September, 2026

Sep 1

Hypnopomplia (noun): the phenomenological substance that arises after waking from sleep, suggesting the contents of one’s dreams; a portmanteau of hypnopompic and qualia.

(A word I made up)

The Buddha still itches. For him, the itch has neither subsided nor has it become pleasurable. The itch has only ceased to illicit a reaction from the Buddha. The Buddha itches but does not scratch.

We humans are lawn-mowing ants, and we use our grass-clippings as feed for social status that in turn, nourishes our egos.

Sep 2

The only person worry serves is Satan.

Sep 3

When I scratch, my jaw clenches and teeth compress, which is part of how I know that the karmic traces of scratching take me further from awakening, as is true with all contractions.

What does it mean to be “un-American”? Basically, it means being a modern-day American.

[[Modern America is not a nation under God but a nation trying to get over God, which is like trying to get behind your own shadow.]]

One the Monday evening before our wedding, Tay and I are in the car, and I impersonate the priest from The Princess Bride, saying “Mawage,” and she joins in. Then, she says, “Let’s watch it tonight,” and I say, “Yeah, I was going to pull up the clip when we get home.” And she says, “No,” which I am left to interpret: “You mean ‘Let’s watch the whole movie tonight’?” She nods, and I smile. Taylor hardly ever wants to watch a movie, especially during the week. But the woman I’m going to marry in (two days from now) wanted to watch The Princess Bride on the week of her wedding. And for that I am deeply grateful.

My name is Garrett Kincaid. You are my fiancée. Prepare for “Bride.”

Saying “as many of you know” in a speech is a lose-lose. Either the audience-member does know and checks out or the person doesn’t know and feels left out.

I really don’t understand people who get upset about crying babies. Babies cry. For a moment, imagine not being able to supply your own basic needs, not being able to talk, and only be able to scream and cry. When you find yourself hurtling through the air in a metal tube mere inches from smelly strangers, for instance, what would you do? Be completely silent?

Why say “push the gas pedal” when you could write “hit the gas” or “press the pedal”—or, even better, “put the pedal to the metal”? You can’t write that phrase, though; it’s cliché.

Two more everyday sensualities: sky-gazing and naval-gazing.

Sep 6

Ailments with multivariate causes require multivariate solutions, as has been the case with my skin condition(s).

Scratching does not resolve but intensifies the itch.

[[To Itch But Not to Scratch]]

Sep 7

To be on a schedule but not in a rush—that is enlightenment.

My favorite plural-form augmentation may be ‘a’ to ‘ae’, as in scapula and scapulae; antenna and antennae.

In Athens, every two lanes has a third lane between them, comprised of the dotted white line and less than a foot of pavement in its either side, for bikers. No, not created for bikers but, rather, created by bikers. All but two bikers I’ve seen on our drive from the airport to the ferry port have been lane-splitting, moving 20 km/hr faster than the traffic.

I just realized that strength and fortitude must be the Saxon and Latinate equivalents of the same word, analogous to house and mansion. The Spanish fuerza and Italian forte suggest as much. I don’t know where strength comes from. (I just checked etymonline which confirms a Germanic/Old-English root: strengþu, strengð.)

Another unrelated observation: At eight letters, strength may be one of the longest monosyllabic words in English, if not the #1.

Sep 8

Mash-up idea: “Paper Planes” x “Hello”

Sep 9

My Custom Seven-Step Story Structure

I’m trying to define story structure independent of the protagonist, meaning the beats of the story that may involve the protagonist but are more about the shape and pace of a narrative rather than character transformation or The Hero’s Journey. It’s actually more about the key shifts in momentum in narrative, the primary attributes of each of the three acts: beginning, middle, end. To make these most memorable, I’m tempted to define them using an analogy, either the seasons, geological action, or the Gospel, because the words I have for them now, while accurate, are not memorable.

Here it is. This the essence of it. Each of the three acts have their own climaxes and denouements (rising action and falling action); between them are these inflection-points of narrative. However, Act Two is an exception, for there is a double-climax, a false-summit before the action and energy push even further. So, there are seven total inflection-points. The hard part is giving them memorable names (that are distinct from Campbell’s).

Each of these seven beats initiate the rising actions and falling actions of each act, in sequence.

ACT ONE: OUT OF THE LIGHT

1. Disturbance (rising)
2. Departure (falling)

ACT TWO: INTO THE DARK 3. Triumph (rising) 4. Ordeal (rising) 5. Revelation (falling)

ACT THREE: INTO THE LIGHT 6. Resurrection (rising to the climax) 7. Fruition (final denouement)

v3? PART ONE: OUT OF THE LIGHT

1. Disturbance
2. Departure

PART TWO: INTO THE DARK 3. Commitment 4. Trial 5. Reprieve

PART THREE: INTO THE LIGHT 6. Ordeal 7. Resurrection

The hero’s ordinary world is changed (1), and he leaves behind the familiar to seek answers (2). When he learns of the challenge ahead, the hero does not falter and is irreversibly drawn into the adventure (3), which leads him through challenges (4) and leads him to doubt his ability to succeed (5). The hero faces his greatest challenge yet and resolves the conflict within him (6), leading to his return to the world, having changed (7).

Sep 10

Notes from Naxos Cooking Class

• 10 hens per rooster, 55 chickens total
• 1 liter of extra virgin olive oil per 1,000 olives (10,000 olives per tree)
• Naxos is only self-sustainable island in the Cyclades (little Crete) because of fresh water from snow and rainfall on Mt. Zeus
• Prevoli Farm
• No goats on the farm because they would escape and jump up to eat from the olive trees, yet their homemade cheese is 80% goat, 20% sheep milk
• Not at all industrial or crop-specialized: olive trees, chickens, oranges, pomegranates, figs, wine (grapes), cheese, potatoes, tomatoes, thyme honey, eggplant, cucumber and zucchini, and more, each of those in excess, enough to sell—even in excess of feeding tour groups all week long in cooking classes
• One ton of potatoes harvested per season from one small (maybe quarter-acre) plot, can’t plant them in the same place twice, soil needs 8 months (ideally more) to replenish nutrients
• Naxan potatoes or special because they can be farmed without much water; vegetables are more flavorful the lees you need to water them, and these have adapted tot he dry climate, also able to survive without much water because the soil is so nutrient-rich from volcanic activity in the Cyclades and from the northerly winds blowing salt and minerals onto the island from the sea
• Donkey named Margarita
• It is known that donkeys and horses live longer (up to 30+ years) if they have a good view, hence why Margarita can see the whole valley from her pen
• These Greeks are not frugal (evidenced by their liberal dousing of everything in either extra-virgin olive oil or honey), but they are resourceful. When they said that they feed the egg shells to the chickens and the vegetable trimmings to the donkey, I thought it was about food waste. Rather, it would be a waste of money to not do so, as the chickens need calcium and would eat the shells of freshly laid eggs if they were deficient, and the donkey, while vegetarian, is an unscrupulous eater.

