Inspired by:

Hi. Wednesday. There was sun today for the first time, literally, in weeks. Tell me this, Internets, is it sunny where you are? And if so, is it often? I'm starting to get itchy feet. Hankering to be somewhere else maybe. Some place with more sun, more... I don't know. If I were foot loose and fancy free I'd be tempted to do this. I've always wanted to write a story about big rig drivers. Cool, right?

Really though: do you love where you live? Tell me about it!

Also today: lots of revising and forward progress. Writing is a crazy making profession for sure. So much terror and doubt is there, every day, waiting in the margins, in the click of the space bar. During breaks today I was inspired by her beautiful aesthetic. And also this breathtaking art.

This super cool journal also caught my eye today. I love when image and story and news and ideas collide. It's how it's like inside my head.

Speaking of things that get inside my head--I loved reading this story in particular because it reminded me somehow very much of The Year of Silence by Kevin Brockmeier in the Best American, which was originally published here. I wish I could find a link for you to read it online--because then you'd see what I mean about these two pieces connecting. This picture in particular, of Sao Paolo stripped of visual pollution is just what I pictured when I imagined a city stripped of sound. It's serene and calming and yet...I like a mess, which is why I liked how Brockmeier's little piece ends immensely.

And finally, because I adore lists and am a total sucker for good food, Travelers Lunchbox delighted me so much today. Particularly this list of all foodie lists. My short list of to die for food off the top of my head: cherry pie, pasta from Mezzaluna, lime gelato in the Piazza della Signoria, affogato, oysters with white wine and garlic butter.

Runners up: root beer floats, hot chocolate from Quebec served in a bowl, majool dates, fresh raspberries, steak frites, unagi sushi, raspberry sorbet, licorice, dark dark chocolate, caramel apples, dry packed scallops, Oh lord, I have started something I cannot stop. What are your top five and your runners up?

A weekend roundup

First off, I very much loved reading about your media habits the past couple of days. I have continued keep a record of what I've been consuming media wise, and I think that it's made me much more conscious and thoughtful about my choices... I've decided to keep the record going over at twitter. It seems like the perfect, if not slightly ironic venue for such things. But before I do, I want to share with you some of my favorite links from the past couple of days:

Firstly, Elizabeth Strout's essay "English Lesson" in the Washington Post this week is fantastic. She is such an amazing writer to me. Her characters are so real, nuanced, subtle. She deserves every ounce of praise for Olive Kitteridge, which was my favorite book I read last year.

Also, I am giddy with the discovery of the Washington Post's Summer Reading Issues from years past. I am sure everyone else on the face of the earth has already devoured these stories, but until now they have somehow escaped me. Delight. I cannot wait to read all of them (I have not yet.)

Also, speaking of the Washington Post, if you don't read Gene Weingarten you should. This piece made me sob when I first read it. This one made me nearly die laughing. Also, because things seem to work this way in my life, his piece this week explores the various glories and follies of tweeting. Ah-hem.

Now, without further ado, some family updates (a.k.a, my camera is fixed people. Prepare yourselves for some seriously photo-heavy posts to come!)

First off, have you met Bob, our rooster? Bob, Internets. Internets, Bob. He is named after this book.

Here is the new batch of girls who have finally figured out how to do the free-range thing, thus saving us more fruitless attempts to catch them whilst thrashing our legs on sharp pine boughs.

And here is newest member of the poultry bunch: the chick that the goose hatched. It's name name is Twitter. Bean named it. I swear he knows nothing of my current media obsessions.

And because I cannot stop staring at my beautiful boys:

Also yesterday, because it was raining and we were bummed because we were supposed to go to this amazing parade to celebrate the umpteen hundred years of our city's existence and instead had to stay home to avoid being drenched and bedraggled, we had a dumpling party instead. The four of us. Fancy frozen drinks for everyone and homemade dumplings using this recipe.

While we were frying up the dumplings we had pandora on, set to a Madonna quick mix (which turned out to be the best movin, groovin, bootie shaking tunes ever!) The storm was right overhead with lots of serious thunderclaps. For dessert we made chocolate pudding with fresh strawberries and watched the Tour together on the couch.

