I (Heart) Mondays...

because I started my day reading a seed catalog.

I (Heart) this Monday

...because it's Christmas Eve, because I am in snow country, because those dearest to me will be sleeping under one roof and beneath a Nevada sky.

I (Heart) Mondays because...

sometimes I stumble upon a brilliant quote and it's like finding an arrowhead in the dirt or a sand dollar at the beach.  That happened today:


"If it is really true... that what makes us human is above all our capacity to make history, and if history consists of actions that could not have been predicted be­forehand, then that would mean that the fundamental measure of our human­ity lies in what we cannot know about each other. To recognize another person as human would then be to recognize the limits of one's possible knowledge of them. Their humanity is inseparable from their capacity to surprise us."

                                                                David Graeber, Lost People

I (Heart) Fernet

 My husband and I  walked  past the Pikes Street Market, along the Seattle harbor, enjoying the summer evening after a pleasant but early dinner.  When my husband   suggested a nightcap, I said, “Sure.”

I asked the bartender, “What’s the name of that aperitif made from artichokes?”

The bartender must have sensed that I really didn’t want anything to drink. He was busy, in no mood to play guessing games, and clearly pleased with my husband, who knew what he wanted.    When he came back with my husband’s draft beer in one hand and a liquor bottle in the other, he said,  “Is this what you’re talking about?”

 I liked the looks of the label, cream-colored and dense with black print.  I studied the bottle.  “Fernet… I think that’s it.”  I wasn’t at all sure, but the bartender was giving me a “drink it or wear it look,” so I quickly said,  “Yes.  That’s the one.”

 “Ugh!” he said.  “You want that on the rocks?”

Of course,” I replied, as if everyone knows that’s how one drinks Fernet.

 My drink, dark as molasses, tasted the way horse liniment smells and a little minty.  Someone on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernet describes the taste of Fernet as,   “black licorice and Listerine.”

When my husband signaled to the bartender that he was ready to pay the tab, the guy said, “I’m not charging her for that,” glancing at my empty glass.  He didn’t say  “…that vile concoction,” but I could read his look.

 I laughed, leaned toward him, looked him in the eye and said, “I’m going to tell you a secret.  I really liked it.”

I did. I like Fernet.  Of course, I had confused Fernet with Cynar, made of artichokes and with a picture of an artichoke on the label.  Both are referred to as a“digestif” not an “apartif.”  Fernet is made with everything but artichokes and the kitchen sink.

 Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
Fernet is made from a number of herbs and spices which vary according to the brand, but usually include myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom, aloe, and especially saffron,[1] with a base of grape distilled spirits, and coloured with caramel colouring. Ingredients rumored to be in fernet include codeine, mushrooms, fermented beets, coca leaf, gentian, rhubarb, wormwood, zedoary, cinchona, bay leaves, absinthe, orange peel, calumba, echinacea, quinine, ginseng, St. John's wort, sage, and peppermint oil.[1]

Who likes Fernet, besides me? Well, pretty much everyone in Argentina, where they mix it with Coca Cola.  It’s popular in San Francisco  and is considered to have  medicinal value, “treating menstrual and gastrointestinal discomfort, hangovers, baby colic, and (formerly) cholera.”
   
 Who do I hope likes Fernet?  I would be pleased if Sting, Helen Mirren, and Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth shared my newly-discovered taste, but I’m skeptical.  I brought up the subject last night at a dinner party and one of the guests said, “Oh, _____________ loves Fernet.  Or used to love Fernet.”  
 
I won’t name names, but the person mentioned is a recovering alcoholic and, I have to say, a  disagreeable person.

Do you like Fernet?

I (heart) Mondays because it is washday

I will hang freshly-washed flowered sheets on the clothesline and my back yard will be a fiesta as the wind dances them dry

I (Heart) Mondays--entertaining the uncomfortable

Just re-discovered this gem of a quote:

"The better you know yourself, the more you will know when you are playing to your strengths and when you are sticking your neck out.  Venturing out of your comfort zone may be dangerous, yet you do it anyway because our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable."

     Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

I (heart) Mondays: double entendre du jour

To have a sense of direction means

• You know where you are going
• You know how to get there

Rat's Country: Forgive yourself

Why does this take so long?