Observations of Human Mating Strategies

The human male’s mating strategy is analogous to hunting, whereas the female’s is analogous to fishing. That’s what both is naturally best at and to what the other is naturally attracted. If a woman encounters a man who is merely fishing, flaunting himself, maybe flirting, and waiting for women to bite, she will refuse to do so. And when met with two women of similar physical appearance, one who is overtly and one who is covertly propositioning him, the man will choose the latter. He will dodge the speargun and bite the bait; she will sidestep the trap and stand abreast to the incoming arrow.

Imagine two chimpanzees fighting in a forest. If those two brawlers were male, maybe a challenger and the alpha, all the females (while maybe not engaged in the fight itself) would be quite attentive to the fight and would ignore the inactive male beside her, dismissing his present advances to save herself for the soon-to-be victor, whom she already covets as a mate. If those brawling apes were female, though, the males (though they may be fascinated by the action) would give no special treatment to either the victor or the loser; a male would, instead, notice the lone female grooming herself by the water, the one aware of the brawl and nearby but paying no mind to it. Maybe three males lose interest in the female-on-female action and approach the lone female in succession, coveting the mysterious female over the competitive ones.

The most common errors I’ve observed in modern dating are inversions of these natural laws of attraction. Men err by being too coy, withholding their feelings of attraction or opting for sarcastic banter over a simple compliment, most often because they fear the woman turning him away for being too forthright. Pushy or insistent, sure, the woman would resist, but clear and forthright, no, that’s expected and appreciated. Women err by being too competitive, inventing new ways to augment their faces to get ahead in the collective hunt for a man, as if an angler were trying to land a surface-feeder by floating a bobber that says “Bite me.”

Women want to be pursued, but as soon as a woman pursues a man, he will lose interest. Men want to be lured, but as soon as a man tries to lure a woman, she will turn away. If a woman wants to succeed in dating, she becomes both more mysterious and more approachable. If a man wants to succeed, he becomes more ambitious and more forthright (i.e., out-going).

How do you know that you have spotted a Kansas Citian abroad? He is wearing either Chiefs or Royals gear.

Every story is both a fantasy and a mystery: enraptured in a dreamworld, the reader wonders what will happen next.

// Every story is both a fantasy and a mystery: Witnessing a dream of a world that doesn’t exist, the reader wonders, What will happen next?

New pet peeve unlocked: people using the verb “to do” when they talk about traveling places or experiencing things: e.g., “We did Greece last summer” or “We’re doing whale-watching tomorrow!” or “We did the mountains today, and we’ll do the town tomorrow.”

This verb is so objectifying and alienates one from one’s own experience of a place at a time. Alternatives include any verb that is more apt and more immediate (can be very simple): e.g., “We’re going whale-watching tomorrow!” or “We visited Greece last summer” or “We drove through the mountains today, and we’ll walk the town tomorrow.”

This is no chicken-or-the-egg mystery; this is a linguistic (AmEnglish-usage) effect of travel having become commodified. The same verb people use to discuss their work agendas and household chores (“I did the dishes this morning”), they are using to discuss some of the most extravagant, sensuous, pleasurable, and epic experiences any human being has every experienced.

Sep 11

“Wash-Closet”

“Water Closet” has always seemed an odd phrase to me, until Taylor said so on our first day in Greece and I thought about it more deeply. Closet comes directly from the French closet, meaning “small enclosure.” Compare closet of “water closet” to room in bathroom, and it’s clear that closet wins out for more accurately describing the space: i.e., an enclosure smaller than a normal room, one that may even be contained within a room.

Then you have the question of water vs. bath. Well, I’ve always found bathroom to be an odd word too, because most bathrooms do not have baths. Bathe-room would make more sense, if the definition of bathe were broad enough to including washing one’s hands, for example. For this reason, too, “water closet” is more accurate than bathroom, but it is procedural and inane: “a small enclosure containing water.” It’s accurate but has no pleasant allure or personality. Analogous words that do have such qualities are “lavatory” and “dormitory” (both using the Latin suffix -torium, meaning “a place for a specific function”). The roots lavar and dormir (which I know from Spanish) mean “wash” and “sleep,” respectively. So, lavatory and dormitory are “a place to wash” and “a place to sleep.” How elegant!

A bathroom is not a place with a bath, neither is it a room: more of a closet. Yet “water closet” has that sterile quality because it contains no verb. After thinking about this deeply, I am comfortable proposing a new, unified English phrase for this place that has all the pros, none of the cons, and—bonus!—one fewer syllable than “water closet.” I propose wash-closet.

I want to test the latest version of my seven-inflection-point narrative framework on some familiar stories.

PART ONE: OUT OF THE LIGHT

1. Disturbance
2. Departure

PART TWO: INTO THE DARK 3. Trial 4. Ordeal 5. Revelation

PART THREE: INTO THE LIGHT 6. Resurrection 7. Fruition

The Truman Show (1) A spotlight (Sirius) falls from the sky. (2) Truman attempts to drive over the bridge, off the island. (3) Tries and fails to prove his theory, and suspects his wife and best friend are in on it. (4)Truman’s dad appears, who had previously drowned at sea. (5) Truman is gone; show cuts transmission. (6) Truman sets out to sea. (7) He collides with the wall of his world.

Siddhartha v2 (without summary, only the inflection-point events): (1) The ascetics come to town; (2) Siddhartha and Govinda leave with them. (3) Years of ascetic life; separation from Govinda, who chooses to follow Gotama; years of hedonistic life with Kamala. (4) Reunites with Govinda on the riverbank, who saves Siddhartha from killing himself. (5) Siddhartha seeks the ferryman as his teacher. (6) Kamala dies from a snake bite, and Siddhartha loses his son, and he lets them go as the river would. (7) Siddhartha and Govinda share the river as their teacher and find enlightenment together.

