Month: May 2021

Dreams With Sharp Teeth – it is great, go watch it.

We are also watching a love story for New Haven, Connecticut. Well, in reality, it is a love story for the apizza. The rest of us call it pizza. But this place filled with Italian immigrants called it apizza and so it is. Three places hold the honor of being “the” place for the style. Pepes, Sally’s, and Modern. It is a long story, filled with history and profiling each of the three places. If you want to know about this dish, go watch this story. It is called “Pizza, A Love Story” and it is on Curiosity Stream.

If you do not know of Curiosity Stream, well it is your lucky day because you get to find out about it today. Curiosity Stream is a place that hosts a bunch of things to watch. You know, like Netflix. Only the difference is Curiosity Stream has nothing but documentaries. Now, no they are not all great. Some are awful. But there are plenty of good and great ones. And, here is the killer. For HD quality you can get an annual subscription for $19.99. That is two months of Netflix. And yes, no commercials.

It is a great place.

—— MichaelRpdx

Love you like a mango. It is twilight, in the evening, and I am waking up. Gotta wka wk wake up, stay up, stay up long enough for a good night of sleep.

Wake up, stay up, wake up. That sounds like something from a reggae song. That is how you can wonder about how they came up with what they have for us to listen to.

Buckle up kids, this ain’t going to make sense. I am just going to blurb it out. Confession time. I do not floss regularly. Sometimes months without doing it. Now I have a thing where I keep track of it. Huh?

I have a page in my journal/notebook/writing thingy that I greatly track what I do on a daily basis. You maybe have heard of “don’t break the chain” something that allegedly is based on Jerry Steinfeld’s habit of having a calendar that he puts a red X on every day he writes a joke. He has a long chain of days red Xed out from the chain of days in which he has written jokes. I have similar things where I track whether or not I have gone something like Duoling (now at 871 days), Morning Pages (which I track based on pages, now over halfway through the 24th Composition Book), reading, writing, watercoloring, and so on. I am now doing that for flossing my teeth, I am at five. My phone has, and I will bet yours does it also, have an alarm. Like people use for waking up. Which I have not used for waking up in years (decades?) I wake up in the morning and it is early enough for things that need to be gone in the morning. Well, I have my alarm set for 8:30 at night every day. And I use it as the time to floss my teeth and take my evening medications. It works so far. It is an “Atamoic errgh Atomic Habits (book title??) my trigger to floss is to shut off the alarm and start in on what needs to do daily, every day, until they are complete. As for One Typed Page…

As you know my pages are not a daily thing. Like Spanish, Morning Pages, and the other things that are habits.

Here is a paradox: I prefer reading things that are not personal. People’s bits of fiction and observations about the world, book reviews, those I like. Yet, here I am: contributing to pages with observations about myself and what is going on with me. I am trying to break that habit. It is hard.

What about fiction told in the first person? Ummmm, well, Yeah that is it! Everything you read here is a lie. It is a lie in that it is all fictional. Yeah, right, everything you are reading is about some character. Told from his point of view. Kinda like Hemingway, so much of his “fiction” was based on his life. I went decades not knowing that. (Same applies to Richard Brautigan, all from his life.) Maybe it all is like that. At least some core parts of it. With some embellishment.

Well, I believe I have streamed along for far enough for one Daily Page. Now to pay attention to my life and find stuff to write about.

— MichaelRpdx

There I was, lying on my back. Someone’s fingers were in my mouth.

Yes, a dental appointment. It would be great to meditate. What else are you going to do for an hour? Conversations were out of consideration.  Yes, let us keep our minds on the breaths. Like you can pay attention to that while stabs of pain come from those wire thingy things crawl under your gums and scrape stuff off of your teeth. Real conducive to just watching the breath come and go. Meditating on the subject of your experiences?
Six probes on each of the 32 teeth followed up with the scraping.

While I tried to keep my attention on the in and out of breathing I detoured to “relax” as I felt my shoulders tensing up. Relax, and my shoulders would go from tense to a semi-relaxed state. Relax again and I stayed somewhat relaxed for a bit. I kept drifting off to some meditative state. Until OW and I felt like I was ready to climb out of the chair. And I felt, again, stiff shoulders and returned to “relax.” What else are you going to do for an hour, laying on your back, with someone’s fingers doing what they needed to do.

