Upside Ann

 Yes.  That is a snickerdoodle cookie.  While it may be my second favorite cookie, it is the one that carries the most love.  No one made snickerdoodles in my family - but one winter day while I was at OSU, I received a care package full of love and snickerdoodles.  Those were the best snickerdoodles EVER.  I think it was all that extra-love.  Thank you. Today's snickerdoodle came home from "Family Consumer Science" class with Zupe.  Poor kid.  He doesn't eat cookies but each year he has to bake them.  Maybe I should tell him that sending a box of cookies to a distant friend is the best long distance hug that friend could ask for.

She (Michelle Obama) told Chicagoans they “have shown the world what we are capable of. You’ve proven that a lasting legacy isn’t an award or a name on a building or a number of zeros in a bank account, but the difference we make in one another’s lives. It’s about seeing each other, and showing up for each other, and carrying each other when we’re weary or faltering or losing faith. That’s how you build something that endures."  

Despite the brevity of this work, it is quite a short story, I walked away with multiple connections that felt significant.  And a desire to explore other works by this author.  This is always a welcome outcome.  When they were arrested, the boy and the girl claimed that they had spent the night inside, but the indignant guards swore that such a thing was impossible because they patrolled the premises tirelessly.  Furthermore, they security camera picked up everything down to a person's inner most secret thoughts. Being locked in a museum - yep- very romantic - though in my experience - no wedding dress nor naked "boy"- much more PG rated than the night this couple enjoyed.  Of course, we didn't spend the entire night locked in the museum.  Yeah, but stll, no wedding gown. He didn't get modern art; he preferred bucolic landscapes with cows. LOL.  When I took my first teaching job, at Urbana University, the psychologist I replaced was "interesting"....

For some inexplicable and frustrating reason, my computer and you-tube are having a dispute.  I cannot play videos as the you in question believes I have some sort of ad-blocker.  If I do, I don't know how that happened.  I'm trying to watch this in my blog.  Love.

It is 11 PM on 12-31 and I am undrafting all my drafts.  This is the last I have the energy for.  I'm too tired to say anything more than enjoy these quotes.  I did. ...somehow, I think I should just get used to it.  We can't curse all the men in the world, can we?" "Not in a single day, at least," Mrya replied.   "Everyone will always ask you for something, " she told them, "and ghosts are no exception." The irony of new moons, of beginnings in general, is that they are always begun with total blindness.  No orb of light for guidance.  No promise of the future, good or bad.   "Your constant barrage of whimsy exhausts me."   "Dima," she rsaid softly. "You know Stas never took your place."  He swallowed, saying nothing.  "how could he?" she pressed him.  "you were all I ever wanted.  From the day you told me you loved me, there has never been anyone else."   Faith was an unwise extension of hope...

 They loved each other like you loved a really good electric toothbrush.  The way you loved the perfect cashmere sweater.  Because it kept you warm when you were cold.   "I think I might be marrying someone who isn't you," she said, accepting it. "Mm.  How does it feel?" Jamie asked, sipping his coffee. Meridith considered it.  "Safe," she said.  "But also, kind of like I want to swallow hot poison and die." ..and felt sad, but not, I suppose, empty.  Not ... unfulfilled , exactly, but more...unfinished.  Like the story didn't have an ending yet.  A silly thing to think at a funeral.  Obviously all stories have endings whether you're ready for them or not.

 ...art is tragedy.  Art is loss. It's the fleeting breath of a foregone moment, the intimacy of things undone, the summer season that passes.  It's the peeled lemon and bony fish in the corner of a Dutch still life, rotten and dead and gone. It's him lying next to you, legs tangled with yours, only to know he'll be specter in your thoughts by next month, next week, ten minutes from now.  This is what makes it art, Charlotte, and you've always understood that.  You've always understood, above everything, that what makes beauty is pain. Every time you love, pieces of you break off and get replaced by something you steal from someone else.  It seems like it's the right shape but it's slightly different every time, so that eventually, very very quietly and over days and days and days, you are tranasformed into something unrecognizable, and it happens so slowly you don't even notice, like shedding scales and making new ones. What an appropriate passage t...

 In a likely misguided attempt to simplify my life and my possessions, I've decided I must part with my old letters.  But before I can do that, I'm reading them - reading every line - one last time.  I'm reading the letters from friends and family in 1979 and 1980.  You see, I kept them- I kept them all.  I kept the scribbled notes from my mother on her lunch break.  I kept my grandmother's observations of life on her farm...what was blooming and who was singing in the trees. I kept the silly letters written by my crazy, wonderful friends as we started our lives "adult" lives away from "home".  I kept the love letters.  They are all love letters. I kept them all and I'm reading them all.  My heart aches. All those people I loved- with love so intense and pure and fresh like a paper cut.  I'd give anything to go back for just an hour and hold those beautiful people with their hopes and joys and laughter and tears and tell them.  Tell...