Photograph: "Lifesaver"

"Lifesaver" © 2012 Greig Roselli

The life you save may be your own. I understand this quote now than I ever did before in my short life. I take a rather peculiar take on life. I feel like no matter what happens to me two things eventually occur. First, I cannot control a lot of stuff that happens to me. I can't pay my rent. My boyfriend dumps me. I lose my job. My doctor says I have high blood pressure. And so on. But then there is the response to whatever batsh*&t crazy stuff happens to me. I can respond to it. I go to my room and shut the door and don't come out for forty-eight hours. Or. I go to a museum (I live in New York so museums are like drugstores). I take a walk. I flirt. I talk to strangers. I do. I be. I am. Do be do be do. Therein lies the small modicum of freedom between what is unassailable and what I can do about it.

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Photograph: "Birds"

Birds

I used this photograph of birds flying away in a baseball field near Fort Tilden as the cover of my book of essays entitled Things I Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas).

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas)

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Quotation on How the Wise Understand

a word to the wise is sufficient

dictum sapienti sat est

Attributed to Plautus, Roman dramatist and Terence, Roman poet

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Theater Review: Performance of "The Skin of Evil"

My friend and colleague Steve Ewaschyn directed and adapted the play the Skin of Evil with a group of wonderful young people at the Radha Govinda Hare Krishna Temple in downtown Brooklyn on Friday, March 9th. The play recounts the wrath of a malevolent demon who is destroyed by the help of Krishna and the deep faith of several village folk. Here are some pictures.

Anupa presented the divine role of Krishna with grace and majesty.

Music and dance preceded the performance to pay homage to the deities manifested on the altar.

Malika and AJ evoke the god.

This boy was rushing through the crowd of dancing women.

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Video Repost: "No Man Is an Island" Recited with Music by Joan Baez from her Album Baptism

A clip from Joan Baez's "John Donne" piece from her album Baptism sets the foreground for the arrival of a northbound G train entering the station at 4th avenue-9th street on the IND crosstown / Culver line in Brooklyn, New York.

Here is the text:

No man is an island
Entire of itself
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main
...

Any man's death diminishes me
For I am involved in mankind
Never send to know
For whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee

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Quotation On Time by Ovid

Read a timely quote from Ovid, a Roman poet who lived in the first century C.E.:

Time is usually the best medicine

Temporis ars medicina fere est
Ovid, Roman Poet
43 BC - c. 17 AD

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On Realism and Strunk and White: Rule 16 On Writing

I write about, in this post, the famous book the Elements of Style - one of the few editorial style books to make it to the bestseller list.

I live by this rule of writing:

Rule 16: "Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract" (pg. 21).

Find my TpT store here and be amazed.

Sad to say that I never once owned a copy of Strunk and White, the famed Elements of Style that completes the shelf of any writer (worth his salt).

Most of my adult life I lived amidst the company of other people's books. Now that I am free from the prescriptions of communal living I find myself purchasing books that I never in the past had to own. Strunk and White is one such book.