Win some, lose some

What’s going on? I never blog Monday to Friday! That’s right, I don’t. So I thought I’d give it a try. A more social September.

It’s taken a lot of music, movies and series, hours of exercise and gardening, and tons of family time to get through this year, and it’s going to take plenty more before the year is done. But you got to keep going. Keep on moving, keep on dreaming, keep on working on whatever your life is made of, or on changing that, and your future, and ours. You won’t lose, you can’t lose, unless you give up. You can experience defeat, single events in a long line of experiences that are the story of you, but you will never be a loser until you decide to give up on yourself or the world we live in.

Remember that, dearest denizens. Being defeated does not make you and mark you as a loser. It just means you went for it, you were active, you tried, but did not succeed in that endeavor in that moment in time. That’s all it means. That’s all it is. Don’t make it to be something it’s not; that only leads to pointless feelings of guilt, suffering and self-recrimination. Ain’t nobody got time for that, agreed? Don’t waste precious time and energy. Live and learn and move on.

I often write about hope because I view it as both a tonic and an antidote. Hope is not passive, wishful thinking, a Hail Mary pass. Hope is not a noun but a verb, a doing word. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look up Professor C. R. Snyder this coming October. He has a theory and a toolkit that might boost and soothe you, as contradictory as that sounds, on this roller-coaster ride we’re taking.

This decade got off to a pretty shitty start. You know what that means? The only way is up.

North Brooklin, Maine

30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,
E. B. White

Ikigai

Good trouble

Dita can’t come to the blog right now, Fridays For Future has called for a global day of climate action and I’m helping my sons with something. Yes, they’re being very responsible and mature about things, much more responsible and mature than some adults who should know and behave better have been this week (happy 75th, UN!).

Last night I dreamt of some Pedro*

If yesterday was a say what kind of day, today is say again in the form of misheard lyrics, or (I learned a new word today:) mondegreens. Feel free to add your favorite.

Save a whale, save a whale, save a whale
= Sail away, sail away, sail away
Orinoco Flow by Enya

Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, poke her face
= My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my poker face
Poker Face by lady Gaga

She’s so popular
= Jeux sans frontiers
Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel

Annie are you walking, are you walking, are you walking, Annie
= Annie are you ok, are you ok, are you ok, Annie
Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson

Welcome to the land of flaming sex
= Welcome to the land of fame excess
Party In The USA by Miley Cyrus

Here we are now, and we’re heinous
= Here we are now, entertain us
Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

Bin full of Usher on the fortifier
= Brimful of Asha on the 45
Brimful Of Asha by Cornershop

I miss the rains down in Africa
= I bless the rains down in Africa
Africa by Toto

Everybody run, Barbie’s got a gun
= Everybody run, Bobby’s got a gun
Creep by Stone Temple Pilots    

We built this city on the wrong damn road
= We built this city on rock ‘n’ roll
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship

 

*hint: a song by Madonna

Say what?

Some nonsensical songs that make as much sense as some of the nonsense some are spouting at the UN GA:

Nik Kershaw: The Riddle

The Beatles: I Am the Walrus

Oasis: Champagne Supernova

Duran Duran: The Reflex

Vance Joy: Riptide

System of a Down: Vicinity of Obscenity

Barenaked Ladies: One Week

Equinox

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

"How To Like It" from Velocities: New and Selected Poems by Stephen Dobyns

Do you remember

 …the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders…

Happy Earth, Wind & Fire Day, dearest denizens!

I wish you a hopeful week. 😘 

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

I hope there’s beauty in your weekend, sweetie darlings. However fleeting.

Thursday. What a concept.

If you still haven’t watched Russian Doll 

omg

why

what’s the matter with you

go watch it now.

Shoo.

Go.

#StopHateForProfit

Even if Sacha Baron Cohen is not your cup of tea because you can't stand his comedy or characters, you need to listen to him this once being articulate, humane and dead serious.

L’état, c’est moi

The President of the United States, brought to you by the oil and gas industry, practicing willful ignorance and casual if not deliberate cruelty.

One thing is for certain and backed by four years of evidence: elect this man and nothing will change. Whether he is unwilling or unable to tackle the climate crisis, a pandemic, economic and gender inequality and institutionalized racism is neither here nor there because the end result is the same: nothing will change for the better. He will keep serving himself and those close, loyal and tied to him. Problems will keep being swept under the rug, environmental protection will keep rolling back faster than you can yell “Fore!” and citizens will keep being breadcrumbed while big spenders, big polluters and big business reap the benefits.

So start sending them the bill. Or sue them for reckless endangerment. If they're not willing or able to change things for the better, they may as well pay the cost. Because inaction costs, and they won’t pay a dime if they can outsource the risks and damages. So file a class action lawsuit. Or maybe just don’t vote for someone who will never be the president of all your united states, only those he can profit from.

Onward

How was your weekend, sweetie darlings? I do hope you found some form of R & R. I’m hanging on to every bit of good news I receive, but even those tend to be tainted by the pandemic.

I got word, or rather a picture at first, of a friend who had gotten married. How wonderful is that? Absolutely champagne-popping good news! But my next thought, one I should not have let in but which gatecrashed quite unceremoniously was: we don’t get to celebrate this. She said we absolutely would Once This Is Over, and I wish that were true, but I just don’t know.  

We're all amassing celebrations that didn’t get the party that was planned or the occasion called for. Some keep postponing festivities. Some are making due, observing as best as they can under present circumstances. It’s been disappointing at best and utterly depressing at worst, and that’s just the way it is. What we’re used to doesn’t apply. But it ain’t fair doesn’t fly. I know some perfectly stable adults who’ve thrown temper tantrums a two-year-old would gawk at in reverent approval. I’m sure my nostrils have flared, like really flapped as I fumed, trying to breathe in calm and breathe out some oh-hell-naw. You do what you gotta do to remain sane.

