Allende’s Hell

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Waiting for the Muse

“I start all my books on January eighth. Can you imagine January seventh? It’s hell. Every year on January seventh, I prepare my physical space. I clean up everything from my other books. I just leave my dictionaries, and my first editions, and the research materials for the new one. And then on January eighth I walk seventeen steps from the kitchen to the little pool house that is my office. It’s like a journey to another world. It’s winter, it’s raining usually. I go with my umbrella and the dog following me. From those seventeen steps on, I am in another world and I am another person. I go there scared. And excited. And disappointed — because I have a sort of idea that isn’t really an idea. The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up.” 

—Isabel Allende, Chilean author, “House of the Spirits” (1982), from Maria Popova, “Brain Pickings” 

• Editorial Comment: The muse is always late.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

January sunset






Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
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