I used to bring earbuds and listen to a podcast or two. What is better?

— MichaelRpdx

Forever you find
there is a bottle of Sriracha, almost empty
a player piano. They have not made them, in that form, the original form
that was invented in the aughts, of 1900, of the year.
on top there are hundreds of rolls, the kind you use to play them
you can find them, the songs, waiting to be played again.

there is a bottle of Sriracha, almost empty
I was waiting for something
I was waiting for a while. What was I waiting for with a bottle of Sriracha?
Could it be a bowl of dan—dan noodles? Some scrambled eggs? The wonderings,
the musing, the mental searching was interrupted.
It was a book. A signed book. The Anthropoenene Reviewed* anthropocene, yes
that is it.

— MichaelRpdx

* I was reading the title of the book from the book and I still misspelled it. geeze

Somebody, somebody here, asked about storing One Typed Daily pages. Or maybe it was asked what does one do with these pages. It has been written. It was sent to Danial for “publishing” here. Then you have a piece of paper with daily thoughts on it. What to do then?

I, for one, keep them. And thanks to the asking of the question I now have most of them in a three-ring binder. The rest of them will be added when I find them. Hopefully, it will not be another saga of the library books.

Why do something like this?

First is being able to read them. This is not a case of my handwriting. Where reading whatever I wrote is pretty iffy. Not like the days in the hospital after having a stroke. Reading those pages – good luck. But now, well if I slow down and take my time I can read them. But anything typewritten is guaranteed to be readable.

Second is the intent. What did I write about? Sometimes I do not understand what I was writing about. But going back and reading them again I will get some understanding of what I was thinking about. Which can lead to even more things.

Next, it is mine. Even the worst of what I have written (and this applies to your writings and you) is a part of yourself. There are kernels of goodness lurking in these pages. Now I have them here to read again.

— MichaelRpdx

My wife got her second vaccine today. We are celebrating. Not the most conducive state of mind for writing.

He picked up a pencil, picked up a journal. Or they called them journals. I was just a book. Something to write in. Something to put down thoughts. That is what a journal is for. It is for getting your thoughts. All of them. It keeps you from

And then he cut off the narrative. He was not ready to have the protagonist telling the world about all the things that were there to be told. He needed to have them come out each on their own. Or did he?

For the first time in a long time, he was alone for the night. That is the benefit of a vaccine. It allowed her to go out for the night.

So what would you do in a morning with the sun slinking out from the horizon?

John Prine had a bunch to say in so few words. Others among us say a lot of words without saying anything. Which one has something to say at the end of a day?

2:00 or 3:00, those are the hours that I am awake. Not a great time to be up or at least awake. What do you do when you are awake?

I have not a thing to say. or as I could say it, “Got nuthin to say.”

—— MichaelRpdx

PS – I quit writing tonight because my wife came home from book club, here is something to hear about.

What a beautiful, summer day. What? Wait a second now here. Summer is still a month away. This is springtime. Where has it gone? Where are the rains? But since we can turn off the heat and wake up to comfortable days, reminders, reminding me of so many youthful days, well I had better quit complaining. These weather patterns are bringing happiness. I will enjoy the days.

A couple of months ago I read, actually read a book from start to finish, called Atomic Habits from James Clear. (If you want to know about it, ask me.) He also sends out a newsletter every Thursday called “3-2-1: On character, the process of improvement, and mastering one thing.” It involves three quotes from himself, two quotes from people with great things to say, and one question. The question is for you, the person who received the newsletter. This week’s question brought a smile.

What is a small pleasure
that brings me great joy?
Can I enjoy it today?

Aside from a memory of waking up in a friend’s house and feeling at home, I immediately thought of a daily thing that brings great joy. Every day. After writing Morning Pages, after checking my phone (no emails today), checking the backlog of emails from overnight, after taking my blood pressure and my morning meds, after those things my wife is usually getting up.

So I grind some and light the stove. Put on a Moka pot of what will be coffee. Make a pair of flat black coffees. We sit down on the couch and drink it together. That morning coffee with my wife is a daily pleasure.

Yes, I can enjoy it today.

What about you? What small thing can you do that will bring you joy?

