62 Comments
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Manuel A. Garcia's avatar

Everything belongs...

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

That's very good. Good point, thanks Manuel.

Armand Beede's avatar

Manuel A. Garcia: While my posting was much longer, yours says it all in two words and an ellipse.

Thank you!

Manuel A. Garcia's avatar

I don't take credit for it, Armand. 🙏🏻

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

You guys are both very concise!

Sarah Rain's avatar

I have 7 years sober in January. For the longest time I was anticipating negativity every time contact was initiated with me. The phone ringing was one of the worst. I will practice this today!

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Oh that’s amazing congratulations on your milestone. I understand those moments of dread. That’s why I’m not a phone person. Sending you hugs🥰

Sooz Hall's avatar

Congrats on your milestone! I needed to see this today.

Sarah Rain's avatar

Thanks. I appreciate that it helped. 😊

Pamela's avatar

I am also on that boat! Also on the one that feels things happen in threes! I think because I have far too much free time because of my damaged body and I THINK far too much!! If I could get this done or that done..... 🤦‍♀️ nope nope nope - get back to positive thoughts!! 🤦‍♀️

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

It’s a struggle. The monkey mind. You sound so positive, thank you for reading and commenting. Hugs and happy new year!

Pamela's avatar

Happy 2024 - that is a former futuristic number! When we would jump rope it would be one of those little ditties we said as we jumped! 😂

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Wow is that right? It does boggle the mind. I remember when I was 14 thinking 30 was soooo far away.

Pamela's avatar

Yes!! We would figure out oh no I will be 40 in this year, and 30 in this year!! 😂 that was SO OLD and so far away! No 40 would be awesome!!

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Yes! I thought it would be so awesome. In a way, I loved turning 30 because I always looked so young through my 20s, it was great to be able to say I'm 30, ha ha!

Pamela's avatar

I looked young until I turned 55 - but really if I didn’t have RA I probably still would - but was not to be - it can be frustrating but freeing as well - you can relax and not worry about how you look anymore 😂 I still try but I don’t like putting on makeup now because I see all the lines - but the eyes were my thing now - ugh 😂- hubby doesn’t care so I don’t either now lol

Jena Ball's avatar

Well….just because it is common knowledge doesn’t mean it is routinely practiced ;-)

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

It's a totally new thing for me Jena. But you're right, easier said than done!

Jena Ball's avatar

And you “got it” in such a wonderful way!

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Slow learner but once I learn it sticks. 🙏🏻

Thomas D’Arcy O’Donnell's avatar

methinks the slow learner embeds better - or at least - more comprehensive ‘understandings’ - knowing you’re a film maker will mention this .. the Virgil Flowers Series by John Sandford often includes Musky Fishing (in season of course)

It seems an odd practice - as does ‘Bone Fishing’ - many practitioners never even capture one.. & if they do.. the creature is not a ‘trophy’ per se.. but one that’s to be returned swiftly to its habitat .. haha & wiser .. even more wily !

Thus along will learning every trick in the book.. massive amounts of ‘time on the water’ are ‘the keys to success’ & the ‘reward ?’ - or is it a sort of ‘nobility’ !

David Coggins writes of this re ‘Bone Fishing’ - I have yet to find the Virgil Flowers type person here.. ‘the Muskellunge Fisherperson ..

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Oh how ironic you mention bone fishing. That was the one thing I did on my first try, ha ha! But pure luck. But they do say some things come more naturally than others. For example, I'm naturally terrible at skiing and golf. But I pursue golf and avoid skiing at all costs. And I took to scuba diving very naturally. Nice chatting my friend!

