26 Comments

Reading this made me feel a quickening—I need to get out of my home office more often. I am in love with the way you pull us through the piece like glossy prayer beads slipping through fingertips. Thank you.

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xxL

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My mother refrained. Numerous times.”when your infant nurse and I bathed you she “Jennifer has the most beautiful body “ Early childhood. Clubbed feet. Legs in casts. Steel bar in between. 4 years old. Lazy eye. Operation . Patch on left eye in kindergarten and Jules Stein clinic ucla eye exercises “” Bird legs. Red frizzy hair. Freckled . Rail thin. Class IC clown. You know the tale. The duck took a long swim .

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Laurie, I love how you think and write, the multiple haphazard threads by which you link language, our mind candy, to our bodies. 🧡🌿

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Thank you, though not haphazard at all. Always thought out and intentional.

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Those ceiling droplets like “hot little bullets, . . . thick and indolent.” ❤️ Reading this put me into a trance. I love how sentences flow in a stream, then stop to breathe. I not only felt the steam, I could smell it.

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Ha! Nice one.

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I love this from you...

"Dogs are better than chimps at following the pointed finger of a human. Chimps, like humans, are thinking about themselves. In the British TV series Years and Years (2019), set in the near future, a young girl has her hand turned into a phone. Nearly forty years earlier, in Steven Cronenberg’s movie Videodrome, the hand of James Woods becomes fused with a gun."

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Hi Laurie, I love your posts. Fresh, sensuous, affirming, feminine. Thank you.

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oh that bobcat -- and my snow envy is just going up and up x

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He's not our bobcat, and we don't have snow at the moment, but we do see a bobcat and it does snow. xxL

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"There are so many things to love, and I like to count them, and that’s how now is." trying to do this lately when i'm glum (and remember to). it does work.

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A panorama of time and feelings. We are surely the same being all our lives, only we accumulate barnacles the way old ships do. The barnacles would tell you, yes, they are changed by living on our bodies. Hurray.

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So beautiful, a blessing for this imperfect body that I have fallen unexpectedly in love with.

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💃💃💃🥰💯

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Your words woke me up today. A gift. Thank you.

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You are welcome, dearheart. That was my intention and to offer solidarity to everyone here.

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Your voice! The cadence. Impeccable.

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Ah, thank you. Wonderful to hear.

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Laurie, I've tried signing up for your Saturday Zoom, but the email address you gave me doesn't work. This is my first time to try the email function. Since I've failed at that, this is my only way to reach you.

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I found your email address and just sent you the link. Are you saying this email didn't work: lauriestone@substack.com? My regular email address is: Lstonehere@aol.com

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Here's the address from your post:To RSVP, please email me at: lauriestone.substack.com. It needed the @, and I should have figured that out. Thanks for your reply. See you soon.

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Ack, sorry.

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I used to go to the Russian Baths on East 10th Street for just this reason. Thank you for writing, Laurie, you're wonderful.

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❤️💃

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Language must have a lot to do with how humans think thoughts, think about our thoughts, know we have thoughts and feelings, and then often CHANGE and REARRANGE our thoughts and feelings.

We can change and rearrange our own thoughts and feelings. We can change and rearrange others’ thoughts and feelings. It’s impossible for that not to happen. We cannot help but do it all the time. But it can happen with or without language. Sometimes the most powerful way we change each other’s thoughts and feelings is WTHOUT language.

Most of the time when we’re changing and re-arranging each other’s thoughts and feelings, we’re doing that without awareness. Most of the time we are doing that without either purpose or intention. And most of the time when we think we are intentionally manipulating someone’s thoughts and feelings, we are creating unintended repercussions we never envisioned, desired, and may fear taking responsibility for..The same goes when we’re writing, talking, meditating, or simply trying to BE in our bodies intending ONLY to change our own thoughts and feelings.

The human world is full of women’s bodies. The human world passes through women’s bodies. That’s a lot to be thankful for. That’s a lot to resent and resist. That’s a lot to feel wonder and disgust for. That’s a lot to protect and defend. That’s a lot to have thoughts and feelings about, just as it is a lot to think ABOUT, feel ABOUT, or apprehend such bodies in other ways without making them objects. (ANY bodies.)

A word game suggests replacing “ABOUT” with “WITH.” That little change might help us feel better for a bit. Just like hot or warm toast helps me feel better than half burnt bread does when it’s cold.

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