Siddhartha, Herman Hesse (1) The acetics (Samanas) wander into town; (2) Siddhartha and Govinda go with them in search of a new path to enlightenment. (3) Siddhartha tries the acetic path and finds it insufficient; then goes to meet Gotama, the Buddha, whom he finds contradictory, and thus leaves his friend Govinda; then pursues the path of pleasure and the material world, guided by Kamala. (4) Siddhartha seeks to down himself in the river but fall asleep and is woken by Govinda, who cared for him until he was no longer sick, before continuing on his own way. (5) Siddhartha returns to the ferryman he encountered years prior, realizing that he was the only person he had ever met who embodies the spiritual state he desires. (6) Kamala comes to use the ferry with her son, Siddhartha’s son, and she dies; Siddhartha becomes (learns that is already) a father and promptly loses his son, whom he allows to leave. (7) Siddhartha, the ferryman, becomes enlightened by studying the river and shares that gift with his lifelong friend Govinda.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1) Ferris calls Cameron; (2) Cameron picks him up, and they take the Ferrari to go get Sloane. (3) Valet-ing the Ferrari, stock exchange, baseball game, lunch, museum, overlook, parade. (4) Seeing the odometer on the Ferrari and going catatonic. (5) “I’m gonna take a stand.” (6) Cameron kills the car and insists on taking the heat. (7) Ferris makes it home without getting caught.

Life is a rougelike game, and every day is a new run at it.

Sep 12

Freediving and skydiving are analogous: the parachute you carry up then down, and pull; the breath you carry down then up, and pull. SCUBA-diving is analogous to a space-walk: the capacity of your tank is the length of your tether.

Notes on Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise

The dialogue is perfectly stylized, right on the edge of too benign to fill a film and too orchestrated to feel justified. But, in fact, the conversation between these two is their connection; the entire film is a series of set pieces for conversations between Jesse and Celine, and I love it. It’s such a unique premise for a film, not to mention the premise for the whole trilogy, which I am now sure to watch in its entirety. The comparison to a dream is apt: a chance encounter outside of time, overnight, before “real-time” resumes in the morning. And the best films evoke the feeling of a dream. The penultimate scene even includes a montage of still frames showing the many locations they visited in Vienna throughout the evening, in roughly reverse-chronological order, which is similar to how I recall a dream.

I relate to both characters, as if they are the masculine and feminine archetypes within me, who also happen to be at a similar level of maturity as I am now. This film was recommended to me by my life-long friend and groomsman on the final night of my Bachelor-Party trip about two months ago, and I watched it one week after getting married. Besides the sudden urge to write a series of essays detailing my responses to the philosophical prompts posed by these characters in their many conversations, the feeling I have at Before Sunrise’s conclusion is that I lived my own version of this sacred night when I first met Taylor, and I had the especially good fortune of never being forced apart from her by circumstance.

As Jesse says, after only one day together, given the chance to never see Taylor again or marry her, I would have chosen to marry her—not because I was excited about marriage but because of how obvious it was immediately that Taylor’s permanent presence in my life would have been better for me in every way than her permanent absence.

Sep 13

Cortisol is a drug—a performance-enhancing and spirit-depleting drug—with severe side-effects of chronic use.

Final line for my self-eulogy?

There is no need to honor me annually, either on the anniversary of my birth or death; you honor me daily by living well.

First line for my self-eulogy: “Boo!”

I’ve loved grapes all my life and have only had a grape for the first time today, because before today, I’ve only ever eaten seedless grapes. Skinning and dissecting grapes as a kid, I always wondered about their vacant cavities. Those are ovaries! Every grape has four ovaries! And the overwhelming thought, beyond this one, I had while eating those seeded grapes today is this: fruits, which fall to the earth, are female (yin); and vegetables, which burst out of the earth, are male (yang).

The basic female insecurity is not having procured enough to support another’s life. The basic male insecurity is not having produced enough to be worthy of one’s life.

Sep 14

In English, spelling is no indicator of rhyme: e.g., warren, soarin’, foreign. You have to think phonetically.

I came across Guy Billout’s illustrations today, and I love them: they are all thinkers and have the same paradoxical, surrealistic quality as Rene Magritte’s paintings.

Sep 15

I hope to evolve, someday, to the point where melancholy is not necessarily appended to my euphoria. I’d rather come down to baseline rather than be drawn below it for immediately lamenting a peak experience. I dislike the feeling of planning to return to a place as I’m leaving it, because I know that return-trip, like tomorrow, is not guaranteed.

(This is the thought, and the melancholic feeling, I’m having on my hike back from skinny-dipping alone in a secret lagoon on the island of Paros, having just been utterly buoyant in both body and spirit, held adrift in a micro-inlet of the Aegean.)

Sep 17

Relative to one another, dogs are yang, and cats are yin.

Bobbing off the rocky coast of Hydra on a clouded day, only my head is above water. I look to Peloponnese on the horizon and see an oil spill: the surface of the Aegean is churning tar. I look down at my feet and see pristine spring-water for a hundred feet, only clouded by the blue-shifted sand of the seafloor.

Sep 18

DJ transition idea: “Welcome to the Jungle” –> “Season 2, Episode 3” (Glass Animals).

The end of “Jungle”: “It’s gonna bring you down . . . Bwew, neu, neu” [SWITCH] “Hoo!” (instead of GnR’s “Huh!”, the beginning of “Season 2”).

A body is not an organism itself but an ecosystem. The organism is body plus anima, and anima is the natural byproduct of the ecosystem that is the body.

The body is not a machine, for it is not used by the organism (as a tool) and it exists for itself rather than for its function. If there is any man-made, mechanical metaphor to apply here, it would be the body as component part of the organism.

I absolutely hate the fact that (and the frequency with which) iOS auto-corrects were to we’re by adding an apostrophe. It’s as if it does not recognize the past subjunctive form of the verb to be (to be, our language’s most helpful verb!) as a valid English word.

Notes from the Hike to Prophet Elias Monastery on Hydra

Just outside the gates, I see a centimeter-long ant carrying twin pine-needles that measure more than an inch each. By comparison, his compatriots are slacking.

Standing in the horizontal center of the sanctuary, closer to the entrance than the ornate floor-tile in the exact center, alone in complete silence save the intermittent buzzing of a fly, facing the opening in the partition that separates the public space from the house of the Eucharist, I closed my eyes and prayed a blessing on our marriage.

My entry in the guestbook, which is a green, cloth-cover, school subject notebook (“Classic Leaf Subjects 3”) with lined pages:

Thank you for sharing this sacred space. May myself and all who visit this place find peace and carry it down the mountain, across the sea.

