one thing today

  This is i nterior designer Alexander Doherty. He works in New York and Paris. His apartment is way too full sparkle plenty done up wrong but he is so dreamy Superman handsome he looks A.I. I am reading a book and it illustrates how hard it is to establish characters. The author is setting up the story with at least ten, maybe as many as fifteen characters he wants the reader - me - to remember/recall/recognize.  It is quite a task. Hard.  In one scene, he describes a beautiful woman listening to live music at night in an Italian courtyard and it reminded me of one of my most memorable lifetime memories.  A lovely friend one summer night at an outside Joan Armatrading concert along the Hudson. She gets all flushed after she drinks wine - Leslie, not Joan - and while Joan sings her majestic anthemic one for the ages song Love and Affection ... when she elongates ... why can't I feel  l-o-o-o-v-v-v-v-v-ve-e, my friend raises both her arms and sings the word...

  the Magnificent Paragraph of the Month In the bowling alley, the stale cool air seemed hardly to exist, except as a smell and a chill from no particular source. Outside, without a breeze, only the summer heat, the lingering odor of sun-warmed parking log, of cars and litter, he might have felt this sudden silence had stopped whatever it was that turned and refreshed the earth.                                                                                                             - Alice McDermott, That Night

My parents gave me boxing gloves one xmas. I'm sure it was my mothers idea. I didn't know that it was more than a cliche - your stomach can drop. I knew I had to like them. I knew I had to use them. They must have bought a pair for my brother. When my father tried to teach me how to make a fist, I buried my thumb inside my other four fingers and told him I didn't want to hurt him.

                                 Ali Siddiq            start with his My Two Sons or  Mondays                                ... on Youtube

Arthur Brooks is a social scientist, writer, speaker. He teaches MBA ers at Harvard Business School and explains to them why they aren't happy even though they are 1% ers destined for fame, glory, $$$.  He believes women want to be adored while men want to be admired. I'm not sure I agree with his binary distinctions but I do think that adoration isn't earned, necessarily, while admiration is based on actions and achievements.  I think its been proven that women judge men on how well they will provide for loved ones, especially children. Kindness is a major factor, too. Men, being the less deep creatures, judge women based on surface appeal. Broadly speaking, lesbians are idealists. Gay men have to figure out if they want to love their man or if they want to be him.  It's all a puzzlement. 

Herbie Hancock was playing with Miles Davis once in concert. He said the music was "tight, powerful and fun."  And then he, Herbie, played a horribly wrong chord that was a big mistake. Miles paused for a second and played something that made the wrong chord right. He didn't hear it as a mistake. He heard it as something that happened and found something to follow that fit.