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To thine own self be true

I met with a friend today who has had enough of being the artist everyone wants her to be and has spent her time recently dedicating herself to her own artistic fancies. It’s the person I want to see in her – not the one who wants to succeed in artist-ness but the one who wants to express herself no matter the outcome. To thine own self be true.

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Me, you and, um, how’s that again?

I met with a good friend for dinner tonight in North Beach at Vicoletto’s – a small intimate Italian restaurant where I had broccolini and house made papardelle and chanterelle mushrooms and well, there we were in North Beach, her in the window, me in the chair looking out the window, and the lights went out and it was 91 degrees outside and we were drinking Planeta Syrah, and talking about life. She meets a…

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City by the Bay

I’m woolly from lack of sleep and too much talking and thinking and went outside to enjoy the seasonable unusual hot weather in San Francisco. Here is why I went outside – this is the view from my hotel room: I walked over to the Ferry Building and smelled Fairy Cap and Black Trumpet mushrooms and almost walked off the planet; I had a small cup of Turkish Pistacio gelato and came back down to…

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Fear has no home here in my heart

A friend recently used an odd descriptor for a mutual friend, he told me, “Have you ever noticed how nervous he is, he is motivated by fear.” Hmm, I thought, thinking about it and seeing verisimilitude to my own observations. “Yes, I noticed,” said another friend, “I noticed also when he let go of fear, didn’t you? I heard it in his voice not too long ago, the way he began cracking jokes and seemed…

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In the beginning

Reductive In days of caves and communal songs, in days of old, There was no morphine. The humans’ brains Were just as quick and big as in 2010, But there were no bookstores or even any libraries, So when a situation came up which seemed new There was little guidance, only the oral history bullshit. In unendurable pain from just about anything, Cancer, diabetes, eye infections, gangrene, hunting bites, Severed limbs, a widespread deadly arthritis…

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Keep the home fires burning

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel…

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Over 50 and a force to be reckoned with

Dinner and champagne and catching up with an old friend now having hit the 50 yard mile – “If only I had known,” she said, “Sex? .. forgetaboutit .. overrated, I could have been so productive,” and therein lies the nuttiness of aging – it’s not that youth is wasted on the young, it’s that aging gives you a new perspective that would have been SO HANDY in your youth it almost feels like some…

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