After watching Cloud Atlas yesterday, I ran into a new friend who is doing some work with me at Waldorf and we got into a very inspiring conversation. I’m trying to connect the dots in my life to walk the line that draws itself from inside me then out. My dots start with Tin, and move through education (not a cookie-cutter, test inspired, grade driven education, but to really develop as a human being and…
We skipped work yesterday afternoon and went to see Cloud Atlas, which just opened at Canal Place. I read David Mitchell’s book three summers ago in Spain and was taken on a wild and delightful odyssey. The movie is worth a look, albeit I do agree with the NYT review that it too tightly controlled the message. And what is the message – that we are all interconnected by truth. And I’d like to actually…
1997 Convocation Speech at Dartmouth College: Louise Erdrich (Class of 1976) (Sept. 23, 1997) CONVOCATION SPEECH Ahneen, apijigo megwitch. Niminwehndam ikidooyeg noongoom onishishin geezhigud. I entered Dartmouth in 1972, a member of the first freshman class of women and in the first class of Native Americans. I had never been east of the Mississippi. I didn’t know what a bagel was. I found Brooklynese both strange and moving. I’d never met a Californian, never heard…
So in order to fix a problem, you first have to name it, correct? Well, yeah, but for some gals you have to repeat it ad infinitum until you are just poisoning yourself. I’m like a soy candle, I burn so slow and so low and it takes a really long time for me to feel the burn – so it was that in discovering a saboteur on Tuesday with the life coach, today another…
We developed an addiction Issa Rae – whatever she does, we watch and love. So in Cadiz, while Tin was asleep as it was midnight, we were holed up in the dark living room watching on my computer one of her episodes and the theme song was the Doublemint Twins singing Booty Shawts. Rae’s stuff is so compelling, she’s like a one woman enterprise ranging from her Ratchetpiece Theater to Confessions of an Awkward Black…
Hashimoto’s and Alopecia got you down? Take control of your life, change your diet. And I did, took out dairy, cut back meat – inflammation be gone. Only I replaced dairy with soy – what! are you nuts! – soy mimics estrogen and therefore suppresses the thyroid causing weight gain, depression and fatigue in Hashimoto patients. What? The list that I can eat shrinks, but I don’t mind, as long as the rest of me…
“Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” — Henry David Thoreau I spoke to my life coach yesterday and it was a positive turn for the better. I told her I felt as if the last two sessions had helped move the turnstile – picture me in the center of a turnstile – the image of a hurricane and either right in the grind or whipped out into squalls…
I’m having an art crisis right now – I need to see new art, hear new music, read new words. Anyone who has something they think I should know – tell me. [A friend recently recommended WILD by Cheryl Strayed] – I came across these artists after reading about Nick Cave’s collection: Kehinde Wiley Barkley Hendricks Zwelethu Mthethwa Hank Willis Thomas
A long time ago, I was part of a group who took jobs to live so they could pursue their art – I had dreams of being a writer. California tried to destroy my dreams by making work and the great material machine godlike. Luckily, I escaped back to my homeland, New Orleans, but as luck would have it in reaching for the brass ring, the terra firma sank underwater – which became a big…
I cut out a quip by Chuck Close and put it in this journal that I’m keeping about what inspires me. He says that he was in the hospital – eight weeks in rehab – and almost died – he decided that when he was out he would make sure that every day he would do something fun. Maybe see a play, a movie, or go to a gallery and see a show. Often it’s…