“A performer is asked to do two things,” [the actor Tom Hardy] tells me. “To be disciplined and accountable, communicative and a pleasure to work with. And then, within a split second, they’re asked to be a psychopath. Authentically. It takes a very strong human being to sustain a genuine sense of well-being through that baptism of fire.” Then: “Drama is not known to attract stable types.”
Another wonderful discovery from the Public Domain Review: an eye test chart from a 1907 San Francisco optometrist George Mayerle. It not only featured international text and symbols, it had a positive and negative side.
This is a useful tip I've handed out since it was given to me years ago.
At the time, in my 20s, I was excitable, jabbered on and on when talking to people, and was concerned -- given my job at the time -- about the impression I made on people.
A mentor advised me to lower my voice when I talked. When we're nervous, our heart rate goes up, we breathe faster and more shallowly, we talk faster, and as we talk faster, our voices rise in pitch.
So when I caught myself talking fast or feeling nervous as I talked, I reminded myself to lower my voice. The change in attitude was almost instant.
As my pitch fell, I could feel my voice's center move from my head down to my chest. Lowering my voice slowed my speech, which slowed my breathing. I could feel my shoulders relax (I hold a lot of tension in my shoulders).
And I could feel my mind slow down too. My thinking evened out, I took my time, and I usually felt like I was now consciously participating in the conversation, not flailing like a fire hose.
I stand 6'3" (1.91 meters) and wear size 15 shoes.
At the movies today, as I stood to move into the aisle and down the stairs, it hit me again that the world does not quite fit me, or maybe I don't fit into it.
I unfolded myself, stepped carefully around the seats and railing, arranged my feet on the stair, and then deliberately started down. The little people all around me had no trouble navigating the cramped space.
Left to myself, I stay up late and get up late. But I live in a world where I must go to bed by a specific time so I can get up to go to work by a specific time, leave by a specific time, or otherwise adapt myself to other people's or group's schedules.
What would my own personal world look like, if I were the Dungeon Master?
There would be room. I could move freely without bumping into things. There would be space in my calendar to move freely without crashing into someone else's constraints.
Note: I am aware, of course, that physical reality demands honoring appointments and deadlines, paying our taxes by April 15, etc. I accept that. I just didn't feel like accepting it today.
Encounters With an Enlightened Man by Linda Quiring. Of the three books written by Quiring about Sydney Banks, this is probably the best. It misses the freshness of the first two books, which were written in the early 1970s when Banks started sharing his enlightenment experience, but it tells a beginning-middle-end story and paints a more complete picture of the place and time. Of interest mainly to people interested in the history of the Three Principles and Banks’ personal history. I am drafting a bigger post that takes a look at all three books.
Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film by Patton Oswalt, read by Patton Oswalt. A memoir by Oswalt of the movies he compulsively watched during his first years in Los Angeles. It’s a story of being in the grip of a mild obsession well-known to those of us with a geeky/nerdy bent. His girlfriend at the time asks him to walk her out to her car from the theatre, and his first, absolutely natural, response is, “But I’ve never seen the start of the next movie and I don’t want to miss it.” Exit one relationship.
Parallel with his obsession is the evolution of his standup, writing, and acting career and how he tries to juggle that with the nightly movies shown at the New Beverly. The most chilling and haunting story to me is of a long-ago standup comrade who imposes on Oswalt for a shot at becoming a star; Oswalt has already become a character of fiction in someone else’s movie. He introduces and returns to the idea of special, sometimes dark, moments that propel one forward in life or work. He wrote this before the death of his first wife, so listening to those passages struck me as especially poignant.
The Correspondence by JD Daniels. A collection of laconic essays and two short stories that originally appeared in The Paris Review. Here’s a passage from a short story:
She’d gone to school for years to study library science. He didn’t see how it could be so complicated. It seemed like a hoax.
All the essays and both stories have that terse, dry flavor; the humor is almost an aftertaste. A rather short book, too – I read one essay or story a night in about 30 mins or so.
Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett, read by Simon Vance. Bennett finds a loophole in Dickens’ story to spin a tale with 19th-century flavors, coincidences, and voices. It’s a clever reworking of the original material that exploits unexplored nooks and crannies, though he does get a bit bogged down as the spirits explain the metaphysical mechanics of the afterlife and what is required for Scrooge’s reclamation. Though, if I heard the story right, it’s Marley’s sacrifice that redeems Scrooge rather than Scrooge’s own change of heart. If so, that makes Dickens’ story subservient to Bennett’s, which does not sit well with me.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, read by Michael C. Hall. I had never seen the movie nor read the book so this was new to me. It is very much a book of the 1950s – rather gray and naturalistic, the secondary characters all stagey and one-note – except when Holly explodes into the narrative with unnatural color and life. Holly is clearly the most interesting character and the mysteries surrounding her are the ones I cared about the most. Hall’s reading was fine though I didn’t care for his expression of Holly’s voice. For further reading: an excellent Open Letters Monthly essay compares and contrasts Sally Bowles and Holly Golightly.
Just Keep Going by Jeanette Stokes. Disclaimer: Jeannette is an acquaintance we run into at random cultural events here in Durham. The book is part of her ongoing memoir series; this one focuses on how her relationship to writing, art, and creativity marked key passages of her life. A compact memoir with a good collection of basic advice and resources for the new writer and timely reminders for the experienced one.
Tales of the Batman: Alan Brennert (Comixology). Archie Goodwin had a long career in the comics industry and was a much beloved writer, editor, and mentor. His Batman stories in this volume span the years 1973-2000. They tend to the pulpy and the “well-made.” He also seemed interested in expanding the canvas on which Batman stories could be told; many of the stories delve into character histories and motivations – with lots of exposition – making Batman almost a secondary character.
They’re good meat-and-potatoes Batman stories that color in unnoticed areas of Batman’s universe (who did design the Batarang and Batmobile?). The highlights for me are the six or so Manhunter stories that ran as backup to the main Batman series and that I still remembered from when I was a kid; so glad they’ve been collected at last. Goodwin’s updating of the 1940’s Manhunter character to the cynical modern-day prefigures work that Alan Moore would take to another level a decade or so later. It’s Walt Simonson’s artwork that made these stories instant minor classics.
Alan Brennert has been a successful writer in many media: stories, novels, TV, even the book for a Broadway musical. He only wrote nine stories for DC, his first in 1981 and his last in 2000. Yet they include some of the most interesting takes on the Batman mythos, mixing the pleasure of nostalgia with the character development he used in his scripts and novels. For me, his stories pay the best dividends every time I re-read them. I remember buying these comics back in the day and noticed even then how different his stories were, how he pulled out details or emotional colors that I did not see elsewhere.
Brennert had a particular fondness (as do I) for the “golden age” or “Earth-2” Batman and my favorite story of his – maybe one of my favorites of all time – is the Earth-2 Batman teaming with Catwoman to hunt down the nefarious Scarecrow (“The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne”). Joe Staton and George Freeman drew the chunky Batman from the ’50s, a style that instantly evokes the light-hearted adventures of that era. But Brennert adds a moment that stops that feeling dead in its tracks.
Batman removes his shirt so Catwoman can attend to his wounds. She gasps at the scar tissue covering his back; it’s key that we see only her horrified reaction and Batman’s stoic response. That scar-tissue detail is so unexpected in the context of a “retro” Batman story, yet such a common-sense detail considering his life of fighting, that I am still amazed Brennert was the first to conceive of and use it. It’s a telling detail that’s now accepted as a given and enshrined in the movies.
Brennert had that freedom of approach – perhaps from his work in other media – to give his characters time to breathe amid the action and feel the weight of emotional moments. That’s not something you see in comics very much, and it’s always appreciated when it happens.
Updated on 2026-01-30
“It’s within mystery—real or invented—that the human spirit thrives. (“I don’t believe in God,” I told one of my students many years ago. “But I do believe in mystery.”)”
David Halperin, “Chariots of the Gods?” – Erich von Däniken and the Book of Enoch
Stuff I wanted to read but didn't get to. Maybe this weekend...?
Inspired by Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work, and my wholesome need to generate a new blog post everyday, here's what I'm pondering.
In Five Pots, I said I was thinking of becoming a time management coach. What would a 3 Principles-based time management coach look like? Rather like any other 3 Principles coach, I guess, except the pain point for the customer is their feeling of overwhelm.
I wondered about writing a giveaway PDF -- the two things you need to know about time management. The two things idea is something I ran across in Oliver Burkeman's column.
In listening to Mary's Daily Principles audios, she mentioned a fear she had at one time of being 54 and thinking her job at that time was the best she could hope for, or something like that. That rang a bell with me. I've felt the same thing.
