Sat 14 Mar 2020
Instagram stories – Country Girls
Posted by PJ under instagram stories
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Archive for March, 2020
Monthly Archive
Fri 13 Mar 2020
Dead Man’s Zen
Posted by PJ under my poetry, poetry
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Dead Man’s Zen
My dead friend wrote in the margin of my book:
“Nothing’s your fault, and you are responsible
for all of it. Maturity.â€
The wolf stared at me and I got scared.
I cried, thinking my time was gone,
but time still ticked in my heart.
Time was not my problem.
What to do with time was my problem:
how to use it well, how to be used by it
and not mind so much.
The wolf still stares,
hungry, unapologetic, bluntly assessing
whether my tottering legs can outrun it.
But wolves aren’t hungry only for flesh.
Often it is for honesty:
sifting, weighing, natural selection.
They want authority and submission,
a leader to follow, or a pack to follow them,
arranged alphabetically.
They do not accept excuses,
or acquiesce with lies and self-delusion.
Their gleaming eyes know fraud,
and seek out weakness.
They hamstring the liars,
bring them to the ground
to meticulously devour pretensions.
Nothing’s your fault.
You are responsible for all of it.
Maturity.
Dead man’s in his Heaven,
I’m here with the wolves.
Be straight with yourself—
and get to work.
—PJ Thompson
Fri 13 Mar 2020
Entitled
Posted by PJ under entitlement, happiness, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“I don’t think you can feel entitled and still be happy. Happiness always comes from feeling that you’ve been blessed.â€
—Robert Brault, The New Robert Brault Reader
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Thu 12 Mar 2020
Service
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, service
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Random quote of the day:
“As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don’t have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn’t matter as much as how you do what you do.â€
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, quoted in Another Door Opens by Jeffrey A. Wands
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Wed 11 Mar 2020
Review: Last Mountain Dancer by Chuck Kinder
Posted by PJ under books, review
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Chuck Kinder may be a metafictional wonder boy, but this book often tried my patience. I didn’t give up on it, though many times I wanted to. I would put it down, sometimes for weeks at a time, but I’d always circle back because I couldn’t quite give up on it. And these days, when I’m notorious for abandoning books because “life is too short†that’s something of a backhanded compliment.
You see, this book is what Chuck Kinder calls “factionâ€â€”that is, a memoir that’s even more loose with the facts than most memoirs. Mr. Kinder states repeatedly that he’s a storyteller above all else and never lets the facts of his life get in the way of a good story. Born and raised in West Virginia, he pays loving and cynical attention to his quirky home state, speaking of its history and its legends, everything from Matewan to Mothman. As fast and loose as he plays with the facts of his own life, when he’s talking about history and legends (as far as I can tell) he plays it fairly straight. Oh, he may insert himself into the headspace of the historical actors —which makes the narrative come alive in quite wondrous ways sometimes, if I’m honest—but he does tell the story down to its bones. In these days of the internet, it’s easy to call his bluff there, and some of these oddball characters have presences you can even look up on YouTube (Jessico White, for one).
I was good with all of that. Enjoyed that part of the ride. What Mr. Kinder had to say in these passages was often beautiful and heart-wrenching; or oddly, spookily, legendarily interesting; or downright funny. A lot of funny. When he talked about the history and legends of West Virginia (“Planet West Virginia†as he referred to it), you could feel his love for the place and its people and the craziness he grew up with.
Unfortunately, he frequently interspersed these bits with references to his own bad boy past and present, and those passages smelled of stale testosterone. I am so over reading about bad boys and posing tough guys, whether they are teenagers or fifty-somethings. He often doesn’t name the people in his life, or only by pseudonyms and nicknames—either to protect their innocence or to turn them into characters he can fudge facts about. Again, I wouldn’t have minded the faction about his relatives, but his wrenching everything back to stories about his bad boy status got tiresome, and interrupted the flow of the rest of the narrative. And that, as the saying goes, got on my last nerve.
But I did finish Last Mountain Dancer, so there is that.
Wed 11 Mar 2020
Truth
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, truth
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Random quote of the day:
“Truth doesn’t need any furniture.â€
—Tomas Tranströmer, “Preludes†(tr. Robert Bly)
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Tue 10 Mar 2020
Perfection
Posted by PJ under art, perfection, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“We must surrender the idea that this perfection that we see in the mind or before our eyes is obtainable or attainable. It is really far from us. We are no more capable of having it than the infant that tries to eat it. But our happiness lies in our moments of awareness of it.â€
—Agnes Martin, lecture, Institute of Contemporary Art, February 14, 1973
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Mon 9 Mar 2020
Grief
Posted by PJ under grief, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“Grief has no solution. Let it be.â€
—Amy Shock, Thought Catalog
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
