the writer's life, so it becomes as much of a memoir as anything else. But that's the relationship between writing and writer—fused at the hip, or maybe the fingertip.

One thing I don't like to read is articles built around lists. You know the type: '23 items you can buy to hold and organize all the crap you already have,' or '6 steps to put your hypothalamus in peak condition.' Half the suggestions are useless and half not worth doing.

But there is an exception to the rule, and that's lists about achieving writing competence, if not happiness. Both Maggie Smith and Austin Kleon have developed lists of 10 things they've found that are related to writing. In fact, Austin uses lists of 10 to structure his four books.

Here are the lists. What I'm going to do is highlight my one or two personal takeaways from each list. Depending upon my mood/state of mind/zeitgeist, I may answer questions, like whhhhyy?

Maggie Smith:

  • attention
  • wonder
  • vision
  • play
  • surprise
  • vulnerability
  • restlessness
  • tenacity
  • connection
  • hope.

Austin Kleon

Steal like an artist.

  1. Steal like an artist.
  2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.
  3. Write the book you want to read.
  4. Use your hands.
  5. Side projects and hobbies are important.
  6. The secret: do good work and share it with people.
  7. Geography is no longer our master.
  8. Be nice. (The world is a small town.)
  9. Be boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.)
  10. Creativity is subtraction.

Show Your Work

  1. You don’t have to be a genius.
  2. Think process, not product.
  3. Share something small every day.
  4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities.
  5. Tell good stories.
  6. Teach what you know.
  7. Don’t turn into human spam.
  8. Learn to take a punch.
  9. Sell out.
  10. Stick around.

Keep Going

  1. Every day is Groundhog Day.
  2. Build a bliss station.
  3. Forget the noun, do the verb.
  4. Make gifts.
  5. The ordinary + extra attention = the extraordinary
  6. Slay the art monsters.
  7. You’re allowed to change your mind.
  8. When in doubt, tidy up.
  9. Demons hate fresh air.
  10. Plant your garden.

Don't call it art

(Bonus:) Just make stuff.

  1. Throw out the instructions.
  2. Don’t take things too seriously
  3. Give yourself time, space & materials.
  4. Permission to be bad!
  5. Believe in magic.
  6. Think ouside your head.
  7. Problems of output are problems of input.
  8. Borrow a kid!
  9. Nothing is wasted.
  10. You don’t need a vision.

The bolds:

from Maggie

  • wonder Wonder is all tied up with why and how, which are good for writers, because that's where the good ideas get formed, rubbing up against and worn down bumping into other ideas. 'Wonder wow' leads to 'wonder why' and 'wonder how.' 'Wonder' is the mystical way of being curious.
  • play I don't have to spin this out, do I? Kids get older and smarter by combining curiosity and play, combining fun and learning. It's a big part of our introduction to life. We should maintain it as a major component of our daily adult habits, and any attitude adjustment hours we may indulge ourselves in. When we're playing, we're engaging. The trick is to not get the play beaten out of us.
  • restlessness One of the anthems of modern kids is, 'I'm bored.' Unfortunately, adults too often jump in the provide entertainment, often in the form of consumption devices. Better to leave them bored. Sooner or later, they'll figure out something to de-bore themselves.
    For me, restlessness is synonymous with boredom, or antsy. I may be working on a topic or piece that interests me (or did at some point), but still feel restless, that there's something else I should be doing. Even if I put the current project aside, that restless/antsy feeling will push me back to the original project smetime, or it's time to stay moved on.

from Austin Kleon: steal like an artist

  • Be nice. There's already too much ugly in the world. A positive attitude is reflected in your writing, I believe.
  • Be boring. Not in your writing, but in other places, Kleon stresses the importance of routine. Routine is boring. But it's also a way to get things done.
  • Creativity is subtraction. We usually think of creation as addition. Writers add words, painters add color, potters add clay and designs and glazes. But classic sculptors work by removing stone, by subtraction. Writers revise and edit, painters remove paint, and two of the most used tools in a potter's kit are knives and scrapers. So don't be afraid to find the core, the essence that's hiding. As the Emperor said to Amadeus, 'too many notes.' On the flip side, sometimes when you're cutting fat you're nicking bone.

