The blood draw on Monday screwed up this week. The tendonitis in my left arm was acting up and an attempted draw from my left arm aggravated it. Lst night and Monday night I resorted to the brace for the first time in months.
I was in bed by 7 pm on Mondy night and up at 3 AM. That screwed up my sleep pattern for the week. I was too tired to do my daily report. Too tired to work on "Love Stinks".
Tuesday was not much better. I did a little bit on "Love Stinks" after I got home. Finances started worrying me. I usually have money left over from the Social Security check. Having bought the bed for the new place has me in a bind. I did get some work done on "Love Stinks" - mostly assimilating changes in the action with what I wrote while in prison. I finished reading Carlos Fuentes, more on that later.
Might as well start cataloging what I have read that I thought was worth collecting here.
Puzzlement Over Answers: On Fiction as a Mode of Inquiry incites me to a target I might not come close to hitting, but too many years without ambition or goals did me no good. Maybe having unattainable goals is another antidote to despondency - just having the fight is enough, Is that not life? To live even though we know we die. Where once that thought fed my depression, I can take energy from the fight
“Art starts when things get strange.”
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What makes a work of art a strange tool? For Noë, such a work is “useless”: it is no help in getting things done; it yields no information or explanation. And yet we make such works to think with. They help us find our way around in a world where we often “get lost in the complex patterns of organization that make up our lives.” In other words, “the true work of art is philosophical.” Like philosophy, art is a practice, a method of research aimed at “illuminating the ways we find ourselves organized, and so, also, the ways we might reorganize ourselves.”
Like philosophy, art interrupts and subverts our conventional ideas and activities, creating space for transformation. Take the art of storytelling. Just as philosophers are preoccupied with our habitual ways of thinking, Noë writes, so “literary artists take all the ways we find we must express ourselves, or write down our stories, or articulate our lives, and they make that their problem. They try to invent new ways of writing…. Writing, so familiar, so dominant, so hegemonic, is made strange.” If a story results, it invites us to wonder what we could see in or with that story.
The Loneliness Files – Athena Dixon by Olivia Durif, I may need to come back to:
In her new collection, Dixon writes critically about technology and loneliness without ever slipping into the realm of self-help, answers, or alternatives. “The liminal spaces of our new world are massive,” Dixon writes, “—easy for us to be swallowed into—and disorienting.” It’s a popular topic: the digital world and how it shapes, satisfies, and harms us. Dixon’s perspective is unique, I think because of the particular ratio of memoir and criticism in her work. She uses the personal to get at the cultural as much as she examines the cultural to understand her own life, which is a hard thing to do.
6 Tips for Writing a Compelling First Sentence Deanna Martinez-Bey, has me considering what may be wrong with what I have written. If I had time to go back over what I have out instead of just trying to get stuff from the written page into the computer....
Indiana’s congressional delegation is getting a much-needed shakeup by Michael Leppert, which I think verges on what may be wrong with Indiana politics - too long an acquiescence in Republican control has sapped any interest or belief in politics. It has also bankrupted the Republicans' talent pool.
When the contest for representation only exists during a primary, the seat will only attract the most partisan candidates. It reduces campaigns to the foundational choice of being partisan or not. And in today’s congress that choice is synonymous with being either deranged or unelectable.
Enjoy the May primaries in these four districts, Indiana. They are certain to be much ado about nothing.
WEIRDING THE WEST: STRANGE TALES THAT COMPLICATE THE PICTURE OF TEXAS by Elizabeth Gonzalez James (would we could say the same about Indiana)
THE FLITCRAFTING OF SAM SPADE - explains a little about the AMC show - which I have been nibbling on.
This gets me to Wednesday. I omit the cat being soaked in Trusday's rain and coming back in while I am leaving for work and how he stayed in the room all day by himself. I got home from the courthouse around 5. I called it a day around nine. I did get a few paragraphs done on "Love Stinks"
A police chase happened Tuesday in Muncie. I saw the end result of this yesterday when the bus got me downtown: State police identify Muncie man killed in downtown crash. I ask the same question I have asked for decades: is there a mental deficiency in Muncie residents that they run from the police in high-speed chases?
Does it surprise anyone there are no happy hours in Indiana? They may be coming back - Happy hour, cocktails to-go bill makes a splash
Lisa Hutcheson of Mental Health America of Indiana said drink specials are correlated with heavier alcohol consumption and could negatively impact people struggling with substance use disorder.
She also suggested the change could increase alcohol-related crimes.
Hutcheson told the committee that if the bill proceeds, lawmakers “should at least” consider new restrictions: banning happy hour advertising on social media, banning advertising outside of the retailers and requiring customers purchasing discounted alcohol to also buy food.
The bill would also legalize carry-out alcohol.
Considering what I have heard about Hoosier reactions to Covid, I wonder if we really need to hear from every constituent, and is not the Governor elected by all a state-wide vote or does the Governor of Indiana have a different constituency? Whichever way it goes, Republican lawmakers advance new attempt to limit Indiana governor’s executive powers sounds like the recipe to make any emergency worse.
The rejections are starting up again; the first for Theresa Pressley Attends Michael Devlin’s Viewing, and the second for Their Bright Future.
Thank you for sending us your writing. We are sorry that it has taken so long to get back with you. We had an unusually large number of submissions this year. Our staff reads submissions in rounds, so the fact that we kept your submission a long time also indicates that we found much there to admire, even though we are passing on it at this time.
Again, thank you for sharing your writing with us!
The Editors
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Thank you for allowing us to consider your work. Though we find we are unable to use it, we consider it a privilege that you thought of us and regret that the volume of submissions precludes a more personal reply.
Sincerely,
The Editors
Good news: We May Not Have Seen the Last of the Coen Brothers’ Collaborations. What would be even better news? The Davies brothers putting out one more album.
I do not drink anymore. It is just one of those things that I gave up when my digestive system went on the blink. Nowadays, I am on my own and I do not drink alone. That I leave to George. However, I used to like drinking rye - back when you might be lucky to find Old Overholt and Jim Beam just started putting out a rye. The 10 Best High-Proof Rye Whiskeys in 2024 tempts me.
I have 10 minutes to get ready for work. Grocery shopping tonight. Do I have time to shave?
An inspirational song:
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