Mindful Monday

Today is for beginnings. I have a couple of art projects I began that will become gifts.

We seem to be moving into a more moderate weather period, which means I started long overdue work on Aaron’s Garden–pruning, plant replacement (required a shopping trip), cleanup, and a few salvaged items from backyard decorations will find a new home there.


Last spring I found these rocks under leaves when I cleaned the carport. I meant to add them to the garden, but they’ve been sitting on this windowsill ever since. They’ve now been moved one step closer. =)

Succulents waiting inside for new pots, fresh soil, and the succulent food I give them.


Need to get all these leaves from the front porch and the garden bed into eco-accepted bags and on the curb.


With all the leaves, twigs, and other debris removed, tomorrow is the day I’ll get everything out, watered, and gardenish again. It was great to be outside a lot today–and also to walk through our local garden center, which was hit pretty hard by recent winter weather, but they’re restocking.

It’s clear enough to see our planetary neighbors and constellations in the night sky. Amazing!

I ran out of time today to revisit an old manuscript. I don’t have the original draft, but I’ve found some other false starts that may get my imagination taking on yesterday’s dragon. Tomorrow!

Sunday Sundries


I don’t think I’ve ever featured this book on here before, though I see it’s in a shot of a group of journals and other books I took in June of 2021, so it’s been around a while. The Magic of Mindset is a journal, by Johanna Wright, to be written in, so if I had filled in any of the pages (I haven’t), it’s likely what I wrote would be too private to share.


That’s still true with the page I’m featuring, where under the title “Expect Resistance,” a girl meeting a dragon says, “Oh, hi.” The text on the accompanying page says, “RESISTANCE is A NORMAL PART OF THE PROCESS. LIST all of the REASONS WHY IT FEELS impossible TO LET GO OF YOUR OLD MINDSET AND MOVE OUT OF the stuck PLACE.

Those little items on the plate are like small talismans (crystal ball held in cupped palms; a wee dachshund carved of wood; a soapstone container, lid off, to show a variety of tiny stones; a small river rock in the shape of a heart; a sunflower incense burner holding a stick of sandalwood incense) that are either from or reference people, all a part of my history, who at one time or another were a force that could either subdue my voice or inspire and encourage it.

Relationships are complicated, and more than once, I’ve allowed them to block the flow of my creative energy. This time, I want to face that dragon and make a choice truer to myself.

This week’s theme may be arriving organically on each new day.

Photo Friday, No. 948

Current Photo Friday theme: Tiled.

Had a little fun with this theme by using several of my own tiles (the New Orleans tile was my mother’s), ringed by Sowminoes™ ceramic dominos, along with Scrabble tiles and artist Jeff Fisher’s cover illustration for British writer Louis de Bernières’ 1994 novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. (My theme this week has been books.) Some sources say the cover was inspired by the art of Matisse; another speaks of how the figures are like those on Mediterranean pottery. I read the book several years ago (I think it’s excellent, by the way), and remembered as soon as I saw the Photo Friday theme how the illustration always made me think of old tiles, as well as the way the cover figures are like “keys” to people and things in the novel.

(P.S. You’ve now seen your Daily Cow, plus a bonus cow!)

Thursday thoughts

One interesting thing about revisiting these books I haven’t read or read about in a long time is remembering why I once deliberated about whether to write my Masters thesis about the fiction of either Tom Robbins or Larry McMurtry, and in no small part, it had to do with their female characters. Though I relished the language of one author, and the narrative skills of the other, I intended to address how they wrote women characters, and my points were not all valentines toward either writer. That had little to do with enjoying their novels nor any sense of conventional “morality,” and also considered the time and culture in which the novels were written.

I think it’s an important part of reading that nothing should become “truth” to us at the expense of accessing our brain, our senses, our instincts, our better feelings. It’s wise to question even those books we’re told are indisputable truth. As a writer myself, with a deep love and understanding of stories and storytellers, I believe there’s no.such.thing.

I don’t have the energy to tackle a discussion of the means used to indoctrinate and control humans. I’ll always believe that the more we read, from the contrary and challenging and unsettling to the comforting and amusing and entertaining–all of it–the better off we are.

Oddest of all to me is the way book banning movements so often begin with people/readers believing the lie that “no one is banning books.”

How do we make love stay?


Let’s begin with this photo of my Dan Fogelberg 1983 Greatest Hits album that was lost in the Harvey flood. I’m pretty sure I have all his work that was drowned on the CD collection I bought, but it’ll never be the same as lying in a candlelit room and listening to the albums, staring at his photo on the cover, and traveling through all the journeys he took me to all the places in my imagination.

Though it was an album of greatest hits, it also had a couple of new songs on it, and one of those was “Make Love Stay.” I wondered from the first moment I heard it if it was inspired by Tom Robbins’s novel Still Life With Woodpecker. Of all his novels, this is one of two that I’ve read so many times they have a permanent residence in my brain. Because of this book, for years, I kept a sealed pack of Camel cigarettes in one desk drawer after another in every home, school, and business office I was in.

From the novel, this excerpt:


“Who knows how to make love stay?”