–Garrett

N.C., U.S.A.

Sep 18, 2026

There was really two sentiments expressed in the guestbook, at least the many entries I could read in both English and Spanish: (1) gratitude for this place and the people who tend to it and (2) blessings on those who visit this place, including oneself. The only message that would have been true for me to leave was one in keeping with the guestbook’s existing themes, for gratitude and hope were the only feelings I have.

I hear the monks behind the doors with signs saying “For monks only,” hear the chanting of a prayer and the clanging of silverware during what I assumed is lunchtime.

From the bell-tower, I can see over the southern tip of the Peloponnesian Peninsula to the dense and sprawling Athens, with its all-ivory buildings, which from here looks a wide, steep, long beach beneath the mainland’s mountains.

There is a honor-system shop, a little alcove you access via the vestibule of the monastery. It has books and 100% beeswax candles and St. Thomas’s Wart Ointment and iconography for sale. There is a metal drop-box by the door for cash with a handwritten sign on it—only in English—that says “IF YOU NEED CHANGE PLEASE CALL A MONK.”

There was a beautifully designed book I couldn’t pass up: Hesychia and Theology: The Context for Man’s Healing in the Orthodox Church. From the back cover, I learned that Hesychia means “inner peace” and is the state one must cultivate to commune with God. While I expect to disagree with much of the content, beginning with the premise that man is inherently and irreparably flawed, I also expect this book to be a valuable addition to my library; I’m sure I can learn a thing or two from it, and if I’m honest with myself, I sympathize with the ascetics in my actions (my rigid abstinence from many vices) though not philosophically.

The book costs 20 euro, and the smallest bill I have is a 50. I haven’t seen a monk yet, and I don’t want to go knocking around bothering these holy men just to ask for some change. I met an older couple, Craig and Sandy from Silverthorne near the sanctuary when they were looking for the bathroom, and I asked them for change. Craig couldn’t make clean change but supplied me with 20, and I Venmo-ed Sandy $25 USD in return. They had lived in Utah for 40 years and more recently moved to Colorado. Their kid got married on Sep 01, and Craig and Sandy are one week away from their 49th wedding anniversary, which they will celebrate in Crete on a group-tour. Currently, they are at the end of on a Rick Steves tour of Greece with 22 other people. This couple was the only from their group who decided to use their free time to hike to the Monastery.

The self-service shop had free snacks too, including an enticing mason jar of chick pees, but I did not partake, because I had packed a snack (multigrain breadsticks from the market) that I had yet to eat, which I am doing presently with a wonderful view, seated on the edge of the mysterious circle of stone at the edge of the land, with three onlooking cats behind me.

The entire ridgeline of Peloponnese is littered with windmills. I need to research their energy production to learn whether the eyesores are justified.

The muted gray-green olive trees mix with these unfamiliar bushy pine trees that match the bulbous shape of oaks, and their needles are a vibrant, fully saturated, matte and homogenous green—a staggering contrast. Both species have settled the entire mountainside and are now climbing the sheer cliff-faces as well.

I received suspecting looks from the few couples I met on the way up when I revealed that I’m on my honeymoon and that my wife is sick. I couldn’t help but add that she insisted I go up without her. That failed to soften the judgmental glares masked as quizzical stares. I got the sense that these inseparable couples were worried my marriage was already failing, or at least erring. Yet I see this as a predictor of great success. That said, it is time for me to stop logging, stop loitering around these sacred grounds, and hustle down to my wife who is suffering from a stomach bug.

Duration: 3.5 hours | 11 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Accent: 1 hour, 20 minutes Descent: 50 minutes Monastery time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

End of Hike

On My Boringly Simple Handwriting

When I write by hand, it is always in utterly legible schoolboy print. It’s not perfect, still messy with some idiosyncrasies, but it’s highly legible. I can’t stand struggling through reading a handwritten note or letter, because it nerfs the impact and meaning of the words. It’s distracting. When I am communicating, I want my meaning to be transferred accurately and understood. So, my handwriting is boring print, the same letter-forms I remember practicing in first grade in those multi-lined notebooks where each line was bisected by a dotted line and you only crossed the red bottom line for 'q’s and 'g’s and 'y’s. If handwritten correspondence were more common, maybe this wouldn’t be such a problem; I would have an easier time reading hard handwriting, but I think I’d still stick with my banal style. I am proud and confident in saying that at every step of the way in my work, my writing, regardless of the context or medium, I aim to minimize incessant toil for my reader. She toils enough already.

One of the first lessons I want to teach my kids, something I imagine myself repeating often: One learns by asking questions.

Notes on Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset and _Before Midnight

I’m so glad I watched this entire trilogy within the same week; these three films feel like a cohesive whole: (1) the serendipity and spontaneity of youth, (2) the inevitability of true love, and (3) the transience of all things notwithstanding true love.

After watching Before Sunset, I felt like I had never related to any character more than I do to Jesse Wallace, and I found myself admiring him, viewing him as a model. But just now, watching Before Midnight on the final night of my honeymoon, I aspire to transcend Jesse Wallace in every way. I will be a better husband, a more peaceful and honest and forthcoming and reliable man, a better writer, and a more present person and father. The struggle depicted within Jesse and Celine’s relationship in the trilogy’s final film is real and I’m sure common. (It’s also, as the film reveals and its theme supports, fleeting.) And I’m sure that having kids does change everything about one’s life and one’s romantic partnership. But regardless of what changes come, the unwavering thing will be: Garrett taking care of himself, Taylor taking care of herself, and the two of us caring for one another as partners in life.

Watching the first film, Before Sunrise, I felt like I was at a similar level of maturity to the characters. After watching Before Midnight, I feel like Taylor and I are both already more mature—as individuals and within our relationship—than the 41-year-old versions of Jesse and Celine. I attribute this to some uncanniness, some slight disconnect between what the characters say and how they act. I think what I’m admiring more than the characters is the maturity and wisdom of the screenwriter.

Aspirations of Creating a Jellyfin Media Library

I think my next tech-focused personal project will be to set up a personal media server using Jellyfin. It’s completely free, open-source software to host one’s entire media collection on one’s personal server and stream it to any device. I’ve known about this for a while; one of my closest friends created his own Jellyfin and runs a server from his iMac, but I’m not sure whether he’s stuck with it as his primary media library—need to ask him.

