The start of a new day and a new month and a new year. I'd say that today is ripe with potential. Ready for harvest... Welcome to January. It's nice to think about ripening and harvesting in the middle of winter, even if we must summon the metaphor from the tumescent days of September. It's time to start fresh once again. Rabbit, rabbit! ...
Midlife Doodles
Doodling in middle age, doodling in the digital age... Daily. Digitally and not so digitally. Sometimes almost not digitally at all. Welcome to my midlife doodles.
I doodle old school back-of-the-napkin doodles with borrowed pens and pencils. Or a straw dipped in tea. I doodle in meetings, and I doodle in bed. I doodle at the beach. On the beach. In the wet sand by the water's edge where I sometimes re-doodle when the waves wash over my works of whimsy. I doodle on my phone. I doodle on the not-so-fancy paper placemat with my spilled coffee. Or red wine. I noodle-doodle on my plate, and sky doodle with my flashlight. I doodle in the margins of my books, and doodle on the backs of envelopes when paying bills. My friend even doodles on pristine white airsickness bags and then slips them back into the kangaroo pouch in the seat in front of him for somebody to discover later. Dogs doodle in the snow and we call it marking their territory...
Do You Doodle?
Maybe you should try marking some of your territory with doodles? Or maybe doodle a morning message on your misted mirror instead. Doodle-dawdle to decompress, and doodle-bomb get even or make a point or just to experience [almost] what it's like to graffiti. Doodle because teachers and parents told you not to. Doodle because it's risky. Doodle because it's safe. Mostly — and most important of all — doodle because you can and it's fun!
Romance Crisis
"This is not a romance. It’s his midlife crisis." (Source: Annie’s Mailbox) ...
Clowns
[W]here are the clowns? Send in the clowns Don't bother, they're here Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer? Losing my timing this late in my career But where are the clowns? Send in the clowns Well, maybe next year ...
Independence
Here's to a happy, healthy Independence Day, American friends! (Plus a much wider wish for independence—real, autonomy striving, responsibility ensured freedom—to creators and explorers and teachers and dreamers all around the world.) At the risk of sounding pedantic, I invite and encourage you to shoehorn a few minutes between the bunting and the barbeque, between the parade and the fireworks, a ...
Flag Day
Today, June 14, is Flag Day. And this is my flag. Where's yours? I'm probably about to conflate a pair of memories, maybe three? Four? This is my Flag Day recollection. I remember painting an aging wood flagpole, repainting really, with my father as a boy. He had lowered the pole for our chore, removing a long bolt near the base that threaded through three stout, round poles arranged ...
Third Boob
I've just noticed that my third boob — a surplus nipped areola, smaller, less pigmented, lower, left of center, roughly midway between east tit and belly button — is almost gone. Vanishing from neglect, I suspect, or maybe just obscured by “the beard on my belly”, dubbed such by my nephews a dozen years ago. Yes, I just shared the first fifteen lines of a riff on my third breast. True. The poem. ...