Thomas D’Arcy O’Donnell's avatar

Some will find the downside of up..’ I seek ‘the upside of down’ - always. athis a rather simple ‘mental tool’ as I call them.. & obviously they’re self installed.. Think of that one as ‘an auto cue’ - some see such cues as ‘auto mantras’.. I began to feel panicky in Mexico once - I do not ‘float’ & crossing a huge coastal inlet, forgot it was mainly freshwater as the tide receded .. began struggling with my stroke, took a mouthful or two.. began flailing.. the cue kicked in ‘panic will kill you’.. & simple woke up to reality by flipping onto my back & deploying an easy calm flutter kick.. haha & my twin outboard motor size 13’s.. in 20 secs or so started an easy amateur level backstroke

Want another ? I do not fear getting a speeding ticket, failure to come to a full stop.. guess why ! I always check my blind spot when driving ! I made a rule - or mental deal with myself - more than 56 years ago .. I despise ‘drama’ .. such ‘tools’ soon become repeated ‘rules’ .. in some cases - life preserving - though usually bring a light smile as they deploy

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Love all these points Thomas! I always check my blind spot too and I love this as an analogy for countering my mafia mind. Thank you!

Thomas D’Arcy O’Donnell's avatar

I’m a slow thinker.. also ‘a slow learner’ - yet I do ‘get there’ .. eventually

But life can ‘present’ - very suddenly & best to have critical Tools / Rules that kick in ASAP while figuring out what’s what.. I need structures like that & as they deploy .. either relief and/or confidence may also bolster your pathway forward

Haha.. but when you make it to 72 & should have died way far too many times.. if not for blind luck .. it’s easy to preach how simple things are. If you look at my site.. note the Segment I added re Legends of The Nine Lives ! Have a visit - a one minute read ! Nobody has risen to the simple request & I find it hard to believe .. that nobody here or on Twitter X is still walking this planet - only because of Blind Luck or The Luck of The Irish (note my name !) 🏴‍☠️🦎🇨🇦

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Thomas, are you by chance left handed? I am and I have always tended to learn things "the hard way" or as you say I'm a slow learner. But I enjoy the methodical process of really learning things from first hand experience. It's a blessing and a curse, I guess.

Also, have you read The Biggest Bluff? The author does an amazing job of explaining exactly your point, it's truly a miracle just being here.

I'll check out your site now.

Thomas D’Arcy O’Donnell's avatar

.. yes.. i’m a lefty.. bat righty, ride ‘normal’ snowboarding, shoot via left eye.. There’s an entire unedited novel hiding in plain sight - Jimmy ‘Diamond Walker’ is a perfectly ambidextrous shaman kid.. who throws a knuckleball from hell either hand. He also swims with orca ..

Again - the Upside of Down.. a One Page Film Synopsis submitted to the Pitch This competition - Toronto Film Festival ‘disappeared’ .. After the obvious outrage & denials.. the Upside tool deployed - I wrote it as a Novel. If someone took the ‘idea’ i wanted them to need the ‘voices, ‘character’ settings, scenarios by ensuring they were so ‘indelible’ so perfect.. so ‘complete’ .. they’d realize the Property was not ‘stealable’ - My son pointed out that.. sadly, the novel was a 4 or 5 hour film.. so what did I want to cut haha ! I’m currently assembling the sequel.. ‘Hunter Walker’ .. Jimmy’s Navajo dad.. ex military ‘tracker’

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Ha! amazing. I'm fully lefty. But was raised with three bros and lots of boy cousins so I batted righty playing softball in the yard all my life not knowing there was a lefty way. Then I picked up the golf club righty. Finally after years of frustration, my golf pro switched me to lefty. I still suck, but definite improvement. Any progress in golf is a miracle.

Anyway, your novel/script sounds interesting. In my experience, there's not really any way to "steal" a script or novel unless it's full-on pirated after publishing.

As you point out all the details and characters can only be written from your perspective. So yes it could be a similar story but legally, copyright cases rarely stand up in court because any difference makes it unique.

All that to say, keep writing yours!

Thomas D’Arcy O’Donnell's avatar

haha.. it’s why i’m here ! & seeking either Patron or Patron/Partner

I’m creating a Feature Screenplay here - from scratch

there's six ‘evolutions or progressions’ already at Draft Stages

As a pro shooter - & ‘preditor’ (Producer / Director / Editor) I recognized Turks & Caicos Islands as a natural setting - to write to .. I’ve scattered the current docs like buried treasure within my ‘stack & left clues for the intrepid .. the docs are highly ‘visual’ via a mixture of imagery.. since I’m a shooter & hypermedia artist..