This is squarely up my alley. In the name of autonomy and curation, I would love to own all my digital media (not rent via subscription) and host those files privately, securely. My book collection is intended to be physical, but I should have a digital media library that is similarly curated. I’m not going to buy every album I love on vinyl, because I most often consume audio when I’m not home. The reason my books are physical is because I prefer to read physical books. Film and TV are digital by nature, so my Jellyfin server would be a library of my

The problem is that this is a pretty big undertaking and a significant personal project, and likely costly (especially to purchase all the media I would want, though that can happen gradually). I don’t know the first thing about setting up a home server, and I don’t know from what marketplace I need to purchase this media to be able to store it in Jellyfin (e.g., is it easy to port over all the twenty or so films I own on iTunes)?

I think most people who use Jellyfin pirate the content, but I refuse to do that. I want to support the creators and own their creations outright, with proper licensing, etc. Digital media is way more complicated than physical because of the simple fact that it costs nothing to copy and distribute. If someone buys my book and then wants to give it to a friend, they must give up their copy and either travel to or ship the object to the recipient. Forwarding a file is comparatively free of time and money.

I’m learning quickly that DRM licenses are the killer here. Blu-Rays are simple, but all those films I have in Apple’s TV app are not mine. I paid $12+ for the license to stream that film via the one app indefinitely (wow, what a wonderful privilege!). I don’t own shit. On some level, I already knew this, which is why I plan to have a large physical library of films, TV, and vinyl. But, ideally, I would be able to host all the digital media I want to consume on Jellyfin and then select my absolute, all-time favorites to buy physically (i.e., a second purchase).

Here’s another important idea: For films and TV, I could buy physical disks (likely buy used) and then port (rip) them into Jellyfin (although I think this is only legal as long as the disk remains in my possession). For films I don’t like enough to keep a physical copy, I could donate or sell those disks once I own the file. I could also use streaming services to sample, and even to watch TV and films and then use Jellyfin only as a curation engine, rather than first-time consumption.

This move would be to gradually curate a digital media library, focusing on my all-time favorite films, TV seasons, and music albums. These would all be media I have consumed before and loved and of which I want to own a copy to access anytime thereafter, regardless of my current streaming subscriptions or the content libraries of those platforms. The other benefit would be the freedom to design the information hierarchy and metadata of this library so that I can browse and search it as I would like.

When anxious, one is overthinking. When depressed, one is over thinking.

Sep 19

I love this shit! Watch my self-publishing colleague David Kadavy build a recording booth in his bathroom using PVC pipes and acoustic blankets.

The Trees and the Seeds

Women have a head start when it comes to spiritual maturity. A woman is born as a broad tree with deep roots, and a man is born as fruit that falls from a tree. Males only become rooted after great effort, uncertainty, and adventure. Like a drift, males drift and roll, and their outer shell slowly decays. He deposits his seeds almost indiscriminately to see what will take, as if seed-spreading is his purpose. Yet the fruition of the fruit is to become a young, shallow-rooted tree. The female transforms by decaying too, letting her nutrients be sapped from her for the sake of the entire forest, until she is deadwood then dust then soil for the fruits and roots of her descendants.

Women are born of the earth; men are born on it. By default, men excel in all things material and women in all things immaterial. The sexes learn from one another to slowly develop the other’s complementary strength. By the end of life, a woman may be more ambitious than their male peers, and a man may be more mysterious than his female peers.

(If this sounds like nonsense, look at the lifecycle of queen bees or ant queens. They are deeply rooted inside their hives or colonies and send their workers out to provide the nutrients needed to propagate and nurture the community. When the lifecycle of the hive or colony is nearly complete, the queen leaves in hopes of seeding a new community before she dies.)

Sep 20

I’m reading Ann Kavan’s Ice and, if I may be so bold, came up with a small edit that would make this good sentence great; it’s mostly an edit for concision and meter, and solving the slight redundancy caused by “fate inevitable.”

Original:

The irreparable damage inflicted had long ago rendered her fate inevitable (p. 66).

My edit:

The irreparable damage inflicted had long ago wrought her fate.

Fate, by definition, is already inevitable, once it is rendered, or wrought. There is no such redundancy in my edit, and my version adds the implication that her fate was wrought by “irreparable damage inflicted long ago,” which is more accurate than saying that the damage augmented her fate, rendering it inevitable. Her experience determined her fate (which is inherently inevitable).

Economical Blocking in Prose

Blocking is orienting subjects and objects in space. In a play, it means choreography and acts hitting their marks. In prose, it’s more difficult, because you not only have to describe the movement of what’s on the stage but also who/what is on the stage in the first place.

The best writers I’ve read have mastered what I can only think to call “economical blocking.” More amateur writers like me struggle to convey little details without droning on as if describing a diagram in a textbook. This is a subtle thing, but I’ve started to notice both good and bad examples more readily.

Here is a good one, from Anna Kavan’s Ice. This is a dream-scene where the images are arising and break from the true setting

I had no weapon, and searched for something with which to defend myself. I was in a street where dead horses had been piled up to form a barricade, among them a man who had been killed with his mount. He had not had time even to draw his sword, which was still in the scabbard, engraved with intricate patterns, a beautiful piece of work. I tugged at the projecting hilt, but in falling the blade had jammed and I could not move it (p. 68).

Notice how many specific images have been conjured here in just four sentences, and the intricacy of the resulting scene. There’s some real magic happening here, with repeated/shared subjects across clauses, verbs loaded with meaning, and critically descriptive nouns. Note the dependent clauses, beginning with “among them” and “which was,” which both refer to the preceding clause’s subject. Note the carefully chosen nouns barricade, mount, scabbard, hilt, and likewise the verbs searched, piled, engraved, projecting, falling, jammed. Finally, note the coordinate clause that required the description of the other details: the blade was jammed. How was the blade jammed? Why was it inaccessible? Those questions are answered by the three sentences (only three!) of economical blocking.

The most wonderful achievement here is this phrase, which for another writer could be three sentences of description on its own, describing how the blade became jammed into the scabbard, between the man and his mount or the other dead horses: “but in falling the blade had jammed.” This honestly blows me away. As a reader, I feel like I have every detail I need to hold the scene in my mind’s eye and exactly nothing more.

The only confusion here that comes from scabbard, which I was imagining as running the full length of the blade, where the blade (and its engravings) wouldn’t be visible. But I think Kavan used scabbard instead of sheath hopping to evoke a different image, more like a holster where parts of the sword are visible. On my first read, I had already imagined him unsheathing the blade when he described the engravings.

