WHY 52 BOXES?
- A box lets you look at something outside of its normal space.
- The novel I’ve been working on for years is called 52 Boxes.
- I like the idea of boxing up words as if they are gifts.
A Spool of Blue Thread and Just-picked Peaches
The peaches come from Andy Mariani’s orchard in Morgan Hill. They’re so fragrant that I can smell them all the way on the other side of the room. Andy has been growing stonefruit for many years and it shows in the color of his fruit, in the aroma, and the flavor. You can’t get peaches like these in Safeway. You have to come to Andy’s wooden country store on Half Road.
I come here often in the summer – maybe three times a week – and I always bend down to read the index cards set above the fruit.
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“The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable. But our wholeness, even our wholeheartedness, actually depends on the integration of all of our experiences, including the falls.”
“When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways — either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.”
“I have learnt… to conserve my anger…. As heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can change the world.”
Life After Facebook
I love Facebook. LOVE it. During the past few years, Facebook was sometimes the highest emotional point of my day. But Facebook also amplified my own anger, and there was already plenty of anger to go around.
Plus, since reading about how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook to help get Trump into office, I have felt guilty about using Facebook. I figured if my clicking on Facebook has given Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer a hand in their nefarious schemes,
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“Life isn’t life if you just float through it…. The whole point — the only point — is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.”
“There are endless temptations but only the work will lift you up.”
"Every day the sea
blue gray green lavender...."
~ Mary Oliver
“All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from and to and why.”
“Live your life by an inner scorecard, not an outer scorecard.”
“There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.”
Roald Dahl
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.”
~ Roald Dahl
“What makes a good children’s writer? The writer must …be a jokey sort of fellow… must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be unconventional and inventive. He must have a really first-class plot. He must know what enthralls children and what bores them.
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“This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky — that’s called liberation.”
Clarence (yes, and Bruce).
In high school, Clarence loved football and was good enough to try out for the Cleveland Browns and the Dallas Cowboys. The night before his Cowboy try-out, a car accident crushed his legs and any hope he had of a career in football. He did menial jobs and played his sax until September of 1971 when he walked to a club called The Student Prince.
“A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street.
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“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately…, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“I didn’t know where I was going until I got there.”
“You have to go forward: It’s the only way. You have to go forward no matter what happens. This is the universal law.”
“Writing stories … is what I love. It’s still a pleasure to find these peculiar side roads, to go down them, to see who lives there, to see what they’re doing and who they’re doing it to and maybe even why.”
“[To stand beside a rare butterfly] “is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone.”
“My religion is kindness.”
“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?”
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
“We are so much less alone than we think.”
“If we don’t push, nothing happens. Life is much more interesting when we make a little bit of effort.”
“Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.”
“It’s hard to know… which is worse—not having a place to sleep or not having a place to work. One can sleep almost anywhere, but one must have a place to work. Even if it’s not a masterpiece you’re doing. Even a bad novel requires a chair to sit on and a bit of privacy.”
“Select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate.”
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
“When we share our struggles we let others know it's okay to share theirs.”
“When life gives you lemons, you should freeze them and throw them at your enemies using some sort of trebuchet.”
“It ain't what they call you; it's what you answer to.”
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be.”
- Where Is Ann?
- Petaluma, CA
- Austin, TX
- Richardson, TX
- Rome, Italy
- Fiersale, Italy
- Venice, Italy
- Sintra, Portugal
- Obidos, Portugal
- Lisbon, Portugal
- San Francisco, CA
- Gilroy, CA