I was organizing my notebooks and loose papers and to-do lists at a coffee shop this morning.  I love to organize, but I am strangely disorganized.  Creative chaos is my middle name, but so are organizational skills.

My mind runs a 1000 miles per hour, and so I write bits of quotes, make lists, tiny mind maps, big mind maps, on ripped pieces of paper, a bit of here and there, including doodling and collecting artifacts, while walking, while sitting on a park bench, in a coffee shop, in the tub.

Then every once in a while, I take some focused time to examine each note, each doodle, each object and write a fresh to-do list and/or start a new journal.

Here are some random remnants (seemingly important when I wrote them) that I found today in my pile [no dates]:

Quote: The writer takes the reader’s hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words. – Natalie Goldberg

Sightings at the lagoon: raccoon digging close to me, crows, goose, ducks, robins, gulls, magnolias, camellias,  hyacinths, daffodils, rhododendrons, lagoon, ducks on branches, sunset, dark clouds northwest, ducks in reeds, seagull with a duck egg, swallow flying eating bugs, cherry blossoms, people walking, golfing, running, riding, skating, driving, lone heron in a tree, another flying right by me with a stick, dandelions, dogs, pigeon, robin singing, Beaver Lake, ducks, geese, herons dancing in the air, squirrels, chipmunks, chickadees, nuthatches…

Forensic taphonomy: typical coyote activity in Stanley Park?  October?  Cold weather?  Skin damage (tissue) –> sternum/clavicle/ribs –> disarticulation upper extremities –> thorax, pelvic region, thighs (muscle tissue) –> detachment of limbs.  If weather is below freezing?  Clothes keep bodies intact?  Mandible intact?  If buried slightly beneath fur coat plus cold weather?  P. 372 Protective circumstance, partial burial- Typical scavenging sequence subject to modification when portions of the body are in sheltered circumstances or positions which protect the body from scavengers.  Heavily clothed, partial burial, wrapped, frozen.

Quote: Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.
― Edna O’Brien

Question to self: How to you want to bring in revenue?  Visual facilitation until or along with Molly.  How do you want to serve the community?  Monkeys.

Quote: Learn to write about the ordinary.  Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches.  Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of.  Keep adding to it.  -Natalie Goldberg

Quote: Extend your boundaries.  Live on the edge for a while.  We act as though we were immortal, and are comfortable in that illusion.  We don’t actually know when we will die and we hope it will be in old age, but it can be this next minute.  This thought of mortality  is not droll; it can make our lives very vital, present and alert right now. –Natalie Goldberg

Poem exercise: Pushed by the breeze, Orange! Yellow! Indigo! Sheltered by unfurling ferns.

Notes re Molly: It is a fascinating female story/history.  It tells the story of a society that created tragedies.  It was moralistic and there was no place for single women (unwed mothers with children).  (foster services, Astrid Lindgren’s personal story)

The wasp: observe the wasp that just landed on my book and waited patiently, just lone enough for me to draw it.

Quote: No matter how large a thing is, how fantastic, it is also ordinary.  We think of details as daily and mundane.  Even miracles are mundane happenings that an awakened mind can see in a fantastic way. – Natalie Goldberg

Thoughts at the park bench at Bidwell and Burnaby: Observing human/animal/bird/insect/nature/weather activity in the West End is very much like reading a book of little short stories and one big one at the same time.  Sounds are OBSERVED.  Visually.

Don’t tell me.  SHOW ME.

Quote: In order to write about it, we have to go to the heart of it and know it, so the ordinary and extraordinary flash before our very eyes simultaneously.  Go so deep into something that you understand its interpenetration with all things.  Then automatically the detail is imbued with the cosmic; they are interchangeable. – Natalie Goldberg