Here is a not-so-good one, from the previous book I read, Stephen L. Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell that reads like straight-up stage-direction:

I ordered for her and passed the salad to her as it came out of the device. I asked for fish and chips, and we carried out plates over to the middle of the nearest row of books and sat down with our legs dangling over the side. We ate in silence for a few bites, making a comment or two on how good the food was here in Hell. She finished the ice cream sundaes we had ordered after tossing the remnants of our meals over the side. I told her about my Mormon mission in Maine. I told her about getting my master’s degree in geology. I told her about raising my children, and of course I told her about my dying (p. 49).

Notice that the first half of this paragraph is physical blocking, and every minor action gets its own dependent clause, as if each is equally weighted and ticking along on an assembly line, building out the scene. Contrasting this to Kavan’s, this paragraph is like a digital image loading row by row, pixels populating the screen; whereas Kavan’s paragraph is like entering a gallery and seeing a large painting in the light, and you begin to squint and focus on one corner to examine the intricacies of the scene.

I’m sure I could find both good and bad examples of this in my own Beneath the Glacier. These tiny, necessary details may be the hardest cases to achieve concision in writing.

We do not repent for the sins of our parents but rather transcend.

A fear of death may protect life but prevents living.

The essence of all form is emptiness. The essence of all form is emptiness. The essence of all form is emptiness. The essence of all form is emptiness. The essence of all form is emptiness.

I’m in the dead middle of an overbooked flight from Athens to Charlotte, in row 27, on a plane with 11 seats per row, and mine is one of only four reading lights illuminated. I am certainly not the only one reading but the only one reading a physical book. It makes me feel proud, flushing my ego, disheartened by how ubiquitous TV- and movie-watching are on planes (like WALL-E), and I feel guilty that my light may have disrupted on or another of my neighbors’ sleep. Now that I glance around though, everyone bordering me, everyone I can see, is staring at a screen. The man next to me in the aisle-seat is on his fourth movie. It is now 8:45 p.m. in Athens, and I’m going to listen to some music then get some sleep.

The Ethics of Rock-Skipping

There’s a complicated ethics of rock-skipping. The more I indulge in a single place, the harder it will be for the next person to find stones suitable for skipping, the less pleasure they will experience for not getting there before me. Man skips rocks, which sink to the lake-bottom or riverbed or seafloor faster than the lake, river, or sea replaces skipping rocks ashore.

That said, I indulge in excess almost every time, for having the combination of flat, calm waters and flat, rounded stones is rare enough to incite total bliss, absolute elation. I cannot stop myself; I skip until I beat my last best performance and then skip until I beat my new best or am forced to leave by circumstance or company. Should I feel guilty? I don’t think I do, for while I am denying skipping-rocks to the next person who visits the shore, nothing I am doing is destructive, only displace-ive. The rocks return within human scales of time, and beyond those scales, one can understand the skippable rock as only a fleeting phase of the rock’s lifecycle. Am I not providing it the thrill of an eternity? Maybe all rocks—first cliff-faces then boulders in moraines, then rigid coastal stones, then smooth beachside pebbles—hope for a billion years that for the century they are perfectly skippable, some skilled young man will buck them side arm and send them whirling, careening across the surface, triumphing its oppressor for an instant of unrivaled freedom. Maybe I make a rock’s dream come true with every skillful skip, and maybe my best performances have exceeded the rocks’ wildest fantasies and supplied them an ecstasy that will endure long after I am dead.

I remember my guitar teacher getting perturbed by my consistently poor hand position, how my fingers laid too flat along the fretboard and caused collisions across strings, half-muting neighbors, causing that awful screeching twang. He implored me to keep a pair of nail-clippers in my bag and to cut my nails often. I’m not sure he had ever encountered nails like mine, and I only recently have understood my fingernails as an anatomical anomaly. I struggled to “press straight down on the strings” because my nails collided with the fretboard, bending as I tried to apply enough force to the string to produce a clear tone. I cannot cut them any shorter, have no option to trim my nails back behind my fingertip, lest I suffer injury as my grandmother inflicted on me one day when she was babysitting me at four years old. My parents were outraged by how careless she had been, but I no longer fault her; she had certainly never cut fingernails like mine. This “condition” is one of few abnormalities of my body, and it pairs horrifically with my body’s most notable ailment: eczema.

I refuse for the most sensual and enchanted part of my life to be behind me, in my childhood. It is only a matter of attention and imagination.

The Agean is so salty that when I swam down with my mask on for a closer look at the parrot fish feeding, I had to constantly kick, and all I had to do to return to the surface was be still; I wafted up like a foam kick-board submerged in the pool then released. Even without kicking—not a single upward stroke—I rose uncomfortably fast, irritated my ears.

Sep 21

There was a distinct and immediate shift in our relationship when we got married two weeks ago, yet it is subtle. I’ve been struggling to put it into words. I think at least one part of it is that everything feels less dire. Positive surprises bring as much or more joy than they did before, and negative surprises are now more delightful. I guess it’s the feeling of having a teammate in everything I do.

Here is my brief pitch of myself on the Talent Network form for the new Authors Equity publishing house, which seems like a pretty great fit and could be the perfect place for me to learn a lot about how to build Glacial Press.

https://garrettkincaid.com/coaching—I am an editor, writing coach, and self-published author. Most notably, I’ve worked with Paul Millerd on Good Work, with David Kadavy on his books How to Sell a Book and Finish What Matters, with David Perell on his personal essays, with OSV Fellow Michael Dean on his Essay Architecture textbook, and with Scott Britton on Conscious Accomplishment. Most recently, I self-published my book Beneath the Glacier, a travel memoir. I have an especially good eye for structure in both arguments and stories and a keen sense for achieving clarity and concision at the sentence-level while amplifying the author’s voice.

Geoff Shandler, formerly Executive Editor at Little, Brown and an Editorial Director at Harper Collins, now freelancer worked on one of Authors Equity’s first books: Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Greg Beato’s Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future.

Glacial Press Is Not a Vanity Press

I need to immediately dispel any writers’ concerns about Glacial Press being a vanity publisher (which is associated with no editorial vetting and scams). Rather, Glacial Press is a new kind of hybrid publisher: an imprint for a self-published authors and an online bookstore. Our revenue is author-subsidized, but in the long run, we make more money selling a book on our store than we do from the initial service fee. Unlike a vanity press, we rigorously vet submissions and provide white-glove editorial service to create books that meet or exceed the quality of traditionally published titles, in both prose quality and design.

