Sentential Links #188

Linkage of the week:

:: Very few phrases fill me with dread and/or irritation as the response, "Oh, it's EASY!" And it bugs me on two separate but related levels.

:: I really do believe that there are blessings in ALL my experiences. Some float right up to the surface, like those breaching whales and leaping dolphins. Others are harder to identify. But if I look deep, they are always there.

:: Walking into the San Antonio Airport this afternoon I noticed that there was a decal next to the door that said "Threat Level: Orange". What the hell does it mean that this is apparently a sufficiently permanent state of affairs to merit a sticker on the door? (Interesting that nowadays we never hear about "Threat Levels", like we did back in the day....)

:: At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth. (For me, it also involves training my brain to recognize ideas when they float by, snatch them up, and kill them.)

:: When I was a kid I didn’t pay any attention at all to who wrote the songs. (Me either, with the effect that I would often -- and still do -- find that when discussing contemporary song, I can't often keep up because I often don't know artists or titles, but when I hear the song in question, I think, "Oh yeah, I know that one." Of course, by that point, the conversation is long over.)

:: Do you believe in inspired writing? Has it ever happened to you? A wave of insights, images, or thoughts so profound you must stop at once, grab a pen, and paper in hopes to capture it before it's gone. (I know the feeling well.)

:: I used to live in a town called Sandpoint. It was a little ski town in the northern tip of Idaho and it was beautiful. (I just read a book by the woman who writes this blog, Jenna Woginrich, titled Made from Scratch. I'll blog about that book soon -- short version is that I liked it a lot -- but what caught my eye is that she wrote it when she lived in Sandpoint, ID. That's where my future in-laws lived when I first started dating The Wife, way back when; in fact, my brother-in-law still lives up there. It really is a very beautiful place. I wouldn't want to live there, myself -- I find the distances between places in the West a bit daunting -- but I do wish we could get out there more than we do.)

:: Today, fifteen years after I first saw it, I believe "Hoop Dreams" is the great American documentary. No other documentary has ever touched me more deeply. It was relevant then, and today, as inner city neighborhoods sink deeper into the despair of children murdering children, it is more relevant. (Wow, I really need to watch Hoop Dreams one of these days. I never saw it, but I was a faithful viewer of Siskel and Ebert back when the film came out, and during the controversy when despite the nearly universal acclaim that was heaped upon it, the Academy failed to give it any Oscar recognition whatsoever. The film wasn't even nominated for anything, despite the fact that many felt that it was not just the best documentary that year, but a serious contender for the best picture, period.)

More next week!