Hospital

 Yes so the heart and the stroke, lymphoma, 

Coronary artery disease

The shunt caused a problem. With blood.roto rooter her veins every three months.

Dialysis.

Going to the hospital brings those memories

Austin Kleon

He likes to share 10 things worth sharing every week. I like how he moves from list number two to three by borrowing from the end of list two. Maybe this is something to do with a piece of pulling together some of the research.

2.Kurt Vonnegut: “Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”

3.“What is civilisation? I don’t know.” In “The Seductive Enthusiasm of Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation,’” Morgan Meis argues that the TV series Civilisation succeeds “despite its underlying ideas, not because of them…. Clark is an indispensable guide not so much because of what he knows—though he is deeply knowledgeable—as because of his unabashed enthusiasm for the art that he shows us.” (This is something I remember from watching Sister Wendy in art class. It makes me think of a line from physicist Brian Greene: “My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer.”)

Princess leia tshirt

 And our boys struggling with wanting to read books about unicorn princesses

The Criterion Channel Free Movie Week 2025

The Criterion Channel

Free Movie Week 2025

Tuesday 4/8

6 p.m. ET - BREATHLESS (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

8 p.m. ET - THE BEAST (Bertrand Bonello, 2023)

10:30 p.m. ET - CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)

12:30 p.m. ET - PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

Wednesday 4/9

6 p.m. ET - 8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

9 p.m. ET - THE DAYTRIPPERS (Greg Mottola, 1996)

10:30 p.m. ET - EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022)

12 a.m. ET - HOUSE (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

Thursday 4/10

6 p.m. ET - THE TRIAL (Orson Welles, 1962)

8:30 p.m. ET - EVIL DOES NOT EXIST (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2023)

10:30 p.m. ET - MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (Paul Schrader, 1985)

Friday 4/11

6 p.m. ET - ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia, 2024)

8:30 p.m. ET - MIKEY AND NICKY (Elaine May, 1976)

10:30 p.m. ET - NIGHT ON EARTH (Jim Jarmusch, 1991)

Saturday 4/12

3 p.m. ET - TAMPOPO (Juzo Itami, 1985)

5 p.m. ET - PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati, 1967)

8 p.m. ET - BLOOD SIMPLE (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1984)

9:35 p.m. ET - BEAU TRAVAIL (Claire Denis, 1999)

11:10 p.m. ET - POLICE STORY (Jackie Chan, 1985)

Sunday 4/13

3 p.m. ET - BLACK NARCISSUS (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

4:40 p.m. ET - DAISIES (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

6 p.m. ET - PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders, 1984)

9 p.m. ET - CURE (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

11 p.m. ET - TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch, 1992)

MONDAY 4/14

6 p.m. ET - CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

7:30 p.m. ET - RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

9 p.m. ET - THE PLAYER (Robert Altman, 1992)

11:30 p.m. ET - STALKER (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

 

12 angry men

ANGRY WHITE GUYS. Even gentle white guys like me have to deal with them. We're at the stop sign on a one way street as the ambulance on my right has its lights on. No sirens. I still think that I'll just wait for the ambulance to pass by me because I know it needs to get into my lane to get to the hospital. Light turns green, and the guy behind me lays  on his horn for me to move. So I just move a little to let the ambulance pass me. We approach the next stop light and Mr Anger is on my right now, window down, TOO CLOSE to my car, staring me down and not looking at the road, with anger on his face. I roll my window down. I yell, the ambulance lights were on. He doesn't hear me as he asks, are you all right? He doesn't ask in the way that he's concerned about me. I then repeat again, the ambulance lights were on, man. He looks over to notice the ambulance in front of me. Oh okay, he says as he drives on by.

Kismet moments

 Just as I'm thinking about The Uncanny I think about Kismet

Then in the used bookstore I found a copy of a Mythic life that came out in 1996 by Jean Houston

In the mythology section

Is the daughter of Jack Houston who is a comedy writer and the introduction begins where he took her almost 5 years old to MGM Studios in Hollywood

Now get this I'm trying to write a book about going to the movies as modern mythology and here it is in the part of the book where I always love going, the introduction, where I can get the juiciest of material from any book

And it's so uncanny to me as I'm reading about Hollywood that I would have find it in a book about Miss in someone encouraging to find their own Mythic life

bechdel test

 https://getpocket.com/explore/item/10-iconic-movies-that-pass-the-bechdel-test

 

uncanny

 as the X-Men

 as how students who are similar sit together in a class without knowing each other

as in etymology, the eerie, the way we can't say why

in medias res

 One of the first things fiction writers are taught about effective story-telling is to start in medias res, in the midst. It's also something I tell people when they ask how I am doiung suring a busy time--I'm in the midst. Soemthing educators say in April.