Glacial Press is a hybrid publisher, because it meets the Independent Book Publisher’s definition of a hybrid publisher:

• Define a mission and vision for its publishing program.
• Vet submissions.
• Commit to truth and transparency in business practices.
• Provide a negotiable, easy-to-understand contract for each book published.
• Publish under its own imprint(s) and ISBNs.
• Publish to industry standards
• Ensure editorial, design, and production quality.
• Pursue and manage a range of publishing rights.
• Provide distribution services.
• Demonstrate respectable sales.
• Pay authors a higher-than-standard royalty.

The “pay authors a royalty” part is where things get interesting. Authors own their books outright and get 100% royalty, which is indeed higher-than-standard.

I plan to do a lot of direct outreach to booksellers. A review would help a lot, I imagine. I’m tempted to go ahead and pay for the traditional Kirkus review. It would honestly help boost my confidence in the book if I had something like that to point to, especially if it earned a Kirkus Star (oooh . . . ahhh).

Sep 22

Here’s my submission of “'Tween the Trunks of Tall Pines” for Strange Pilgrims’s Leonard Cohen reading period, which I discovered yesterday and ends tonight at midnight.

Category: Flash Fiction Words: 220

Cover Letter

I’ve written many essays, several short stories, and two books, but the place I’ve spilled the most ink is in my dream-journal. Rarely, a dream has both a coherent message and a compelling narrative. Recently, after watching Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise for the first time, I fell asleep thinking about how men and women misunderstand one another, and I woke up with the memory of this scene as a dream.

Bio

Garrett Kincaid grew up in Leawood, Kansas, studied finance in Hoboken, New Jersey, and now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he works as an editor and writing coach. Garrett is the self-published author of Beneath the Glacier: Solo for 81 Days in Iceland and the founding editor of Glacial Press. To read more from Garrett, visit garrettkincaid.com and subscribe to his newsletter, The Intronaut.

Sep 24

Overheard at coworking space:

“How are you?”

“Good. How are you?”

“I’m phenomenal, and that’s an understatement.”

Sep 26

The most common source of meaning for any human for all time is parenthood, and parenthood is becoming more rare by the year.

(A thought provoked by chapter 2 of Arthur Brooks’s BigThink interview)

At dawn, the darkest part of the sky other than the western horizon is the zenith. The zenith! How could I have never noticed? To the east, a pale yellow bleeds into bright blue; to the west, a deep purple blends with the same; and between them, furthest from the horizon and directly above my crown, is a blue as dark as a new-moon’s dusk.

Notes on My First Long Ride on the Sugar Creek Greenway

• New Nature Museum under construction. On the concept-art fence-cover, Gibran quote: “Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky.”
• Loudest laughter from woman in wheelchair being pushed by an aid near the rehab center
• “Urban Section: For Your Safety and Enjoyment . . . Walk With a Friend”
• The opposite of an exodus to Freedom Park, most people I’ve seen in any one place in Charlotte
• The embarrassment of riding an e-bike and for my only company to be grandparents
• Within an hour, I went from our go-to trailhead near the 485 beltway (south) all the way into Uptown (north of Freedom Park)
• Overwhelming eagerness to become involved in this community, and to source clients locally: grassroots, in-person marketing
• The Greenway is closed for a construction-site, and it has a marked detour via the street!
• It’s very gratifying to reach the segment of the Greenway that I first experienced, in Uptown right next to the AirBnB we stayed in for my birthday last year—our first time visiting CLT.
• Teaching gig or editing work for Central Piedmont Community College?
• People seem genuinely afraid of blind turns, especially the underpasses. One biker-woman in front of me was absolutely spamming her handle-bar bell leading into the blindness, shouting as she confronted the unknown.
• Quinceañera photoshoot 
• The creek is quite pleasant, but I can’t help but think of what it used to be, before this city. It’s become Weak Sugar Creek, hardly flowing, but at least it’s no longer dying, or dying more slowly now that it’s preserved. It used to be a body, now a vein of this city. 
• I could smell the funnel cakes from two hundred yards away, indicating some fair. As it turns out, it’s the Festival in the Park.
• The porta-potties in the park today are provided by the same vendor who provided the drapery and dance floor for our wedding.
• Just passed a mascot in a duck costume. As he slid on the final article, his left glove, he says, “Let’s do this.”
• “STOP: Do Not Disturb the ‘Streamway’”
• I found a little secret MTB trail with some kids’ custom-made jumps
• I saw two men on adjacent tennis courts: one being fed by a ball machine, the other hitting against the wall.
• Most passers-by greet me, subtly, with a nod or a half-wave, fingers’ wave.
• President James K. Polk’s birthplace is right off the Greenway by the highway
• I passed walkers who apologized, and I misspoke in reply, saying: “No good, your problem.” (Instead of “You’re good, no worries.”)

Sep 28

Indoors, man is locked into his self-obsessed subjectivity, as the “intelligent designer” of his entire environment. Outdoors, man is an object acted upon by Nature, and as long as he is not actively distracting himself, he becomes aware of that fact and, thereby, becomes ever so less self-obsessed.

My name for my Book Notes page on my website should be “Book Re-Views.”

“Everything I’ve Learned About . . .”

Maybe I write a series of essays called “Everything I’ve Learned.” It would be like a serialized, updated version of The Pursuit of Purpose, and the topics would be small enough in scope to be really specific and valuable. Topics would include everything I’ve learned about:

• Romantic Partnership
• Dreams
• Meditation
• Ambition
• Travel

Critically, these topics would be things that readers can practice. These would not be compendiums summarizing various world philosophies. These are more like: everything you need to know to start your own practice of [], or a way to think differently / more deeply about your existing practice.

And each essay would all be centered around a thesis that presents a unique point of view on the subject, an angle that might change the reader’s approach. E.g.,

• A relationship is either a catalyst for growth or a means of stagnation.
• Dreams are the most accessible mystery in daily life.
• It is a myth that meditation requires you to empty your kind; you must become mind-full.
• Every accomplishment is vacuous and empty except fulfillment: feeling like you could die today and be content with your earthly existence.
• Aimlessness is an essential component of travel if it is to be transformational.

Relationships are like flowers. (Yes, a cliché metaphor but allow me to extend it in a way you have not heard before.) A flower exists in its own for itself as its own being, and yet its growth is subject to the activity of the sun and moon. The flower grows through seasons, sometimes lays dormant, and sometimes blossoms. Though the flower will wilt, it may always be revived as long as it has not died. That flower may also propagate into a family.

