http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/Sometimes you have to write it down in order to learn what you really think about life, what it means, how to do what's best. Sometimes you need feedback from someone else to put things in perspective. hourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618957The white buffalo of my dream, my waking dream, fills the sky and earth and all between inescapable as the tornado that knows my name. The thunder snow cloud comes boiling, rolling over kneeling prairie grass, white hooves spark the lightning upward. Miracle is, it fits – the cloud, the image,...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618955Kabu wrote that insightful phrase in a comment on my happy kharmic moment entry from yesterday... Of course she was right. Socks were the symbolic tip of the iceberg. Funny how loving behavior has an expiration date and the one who used to be your shelter becomes the storm. Funny how loving...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618824I was married for twenty-one years, three months and twelve days to a man who never appreciated me, at least after the honeymoon was over. It was nothing personal, he just wasn't a cheerful soul -- the kind of guy who finds the dark cloud behind every silver lining. Still, I gave a damn what...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618708Summer's on the wane, though you can't see it yet days are growing shorter, bright minutes fewer a gradual, certain decline has begun. But my mind senses the slide downhill toward winter's dark and icy days, toward grim November's overcasted gloom in bright July I feel the countdown come. How...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618586For not coming to visit me when I go to the nursing home. I can't blame you for not taking the time out of your busy schedule. You've got better things to do than to bother with a boring old poop like me. This was my cue to promise she would never be forgotten, that I would certainly come and see...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618448A few days ago the local TV news guys announced the cancer rates in this area just east of metro St. Louis are between 1100 and 1200 per million. Rates in most areas of the country are about 39 in a million. Well, I doubt that 39 number. I think it's way, way low. But the other number -- which I...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618313There's a fallacy afoot in our traditions and cultural legend. The fallacy is that sweetness, love, and kindness can turn a rough and ill-intentioned cur into a lovely, gentle person. It ain't so. A predatory, dominating control freak who's intention is to turn a woman into his puppet is not...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618152Unlikely title for a book of poetry. But then the author seems like an unlikely poet. Ethan Coen. Yes, that Ethan Coen of the Coen brothers, movie makers. Genius, perhaps. A bit of the blurb from the back of the book: In his screenplays and short stories, Ethan Coen surprises and delights us with...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/618029This is the first draft of the first chapter. I'm thinking of doing a novel based on Mama for National Novel Writing Month. Mama was mostly hard to like: snappish, a perfectionist, and she didn't like men. Note -- this is NOT exaggerated for effect. CHAPTER ONE - Carpenters, plumbers,...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Pat_B/617874I did not yearn for deep philosophical observation, or pontifications from some obnoxious intellectual. Save me Lord from political bombast and repetitious weather woes, though even those could be a welcome change from the rattling surge of my own mind. At Coffee Heaven, I sought the rhythms and...