I Burned This For You

 After watching PEN15 for the second time through, I've realized that my teenaged years were the only time I ever really felt alive, and I don't even remember them all that well.

Prize Your Individuality Above All Else

The best parts of a person are those that distinguish him or her from everyone else—and, more importantly, that no one has the right to determine how another person lives. 

Feeling My Feet Touch Familiar Soil

 I hope, unceasingly, for great music to be born.

The Spirit of (This) Man

I Am Free 

I make this statement in comparison to those who feel themselves handicapped by a college career.

The Walls Are Stuffed With Books

 I am a practitioner of bibliotherapy.  There is, indeed, a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read great fiction.

I believe much of mental illness can be tackled by the reading of many, many books.

It's great fun!

They arouse a person's mind; they make them alert and questioning.  Being surrounded by books will put some sense into your head. It's something every young bookseller ought to know.  

relapse into irresponsible freakishness

 It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.

The Random Cluster of Sentient Carbon

When one views a stubborn fact from a new angle, it is amazing how all its contours and edges change shape.  If people believe in deities, then it is for psychological comfort.  From there, religion represents the order that people impose on the unruly world about them.

the talking head

 Do you know why people are on social media more now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the Trump presidency has made them realize that their country is ill. The people of this great nation were suffering from all sorts of mental fevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mental pangs are only too manifest. We are all posting, Tweeting, reading, hungrily, hastily, trying to find out—while the trouble is present—what is the matter with our minds.

Delia Wasn't A Microbiologist

How easy/difficult is it to get COVID-19?

Is it like jumping from the Empire State building and landing on a passing unicorn?

Or is it more like a 19-mile radius of everything around me covered in a fine mist, and it's only the 56 times I wash my hands in a day that's protecting me?

Going Viral

I am still a caregiver for the elderly during a major pandemic.  The job gives me a chance to help people and its oddball hours allow me to continue with writing, which brings me happiness.  Due to random circumstances, I haven't had any hours (ironically, not as a result of the virus), so it allowed me to stay home.  There's a silver lining to every cloud; since I've been rationing food, I've actually lost 10 pounds (and right in time... my triglycerides were on a steady climb for years, and just recently my VLDLs finally registered as high).

Things are slightly askew with the clients I do have.  One fellow named Harry was sipping on his lemonade and began to choke.  He had to pause when he was done to assure me that it went down the wrong pipe, and not that he was contagious and ill.  I'm pretty sure I was able to pick up on that.  The first day when the panic and hysteria were just settling in across the country, I was at the library for my Writers' Group.  I was out at the computer printing up one of my short stories when within the span of five minutes, I witnessed these three things:  A grown man came out from the Children's Library and said the following to the librarian, "Um, Miss?  Some kid just sneezed back there.  Do you have any disinfecting wipes so's I can clean it up?"  Then a few seconds later, a guy be-bopped in, asking where they kept the Purell dispenser.  "Across from the bathrooms," was the answer.  By now, it was time for me to pay for my printouts.  Cost me .75 cents.  But when the librarian went to give me my change, she did one of those deals where her hand was a good foot above mine, at which point she dropped the quarter into my palm.  Good thing I caught it!  Do I really look that dirty and diseased??  Like Pigpen from the Charlie Brown cartoons??

Hmm.