The Apostrophe Blog
Photo by GC Norton
I started to work on what’s below way back in the Stone Age, dateline 2007. Some writing exercise that I just did without my usual scrutiny and questioning. I stumbled on it a year later on a Saturday morning while sipping coffee as we readied to start another outside gardening day. Looking at it again today, dateline December 2023, so much still rings true. As I edited to prep this for posting on the Apostrophe Blog, I added a few more items. It remains (still) a work-in-progress:
I believe in dental floss and a good haircut. I believe that generosity trumps greed. I believe in eight hours of sleep every day when possible. I believe in fresh air. In fresh flowers and serif typefaces. In the healing power of scissors and glue. Singing to the radio while driving.
I believe that I have a face that belongs to an earlier century. That in a past life I lived in Cher’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone in Moonstruck or Meryl Streep’s Village apartment in The Hours.
I believe in wisdom over cleverness. Analog over digital. The paper book over the Kindle simulacrum. That a G.P.A. is no indication of intelligence or how well you will do in life. More and more, I am coming to believe that you can learn a lot about most things from Bob Dylan, D.J. of XM’s Theme Time Radio Hour.
I believe you can probably find all you need in your own backyard. I believe in characters and their flaws. I believe in bubbles, watching them float, lift, and dive. That a rainbow blesses a day. That gospel music piped through P.A. systems might cure us of all our ills. And that the world would have been better off without the car.
I long believed in the color green but recently switched my allegiance to orange. I believe air travel is alien, in spite of the fact it delivers us to astonishing places like Venice, Italy. I believe there isn’t much that a walk outside doesn’t help. That we need beauty as much as water and food. I believe it’s vital that we thank.
I believe people do not have to be mean to one another. I believe a person who treats a waitperson badly is not a nice person. I believe in smooth paper and blank notebooks and fountain pens and ink. I believe in money in the bank. For most of my life, I believed writers had the answer, no, I believed writing did. Only now, these overwritten days, I am coming to see I was wrong.
I believe I have a good heart, good intentions, the requisite humility and gratitude helpful to navigate most days. I believe, as Bryan Stevenson writes in Just Mercy, that “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve every done.”
I believe we can overcome. I believe in amazing grace.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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