Word Wabbit

Howl Track 4 (Photo credit: filmresearch) So a friend of mine at work says: Word Wabbit, you gotta read “Howl.” And I’m all like: I have a million books—I can’t afford to buy another! He says, No it’s really short. You can read it in an evening. But you might be depressed after. So I go online, there it is for free at Poetry Foundation.org—simply a great resource. So for anyone who’s…

Cover of The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy; Random House; @ 1997; 321 pages Do not give books that you have not read to friends, relatives, strangers, etc. Don’t do it. I could almost stop my little book report here. Literature, it seems, is a beautiful way to talk about horrible things. Take if from me, if you must give a book, give a book of jokes by Reader’s Digest. I first became…

James Joyce, 1 photographic print, b&w, cartes-de-visites, 9.2 x 6.1 on mount 10.5 x 6.5 cm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By James Joyce; 6 pages As I read Araby, I was reminded that in every story the main character has to want something. In Araby, the young man wants to impress a girl. The girl mentions a bazaar that she cannot go to and recommends it to our love-struck narrator/protagonist. He…

Just before Sunday service (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By James Joyce, 35 pages This story took a good 20 pages to gain my interest, but the end was worth it. The story takes place on the night of the Misses Morkan’s annual dance, which is in the wintertime, I think between Christmas and New Year. The Misses Morkans are three elderly ladies who live in Dublin and have lots of friends and…

I’ve been reading a book called Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark. I’m not ready “to review” it yet, but it made me aware of something that I missed in my review of James Joyce’s short story, Araby. I missed the whole theme of blindness! —Which, Roy Peter Clark assures me is a good thing. Well, sort of. Clark advises us to use symbols and not cymbals in…

English: Mating Grasshoppers, Uvita, Costa Rica (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By Roy Peter Clark, CQ Press, @ 2008, 260 pages. The introduction to this book advised me to start reading the last chapter first. I don’t think the author meant for me to read the book backwards, chapter by chapter, but that’s what happened. This worked well for me as I found the most interesting material at the end. But…

My blog, like me, is in woeful need of a redesign. The question is: should I do this now or wait for the end of the world, in which case I won’t need to do it at all. I’m thinking about deleting all the triggering posts—the posts that for some reason I find upsetting. Unfortunately, these are popular posts that come up often: The Sea, the Sea, The Suitcase, The Foreign Woman, The Lady and her…

What the DNA results revealed

“Just tell me when it hurts too much and I’ll stop,” is what your soul ‘should’ say to mine. I’d like to tell you that I’m not your strawman And, straw “person” doesn’t solve the problem But you misunderstand me… Just who am I anyway? A tribeless Karen—an easy target for your hate I feel it—white, hot, searing down my chest Sung in a different key, it’s still a song I know by heart I try…

Sure, I can be as cryptic as John Campbell, or uncreative. Whatever. Got my DNA test back. No, not the one that will tell me that my father is really my father. That bad news has to wait for later. This one was with CRI Genetics and only shows my ethic breakdown. Worst news. I’m not Russian or Slavic, whatever. Ok, sure I can claim possibly 12%. I’m sad. I’m also only about 12% Scottish,…

Personal Updates and Major Blog Revision

I’ve been absent from my blog for a long time now. The regular blogging I did 5 years ago is now far in the rear-view mirror. I see that people still drop in from time to time and read the old content, but the look and feel of the blog, the content itself, and its stagnation have all been nagging at me. One would think that with the lockdown of 2020 – 2021 that I would have had plenty of time to…

Day 10: Grief and Fear, the Ojibwa Catcher

Shamanic energy again! A dream catcher today. This is one of El Goliath’s bonus cards. The symbolism speaks to me and tells me to notice what’s right in front of me.

Today I’m becoming acquainted with Hank Wesselman, Sandra Ingerman, and Michael Harner.

El Goliath would tell you that nothing is an accident. He would say that I’m finding these anthropologist shamans because I asked, even yelled at…