Mental Leave Blogging (updated)

Oops. You won’t believe this. But I lost all the words I needed to write to you. I sat down to tell you all kinds of crazy things. And I put on the right kind of music – Art Tatum, this time – to make me think about writing to you. I even re-arranged my desk so that everything would feel and look like it should feel and look when I’m thinking about writing all kinds of crazy things for you. I removed, for example, the old and curling sticky-note from my monitor that said “Memo to Self: Annoy Daughter.” My daughter has a similar one. It just reads a little differently.

But I couldn’t find the words to the stories I wanted to tell you. They were just gone. Lost, perhaps, in the whirlwind of wintry activities. I’ll bet I lost them while shoveling the snow. Or skiing in it. Or while plowing snow with the horses. Or when I hooked them to the sleigh. Or was it when I relented to my daughter’s pleas to “skip school” and play outside with her yesterday.

Whatever. I just can’t remember where I left those words.

Perhaps they just don’t matter.

Indeed.

–

Enough words, enough sentences! O Real life,

Artless and unmetaphored, be mine.

Come into my arms, sit on my lap.

Come into my heart, come into my lines, my life.

– Valery Larbaud (from: “Music After Reading”)

–

Oh wait, here are some words:

• Hillary Clinton is a phony.
• Obama is kind of eerie slick.
• Edwards is such a good lawyer that I feel like he’s “lawyering” me constantly.
• The Dems caved. Again and again (FISA, war spending). Yawn.
• Huckabee is a lunatic.
• Romney is a robot.
• Bernie Sanders has disappeared.
• Jim Douglas needs longer pants.
• I bought this book last weekend: “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England.”
  I re-read Christopher Hitchens’ “A Long Short War,” and laughed hysterically when he wrote in April 2003 that “the war is indeed stopping.” Thanks, Hitch. You silly caricature, you.

–

Please
By Nanao Sakaki

Sing a song
or
Laugh
or
Cry
or
Go away.

–

Charles Grodin’s John Stewart media moment:

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And here’s one of my sister-in-law’s latest paintings. It’s called “Swan Choker,” by Elizabeth Zechel.