1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

Though I can in no way approach the kind of writing Tom Robbins creates, I know with every fiber of my being that the heart of one character I created would sing when he read this–and he’d read it over and over.

I think that passage probably had that same effect on Dan Fogelberg. In his own words:

Fogelberg later described “Make Love Stay” in the liner notes to a retrospective album as a “sinuous piece written around a chapter of Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker”and as “a musical question that, unfortunately, eludes me still.”

Tiny Tuesday!

Today, Debby and I had a couple of errands to take care of, but we got a late start. My brain had spent all the time I should have been sleeping last night rerunning old conflicts and disappointments, among other things–until 5 AM. That left me dragging all day, having had only around four hours of sleep.

By the time she and I pulled back into Houndstooth Hall, we were caught in a torrential thunderstorm. We sat in the driveway, talking and listening to music. Finally, the rain abated enough that I could use my umbrella to keep from getting drenched while I opened gates, backed the car into the carport, and we could both hurry inside our homes.

From the Tiny Pleasures book (above right), this page reminded me that the smell of rain was indeed nice, though the dogs were more than ready for their hemp chewies that keep them calm during thunder. I had to change into dry clothes–my third outfit of the day–and dry my hair. The whole thing, from errands to dodging rain, made me late to compose my Black History Month post to Instagram, though I think I actually did my Blue Sky book-cover post sometime in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.

This evening, I was thinking more about author Tom Robbins. It will take me a while to get through Another Roadside Attraction. Since Robbins and his books have turned into this week’s theme, I decided to let my mind wander and see where it took me. One place was the memory of a 1987 movie called Made In Heaven. The principals were Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis, as star-crossed lovers who had to find themselves and each other during lives on earth and in heaven.

This was not the cover of my original VHS copy, which was dreamier and more romantic. When I got rid of my VHS tapes, I bought this DVD. It still has the shrink-wrap on it. The reason I thought of the movie was because it’s filled with cameo appearances: Debra Winger, who was married to Hutton at the time, made an uncredited appearance as a character named Emmett. Others who popped up in the movie included Neil Young, Tom Petty, Ric Ocasek, Ellen Barkin–and one character called The Toymaker was played by none other than writer Tom Robbins. I remember how that delighted me the first time I saw the film.
ETA: I finally had time to watch the movie on Saturday. Except my little DVD player that works with my laptop had stopped working. Tom tested to make sure it worked in the big TV player, but in order not to cheat him of his TV viewing, I asked for and he picked up a new player. I cried through a lot of the movie, which is fine. I’ve been trying to cry since last summer with little success. I figured I needed it.

When I googled “Tom Robbins” and “Made In Heaven,” besides the movie, my search pulled up a quote from his novel Skinny Legs And All. I took this photo back when Eva was our foster fail because one of her endless nicknames was “Skinny Legs.”

The quote: Some marriages are made in heaven, Ellen Cherry thought. Mine was made in Hong Kong. By the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at K Mart.

I’m sure that quote always made me laugh, because our dog Pete LOVED those squeaky plastic pork chop dog toys. Maybe I even have a photo of him with one somewhere.

Tom Robbins’s prose always delivers on many levels.

It’s too late to rewatch Made In Heaven tonight. I’m hoping when I shut down the computer and crawl into bed, I get a full night’s sleep. I need it so much.

Mindful Monday


I got this beautiful image from Mindworks.org. I’m including the link because it’s always good to revisit guidance for improving mindfulness. Some of the words in the image are real challenges for me.

Last night, I was reading my Tom Robbins novel before bed and so much enjoying the euphoria of seeing someone put words together in all the right ways. I checked one of my social media accounts briefly before turning off the lights, commented on a post by someone (who I know only by being a fan of many decades), and my dreams wove crazy stories out of those two reading experiences. They included a song that I’ll now need to play to hear if my brain picked that particular song or its lyrics for my dream soundtrack for a reason.

Anyway, it all made me wake up in a good mood (plus there were two nice dogs snoozing next to me) but then…this…which I probably shouldn’t even post, but it speaks to some of my mindfulness challenges.

Oh, if only ones who told me some of my anxiety triggers would NEVER happen… At least the false idols will be taking good care of themselves.

I’ll be over here gutting deleting that chapter that’s given me so much trouble and trying not to think of real world nightmares for a while. Maybe I can put the words together in all the right ways.

Sunday Sundries


Photo of a much-loved novel; a gift (the ball with swirly paint) from the person who got me reading Tom Robbins; mushrooms and a butterfly that connect me to the book’s cover; the “magic” star, because there’s always something magical in Tom Robbins’s writing; and that lovely gold book pin because books are magic, too, and will forever link me to the writers who create them and impact my life.

I mentioned how on my recently-joined social media account, I’d been doing a book-cover challenge, posting a photo a day of a book that impacted me, but NO WORDS or EXPLANATIONS. Just the cover. On February 7, I posted the cover of Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins (his first novel from 1971). Yesterday, I found out Tom Robbins died on February 9. I’ve decided to reread all his books in order. I’m not really sure yet what my week’s theme will be, but I arranged those items because they made me feel connected to the novel/its cover/Tom Robbins.