…but first art, damn it:

[As with the previous post, another hat tip to Janet Reid. What can I say? When the woman's on a roll, she's on a roll.]

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Bobby McFerrin is brilliant. (And so are his audiences. It’s just that he’s the one onstage.)
[Hat tip to Janet Reid.]

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[Found this image here.]
From whiskey river (highlighted portion):
The Difficult Simplicity of Certain Contemplations
Tapping a tarot card with her dusky finger,
the woman tells me
sit with your emptiness,
in time answers will come.
She says I know them all and only must remember.
My friend tells me I must decide what is enough,
then live with it.
Even my shiny-suited banker waxes [...]

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RAMH has seen a boost in its site traffic over the last week — not in the number of visits to the blog, but in the number of pages read per visitor. Just as one example, over a 25-minute period last night 60 pages were “read,” all by one visitor: pretty amazing for a blog [...]

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I had occasion this morning to hear a song I haven’t heard in a couple years, and this made me think of the guy who introduced me to it. Like many friends these days, he’s not one I’ve ever actually met: I know him only through his online handle, “FLJerseyBoy” (three guesses what first got [...]

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["Crossroads," by Hungarian artist István Orosz. For more about this image, see the Note at the bottom of this post.]
From whiskey river:
A Note
Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;
to be a dog
or stroke its warm fur;
to tell pain
from everything it’s not;
to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to [...]

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A couple of stray tidbits for your daily (weekly, hourly, etc.) writerly use…
—-
First: You may have noticed agent Nathan Bransford’s recent contest, for which he invited readers to submit as contest entries the first paragraphs of their own works-in-progress. (He announced the winners yesterday.)
Regular RAMH commenter Froog has been observing Nathan’s contest as well. But [...]

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[Image from Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. Today seems like a good day to open with this, since it marks the official release of Spike Jonze's film version.]
From whiskey river:
Threat
You can live for years next door
to a big pine tree, honored to have
so venerable a neighbor, even
when it sheds needles all over [...]

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…of the Be Careful What You Wish For Department:

We’re clearing some stuff out in preparation for a garage sale. Aside from that, we’ve got a lot of stuff in boxes which we’ve never been able to take out of boxes — because of all the stuff on our shelves, stuff which we once imagined might [...]

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[Image: "Marshmallow Gun" (excerpt) -- click for full original at xkcd.]
I realized a couple days ago — during this criminally busy week — that I hadn’t posted any writing samples in a long time.
Many of the (non-blogging) pieces I’ve posted on RAMH are grouped together under the category called “Paying Attention.” But I don’t post [...]

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