— MichaelRpdx

Daniel – it is good to hear that you like the patch or sticker. It came from Sarah Mirk. Sarah is a local to me, Portland, Oregon, zinster, comic, activist, and other things. You can find her stuff for sale at

https://www.mirkworks.com/buy-my-stuff

I normally would say something like “all the proceeds go to Sarah…” or something like that but not, in this case, it goes to the cause. To quote her,

100% of profits from this patch are going to
the vaccine access campaign organized by
Partners in Health. A majority – about 75
percent -— of all the vaccines delivered
across the globe have been sent to 10
countries. Partners in Health advocates for
a “peoples vaccine.” calling on governments
and pharmaceutical companies to share
COVID-19 technologies and knoweldge free
from patents.

While you are at the site you will see other things she supports.

Kent, did you say at some time that Duluth, just across the bay has hills? Am I hallucinating…

Mike, a year of Morning Pages, decades of running, perhaps you need to listen to your wife and retire. That will give you enough time to type a page daily. Just a thought. And being retired is really nice too.

All, it seems that the skies will be clear tonight. I am holding off to see what count I get in the little dipper. And the count is: two. Not a good sky to look at stars. At least not until later when a bunch of lights go out. Though that will not be very good then either,

— MichaelRpdx

If you do not have clouded skies tonight you might be able to see lots of stars. Like Daniel who is camping somewhere in Utah. In fact, he should be able to see seven stars in the little dipper. It is available all year to any of us in the northern hemisphere. Catalina, in Oakland, will not have such great seeing. Perhaps two or three stars in the little dipper. It, seeing the number of stars you can count in the little dipper is a quick and easy measure of “seeing”, a quality measurement for the night sky. It helps to go look and count after you have been in the dark for a while. Twenty minutes or so. Years ago I used to give annual talks on “seeing” and how to judge it. Amateur astronomers are very interested in the quality of the skies they are looking through when looking for the “dim and fuzzy” items in the sky. Each region of the sky will have groups of stars with defined boundaries. They are defined by known, bright stars. Count the stars in the group and all the stars you can see inside the triangle or box and you will have an index to the quality of the sky. This does vary by what part of the sky you are looking at or the distance between the horizon and the zenith. The absolute amount of darkness is one measure of the night’s seeing. There is the amount of steadiness, what gives stars their twinkling.

If you like to look at stars, you are, unfortunately, hosed. An image of the USA from the sky, say from the view of a satellite or the International Space Station, you can see so much light leaking from the ground that you can recognize cities, interstate highways, and precious few dark places.

I am waiting for it to get dark to see what I can see of the little dipper. And … I saw zero stars. It is cloudy outside tonight. Hopefully, you can if you have seen see at least a couple or three.

— MichaelRpdx

Feel a deep sigh of relaxation. Go ahead have another. Another deep sigh of relaxation. Two weeks have elapsed since my second and final shot, vaccination shot. I am in the clear. People around me are also sliding into their waiting periods and emerging, ready to go and meet people, actual live people, again. My wife will be at her book club for the next meeting. I will join up with the Southwest Gentleman’s Association for us to raise beers and talk about having made it through the months of well you know what it was like for people. We are all waking up and ready to meet again. It will be our reentry into normal living. We will all breathe deeply.

I asked Kent how his new home was, we have read quite a bit about the place, was it hilly or flat. My home town is not flat. Not monstrously hilly but if I leave the house I am going either up or down. Close to me, where close means two and a half miles away, is a volcano errr volcanic cinder cone. It is one of thirty-two cinder cones in a thirteen mile radius. It is an extinct volcano. But it and they provide some rises to get over when you are out and about in the neighborhoods. I got that tidbit when I was making sure that the volcano was indeed extinct. I do not know where I heard the rumor that it was not extinct but I did from someone somewhere. You know how rumors work. Be nice if it were true. Anyway, Mt Tabor is about 600 feet in elevation we are at 175 feet. Not a huge climb to make but a nice one. I have bicycled and walked over Mt Tabor. It is on my list of things to do this summer. In the meantime I slip down rabbit holes and wish for flat areas here, that is to say, I wish we were on a flat area which we are not.

There were some thoughts rolling around in my brain. It seems they have gone off to someplace for a return to normal life.

— MichaelRpdx