I thought, waitaminnit -- maybe the thing to do is not time management. That's been an intellectual hobby for decades, but is not so urgent to me now.
But ... what do I want to do in the next stage/chapter of my life? That's an interesting, urgent, painful thought right now. And since we teach what we want to learn, then my experiment would be how to gracefully enter that stage myself (a "stage" being only a thought, of course, though we talk about it as though it were real) while coaching others who are making the same transition. In the end, it's still 3Ps coaching, but the entry point is different.
I started this post a week or more ago. I've made one "pot" (mock-up of a business card) since then. I made a list of four or five things that felt like good ideas. I notice only now that I'm still thinking about pots instead of making them. I waiting for inspiration, but I know I can create while feeling uninspired. Not berating myself, just waking up a bit.
Make four really bad pots, really quick, to meet my quota. Trust that the next five will be better.
Leech and Amphetamine are specialized Mac utilities that, when I need them, perform so dependably I thank the software gods for them.
Amphetamine (Free) keeps my Mac awake when I don't want the system to sleep. It has a terrific array of options and preference settings; it can keep the disk alive while letting the display sleep, it will run only when a specific app is running, and it can even run in response to specific system events.
For the last month or so, I've been uploading files to BackBlaze via our trembling DSL line. Before I close up shop for the night, I'll set Amphetamine to run for 12 Hours so the uploads occur while I'm sleeping.
Another time I use Amphetamine is when downloading large files, such as system software updates. I don't want the iMac to go to sleep during a big download only to wake back up the next time I log in and resume the download. Amphetamine prevents that annoyance from happening.
And speaking of downloading...I trust Chrome to download most of the middling files I run across or have to download, like PDFs and whatnot.
But when the use cases run to downloading large files or a large number of files, then I want to use a memory-efficient and dependable standalone program.
Enter Leech ($6) from Many Tricks Software. Leech offers a simple interface: simply drag the download link to the Leech window and the download starts. Drag several links to the window to queue them.
I used Leech recently to download a batch of .CBZ and .EPUB files related to a Humble Bundle comics package I bought. I simply dragged each CBZ download link to Leech, made sure Amphetamine was running, and went to bed. Doing that job in Chrome would have taken hours, maybe many evenings, and resulted in me crying and despairing of my poor life choices.
Like Amphetamine, Leech offers lots of customizations and settings while remaining small, easy-to-use, and utterly reliable.
And be sure to check out Many Tricks Software's other applications, of which I own my fair share.
What I have found in the last few years of reading and soaking in The Three Principles -- and it's been a gradual process of understanding -- is that I generally feel and perform better when I do not have a lot on my mind.
What do I mean by "not a lot on my mind"?
I mean not talking to myself when I'm walking to my car.
I mean not carrying on a conversation from decades ago with the person that annoyed me.
I mean not fretting about what I will do this afternoon or tomorrow or next week when I'm standing in line at the grocery store.
I mean not focusing my mind on solving or figuring out problems that exist only because my mind made them up.
I mean leaving an empty space where worry and anxiety would drive me to distraction.
I mean seeing and understanding that those thoughts are not real, are not really happening to me now, in this moment. They only have power if I choose to pay attention to them.
There is a big meeting at work tomorrow. Four or five years ago, I would have been nervous and anxious about attending and speaking at it.
I still have a bit of thinking about it. That's normal and human. But I know my thinking isn't real and is telling me only about what I'm feeling in the moment. My thinking cannot predict the future. My well-being does not depend on its outcome, whatever its outcome.
I can hear my inner gremlin wanting to engage in debate with me. You haven't prepared enough! You're not knowledgeable or skilled enough! What will they say about you when the call is over?
Those are thoughts that I find easier now to let drift down the river. I do not need them on my mind. New thought will come along if I wait and if I'm not burdened with that old stale thinking.
Part of trusting my intuition and my creative spirit is accepting that I do not control my thoughts, when ideas come to me, or even sometimes why I do what I do when I do it. Part of trusting my subconscious includes trusting that the actions I take may not make much sense in the moment, but that they will in the fulness of time. Like seeing only dots on a canvas, only to step back and see them resolve into a beautiful painting.
After so many years as a worry wart and a Nervous Nellie, it's odd to not feel the weight of those heavy thoughts in my cup. An empty cup is so much less distracting, so much lighter.
