Subscribe via Email
-
Recent Posts
- Advice Dispensed by Cloudy Skies April 24, 2025
- Encyclopedic Cliff Notes April 23, 2025
- Twas the Day After Easter… April 22, 2025
- A Rush of Random Thoughts April 21, 2025
- Easter, Oncology, and Precious Distractions April 20, 2025
Archives
Search on this Site
Categories
Blogroll
- 86,400 Seconds
- A Song Not Scored for Breathing (Cheryl/Hope)
- Actual Unretouched Photo
- Afroculinaria
- Brittle Road
- Chuck Sigars
- CMI Assn. Mgt. Blog
- Cutting Through the Crap
- Elle Jauffret
- HSV Area Restaurants
- Lizardek's Obiter Dictum
- Me and You and Ellie
- Neflix Genre Categories
- Out of the Lotus
- Perils of Caffeine in the Evening
- The New Dharma Bums
- The Singing Wench
- Unretouched Photo
- Words/Love
- writing as jo(e)
- Your Fireant
AR Writer Blogs/ Websites/Resources
- Writer Beware blog
- Considerable Opinions, Millie Gore Lancaster
- Wordcraft, Elizabeth Foster
- Southern Story Lady, Madelyn Young
- John Achor's site
- Nancy Smith Gibson's site
- It Just So Happens, Nancy Gibson Smith blog
- Six Bridges Book Festival
- White County Creative Writers
- Ozark Poets and Writers Collective
- Arkansas Review
- Ozarks Writers League
- Killer Nashville Writers' Conference
Category Archives: Emotion
Dimming of the Day
This song has been playing and replaying in my mind for days, though I do not know why. It is among my most favorite pieces of music. Because it has been so prominent in my recent thought processes, I thought … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Music
3 Comments
Armor Disguised as an Attitude
Flippancy, often taken as frivolous insincerity, can serve as a protective façade; an emotional cloak that behaves like a dam against tears. That hidden function can mislead the casual observer, and even those intimately familiar with the purveyor of flippancy, … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion
Leave a comment
I Can’t Write this Morning
I can’t write this morning. Writing suddenly seems a luxury, a shameful waste in the face of real necessity. My mood will change, I’m sure. I am fortunate, in that it always does. But maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe the escape … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Writing
Leave a comment
Inside Stories
If I wrote what’s really on my mind this morning, people who read it might feel compelled to alert the authorities that they think I might be suicidal. I am not. If I wrote what’s bothering me, I might be … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion
4 Comments
Musical Provocation
I listened to a mariachi version of Laura’s Theme from Doctor Zhivago yesterday afternoon, thanks to an email message Gustavo Arellano sent to his followers. Arellano is best known for his “Ask a Mexican” syndicated column that originated with the … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Music
Leave a comment
Perils of Finding Solace in Food
When my concerns are too personal and too emotional to share with those closest to me—even with myself—I tend to turn my thoughts to food. It’s no mistake that the word “comfort” is so often associated with food. Whether a … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Food, Pain, Philosophy
Leave a comment
Musing on Health and Such
Age is the enemy of good health; the greater the age, the more powerful the enemy. That is not always true, of course, but lately it seems to be an increasingly factual axiom. As I age, I increasingly engage in … Continue reading
Memories of Physical and Emotional Pain
I once was referred to a neurological specialist who, the referring specialist doctor said, would attempt to “replicate the pain” I had earlier felt in my neck and shoulder. Instantly, I decided against accepting the referral because I did not … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Memories, Pain
Leave a comment
What Once was Vibrant
For the only time I can remember, this morning I pondered about how my emotions may have changed during the course of my sixty-six years. A piece of semi-autobiographical fiction (is that even a realistic category?) I began writing last … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion
Leave a comment
Mental Health and Healing
When my creativity wanes, as it has of late, I notice gaping holes in my imagination. I suppose those are synonymous. What I notice more acutely is that there’s a very strong correlation between my creativity and my sense of … Continue reading
Posted in Depression, Emotion
Leave a comment
Roller-Coaster
A group of people from the Writers’ Club and a few spouses will come to the house this afternoon for wine and hors d’oeuvres and a read-around. We’re expecting to have around thirteen people, all-inclusive. Early this morning (up again … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Writing