 

Films are 

We are

our origins reinvent themselves as we are in the midst

 

the big T word

 yes, include trauma in the writing

 

awareness of truama, not as a buzzword, but as a reality

not to label or serve as a detriment, but as a reality

the strengths of survivalhood

the strengths of ADHD

the strengths  

although I also hate it when people say, well, it made you a stronger person

 

To come up with a metaphor for each thing in a theater

 Some of the audience with their cell phones out are like June bugs I've already caught

Joan Foth

 How was I supposed to know that she lived across the street from me that she was a famous artist?

People you just don't know that you might think you know who they are but you don't know.

The saint

 Val Kilmer

He's hiding running from the past, does he truly care about Elizabeth's shoes character

He's posing as different people

He's realizing he can't do what he's hired to do

why these notes

 I will come back to grab all these notes when I sit down to write.

Remember: to keep track of the books I am reading, movies I watched, people I spoke to for each chapter. NOTES section. Even inspirations from what I read. etc.

People with ADHD have so many brilliant plans, but it is common not to complete them. 

It might be ADHD paralysis.

Exhaustion, lack of hyperfocus, lots of reasons to not finish. Not laziness, but burnout. or even worry to start.

We may have a history of not finishing which compounds into shame.

We ,might take a project on forgetting the work we already have.

 

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

 It's a funny thing that happened today. Louise sent an email noting how she might have lended someone the copy of her book Citizen and asked if anyone had a copy that she could borrow or return. I went in to place my copy into her box and found there was a copy already there. Then Melanie said yes I too try to put my copy in and noticed someone already had. I said yeah this is the fun thing that so many of us have a copy of this.

And I think New York Times recently said it was like the number one nonfiction book of the century so far. It's something to keep in mind if you're going to teach a nonfiction writing class. Maybe also not to discount this if you're writing your own memoir?

Note about my memoir

 Just a drop a few notes about what I would like to achieve

This won't be a memoir that seeks revenge on anyone. I've seen people advertently or inadvertently writing to somehow get back at someone and that will never work. 

This won't be a memoir that describes the trauma as much as it covers how going to the movies can be healing. In other words just like trauma-informed care, it helps those who have been traumatized but also benefits everyone. That going through trauma is in a deficit.

Wystan says put in a good word for me

I'm not going to cover everything. There are just some things that are best Kept Within a family or privately.

That's it this is not an autobiography. A Memoir takes selected things and make some mashup of how they are connected. Or that there's Simply Connected because you put them together.

I'll definitely be referencing the book body work because I like how she puts and changes things into different povs

why women's and gender studies

 I know with the current abolishment of DEI, it is difficult to explain to people why such a concept exists. It's not a concept, but a reality. 

Just like having ADHD, it both doesn't and does matter. 

The nuance to be able to accept something which seems a contradiction in terms means getting away from either/or logical fallacies.

the fact that I learned women's and gender studies first-hand before taking any class about it

 

pop-up poetry workshop

 Part of me would like to just rest and work on my book during the sabbatical, but the other part loves doing workshops--especially in differnet places one wouldn't find one. Without classes, this seems the perfect time to do it.

 

Plan to reach out to movie theaters and coffeehouses where there aren't theaters.

Trickster

 https://youtu.be/aL0V1MsOeFM?si=Cxccub-m0BPJWiVp

https://www.jcf.org/post/trickstering-casablanca-and-resistance?mc_cid=69392d8813&mc_eid=de3bf080d3

Poetry books

 https://a.co/d/dqvNsoy

Book

 

Myth & Mythmaking

By Henry Alexander Murray

Depression in movies

 I haven’t listened yet but I like this podcast 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/id1181589175?i=1000475691309

Definitely part of the book

 Maureen Murdock who I discovered through teaching mythology has a new book about using myth and memoir to tell one's truth which leads to healing. This has been my experiences with film as a way to feel safe and self-care to then poetry writing as a way to move outside of myself. The truth of the adverse childhood experiences I went through which is a wonderful way to be sensitive to myself.

