In 1936, my grandmother wrote a letter to her parents in which she announced that her younger brother David had written her a "note with only 9 lines on it." She included a transcription:
I imagine the hounds racing through the woods chasing deer and then camping in an abandoned cabin, drinking whiskey, and toasting their freedom.

I watched Invictus last night. On one of those top secret, advance screening, don't-you-dare-share-this-thing-with-anyone-or-the-FBI-will-disappear-you discs that fancy Hollywood people (and everyone that buys good street DVDs in China) know so well.

I don't think it was a very good movie, but I am in wide-eyed drooling awe of Nelson Mandela. Commitment. Courage. Patience. Curiosity.

My favorite moment in the movie was when President Mandela invited the captain of the national rugby team to his office for afternoon tea. He told his guest that the English had given South Africa lots of things but that the best of them was afternoon tea. And then he poured and stirred and sipped and smiled.

So, starting today, I'm going to drink afternoon tea. If it was good for Mandela, it'll be good for me.

Update: I drank my tea yesterday. But not until 845pm PST. An unexpected adventure kept me away from potable water until after dark. And the tea was good, even late. I sat all by myself. No phone or computer. Just the tea. And a pen and a notebook, just in case. Before I took my last sip, I wrote three words. Tea. Eat. Ate. I'm convinced that they're the only three words of their kind: three words, made up of the same three letters, with each letter occupying a different location in each word. Play with them. Spacially. I think they might build fractals. Or fractals' cousins maybe.

I don't know Mike, but I do know that it was the cat's shit.

I found these words, scribbled:

morning run in NH

New England heart
sparkling dew
magic mist
endless fence post
squishy mud
expect a rainbow
ferns you want to lick, eat

And turned them into these, an email to the original's author:

morning fun on earth

dew brings the heat
ferns misty in magic mud
endless
like a rainbow
or a fence
posts sparkling
and squishy
to eat

Mr. Stanley, my romantic poetry and travelwriting professor, would tell me that isn't a poem. Not yet, anyway. It's a reaction. An impression. A clever joke (his adjective, one I've never really been able to incorporate). A beginning. A draft.

The poem comes later. When every letter, every comma or capital not included, is a choice. A poem is a poem when it's fully intentional.

Stanley and I argued about that sometimes. What about jazz?, I'd ask. He'd shake his head and write the same comment on every piece of writing I ever gave him: It'll get better if you spend more time on it.

He's certainly more right than I was.

And that, above, is not a poem.

But it does have an alternate title: lick my heart, baby.

Max: [pauses, tastes, thinks, swallows] Hmmm. Not bad.
Danny: Max, don't pretend you know anything about beer.
Jon: There's a pretty awesome documentary called Beer Wars...
Zeeko: WHALE WARS!?!?!?

Apparently Whale Wars is a real thing. Which is very cool for whales. But which makes that moment of misunderstanding less awesome than if Zeeko's ears and imagination had transformed the words Beer Wars into a world combo / concept he'd never before that moment considered.

Overhearing the conversation (and never having heard of Whale Wars), I assumed the full awesomeness, smiled big, and quickly typed the dialogue into my phone.

And I post it anyway, even given my overassumption and overjournalistic reaction, because, if nothing else, it demonstrates the speed and unpredictability with which conversations turn.

I talked to the Nevinator last night about the future of the remnants of LanguageCalls, his day job plans moving forward, and what I see lying ahead for The Carrot Project.  Nevin's an unusual guy, but I'm glad to know him and have him in the carrot project orbit.

Overwhelmed by the document clutter on my desktop, a had a scan a few minutes ago for things I could delete or drop into folders.  I found a note titled Andrew Nevin Jan 13.  Given last night's call, I opened it up.

There were a couple of questions in there, a couple of ideas Andrew had given me back in January, and a two line dialogue I'd wanted not to forget.

Jake: What are you gonna do tomorrow?
Mimi: Get into as much trouble as I can.

Mimi died five days later. 

Hard for me to imagine a better granny. 

http://www.moreperfectmarket.com/2008/01/used-tissues.html

And hard for me to imagine a more characteristic joke.  Mimi was funny right through the morphine, right down to the very end.  It made things so much easier, knowing that she was still having fun.

Great to come across a little something like that.  I'm glad I wrote it down, glad I left it on my cluttered desktop, and glad the conversation with Nevin last night led me back to it today.