Comedies

“here’s why I take comedies seriously: they present and celebrate the world in which we survive our own and others’ mistakes, follies, transgressions, and deep sins. However lightly, dimly, or bleakly, comedies revel in our survival—in the delaying of death and the staying of the curse. Comedies tell the story of ruined folk somehow avoiding ruin.”

Melissa Schubert

Write....write....write...write...and then write some more

“Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of 'somedays'. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English."

authenticity

Dear fellow writer:

Romanticize the authenticity of your work instead of seeking perfection.

                                                              

                                                                                                              John

                               

Bukowski The Last Reading

So sit down and write it out

“The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series

The correct writers mindset

“I would enter the desert alone, to leave in the sand endless footprints only to be obliterated by the wind, to walk the same path each day expecting the same path tomorrow, and perhaps to cease wondering at the bloom and wither of lilies only to linger for death. But no, even in the desert, I would seek a new sanctuary, to contemplate a grain of sand in a sea of dryness...” ― Leonard Seet, Meditation on Space-Time

Writers

“We writers are resilient souls.” ― Lauren DeStefano

On writing

“Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life 

Great writing

“The yard consisted of grass and a Russian Olive tree, which was about the only kind of tree able to survive on the high prairies. Its thin, grey leaves made it look as though it were on the verge of dying, thereby fooling the elements and the bad weather into thinking that they didn't have to bother with something so spindly and bent, something so obviously on its last legs.”

― Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

Fate

“Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.” ― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

Plant your garden

Live.........

An intellectual says

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. 

Charles Bukowski

An unpublished writer

“An unpublished writer should doubt themselves.

They should constantly wonder whether what they’re creating has merit. 

And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can’t make it better.” 

― Johnny Rich

New Haven Austin's

I can’t count the number of times I’ve driven past the Grove Street Cemetery Gates (its actual name is The New Haven Burial Ground) in New Haven. 

The gates, done in Egyptian revival style, were designed by New Haven’s own Henry Austin, “The father of American Architecture”

Austin probably designed the gates after the temple Esna North (Five miles south of Luxor on the east bank of the Nile River) and it’s well worth pulling roadside for a moment to take in the entire structure with its  a winged sun-disk and two pendant cobras and its Biblical quote “The dead shall be raised”

Henry Austin (December 4, 1804 – December 17, 1891) 

He was born in Hamden and learned the carpenter's trade as an apprentice and became a prolific architect based in New Haven. 

In his fifty-year career designed an astounding number of building in both New Haven and Connecticut. Locally, he designed the Trinity Episcopal church in Seymour in 1858.

While I was researching Henry Austin the architect, I came across Henry Austin (1782–1852) promoter, lawyer, and land broker also from New Haven. (Below)

At the age of twelve, he sailed to China as a cabin boy and, on returning, found that his father's death had left him partly responsible for the family.

He had quit the sea and in 1805 worked in a number of businesses in Elm City but wrote: "Scarce a dollar that has gone out of my hands has returned to me."

In 1824 his cousin Stephen F. Austin, later known as the Father of Texas, urged him to come to Texas. 

Stephan Austin.

Henry Austin tried and failed at a series of business in northern Mexico. He eventually traveled up the Brazos to Brazoria in 1830 and got a massive land grant to build a colony. The colony never really panned out, but Henry Austin is noted in Texas history as a promoter, lawyer, land broker and a politician.

Eli has learned to open the back windows. When I tell him to stop it, because he leans out to far, I get "the look" below

My dog Eli decided to take a leap into the Potomac on the Maryland side

Several times a week I force myself to stop writing, put all my projects aside and get away for a while. Eli, my somewhat faithful dog always goes with me.