What have you been reading, doing, and eating this weekend?

What would you ask for?

"She'd been so sure a crap liquor store would not stock French cigarettes just because you asked. The shock every time she went in, and there they were. She was used to taking the world as it was, she'd never have guessed you could get what you wanted by asking for it."

~from Paint It Black by Janet Fitch I was struck by these few sentences and the idea has stayed in my head since I finished this book (which I loved, by the way) And I've wondered: What do I want to ask for? What should I be asking for? It feels powerful and vulnerable at the very same time to think of this. To imagine asking, putting myself out there, saying this is what I need.

Today I would ask for: An agent to represent my book. Funding to be able to write and live. Financial abundance would be swell,but just enough would be okay too--to live and write, rinse and repeat. A sponsor, or sponsors. To not feel like I'm always the trailblazer. Some days I want so badly for someone else to say: here, let me show you how to do this so you won't mess it all up.

(And also maybe for some sun. The humidity is getting on my nerves.)

What would you ask for? Really. If you could ask for anything--or many things, what would they be?

A handful of small good things:

Wednesday. Watching the rain from the porch with Sprout. Newly mowed grass, in heaps. Tired. So tired, after a night awake with a restless babe. Fresh jam. Scattered thoughts. Trying to make sense with words with some people, including with my mother, and while my heart is there, and hers is, it doesn't always come out right. You know? The words crisscross like a subway map, and you find you can't always get off where you intend to. A headache. Raw almonds on honey toast. The first zinnias blooming in the garden. And already the day is over and it's time for bed. But before sleep, some things to share:

First: some small art. Little tiny pieces that I am putting in a little gallery for sale. I know. It’s been years, literally, since I sold art here, with the time away from teaching my creative well has been filling and I’m excited to start sharing little pieces with you. Please go look. It's just a start. An inkling. We'll see where it goes.

The pieces I’ll be putting up first are in a songbird series. I have this gorgeous old vintage book about songbirds and I’m giving its pages new life with little paintings of the birds that have been making me so happy this summer.

Also, I’ve been loving…this gorgeous little journal of random things.

These photos.

This little story.

And these fascinating little films.

What's inspiring you?

Morning comes

I last night I dreamed that I was teaching figure drawing. This morning I woke up smiling, regardless of the world (another day of rain; uncertainty still.) Then there were chocolate croissants. The most perfectly ripe strawberries. Bean's last day of school. A new friend.

And this. She's right, of course.

Tell me: What did you dream last night? What is the greatest thing that stresses you out? What are three things that made you happy today?

Recuperating

Tonight I feel like lint flicked from a pocket on the breeze, or like a piece sky blue ribbon caught in a snarl of twigs, or like a small field mouse, ears transparent and patterned with intricate veins betraying a tiny fluttering pulse, curled into a nest of fuzz and scraps of cloth beneath the woodpile logs. Unraveled, scattered, tired. My heart beating in my temples. Trying to learn what recuperating means, as I realize that instead of rest I've been holding everyone else together these past few days. Doing too much. Hard not to. I haven't learned yet how to protect my energy without being selfish. How to take care of myself without hoarding my time. Is there a way to balance this, as a mother and as an artist? The filament feels so flimsy between me and the world tonight.

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before. If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message Larger than anything you’ve ever heard, Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven, Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

From Morning Poems by Robert Bly (© 1998 Robert Bly)

Free will astrology

I picked up the local free paper this morning, after twirling around the house putting what appears to be an endless collection of toys and cups and socks back into their places, and found this (by Bob Brezsny):

AQUARIUS: The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage," writes Thomas powers, quoted in the book Sunbeams. "Afyter it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinis came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passach was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it." Keep this story close to your heart in the coming week, Aquarius. It will give you the proper perspective as you, too, go about the work of doing the best you can at a task that is virtually impossible to perfect.

See? The universe has my back. Apparently all I need to do is listen.