Mythology religion and psychology

Shame

Shadow self

Myth making memoir maureen murdoch

 Myth making and memoir

https://youtu.be/fEtHpYbQf4E?si=D9REt8lRvVeT0hzJ

Book to get

 Written Exposure Therapy for PTSD: A Brief Treatment Approach for Mental Health Professionals

Book by Brian P. Marx and Denise M. Sloan

In Omaha

 As Rilo Kiley made the journey to the city based on Connor Oberst and those who made Azure Ray recording downtown and whatever film theaters are going on with film streams and the connections of artists creation

Arrested Development

 In the midst of naviagting my late teens and twenties, I believed the healing of my childhood meant engaging with what I could do with my earned money: collecting.

 I now say as a joke, a collector is really a hoarder who wants to come to terms with how collecting serves the collector.

 When the term arrested development came a public term, maybe through the TV show?, it was a new use of language to focus through.

Suncoast Era, Gen X, and the Losses We Felt in the Seventies and Eighties

Obstacles for students

 We only have so much time, so trying to push yourself into being creative is barrier making

It's an assignment, so it's already a resistance

Some students really aren't interested in poetry but they enrolled in the class anyway

Students are used to Turning something in and getting a grade for it. They aren't used to really writing something they would want to read or want to ride. Or that they would even have written by a deadline.

I'm asking them to share emotions with using words that they wouldn't normally share. That the art has to be there.

Art and sharing feelings are never encouraged in classroom settings. They are not often graded on. Again, the grades!

Students are more focused on what they need to do for homework then they are on the experience of being in a classroom where they can be themselves.

How books mean to help

 This one of my best writing practices is to have a pile of books beside me.

Even if I feel stuck, I can pick up a book and in no time at all I start writing again.

Engaging with the language itself changes my own way of thinking, that then words that are coming from somewhere come out in a way that's different than they would.

Of course the prompts are also wonderful.

https://open.substack.com/pub/mondaysarefree/p/exercise-001-the-list?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2dy8e9

Check the sources for: Here’s Sontag’s list of beliefs, list of likes and dislikes, and list of rules for parenting. 

Essayism by Brian Dillon

My journey into mythology as mythology

 My journey into mythology as a mythology that I left home many times to get home

I first taught myself about mythology through all the books I could find at the library. Then I took mythology in high school which meant memorizing the gods names in matching them up. What I mean is Greek mythology. Then there was a dash of Egyptian mythology and another dash of Norse mythology.

Then it came to my teaching of Mythology which I looked through the books about inclusiveness, the students worry about studying another culture, and realizing that the stories that represent realities mean that we have modern mythology.

That the stories themselves mean nothing if we can't apply them to ourselves and of the world. I also don't mean negative appropriation, but looking at systems of tricksters and what makes a trickster, alongside what is a modern trickster look like, and specifically how can I be a positive Trickster?

phenomenological philsophical journeys

 I will beed to write about comic books, having chicken pox and getting Richie Rich and Casper, books I could read, then going to Kwik Shop, then movie comic books, XMen, Spidey, then comic book stores, 

alongside drive in movies, then movies at Gage 4 and other places, the nuances each theater held, looking through Friday's paper for movies, magazines at store, comics, trading cards and book adaptations, then toys, then coollectables, Suncoast, collector widescreen VHS tapes, DVDs

alongside library books, albums with soundtracks, buyng such soundtracks at the record store, drving my bike to all of the places around, mythology books

experts in Suncoast, Hot Topic being the closest version now

More books to remember

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1910559962?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K5PAMMNX5GBG5FQKFBQF&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K5PAMMNX5GBG5FQKFBQF&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K5PAMMNX5GBG5FQKFBQF&skipTwisterOG=1&bestFormat=true&dplnkId=144356ae-c209-445c-a6e0-eec8b5cea347

Maureen Murdock will join us to discuss her book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir. We believe mythic memoir is vital for practicing enchantment and for bearing witness to our lives.

Things to do for sabbatical

 Visit Jason's friend Dustin, who has a Superman collection

Reach out to the movie theaters about being their Poet Laureate for a day

Look into film related places

Interview Austin Snell

Magic is Illusion

 As I reflect on my finished writng, I know I should incliude my own struggles--my own stories

That if my upbrining was a film, the illusions I lived within

Film was that get-away to magic

include my own words and reflections

did you see the length of that paragragh about Star Wars?

try other development ideas like that one

Ritual

 Intuition is seeing the solution

https://youtu.be/JYFxTO6nDE0?si=quGJmBjLDTiJXIqQ

Go in as of you are in a movie

poetry + film

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162518/self-portrait-as-david-lynch

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/159668/poetry-and-film

David Lynch passed away today

 How can I sneak in some David Lynch into my writing? How can this be a part of what changed my way of looking at films?