from Austin Kleon: show your work

  • Tell good stories. Let's face it—human civilization is built on stories, right from the very get-go. The cave paintings at Lascaux. Göbekli Tepe. Hieroglyphs in the pyramids. The Odyssey. All those countless stories told around campfires through the eons. Even your resume is a story. Make your stories the stories people want to hear. And when we say good, we mean it in both the 'good-better-best' sense, but also the 'not-evil' sense. If you're telling a story, it might as well uplift the human spirit. Now that's a good story!
    • Teach what you know. Again, two takeaways. The first is the old saying: the best way to learn something is to try to teach it. Teaching is a community activity. You learn as you teach. And think about what you know. How did you learn all this stuff? Most of it was taught to you. Pass it on. Continue the tradition. And if you don't teach it, what happens to your unique collection of knowledge and connections when you die? Exactly.

from Austin Kleon: Keep Going

  • You’re allowed to change your mind. If you've done any writing, you've already been changing your mind. It's called revising, or re-vision. Sometimes it happens because you receive new information. Just because you believed something when you were 15 doesn't mean you have to believe it when you're 30, 45, 60, or 75. In fact, you'd probably get some strange looks if you did. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. If you're set in your opinions, knowledge base, and worldview, you've lost your sense of curiosity. I feel sorry for you.
  • When in doubt, tidy up. Two possibilities or more here (I know, surprise, huh?). First, there's the physical space of where you're working, or the creation itself. I find I work better in an uncluttered space, and it's worth it to take the time to make the environment right. Or maybe the tidying is to the text, by doing simple proofreading and editing. This tidying has the advantage of reacquainting you will the entire work. Maybe your head needs tidying. Go for a walk. Bake cookies. Play with the dog. While you're disengaged, your brain is still working on the problem (or doubt) and often will solve the problem without much help from you.

from Austin Kleon: Don't Call It Art.

Originally, I thought 'think outside your head' was going to be in bold, but I changed my mind (see #6 from Keep Going! So here's the new list.

  • Permission to be bad! I'm still waiting on the book, so I'm going to take a guess on which meaning Austin intends: bad as Michael Jackson sang about it, as in naughty; or bad, as in 'not good,' or 'this sucks.' I'm going with the second meaning. Too often, I get the perfection block, where everything has to be exactly right before I release it, in the meanwhile changing happys to glads, and generally rearranging deck chairs, so nothing happens. But in the process of creation, things aren't perfect right out of the gate. Sometimes they’re never perfect. I have to learn to accept, and move towards betterment, either with this piece, or another piece.
  • Believe in magic. Look, this whole writing/reading process is pretty unbelievable. I have an experience, shape it into words, you read the words, and transform it into your own experience with an emotional or intellectual component that I may or may not have intended. If that's not magic, well, I don't know what is. This isn't getting close to the magic that happens when the words take over and a piece writes itself, or suddenly veers off in an unexpected, better direction. Or response to a piece is better and more positive than you expected.
  • Problems of output are problems of input. This one is easy for me. When I'm tagging these pieces for the web, sometimes thye don’t look right. Either I apply the wrong tag, or don’t complete it. Often the mistake won’t even appear. So I have to go searching to find what I entered and make it right.
    Sometimes the wrong input is external to the piece. We set off on the altogether wrong path. This one is tougher, , as it often requires large scale revision and deletion to make the piece right.

The almosts

From Maggie: It was a toss up whether surprise or play was going to be a boldfaced type. I went with play because you have more control over it. Surprise is a major component, as it shows that you're paying attention and not clamping down on the process.


From Steal Like An Artist: Use your hands. I was just reading a piece by Todd Henry in which he describes building a guitar which he will never play (from his newsletter but not yet posted).

Side projects and hobbies are important. We need the artifacts, but more importantly, we need to get out of our heads sometimes. Working with our hands, playing music, even walking give us a chance to continue to turn problems over in our heads, as well as getting the blood circulating again.


From Show Your Work: Think process, not product. If you want to have an impact, you have to mess with the innards. How is the product becoming? What impact will it have? Is there a better way of doing things? It's in examining the process and the work in the process of becoming that changes occur. Also, it's in the process of creating where the fun is for the creator. You remember fun, right? I worry for those writers who keep lamenting that writing is hard work. They're missing something.


From Keep On: Forget the noun, do the verb. See the process/product discussion, above. Also, action is much more entertaining than listening. An entertained audience is much more receptive than a disengaged audience.


From Don't Call it Art: Don't take things too seriously. Things in this case means 'yourself.' This is just another way of saying Play. Enjoy. Create without boundaries. Be curious. All that good stuff.