***

It has been sunny all weekend (Happy Easter!) and being out in the sun almost feels like being drunk. The intoxication of brightness. The way the angles of light outline new buds: the silent beginnings of another growing season. I'm still lurching about, trying to find a blanance: trying to be outdoors every single second of the day, and still trying to get everything else done (writing, laundry, vacuuming, minutia.) So far I don't seem to be succeeding all that well. But then I read the above and try hard to just be.

Inspired.

I'll be back by the weekend.

Fairy dust and climbing shoes

Another really long day. And then, the best thing ever. We started our climbing class tonight, and as an early birthday present DH got me a new harness and shoes. In between trying on pairs of shoes--and while waiting for the sales guy to dig through his inventory for my size--I picked up a climbing magazine and leafed through it. Then, while reaching to put it back, this little gift was sitting right there--where the magazine had been.

I've always adored Rosa for doing this kind of thing and have secretly wished I'd someday be the recipient of a little random bit of whimsy. But to find it today was simply perfect.

I was so exhausted, bummed out, and feeling defeated in general. Let's just say it was a looong day.

So we went climbing and it was glorious, and now I have a little magical bag of glittery gold fairy dust and I can't stop smiling.

Dig in and read.

It is midwinter here in my small corner of the world and also in my blue-roomed heart. I’m tucked in, my pulse moving slowly and full of trepidation like water running under pale knocked together shards of ice. Self doubt circles like a pack of coyotes, their tracks mushy and dark where the earth collapses, pressing up close to icy ribbon of river.

This is what winter always brings: a bareness; an uncomfortable edge; inadequacy. Things seem so blatant; personal deficits larger than life, like the huge fiery orange sun we watched today. It tangled in the bare branches of the trees near us at the top of the sledding hill, then slipped away, leaving the snow stained pink with longing.

I spent the morning in a quiet house reading Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer, and coming face to face with the blunt edge of my own lack. In the back of the book, “119 Books To Be Read Immediately” and I’ve read only a small handful. I’m a slow reader, with a tendency to dally in the text. I soak up sentences. I read with a pen, marking, dog-earing, rummaging back through previous pages. But I’m also a sporadic, undisciplined reader, and I’m ashamed of this.

Books have a way of inhabiting the drawers of my mind, like so many jars of gesso and paint, easily jostled, staining the surface of my day. I have a hard time shaking free of them, and carrying on, so I have a certain reluctance grappling with anything weighty unless I have the means to hunker down and read it for an entire day.

Also, I am lazy. I drag my feet about finishing books that don’t catch my interest in the first few lines (fickle, I know). I lack analytical fervor. I read simply for the joy of language, story, and words, which I’ve always loved and carried covetously around in my pocket on the scribbled pages of a 4x6” Mead memo book. But I lack critical finesse, and also time, clarity, and a hundred other things have thus far prevented me from reading the list of books I probably should already have read.

Somewhere along the way I’ve also let myself start thinking that time spent curled on the couch with a book frivolous leisure time, less meaningful than time spent clicking away at the keyboard, constructing jagged sentences about blue shadows falling long across bright snow. Have no doubt: I’ll devour books by the authors I love (mostly contemporary writers: Kingsolver, Diddion, Munro, O’Brien) and I’ll jealously leaf through books by new authors who are rising like sudden shiny stars into the literary sky. But I’ve rarely gone back to the masterpieces, the ones that have endured: prose and plot and construction indelible and profound across time. And lately, as I’m grappling with my own writing more and more, I’ve started to feel a hunger for these texts: knowing that as I read them, I’ll be carried across time, into the world of ideas, word by word.

Word by word, closer to what I need to know.

So I’ve decided to make this my year of reading. This, simply, is my mondo beyondo and my one little word. Read.

{ Tell me: What two books most changed the way you see the world, writing, life, etc?}

A positive counterbalance

It's the end of a week off and I feel at once relaxed and utterly frantic. I keep trying to remind myself not to let amorphous anxiety paint the backdrop for the entire day, and to instead pinpoint the underlying fear that causes angst to spread like a dark stain over calmer moments. This week my fear is that I won’t have enough time. My writing deadline looms at the end of the week, and although I love the work I’ve been producing I haven’t had the undivided time to sink back into it in a week or two, and this week is particularly busy.

