be soft. do not let the world make you hard. do not let pain make you hate. do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

-kurt vonnegut

I'm thinking a lot about time. About the green hills from my childhood summers. Those horses standing atop the hills, whose immense bodies and warm breaths made my smallness smaller. Where do those moments live now? Intuitively I know that they are not gone. Nothing disappears. They exist in my mysterious brain until they don't. And then?  The world vanished with us.  We take it, piece by piece, to the silent place.

When you sit on the park bench in the middle of walking the dog, and a strong breeze tumbles a load of crisp, papery elm seeds at you, have you just interrupted fate?  Have you become that terrible accident of nature that prevents some tender unplanted tree from becoming its intended self? 

why do you look at me with such disgust every time i try to actually parent you?

because it's exactly what i'm supposed to do.

why do you have to do exactly what you're supposed to do?

it's programmed.  or you taught me to.

when i was parenting you back in the days when that didn't make you mad?

pretty much.

This article in the Times sort of blew my mind.  Mainly because I am so far away from mathematics, and apparently it is the universe's one true thing.  Whoops.  How can those of us who are not mathemeticians spend our time pursuing completely unprovable truths?  Working to express a unique truth upon which none is meant to agree?  I mean, really.  If mathematics is the truth upon which our system is built, then I am peddling snake oil.  YES!

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one you in all time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares to other expressions.

-Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

Are you a hack?  Does this question haunt you?  Does it make you silent for a year? If so, do you also find yourself wondering if, really, there is anything inherently bad about hacks?  Aren’t some of them kind and funny and sometimes smell good?  Aren't some of them not exactly a blossom, but a little pink glove?  And who's to say which one is better?  What if all those folks who claim to know who exactly the hacks are not, are hacks themselves?  

I heard George Saunders read last night.  My takeaway:  whether or not you're a hack doesn't really matter.  Just know that the only path to originality is the one that cuts straight through your own heart.  If it's not painful, you're probably taking a short cut through somebody else's heart.

i don't quite know what to do with myself today.  i wish i had these shoes--i would just sit and stare at my own feet.  i've sent my manuscript to my agent.  she will divulge an opinion, which will probably be somewhat cryptic and maddeningly calm.  until then, however, i am free to read.  making my way through the george saunders book.  finishing to kill a mockingbird for the third time because e is reading it and i wanted to be fresh for conversation.  atticus, scout, jem and cal are just about the four most lovable characters i know.  i'm reading slowly, looking for the book's joints and seams.  it makes me happy when i spot one, when i can almost imagine being harper lee and making the choices that would wind up creating such a moving, graceful book.  this reminder--that all books come from people--makes me love people more than i might.