How to Live Forever
first, buy an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt...
Hello, dearest sparkly pollen in the eyes of the gods:
Do you have your favorite beverage at hand? Today we talk about… afterlife.
In light of all the news about extraterrestrials and UFOs being renamed, I got to thinking about life.
Don’t worry. I’m merely going to pose a single question that has been keeping me pondering for a week or two (when I should have been thinking of making dinner or writing my next story).
What if we are like houseplants and human bodies are the clay pots that we eventually outgrow?
Step one: the seed encased in clay pot.
Step two: Earth nourishes us while we are contained by the body. We flourish, blossom, maybe reproduce, grow, look awesome for a while.
Step three: broken/old pot crumbles away, leaving plant that can’t live unconfined.
(Don’t worry, I do not intend to explore this to any end. Just daydreaming.)
Things that recently happened or that are impending:
My book was awarded first place in writing/publishing by the 2021 Indie Book Awards. The winners and finalists will be honored June 25 in an online event which will stream live on Facebook at 7:00 pm (Eastern Time). Here’s the book on my publisher’s website.
Time moves differently in publishing these days. My story “Big Bad” will be included in a Red Penguin Press anthology called Once Upon a Time, and is due to be available on June 1. Meanwhile, I don’t yet have even one publicity photo to share!
Steve McCready informs me that, barring conflagrations and other calamities, our interview will air on his Sensitive Rebel podcast June 9th!
Got listed by Columbia University on their alumni author website. Feels good to be noticed by my alma mater.
Got older. NYC decorated my dinner party in a very festive way. (see below for more details)
Here’s what’s coming up:
JOIN ME - I have agreed to run a rare Creativity Spa for mothers on the Summer Solstice! ALL LEVELS welcome. There are not many spaces left & it’s a one-time only event. It’s live but online. Check it out here.
Got time to read? Here are two more links (if you want to see how I wasted time this week): This is a great opinion piece on turning UFOs into science and this is an article about a most-likely-unrelated-but-who-knows mysterious syndrome affecting spies.
Private life (definitely skippable): My birthday was terrific, thanks for the messages! What I did: open presents first thing in the morning. L got me tickets to a SHOW, a real show, on Broadway! This alone would have made my birthday perfect, but there were other, equally cool gifts from other people that I love, and then the teens both agreed to come to Gov Island with me where it was in the low 90s and sunny (my favorite weather—makes all the more delicate creatures hide inside). We all rode bikes like goofy middle-schoolers and brother and sister played on the tire swing and I collapsed into nostalgia in a hammock; then we had tacos outside with a view of the city, and came back and had iced coffees. After a relaxing hour of transition which included reading endless wonderful messages and having the time to recall good times with each sender, L&I gussied up and went to The Fulton for dinner with longtime friends, then, after a thunderstorm and a rainbow over the Brooklyn Bridge, we trundled back to the house where neighbors stopped by and LadyTeen baked an outrageous raspberry tart & Manchild cleaned the whole place both before & after the party.
THANK YOU to those of you who donated to Pen Parentis in honor of my birthday. We raised over $600! That’s a lot of love, given that the average donation was under twenty bucks. There are a heck of a lot of you out there. I’m dying to throw a real party to give you all a hug, despite the lack of wisdom in that wish.
May you all be wiser than you think you are…
And let’s all take a minute tomorrow to remember important people who have passed on. Their ghosts will rest easier in the jungle of afterlife.