I have decided to focus on the positives this week as a counterbalance to the stress. I am excited because DH and I are starting a new class together: a beginner series in ashtanga yoga. I can’t wait for my new yoga pants to come in the mail, and am looking forward to bring more attention and focus towards being consciously in my body next to DH being consciously in his. We’ve missed each other like crazy for the past couple of weeks. Bean has been sick, and this always results in him cozying up in our bed, needier than usual and full of toddler snores. We had an afternoon napping date yesterday, and though not a lot of sleep happened, we’ve been grinning at each other ever since.

Small good things that make me smile: my orchids blooming again on my windowsill; chai tea with sugar cubes and milk; discovering new settings on my camera today; carrying around a list notebook in my back pocket (instead of obsessing about the things I’ll otherwise forget); the first green and blue eggs from my Ameracuna chickens; and my new subscription to Cookie magazine. What are some things that make you smile?

June Self Portrait Challenge: environment # 2

This place is big with words, with ideas, with art. The walls remember e.e. cummings and Stanley Kunitz; Grace Paley's voice and Mary Oliver's eye for noticing the profound in minute details. A fish weathervane tilts out my window. A long catwalk connects the studios; roses tumble wildly below. I stand in the mirror taking pictures to remember this, so that when everything else pushes in, I'll have snapshots with light flooding through big windows and the fan whirring. I'll have Pam Houston's voice and the laughter of other students sharing work. I'll have the images of Robert Yarboroughs paintings dancing like sunspots on the inside of my eyelids, and Wired Puppy coffee, and houses painted lavender and lemon and ocean blue. I'll have the memory of hours writing, quiet pooling up like water around me; and I'll have the seal's slick wet heads bobbing up out of the water to eye me sitting, sand flecking my calves, alone on the shore.

Bliss

Have I mentioned that I’m having a divine time? I sat for three hours and wrote this afternoon after receiving brilliant criticism on the piece I am working on. I went to the beach yesterday, with a picnic: spicy fried chicken, pot stickers, salad, grapefruit soda, and a coconut & chocolate chip cookie. Then I watched the sun set over the water. I heard Maxine Kumin read from her work, and oh, how my breath was lost somewhere as she read, like the flight of birds.

And I went to dinner with Pam and the class tonight. She is charismatic and analytical and forthright. She’s been in the Bronco’s locker room and interviewed Toni Morrison, and she can make a room of people laugh belly laughs repeatedly.

Here are a few things she's said so far this week that I really want to remember:

On why she writes: “Writing is the way I honor the physical world. I think of it as a kind of prayer.”

On craft: “Sink the story into the metaphor. The challenge is how to sidle up next to the big things without becoming lecturers and making total fools out of ourselves.”

“There is nothing worse than trying to say something. You’ll always fuck it up. Keep it concrete.”

“You don’t have to tell everything. Let the concrete specifics stand in for the general.”

You cannot communicate depth using emotion word. ”Just read your seventh grade journal to see that!”

On Revising: by the fourth draft, “take out the things you needed to say to know, but now they can be removed.”

On fiction versus nonfiction: “Everything I write comes out of my experience. I hardly imagine anything.”

Do you know how freeing that was for me to hear? Do you understand how those few sentences made lots of things possible for me with writing, that I hadn’t imagined possible?

On audience; “You must believe your reader is as smart as you are.”

I'm somewhere else

I left at half past nine, and followed the sunshine south. Listened to Radio Lab. Did you know dolphins and ducks sleep with one half of their brain at a time? I was fascinated. Listened to a fiesty Niko Case play for a live audiance, and watched as the landscape flattened and the trees became stubby and gnarled. Now I'm here, feeling light headed and wonderous. Ready to take a walk to the beach, and maybe to scope out the local coffee shop before orientation starts in an hour.

I have work to share, but I'm terrified, still. DH read it dutifully and gave the best of advice: you have to start somewhere, and anywhere is good. Especially if you love words as much as I do. And besides, they're not going to eat me alive just because I signed up for advanced fiction when I've only written a handful of fiction pieces in my life. Right? We'll see. I'll be posting a lot this week (no two year old!) I'm interested to keep a record of my emotions as I jump into this. Something I'm drawn to and totally scared of in the same breath. Must be a little how moths feel, fluttering by the porch light.