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. -Alden Nowlan, poet, novelist, and playwright (1933-1983)

I (Heart) Blue Mondays

just discovered this lovely French phrase:

 l'heure bleue is the period of twilight each morning and evening when there is neither full daylight or complete darkness.

"for soon it is gone and we fly away."

“Moses said, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labour and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away” (Ps. 90: 10).”

I (Heart) Mondays

Every morning in Tuscarora I walk down the gentle grade to the crossroads, stop, stretch, and vow to run up the hill.  I never do.  This morning as I trudged the uphill mile I asked myself why I have never considered running down the hill.  Tomorrow I will see what happens when I go with gravity instead of against it.

I (Heart) Mondays

Sometimes, for no good reason.

I (Heart) Mondays

"When asked my age, I would say 'I'm between fifty and death.'"

Ilona Royce Smithkin in a YouTube interview on the blog, Advanced Style.

Potato-po-tah-to

Did you know "niche" rhymes with "quiche"?  I'll bet you thought "niche" rhymed with "kitsch."   And when was the last time  you made a quiche?  1972?

I (Heart) Mondays

 Surrounded by redwood trees, vision limited by thick summer fog, I am teaching myself--especially on Mondays--to think beyond laundry and dinner.  What about Rome next spring and the Basque country in the fall?

I (Heart) Mondays

"The purpose of life is the progressive expansion of happiness and the ability to love and have compassion.  And also the ability to be in touch with the creative source inside you."  Deepak Chopra

Okay, maybe I have posted this before.  Can't remember.  It's worth reminding you--and me--again.

It's four in the morning. Who will you call?

"Is there someone in your life whom you would feel comfortable phoning at four in the morning to tell your troubles to?  If your answer is yes, you will likely live longer than someone whose answer is no."

from Flourish by Martin E.P. Seligman

The songs of your childhood

For an inexplicable reason, I suddenly remembered this little ditty from my childhood:

"Where oh where has my little dog gone?
Where oh where can he be?
With his ears cut short and his tail cut long,
Where oh where can he be?"

Why, I haven't a clue!

I (Heart) Mondays

At least you woke up!

Summer solstice

Summer
Solstice
Sleep
outSide

The state of Yearning

 This state is populated with keeling bodies leaning against walls, keening over parapets.  In this state, no one is happy, but everyone will be happy soon.  The potential for happiness is the highest in the country, but so is the suicide rate.  When they quit yearning, they ablate.

Go Too Far

Last summer I was visiting my cousin Chris in Salt Lake City.  One morning while having coffee, we happened to meet a friend of hers, film maker Jan Andrews, who told us this anecdote about Werner Herzog, when he was filming True Believers, about a religious group in Russia who lived around a lake.

These "true believers" were convinced  that in the winter when the lake froze they could look through the ice and see a fallen city.  In making the film, there was a scene where two men were on their knees peering through the ice.  A young colleague of Jan Andrews was on hand when Herzog remarked that they were not members of the cult, but two drunken peasants that he paid to pose for the scene.  The young filmmaker was appalled that Herzog would do such a thing.

Herzog looked directly at him and said, "Go Too Far."

I (Heart) Mondays

Here's a concept:  I'm taking the day off!  Excuse me while I stretch out on the bed and read a book at 9:30 in the morning and I'm not sick, not depressed.  I'm taking Monday off!

Mum's the Word

Do you save scraps of conversation?  I do.  Found this in my notebook, from a conversation in England with an Englishwoman:

She:  The women were looking rather mumsey.

Me:  What does that mean?

She:  Old fashioned.

Me:  Oh, you mean like their Mums?

She:  Yes.  Exactly.

When Did You Get Old?

My ninety-six year old mother often says, "When you are as old as I am..." and it's always the preface to a pronouncement of one kind or another.

The other day I asked her, "So, when did you get old?  I mean, can you remember what age you said to yourself, 'I'm old'?"

She thought about it and said, "Ninety-three."

I (Heart) Mondays

This quote makes me think of the white rabbit, "I'm late.  I'm late, for a very important date."  Mea culpa, esp. on Mondays.

"Technology’s intent was to simplify our lives. And if used properly, it can maximize our time. I’m a big fan of technology. But one of its big downsides is how it can create the illusion that we are so much more important than we really are."
            from It Takes an Egg Timer:  A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life by Joanne Tombrakos

I (heart) Mondays

I spent most of Monday waiting for the sun to burn through the fog.  I spent most of the day waiting...

Rats Country: I (heart) Mondays.

There's nothing like starting the week with a good laugh.
 

FIVE RULES  TO REMEMBER IN LIFE:  
 
1. Money cannot buy happiness but it's more comfortable  to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.
2.  Forgive your enemy but remember that bastard's name.
3.  Help someone when they are in trouble, and they will remember  you when they're in trouble again.
4. Many people are alive  only because it’s illegal to shoot them.
5. Alcohol does not  solve any problems, but then again, neither does  milk..

Rats Country: There is no light at the end of the tunnel, but...

she is standing in the dark hallway, sees a light under the door.  Is this a room she wants to enter?

Rats Country: The downside to loving Mondays...

worry about being perfect.

Luckily, I just read this quote:

 "I love the Buddhist concept of enlightenment as living without anxiety over imperfection.  You can strain every fiber of your being trying to be flawless, only to face inevitable failure--or you can stop worrying about perfection, which instantly makes everything feel great.  Save time and tofu:  Choose option two."

Martha Beck, "May We Help You?" Oprah, March 2012

Rats Country: I don't (heart) all Mondays.

Blank thoughts.

Rats Country: Wednesday is Food Day

"Probably the best way to eat an orange is to pick it dead-ripe from the tree, bite into it once to start the peeling, and after peeling eat a section at a time."

from M.F.K. Fisher, "A is for dining Alone," The Art of Eating

Rats Country: I (Heart) Mondays

Happy Chinese New Year! I'm wearing red for good luck and making my bed with clean sheets.

Rats Country: Policy Statement

"Adopt a policy of being joyful."

quote from an article in the NYTimes, "Advice from Life's Graying Edge on Finishing with No Regrets."

Rats Country: Categories of Regret

The things you did that you wish you hadn't.
The things you wish you had done but didn't.
The things that you now know you'll never do before you die.

qtd. on Quora 1/17/12

Rats Country: Cold Comfort

"The advice of the old is like the winter sun:  it sheds light but does not warm us."

         from Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes

Rats Country: Thinking about Superstitions

When my mother sees a white horse, she spits on the palm of her left hand, makes a fist with her right, and smacks the spittled spot, sealing the wish.  She says, "You can't tell your wish to anyone.  If you do, it won't come true."

She doesn't see white horses  often, but, like the rest of us, she seems to have  secret wishes ready and waiting.  She is nearly ninety-seven.  My guess is that she  has two wishes left:  to die in her sleep and soon.

Rats Country: Wild and Crazy on Paper

"Both William Styron and Philip Roth have worked beneath the Flaubertian self-reminder:  Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.'"

              Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of

Rats Country: Forgetaboutit!

"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.  
 
"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious. The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory - and forgetting - can shape your personality."

 Ingrid Wickelgren,  "Trying to Forget"  

Rats Country: Stop Waffling and Wash Your Hands

Put an End to Waffling Over Decisions

If you're second-guessing yourself about a choice you just made, head for the sink for a quick regret-rinse-off. Recent research from psychologists at the University of Michigan found that the simple act of washing your hands can help you to stop questioning your judgment. While the decisions being made in the study were trivial—ranking preference of one CD over another—this act of "cleaning the slate" by washing your hands may work to help you gain confidence in the bigger choices you encounter, too, like deciding which car to buy, or when to have a difficult conversation.



Read more: http://www.oprah.com/health/10-Easy-Things-You-Can-Do-to-Improve-Your-Life-by-Next-Week/5#ixzz1j5IXY4Lj

Ya think?

Rats Country: I (heart) Mondays, cont.

"... two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness."
     from Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

On Mondays, we feel like we are seeing clearly.
   

Rats Country: I (heart) Mondays

It's 1/2/12.  One, two, one two, which sounds like, "Get ready, get set..."GO into 2012 with high hopes and exuberance!