sara has three tiny frogs... but i only saw one... something a jeweler might make... molten metallic yellow bands and blotches against a black black body... almost but not quite the size of the top of my little finger... joint to tip. she has three but the other two were hiding... the one i saw was the biggest... most people would call these poison dart frogs, but sara knows the latin... she knows more, too... she knows that most of the writing on this particular brand of dart frog is wrong in some respects... she knows they are nocturnal as well as diurnal... she knows how they wrestle for territorial dominance here in their small aquarium world... sara plans on graduate school... soon... she's a herpetologist... like her dad... my brother... she wants to specialize in neo-tropical (particularly panamanian) amphibians... like these in the micro-jungle beside her bed... they do not qualify as pets... they do not break her lease... says i... but they are damn pretty... "you probably shouldn't eat them," she says...

suzanne has been writing about attention... how she came to know it and value it... how she maintains it day by day. this matters. as one whose thought and focus seems to become more scattershot by the hour, i'm inspired by suzanne's direct approach... the journey she's on... i never ever thought much about attention until i read william james... the principles of psychology... he wrote in 1890...

Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind - without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground - intelligible perspective, in a word.

(actually, that's two words, bill)

in the pragmatic spirit she shares with james, suzanne says

... I discovered
having my head up my ass
prevented me
from dancing my path
with grace and beauty

so
I began practicing
paying attention.

long ago i wondered about interest... and other things... in james' thought... it was a distant intellectual concern... but now suzanne has got me wondering again... and where o where has my head been...

elliott smith, a fine singer and songwriter, seems to have killed himself back on 10.21... i've only got one of his five albums... Xo... but have listened to it quite a few times over the years... it lingers... rich melodies... i read the lyrics and nothing much happens... but heard... new planets roam into sight (who said that?)... people compare him to dylan but i don't know about that... on what terms? and you can hear his fascination with the beatles... all over Xo... and now it's all over for elliott smith... and that's too bad... for everybody

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

Walt Whitman

talk to me

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