‘Turks Gambit - Takedown @ Barracuda Cay’ is the Clue.. it’s a lot of work to create and/or explain such a hybrid Screenplay / Directors Notes - but I know the settings like the back of my hand.. After trip # 9 there with my Love.. I should ! To claim this is a ‘marine wonderland’ adventure drama is understatement - it’s also a Tale including a sort of ‘vuedue’ akin to ‘voodoo’ embedded with an environmental theme. So a lotta fun for a snorkeler like myself

Kate Morgan Reade's avatar

"Mafia mind" is brilliant! Always ready to threaten us with something!

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Thanks Kate. My therapist helped me come up with that. It really fits.

Steff Callas's avatar

Oh my GOSH, you just more or less vocalized my New Year's resolution. I told a friend this afternoon that attempting to protect myself by remaining 12 steps ahead of everything and everyone has never, ever, not once, NOT EVER, made me happy. And. We. Breathe.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

That's a great example, Steff. Staying present gives me a sense of relief. Happy New Year!💕

Sarah Rain's avatar

Thank you!!

Patty Mooney's avatar

"Keep it cooling, baby

Keep it cooling, baby

Keep it cooling, baby

Ah, keep it cooling, baby!" - Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

How did you know Zeppelin is my all-time fave!!💕

Patty Mooney's avatar

Just a wild guess!

Armand Beede's avatar

In 1884, Georges Seurat immortalized one moment "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

It was one moment.

"Sunday in the Park with George" is the Opera from Stephen Sondheim -- taken from the book of James Lapine -- was released one-hundred years later, and explores deeply the individual persons and elements of this magnificent work of Georges Seurat.

Georges Seurat lived such a tragically short life (1859-1891), but with pointillism Seurat captured "NOW" forever and started a movement.

In one of the aphorisms in "Menschliches, allzu Menschliches" (Human, all-too Human), Friedrich Nietzsche viewed one Moment. This Moment reminds me of the breathtaking mystic vision of Arjuna in the "Eleventh Teaching" of the Bhagavad Gita (Barbara Stoler Miller, translator). One is placed to see and understand ALL simultaneously for one Moment, in Nietzsche's Gedankenexperiment ("Thought Experiment"). One sees and understands the smallest subatomic particle; one sees and understands the largest galaxies and all galaxies together. One sees all and each thing or being. Nietzsche posited that such a vision would enable the viewer to deduce the past, all the way to the beginning; or, alternatively, to foresee the future all the way to the final death of the universe. Nietzsche posited that ALL was contained in any and each moment.

I myself don't know, being rather of the school of thought of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature), but it is a viewpoint that is grand and pregnant with meaning and, while I suspend judgment, it certainly enriches my spiritual life.

Oh, David Hume: That wonderful man and philosopher wrote the epochal "Treatise of Human Nature" -- which Immanuel Kant called a "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy -- between the ages of 17 and 24.

How beautiful is the Moment.

And I love your humor about bad luck following good. You raised a smile and some laughter. Your writings are so relatable and humanly warm.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Armand, your grasp of philosophy and philosophers is truly amazing. At university, my favorite classes were philosophy, comparative religion, and science. DePaul University is a Catholic college but they require philosophy and comparative religion courses. It changed my life, taught me that my brain was my most powerful resource, and that the origins of religion are ontological theorems from philosophy until it parted company with organized religion. Also, I love your reference to art especially Seurat capturing a moment in time. And that long view of the universe, magical, sounds like what must happen in death. Thank you always taking the time for such thoughtful comments. Happy New Year!💙

Armand Beede's avatar

Lorraine Evanoff: My own Catholicity is rooted deeply in childhood adoration of the Holy Eucharist and the Real Presence, which is real, too, today through philosophical skepticism as in the Catholic heritage of Erasmus of Rotterdam and in the secular philosophy of John Locke -- Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature.