But let’s not postpone life. Let’s keep celebrating the big things and the small. Let’s keep living in the here and now. Let’s not yield a single moment of our time, because we won't get those moments back, ever. We don’t get to live them Once This Is Over; that’s another world we'll live in when we get there.

It’s September 14, 2020, a perfectly mundane Monday or the most important day of your life, and somewhere a clock is ticking.

September Midnight

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.

~ Sara Teasdale

Step by step

Re: yesterday’s post; plenty of tutorials out there, if you need more, but this is as simple as it gets. Don’t forget to move your hips! Like really engage them. You're a rubber band, not a rod.

You got this! And if you don’t, you’ll get it tomorrow or some other time, because nobody’s perfect.

Wait a minute

...this sounds familiar. Oh well, you need a dancing break. Oh yes you do. We both do. Vamos nessa, queridos!

I like big books (and I cannot lie)

Some books I've enjoyed this summer (in English and in no particular order):

Przewalski’s Horse by Maja Lunde

The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, From the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden

Figuring by Maria Popova

Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

The Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley

Upheaval How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change by Jared Diamond

The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power

But what have you been reading, sweetie darlings? I’d love to exchange recommendations! Doesn’t have to be a big book. A thought-provoking essay or article? ✔️ A beautifully illustrated children's book? ✔️ Something that made your brain sprain? ✔️

Happy International Literacy Day!

There will never be another you

Monday! Again? Stuck in a rut or getting busier where you are? Is it a brand-new day or Groundhog Day? I know, sweetie darlings. Everyone is feeling it in some form. No one is exempt. We are all being held back one way or another. But our spirits can soar. No one can cage them, impose a curfew on them, take them away from us. They can try but we won’t let them. And I know it can be difficult to find inspiration and come up with new ideas if you’re feeling anxious and afraid, but try to step outside yourself in those moments. Try to reach for things that give you joy and solace, because they are out there. Only you can give them away; you simply shouldn’t. For every thing that annoys you, find a thing that delights you. For every person that exasperates you, find a person who soothes you. Counterpoint every moment spent in dark thoughts with thoughts that enlighten and expand you. They are your thoughts, after all; you are in control. Easier said than done? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Not a wishy-washy-yeah-right attempt. With All Your Might. All right?

I’m brightening my mood and days by celebrating some notable birthdays, today and in the past/next few days. On Saturday and Sunday, I honored the late, great Freddie Mercury by watching Queen: Live at the Rainbow (November 1974), and Queen and Adam Lambert: The Show Must Go On. When Freddie died, I most surely wasn’t the only fan who believed that no one in a million years could replace Freddie. Along came Adam Lambert with his strong, dramatic, melodic voice. He isn’t Freddie. Freddie was a rare beast. But Adam is a rare beast in his own right and I think he is the perfect successor to Freddie in this new Queen. A new generation of fans get to experience the music and the magic, and old fans get to see the magic and hear the music performed. Win-win!

Today, Brazil celebrates its independence from Portugal. The Bicentennial year is up in 2022. That same fall, Brazilians will elect a new president. Or the old one. And the two-term limit is not for life so anything can happen with this current president who treats democracy as a hurdle and not a touchstone. Thinking about Bolsonaro and his cronies makes me turn to all the tips I offered in the first paragraph. How they revel in the rage they incite, these wannabe dictators of our modern democracies. It makes us miserable while hurting them not one bit, so let’s stop giving them that power and start wrenching that power back into hands that aren’t out to grab all they can. Let’s vote like our lives depend on it, because more and more they do.

My counterpoint to Senhor B. is my maternal grandfather. He would have turned 100 today. He died in 2010, two months after his 90th birthday. My maternal grandmother would have turned one hundred tomorrow. (She died in the mid-nineties.) Yes, they were born on consecutive days, a few villages apart. They married at nineteen just before my grandfather set out to fight in WWII. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately, filled with gratitude for every day we spent together, and they were many. Looking at pictures, talking to my children about them…I’m so happy they got to know him. Even my youngest remembers him. And I will never ever forget, not even when I am a hundred.

So today I wish you well, sweetie darlings, I wish my childhood home of Brazil well, and I celebrate my maternal grandparents with her favorite meal and his favorite cognac. And loads of love and longing.

#SecondHandSeptember

Just a thought to get you thinking, unless you’ve already been thinking this makes a world of sense and difference.

I’m all for it. I happen to love antique stores, and thrift shops, and vintage wonderlands. Clothes so well-made from such high-quality fabrics you can wear them for the rest of your life; beautiful handmade gems for both house and garden; out-of-print books and discontinued china and crystal; jewelry you simply marvel at. At a pittance! What’s not to like? 

Sure, doesn’t solve the problem of too much stuff, but you can decide to become a more conscientious, discerning buyer. Do I really need this? Where and when will I use this? How many times will I use it? I’ve decided that if I can’t answer those questions, I’m not buying. Yes, some things are a beauty and a delight without being particularly useful, but most things serve a purpose. If you can’t pinpoint what that is in your life and home, could you go without? Just a thought.

It was the third of September...

The sound that changed America.

Pale blue dot

ICYMI: Free content on Netflix! If you only watch one thing, watch Our Planet.

May I suggest a podcast to go with that?

Enjoy at your leisure! 🎧

Start your September on a high note

classic (noun)
 : a work of enduring excellence
(as per Merriam-Webster)