Skyrim Play-Through Ideas

Writing this fan-fic, I’ve been thinking about Skyrim a lot, and even though it’s terribly nerdy, it is quite fun to think about. Because I’m playing out key moments of the fan-fic in game, I am role-playing more than I ever have in any game ever. I’m embodying a character, especially with her decisions in quests, the specialties of her builds, and her strict combat style and armor preferences (e.g., using Dwarven Mail light armor from the Creation Hub to satisfy her Markarth roots and her one-handed, agile build).

Here are some more characters that would make for both a rich narrative and a fun play-through:

Moonstone Warrior (Male Khajiit): A noble merchant (no theft), claws-only warrior who rises through the ranks of the Companions and receives the gift of Lycanthropy; then the anonymity of his beast form threatens to corrupt his noble nature. He becomes obsessed with eradicating vampires, whom he sees as demonic forces in the world. A lover of the moon himself, he is not so deluded that he wants to blot out the sun.

• Primary character trait: Incorruptible
• Cool duality to play with of the cat having the ability to turn into a wolf: “werecat.”
• Starts battles with sneak-attacks to maximize claws-damage
• Heavy Armor’s Fists of Steel perk (gauntlet armor rating added to unarmed damage)
• Joins up with Aela the Huntress early on; partners in battle but no romance
• Wears the Ring of Hircine (no cooldown on Beast Form)
• He is swayed by Serena, and she becomes an exception to his mission to eradicate vampires; he tries to cure her. Maybe he and Serena make a pact to cure themselves both. In the end, maybe this Khajiit sides with Kodak Whitmane and helps him find the cure for Lycanthropy.

Forsworn Devotee (Male Breton): In his hatred for Nords and the Empire, he slaughters entire Stormcloak camps and then raises those dead to fight against the Imperials in the Civil War, effectively defeating both sides: puppet-master of the civil war.

• Primary trait: Fanatic
• Master necromancer
• Enchanted forsworn light armor
• Conjuration, including Bound Battle Axe
• He always has an elite Nord warrior (or two) as his dead thrall
• Ritual Stone (reanimate dead daily power)
• Soul Tear shout (from Dawnguard DLC)

Amphibian Battlemonk (Male Argonian): First-ever Argonian Archmage of the College of Winterhold. Very old, on account of his race and his mastery of Alteration; wise monk, a revered teacher. He has been called by the Hist to collect all the Daedric artifacts—at whatever cost, by whatever means—to destroy them, to throw them into the Atronach Forge and cleans Mundus of these demonic influences. He must be mutable to allow himself to be the person who would go through with all the Daedric quests, and to convince each Prince that he is their servant and has no ulterior motive.

• Primary Trait: Mutable
• Master in Alteration
• Leans on the Ebonyflesh spells and racial power Hitskin to be a tank
• Perk: Mage Armor (3x boost to “flesh” spells when wearing robes only)
• Wields a warhammer in battle
• Mass-Paralysis spell
• Serpent Stone (daily paralysis-and-poison attack)

Pickpocketing Priestess (Female Imperial): A priestess of Mara in Riften who is slowly recruited by the Thieves Guild and semi-corrupted, then is confronted with the Nightingale oath, deciding whether she becomes Guildmaster. She is a romantic, Robin Hood character who convinces herself that her thievery is in service of love.

• Imperial Luck racial power = extra gold
• Master pickpocket, using reverse-pickpocketing to give gold to the needy while keeping her Thieves Guild identity secret.
• Romance with Mjoll the Lioness?

Alik’r Defector (Redguard):

• Primary trait: Dutiful
• Fights for the Empire to squash the Stormcloak rebellion

Solstheim Ex-Pat (Female Skall/Nord):

• Primary trait: Self-Reliant
• Warrior skilled in destruction enough to wear Ice Cloak into battle

Sep 29

Story structure (like almost everything from some perspective) is fractal. Every book has a beginning, middle, and end, just as every chapter and paragraph and sentence has a beginning, middle, and end. Not only that— books and chapters and paragraphs and sentences, all have a three act structure: they each build tension, rise to a climactic moment, and resolve via denouement.

Sep 30

Getting Involved in Charlotte’s Writing Community

As soon as I started to feel settled in a creative community in Hoboken, we moved. I don’t want to wait to start that process; I want to get involved now. Here are the most promising things I’ve found so far.

Belmont Bookshop: My go-to neighborhood bookstore. I need to be attending their author events, need to apply for their consignment program, and apply to give an expert talk next year—likely on something like “how to travel in Iceland without being a tourist.”

Charlotte Lit: Local nonprofit supporting writers by offering classes, author readings, and social gatherings. It seems like I can submit a story to promote my book in their newsletter. They offer classes as eccentric as: “Poetry Mistressclass: Reweaving the Patterns of Poetry’s Mythic Feminine”. I should teach a class on essay structure. Charlotte Lit is also a physical space in Uptown, which is different from the Writers Club, which is more like a platform to facilitate decentralized meetings.

The Charlotte Writers Club: Established in 1922, this seems like the most robust such organization in the area. They facilitate several types of events: open mics, “critique groups”, a beat-reader network, and writing contests. I am already interested in a book of poetry that I found on their Member Books page, Snakeberry Mamas, and I can see a path to working with these member-authors on their future books.

I’d rather pay to join an organization like the Charlotte Writers Club, for instance, than the Author’s Guild, because I’d like to be rooted in my local community. And it would be very easy to justify a $50 annual fee if I can attribute at least five book sales or just one new editing client to my membership there.

Maybe this event, on Oct 16, would be a good thing to try. I’m interested in it and expect it to be entertaining no matter how good the writing is, though I also expect the poetry not to slouch: Poetry Witchual Theater Performance with Annie Finch.

I learned, or noticed, this recently: British English uses round in place of around, even in phrases like “I turned round” and “I came round to the idea.”

I’m almost finished with Anna Kavan’s Ice, and I find myself grouping it in my head with Camus’s The Fall, Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men, and Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel, and I was struggling to think of why they feel so similar since the prose stylings are so different among them—until I just realized that they all have a somewhat deluded or absurd first-person narrator. And all of those I-characters are relating to reality as if it were a dream. I need to read more books like this, and write a book (or books or short stories) like this. That perspective is so deeply engaging to me, and so true because of the dreamlike nature of reality.

Maybe a new line for my site or bio or something (new part is bolded):

I’m a editor, writing coach, and self-published author writing essays inspired by Nature and fiction inspired by my dreams.