Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
March eases on, and it still feels like a very early Spring.
Even early summer – 80 degrees predicted all week!
NOTEBOOKS 3
Here’s a continuation of samples from my writer’s notebooks as were included in the novel, Third Wish. These are from Volume Two.
Everyone has a birthmark. Some can be seen from the outside – and some are hidden inside. Some we are born with, and others are scars we never reveal.
You may never get all that you want – but you are free to want what you get.
Advice of Fabuliste Curnonsky:
“Why cut anything you can gently untie?
For that which is untied may be retied.
Why break anything which can be repaired?
For that which is broken can be put back together.
Why pour out that which may be distilled into something stronger?
Why slam doors and walk away when you can walk through walls if you want to?
Opportunity knocks, but it doesn’t nag.
Stars: Fireworks that have stayed in the air.
Love is a stream, not a pond. Waves, not a shore.
Someday I will understand, but not yet.
But I am still someday’s child.
Because things are the way they are, they will not remain the way they are.
I admire men whose dignity includes the wisdom to be playful.
Monastic life is not so difficult.
It is harder to stay engaged with the world and maintain a spiritual life at the same time.
How to tell a goat from a sheep:
Goats carry their tails up,
sheep carry their tails down.
Retroactive wishes:
If you are happy at the present, remember a time when your life seemed awful, and you wished it could be like it is now.
But it is now, and you got your wish.
Wishes sometimes take time to come true.
Celebrate the Feast of Saint Precarious –
The patron saint of those who choose to live well on the sharp edge of uncertainty.
He thought of himself as a rich man.
Not that he had much money.
Rich was an attitude, not a bank balance.
Rich was a wealth of experience, not cash.
Invisible wealth –
The answer to the question, “Who knows where the time goes?”
A faded feather from the bluebird of happiness.
The ragged end of the smallest rainbow.
The bittersweet smell of success.
The shadow of a smile.
The box the unbearable lightness of being came in.
Lady Luck’s cell phone number.
She was used to being out on a limb – that’s where the fruit is.
It’s a matter of appropriate anxiety.
If there is a dilemma, then what’s a lemma?
And how about a trilemma?
When two people are out on a wire together, they should not look down. Balance is everything.
Song without music:
Sweet Sunday morn abide.
Extra bacon on the side.
Coffee in my special cup.
Eggs sunny side and up.
Short the life, but wide.
I’ve often fallen, but I would never jump.
If I make it up, can I live it down?
H. N. Swanson was a famous literary agent.
When asked what kind of writing was most profitable, he said, “Ransom Notes.”
I prefer solitude.
But there are some things one cannot do alone:
Be part of a choir, or a mob, a conspiracy, a regiment, or elope.
Baseball proverb:
Some days you win, some days you lose, and somedays the game gets rained out.
There’s a book for pregnant women: What to expect when you are expecting. I want to write one called: What to expect when you don’t know what the hell to expect next.
Enough.