The shape of anxiety

There comes a point when habit pulls me here, to this place where I tell myself stories about the things I cannot do. Invariably after a week of rising early, making coffee, and touching my fingers to the keys, following words about where they will travel at dawn, my mind becomes like a child terrified of the monster under her bed.

This week, more than anything else, I have been watching my thoughts as I wake up and stumble like Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase into the moment of the present, with my mind and body disjointed in a hundred little ways. I’ve realized that without any intention I put a great deal of effort into constructing thoughts that cut me off at the knees. I tell myself: you don’t know anything about fiction writing. And, you don’t have time to really produce anything worth publishing. And, I suck at this, what am I possibly thinking? And six or ten thoughts later I’m in a tailspin writing incoherent mutterings.

But this week I’ve been trying stubbornly to not listen. Trying, being the operative word, of course. Have you ever noticed how damn hard it is not to listen to your negative thoughts, and instead tune to the positive ones? I feel like I’m almost hardwired to tune in to these thoughts, like a freaking hand-made transistor radio that can only pick up a one station. I buy my own bullshit ninety-eight percent of the time, hook, line and sinker. And then I sit down to write, and it’s a wonder I still remember all twenty-six letters, let alone how to construct a few sentences that reflect any small piece of how my heart moves.

But that is the reason I write. The reason you write. The reason we both read. Because writing is an act of turning our inner ear towards the divine breath of creativity that moves across the harp strings of our hearts, and turning that other-worldly song into words; opens our hearts, so that when someone else reads strings of their own heart resonate in recognition. Writing then, becomes something huge. Words have the immense capacity to reach across the divide between individuals, and to inhabit the private spaces in our hearts and minds from whence new ideas spring. The stories we choose to tell shape us.

Maybe this is all very obvious, but the trolly part of me that crouches in the corner of my mind and repeats idiotically a mantra of fear really needs to hear this today. So as I sit down to write this morning, my windowsill cluttered with jars of brushes, I grab a the most recent Sun and find this, by John O’Donohue:

Fear is the greatest source of falsification in life. It makes the real seem unreal, and the unreal to appear real. In The Courage To Be the theologian Paul Tillich draws a distinction between fear and anxiety. Anxiety for him, is this diffuse worry that has no object or point of reference. This is the atmosphere in the U.S., the land of the free and the home of the brave. There is a huge anxiety just down under the surface.

Fear, as distinct from anxiety, has an object and a point of reference. Tillich says that in order to handle anxiety, you have to translate it into a fear that has a definite object. Then you can engage with it. Part of the intention of growth is to overcome one’s fears.

It makes so much sense I almost laugh out loud, my hearstrings thrumming. What if I pushed farther? What if I tried to narrow the huge anxiety I have about writing, especially about writing fiction, into a fear that I can grow past? What if? I’m not there yet, but it’s a good point to launch from.

Do you have wide anxieties or pointed fears? Is there a false story you tell yourself again and again unthinkingly? What is stopping you from accomplishing the things you dream of?

Such goodness

The windows are still open at ten thirty, and the air is warm and soft. Finally the spring peepers have arrived, and on our way back from clay class tonight, DH brought the car to a slow crawl as we drove past the boggy swamp at the edge of our road, where their treble chorus was rising up—spelling out all verbs and adjectives of amphibian delight. I have vacation this week, and despite the fact that I have either the world’s most persistent head cold, or allergies, or both, my good mood cannot be dampened. First off, I just got back yesterday from seeing Blue Poppy and Lizardek for the weekend, which simply put was AMAZING. It felt nothing like driving off into the backwoods on narrow twisty roads to meet perfect strangers, though DH kinda thought that was exactly what I was doing. “Are you SURE you want to go hang out with people you met through BLOGGING?” He muttered before I left.

Going to meet these two incredible women for the first time in person, felt like going to see people I’d known forever. We slipped effortlessly into conversation over tea and wine and toasty sandwiches. We hiked tall mountains to take in the wind breathtaking expanse of mountains and lakes, and we lolled with BP’s butterscotch hounds in the sunlight.

