Avoiding the enervations of modern life

Why I sometimes cannot do the blog, what at those times seems to be a pointless activity.  Jeanette Winterson explains very well in her [August] column.

There’s a common myth that creativity is linked to dark states and depression; it isn’t anything like as simple as that. I think it is to do with being open, which you have to be if you want to be honest in your work, and it is to do with the liminal state of creativity – a place that happens on the cusp or the boundary of two worlds and is exhausting, exhilarating, but also frightening, and full of shapes that are unknown.

Because hiking in Marin County

is some of the best to be had. I mean, available to me here daily! Mt. Tam, the ocean. Coyote Canyon. Outside my door.

Hanging in the tree at the start of a trail head

Fortuitous or faulty?

Getting ready to toss some jeans into the washer, I came across two paper strips in the pocket I’d stuffed in there Sunday night at LitQuake’s Dirty Words, a Tribute to Smut. These two pieces of papers were inside fortune cookies that my companion and I had. They are identical, reading:

“My earliest fantasies revolved around being kidnapped by beautiful women and held hostage. – Stephen Elliott”

(Are these fortunes?)

Neighbors’ chimes

Since this weekend, there’s a new sound, unavoidable. I sleep with my windows open. The neighbors have hung some new chimes. They have a high tinkling, perhaps not what I would have chosen. They put their house up for sale, then hung the chimes.