As "what must happen in death," you and I envision it the same, which one of the best of modern theologians, Eberhard Busch subscribes to.

The Modern theologian strips us of heavenly (or hellish, for that matter) myth.

Instead, Eberhard Busch, who was close to Karl Barth, says that death is the border, and God-with-us (or Christ, "Incarnate") is with us now in life, and in us in death, and we then (not as individuals!) are in God's Eternity.

(In the German language, here are Eberhard Busch's thoughts):

https://www.reformiert-info.de/Leben_nach_dem_Tod-1533-0-56-7.html#4

For an English version of Karl Barth's thoughts on "Afterlife", see the Presbyterian Theologian, Raymond Kemp Anderson, who studied under the great theologian, and whose thoughts (after Karl Barth) are reflected here:

https://pres-outlook.org/2019/06/life-after-death-reflections-on-the-princeton-karl-barth-conference/

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Thank you again for the thoughtful reply. Two more tiny points, although I grew up Catholic my mom never made us go to church and didn't even make us do our catechism so I never took the holy Eucharist. When I enrolled at DePaul I didn't even realize it was a Catholic university. The other tiny point, about what must happen in death, it must also be what happens in Enlightenment.

Armand Beede's avatar

Enlightenment: AGREED.

On Enlightenment: Chapter 11, Bhagavad Gita (Barbara Stoler Miller); Lotus Sutra (Translated, Burton Watson, Columbia University Press).

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Thank you, dear Bodhisattva.🙏🏻💙

LuAnn's avatar

My mantra and humor says, “here today, gone to Maui”! Enlightening read Lolo.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Lulu! Is that you? So happy you're here!! Going to Maui tomorrow, ha ha! Happy New Year, love you!💕

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Lu please update your profile so I can "Recommend" your Substack to get followers!

Tami Siobhan's avatar

Thank you for the reminder. There are times I forget that being in the present is where I need to be. I've also had thoughts on what's going to happen next. I've had something good happen so something bad will be coming next... It's taken me a long time to get to a mindset to understand that things aren't happening to me. Something might be deemed as bad but it doesn't need to be bad. But there are times I need a reminder that I need to be present in the now.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Thank for reading and commenting. You make a good point, if something bad happens it’s comforting to remember something good will happen. But maybe best to just remember this too shall pass.🥰

Tami Siobhan's avatar

❤️❤️

Larry Jaffe's avatar

Lots of love

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Love to you too Larry!

Journalisa's avatar

I definitely have an internal critic WHO is supreme at nagging and making too big a deal of insecurities and doubts, but I don't have the one up-one down follows schtic (sp?). For me, it's more like things come in three's. For me, it's either spiraling up or spiraling down and I know it doesn't take much to change directions off of either course! I love how Pam Gregory and Caroline Myss are both emphasizing now that the future isn't a certainty so don't wreck one's vision of the future worrying about someone else's desperate desire and need to control the future in their own self-centered way and you know who I'm talking about. Addictive to listen, but the possibility of creating something better, of organizing the positives instead of gawking at the negatives like a car crash our instinct is to slow down and see what happened.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Well said Lisa. It's definitely all those doubts combined. That's why even weeks after I wrote this piece I'm happy to say, that epiphany has really served me. Every single one of those doubts are like a bell ringing to remind me to just stay present. 🙏🏻💙

Journalisa's avatar

To stay present with your focus, with the love circle between you and yours and all you touch with your gifts of which there are many; gifts and people appreciating them.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

You are right in there Lisa💕

Sherry McGuinn's avatar

For what it’s worth, I struggle to stay in the NOW. Thanks for the reminder as anything else is wasted energy. That’s one hell of a headstand, by the way.

Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

It's a great reminder Sherry! I need it constantly. Thanks for reading!

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Dec 29, 2023
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Lorraine Evanoff's avatar

Excellent Wayne. Well said, the odds are the same. So why not stay present and positive. Thanks for reading and commenting. Happy New Year!