And so begins the fasting.

Not from food, are you crazy? Do you know me? No, so begins the occasional news media fast.  Perhaps fast isn’t the right word — more like a cleanse. You know like the master cleanse, where all you drink is that maple syrup, lemony, hot pepper infused water.  Except I will just be down to the newspaper, because maple syrup, lemony, hot pepper infuse water sounds like a bad idea.

The longest I have gone through one of these is three weeks. I am thinking about going a month — because I need to wean myself off of the political spin machine, the analyzing, and the constant drone of everything I heard just a minute ago.

Out, MSNBC.
In, Poetry Books, (I am working on more of Frank O’Hara’s Collected, also Billy Collins most recent, (though it’s over a year old),  Horoscopes for the Dead.

Out, Local, evening tv news.
In, local newspaper

Out, HuffPo
In, more writing and blogging about things that are non-political.

Out, Sunday morning news shows
In, more recipe culling. I am looking to reduce my grocery bill as much as I can over the next month – liking these two sites for new and cheap ideas

Out, Real Time with Bill Maher
In, Reading Novels, I have Vonnegut and Lamb half done on my night stand.  Oh and the new JK Rowling for book club.

Out, NPR
In, new music, as much as I can find, have I mentioned how in love I am with this guy right now? Oh, I have. Cool.

 

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The one where I get heady

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be”.
        -Carl Sagan. 

I have, at times, heard a theory knocked around, in interviews with musicians,  mathematicians, or by the great minds that used to hang in my my living room at Shannon St, that all the knowledge and experience that ever was, or ever ever will be, is accessible and waiting to be accessed by us, or the universe – or something. (Wait, don’t go yet, hold on).  I’ve read it and seen it batted around in books like The Celestine Prophecy, or the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, or The Alchemist – or even in Slaughterhouse Five.

mememe and haiku

There’s a mememe going around Facebook tonight, and I thought I might just play along…  I’m doing it here — not in my notes on Facebook because, well my post count is decidedly low these days.

So apparently,  don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

ready – go –

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Kurt Vonnegut
3. Sylvia Plath
4. Madeline L’engle
5. Barbara Kingsolver
6. Bill Shakespeare
7. Harper Lee
8. Ken Kesey
9. John Irving
10. Roddy Doyle
11. Alice Walker
12. Henry David Thoreau
13. Ralph Waldo Emerson
14. Mark Twain (even if Irving said he didn’t like him).
15. Frank O’Hara

That’s a pretty sweet list- that takes me from Elementary school to modern day, and all those authors showed up at different stages of my learning and teaching. To be honest, I rambled off the first thirteen in three minutes and the last two took another  four or five on their own.

As promised, Haiku

Ode to a pinched nerve in my neck-

I think the world needs
to lay off me, when I have
shit that must be done.

Because he was the first author. . .

. . I couldn’t stop reading.

Vonnegut.
I was sixteen or seventeen the first time somebody told me to read him (thanks Mrs. Walsh or Mrs. Dimock — I’m not sure now) — It was summer reading. . . and I read it twice before the first September bell rang. I loved it so much that the cover came off eventually. Cat’s Cradle made me horrified that we could destroy the world, and made me believe that people can really die of a broken heart.

I ate every Vonnegut book in the library that year, and couldn’t believe that the griminess of life could be so beautiful, “I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool”.

Lately he would show up on late night talk shows, and say something outrageous about our government, about our president, about the horror that is this war, and I would just love him all over again.

Rest in peace you funny, brilliant man —

“Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why?

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand