—HAVEN’T CRIED THIS MUCH IN YEARS. SHOULDN’T IT MAKE ME RICH FOR ONCE?

 

…How was your weekend? I hope it was wonderful and memorable.

My daughter and I saw “A Good Person,” on Saturday, which we both loved, and which I have been thinking about constantly. I didn’t know a single thing about it before going. I recommend you don’t either, if in fact you go. Florence Pugh is astonishing and Morgan Freeman is God, as per usual.

 

…At AWP, the first night here in Seattle, I went to dinner with two of my best friends and a woman at the table next to us asked, “Are you Len?”

It felt kind of haunting.

There were three women I had worked with, loosely, at N. Sadly, I couldn’t remember any of their names.

It felt like a bizarre time warp, like who is that person they’re recalling?

 

…I’ve been on some new medication. Lexapro. It helped initially, but upping my dosage has left me more anxiety-ridden than ever. Thus, it was a rather tough weekend, at times.

I just want to feel calm and stop shaking.

 

…A group of kayakers have been swirling around the lake. Just now, one stopped and stared and stared before pulling her camera out, taking shots of the house, which seems really strange, not to mention a tad invasive, though this is a public lake.

 

…But enough about that.

 

… Here are a few things I discovered, of late, that seem like a great way to begin a new week.

 

 

…“To true love, wherever you may find it.” Danny Cafaro 

 

… "I can't afford to hate anyone. I don't have that kind of time.” Akira Kurosawa 

 

 …“Risk” by Anaïs Nin

 

And then the day came,

when the risk

to remain tight

in a bud

was more painful

than the risk

it took

to blossom.

 

…“Sometimes there are truths worth lying for.” Your Honor

 

…“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.” Muriel Rukeyser

 

…"I drink to make other people more interesting." Ernest Hemingway

 

…“While I was driving at night, I saw a lit-up church sign that said, ‘We’re not Dairy Queen but we still have great Sundays.’” Stephen Dunn

 

…“I had to discover my method all by myself. I didn’t have any writer friends, I didn’t have anything. For example, in the afternoon, at work or in college, ideas popped into my mind, and I’d say, “Fine, I’ll write that down in the morning.” Without yet realizing that, for me, form and meaning are one single thing. The phrase arrives already made. And, so, whenever I’d leave it “for tomorrow,” I’d be in despair every morning in the face of the blank page. And the idea? It was gone. So, I decided to jot down everything that occurred to me. And I told Lúcio Cardoso, whom I met then, that I had a big pile of those notes, separate, for a novel. He said, “Afterward it makes sense, one is connected to the next.” So, I did it. Those loose pages made up “Near to the Wild Heart.” Clarice Lispector

 

…“Records stores don't save your life, but they can give you a better one.” Nick Hornsby

 

…“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So, they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” –Ken Kesey

 

…“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.” Anton Chekhov

 

…"I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers." 

  - Langston Hughes

 

…“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.” Thich Nhat Hanh

 

…“My tears are like the quiet drift of petals from some magic rose; and all my grief flows from the rift of unremembered skies and snows. I think that if I touched the earth, it would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, so tremulously like a dream.” Dylan Thomas

 

…“The one thing you can’t do is nothing.” Your Honor