They are brilliant, funny, exquisite, generous women. I totally heart both of them. I’ll stop now, since I’m sure you get the idea.

Driving home, I opened the sunroof and sang at the top of my lungs with the radio, singing in my own way, a million arpeggios of gratitude, and came home to an immaculately cleaned house, and my two favorite guys. Both were sporting wind-tousled hair and smudges on their pants. Doors were hung in my absence, puddles were stomped in. The perfect start to a week off.

Seeking

Trying to find beauty tonight, and striving to ask the right questions of the universe, but feeling shaky about it all. Trying to put the right words out there, the right prayers, the right hopes, so that joy floods into my life and makes me full. Some days this is easier to do than others. Sometimes its hard to even be right here, in this moment, even for a moment without fragmenting into worry and what-ifs.

Thank you for writing all your little rituals--the things you do to find solace and serentity and balance every day. I loved reading them.

I still haven't made it back onto Dh's computer to get the song title print-out for that running mix (which is totally embarrasingly 80's, but definitely rockin'!)...but in the meantime, anyone who hasn't checked out Pandora should, immediately. I'm so undaring when it comes to buying CDs, and I almost never hear new music on the radio (I listen to NPR on the way to work.) This has become my way to venture into new uncharted music territory.. I'd love to know: who are your top five favorite musicians right now?

Happy new year!

I cannot think of a better way to toast in the new year than to hurtle downhill on a sled. Wild, silly fun. Bean’s grin spreading like sunshine across his face. DH laughing, truly in the moment and content, just before he bites snow for the hundredth time. The heat of our breath rising up against the cold air, and in between our giggling, how quite the landscape is covered in snow.

I am ready for a new year. And if I had to distill my resolutions for this year into one pure wish, it would be this: to bring loving devotion to every single moment.

I'll probably write an uberlist over here, tomorrow. In the meantime, if you had to pick one thing for this year--one theme, one goal, what would it be?

Also, happy new year to all of you!

Sunday Doing List

* Had my first-ever Aveda facial today. 1 hour of pure relaxation with yummy aromatherapy and massage. Ooh la la! * Loving having my sister in town. So much fun to spend time with someone you like as much as a friend, but love more, because you're related.

* Wrote the words: REMEMBER, IT'S NOT PERSONAL at the top of my day planner, in preparation for tomorrow's parent-teacher conference with difficult parent A. Must survive conference without getting sucked into her negativity.

* Enjoying the handful of bright yellow tulips my mom brought buy. I love flowers, especially in winter.

* Feeling slightly, and ashamedly sore from a leisurely three mile run with my sister. Must get back into the fitness routine!

* Have started reading Oriah Mountain Dreamer's book What We Ache For, and am drinking it up.

* Making a new commitment this week to really taking care of myself, rather than beating myself up over all the things I don't get done and invariably feel overwhelmed by.

* Getting excited that this is the last week before Thanksgiving!

* Getting ready for bed, right now. I think half my problem most of the time is that I don't get enough sleep.

What did you do today? What are your plans for the week?

"Think In Ways You've Never Thought Before"

I went to hear Robert Bly speak tonight, and felt, after listening to him read in his Minnesota accent, from his newest collection of poems, utterly vibrant. It was a little like touching the glass on an observation beehive, where the warmth from the thousand beating wings transfers instantly into the palm of your hand. Like that: warmth saturating my being, making me huger for more than I already have---more words, more knowledge, more courage, more poems.

He said: “I asked William Stafford ‘how can you write a poem every morning?’ and Bill said, ‘Just lower your standards.’”

Then he said: “Start with anything—whatever happens, and write one every day.”

My favorite poem he read tonight was this one, from his book titled Morning Poems.

Things to Think Think in ways you've never thought before. If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message Larger than anything you've ever heard, Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven, Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

** I’m making this my challenge for the rest of September. A morning poem every day. Some morsel that reaches out and touches wonder. Some collection of scraps that, when gathered together, contains the beautiful remnants of a day.

“You can say anything in language.” He said, daring us to try.

Care to join me?