Memoir

 It was kind of like this boy's life but the stepdad is the dad and the mother has to get out of there like in fried green tomatoes as the dad comes in to hit her.

And it was like Goodwill Hunting but for 11 years actually in college.

Robin Williams telling me it's not your fault it's not your fault

21 c memoir

 How this article describes the beginning of the 21st century in that the confessionalism of the memoir launched into the 21st century. It's the same thing from the confessional poem, that we seek a post-confessional poem. That the representation needs to lead to Healing include others or create some fluid I

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/nonfiction-book-bestsellers-subjects-b2676650.html

Rachel Zucker wrote a lot about this about how the I needs to be included

https://www.foundryjournal.com/zucker.html

How can we write past the confessional but what I mean is that through my healing I don't really find it necessary to name names. I don't need to say anything about the tragedy or abuse I went through. You just need to know that I survived and then I can show some of those joys and loves in play and wonder.

It's the same with how my poetry really launched off, that I attached joy and play to the writing.

And experimental work is the best punk way to work. We have to adapt a punk nature against masculinity. Which is why I was talking about against white male poetry classrooms. White male teaching.

I know it's the irony of me being a white guy but that's why I know even more from my own experiences of having a life where I could reject men and didn't want anything to do with them. That I became my own heroine Journey.

Hero versus heroine Journey and maybe I'm also on the monster Journey

So the Memoir can be that representation while speaking out against oppressive forces.

That's what my research will eventually be too is to look at the Memoirs coming out of Hollywood and comparing them. I'm stuck with equiterre feminine Helen Gireaux 

Something I will have to go back and remember how to spell.

Romantic comedies

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/of-minds-and-men/202501/three-love-lessons-from-a-century-of-romantic-comedies

Interesting as I think about these things, especially how I wait to watch Eternal Sunshine when it's Valentine's Day.

What do these things tell us?

Mythmaking

Another Punk aesthetic in Miranda July

 Me and you and everyone we know as an ultimate homage to the vulnerability we all have, the unexpected, the things we're searching for and the things that we realize we don't need. And that's what I need to do with thinking of the sabbatical, this writing, is stop thinking that I need to do something and just to be truthful and honest. Then go back and write to make it good. Just that like the line in Lee, worry about telling the truth first.

John Waters

 I'm looking at his films on Criterion Channel as I have it this month and I'm thinking about how he made the movies he wanted to make. He was called all kinds of names, but he still made those movies the way he wanted and now he's invited to give commencement speeches at colleges. Well I want to write the book I want to write. Maybe I need to take that punk attitude. I'm looking at all these books and they will make good guidelines, but I also want to be true to myself and write the book I would want to read. What are the things I would want to read about the things I want to talk about. I want to put them in my own way in my own words. And I know I have the style of saying these words that I mean to be colloquialisms but they turn out wrong but I like that. It's like I said many I'm weighted down by money but I mean money is so scarce that it weighs heavily on my mind. Why can't I just say that I'm weighted down by money. Okay when I think of money I get weighted down.

I want to talk about that movie everything everywhere all at once and how I'm like women that I totally understand how he uses kindness as an way to get around the world. I've never been one to try to be rude. It's just my midwest Kansas upbringing and if that can't be a strength what can be? I mean I was thinking about the cynicism that when you're a teenager it's so cool, but then you continue being a cynic and you're grown up and you think what the heck am I thinking about? Why am I feeling this way about things? This can't be healthy!

So I'm going to be Punk and I'm going to go to the movie theater no one wants to go to in Topeka and I'm going to set up my poetry shop there.

I mean it's so corporate that now it's anti-corporate. It's a hole in the wall that Regal just keeps open because they're not going to lose any money from keeping it open but it's so Punk they won't change it in any way. And that reminds me I need to go look in that hidden movie theater and see what happened. They only have seven screens open and I want to see what they're doing about the 8th. I saw those chairs there I wonder if they're remodeling.

A Sabbatical of Joy

 I am wishing to merge work with joy--just as I have in the past--so I will be up for suggestions.

One thing I want to do is reach out to movie theaters to ask if I may be their Poet Laureate for the weekend. It seems the best time to work on my own stuff, draw creativity, and offer five free poetry tickets for anyone who wishes for one.

Maybe even take my printer with me?

Other sabbattical movie writing topics

 When Carrie and I met >> mental rom coms

Work >> Fast Food National, The Matrix Office Space

Golden Globe speeches 2025, The Brutalist with director autonomy / capitalism, disfigurement ableism, women's voices "I am who I am, not what you want me to be"