Leave a comment
Anchor
In Macbeth, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is ambitious and heartless. She believes her husband is too full of kindness and compassion (the milk of human kindness) to take the most expedient path (the nearest way) toward the Scottish crown. That is, … Continue reading
Sesquipedalian
Sesquipedalian; 1) given to using long words; 2) containing many syllables. I first encountered the word nine years ago on Facebook. Really. The word was included in a post on the Smith College Facebook page. Ah! That explains it. I … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Language
Leave a comment
Brittle Memories
It hasn’t been long since I finished my chemo and radiation treatments, but apparently I’ve tried to erase the experiences from memory. I say that because I returned to my radiologist’s office for a follow-up this afternoon and all the … Continue reading
Posted in Cancer, Emotion, Health
Leave a comment
Jeremiad
As I skim materials I’ve written in months and years past, I realize my collected works could well be called Jeremiad. That is, “a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint.” Also, “a cautionary or angry harangue.” Those definitions come from Merriam-Webster’s … Continue reading
Posted in Depression, Emotion, Writing
Leave a comment
Worry Does No Good
Most of the time, I succeed at keeping my health off my mind. But sometimes the topic surfaces and swings a machete, as if it has been waiting just beneath the surface of my consciousness for the the ideal time … Continue reading
Posted in Cancer, Depression, Emotion, Health
2 Comments
Darkness
Darkness. I go to sleep in darkness and I awaken in darkness. But it’s not total darkness. It’s near-darkness, punctuated by pinpoints of light. The thermostat, the kitchen stove, the bedside alarm clock, the modem, and other devices that alert … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Philosophy
Leave a comment
Reason to Believe
Still I look to find a reason to believe. Tim Hardin wrote, composed, and recorded Reason to Believe in 1965. One of the most popular versions of the tune was released by Rod Stewart six years later. No fewer than … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Music, Writing
3 Comments
Architectural Emotions in a Mid-Century Mind
Yesterday, after an email from Dwell prompted me to view photos of a restored and updated Joseph L. Eichler mid-century modern house in the San Francisco Bay area, I fell in love with the architectural style all over again. That … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Emotion, Intellect, Philosophy, Politics
Leave a comment
Thinking About Emotions and Things Related to Cancer
Suffering most emotions more deeply than others seem to endure tends to drain one’s energy. I say that without knowing, of course, how deeply others experience emotions. I base my assessment on observations and assumptions. I did say “seem.” But … Continue reading
Posted in Cancer, Emotion, Health
3 Comments
Wrestling with Myself
Despite the radiologist’s suggestion that the regimen of radiology will eliminate any remaining cancer, the sense of hopefulness that I expected would come over me hasn’t quite enveloped me the way I anticipated. It’s as if I “know” that neither … Continue reading
Posted in Cancer, Emotion, Health
Leave a comment
Stronger Than I Thought
I’ve broken out of my dry spell, discussed just two posts ago, I guess. First, it was the roadrunner, photos of which I posted earlier today, and now it’s a memory that haunts me and touches me in ways I cannot … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Friendship, Memories, Poetry
Leave a comment
Trapped in a Mine
Today, while looking through old notebooks, I came across a note I wrote six years ago. Late in the evening of October 12, 2010. The note, dated October 12, 2010 and marked with the time I wrote it 10:28 p.m. read, … Continue reading
Posted in Compassion, Emotion, Memories
2 Comments
Bat Boy
Last night, toward the end of the PBS Newshour, I watched a segment about the retirement of long time Dodgers’ play-by-play announcer, Vin Scully. The segment honored the eighty-eight-year-old man’s sixty-eight year career. Despite my lifelong disinterest in sports, the … Continue reading
Posted in Emotion, Philosophy
Leave a comment
Shades of Gray
I woke up to face a reality I did not expect to endure. It’s a reality that never occurred to me, really. A reality that suggests I may be out of touch with reality in some fundamental ways; ways that … Continue reading
Posted in Compassion, Emotion, Friendship
Leave a comment