--IT STARTED WITH A WHISPER

...Rabbit Rabbit.

…Today is the start of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month whereby a viral community of writers attempts to complete an entire novel in the month of November.

I’m going to take a swing at it.  We’ll see.
Yesterday I wrote a few pages.  It begins with a drunk teenager hitting a girl with his car.
“Shattered” is the working title.  I’ve started this novel before and got 165 pages in, then gave up.  I keep coming back to the characters—orphaned twins, Eve and Eddy, and so the pull is there to move on with it.

…I live in the boondocks, as I have said many times.  Not a single Trick-or-Treater has ever shown up in the last six years.  I miss that.  I love kids and like seeing them dressed up and giddy.

...It seems like everything is getting bigger and more intense.  Events, I mean.  I thought it was just me—thinking Halloween was being made into this extravaganza, but then I read that Americans spent $80 million on the holiday this year, compared with $48 million in 2005.

Football—the NFL—is the same way.  Just watch Monday, Sunday or Thursday nights.  Each game is replete with some celeb singing the national anthem, fireworks, pageantry, and then the shows themselves have elaborate (and ridiculous) theme songs.
We are a nation, like Texas, that likes oversized things.

…I’m watching “Homeland.”  If you aren’t, you should be.  It’s a smart show, going the opposite way you think, which is an important ingredient when it comes to plotting.  The acting is most excellent, as is the direction and writing.  “Homeland.”  Go watch it now.

…Here are some things that make me think:

-"What's real is if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you'll get better."

-"On a bad day you don't need a lot of advice.  You just need a little empathy and affirmation.  You need to feel once again that other people have confidence in you."
-"I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world--present and in awe." --Anne Lamott

“Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love” Galway Kinnell

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up." Booker T. Washington

 

"A champion is someone who gets up when he can't." Jack Dempsey

"How do you thank a person who saves your life?" Doug Crandell, "The Flawless Skin of Ugly People"