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duanetoops

@[email protected]

I make things...

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No map can depict the distance between all the ways we shift and change. No blueprint for the absences. For what we will endure. For what we will learn. No floor plan for the eventide hours. Sometimes we have to discover ourselves in the dark, "like an abandoned house", Stuart Turton says, something lost, found, and reclaimed.

Sometimes there is no other way.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/who-we-are-in-the-dark

@bookstodon

duanetoops,
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@mhawkturner @bookstodon thank you! That's so kind of you! I really appreciate it!

duanetoops,
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@lobocode @bookstodon it's free, I don't have a paywall set up

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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This week's newsletter went out first thing this morning.

Some thoughts on finding ourselves only when we're lost.

Link below if you'd like to give it a read:
https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/moments

@bookstodon

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We speak of all our failings. We show and tell our flaws. We recall our shortcomings and traumas. The steps we can't un-take. The things we can't un-say. We compare the spindles that our pricked our fingers. Every poisoned apple. Every tree of knowledge. Every forbidden fruit. We tell the stories of our heartache, because when can share in each other's suffering, we can also share our strengths...

@bookstodon

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We lose a job. We lose friends. A loved one dies. A marriage ends. Something perfect turns out not to be. Something meant to stand forever, crumbles apart and falls. Everything that flickers eventually fades. Every expression of fixity yields to alteration and sway.

Between the experience and the recognition, the remembering lasts longer than the event.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/moments

@bookstodon

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Writing is a performance art, a kind of sleight of hand. We take something simple, something ordinary, something as common as words, and we turn it into something else. Something feathered. Something with wings. A dove. A white rabbit from out of now that leads to deeper into mystery. A invitation to wonder, that asks you to come along, to perform the trick yourself, again and again and again...

@bookstodon

duanetoops,
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@RachelBeth99 @bookstodon thank so much! That's really kind of you! I appreciate it!

duanetoops,
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@RachelBeth99 @bookstodon 🙏🙏🙏

duanetoops,
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@caribouslim @bookstodon Exactly this! Beautifully said!

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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Just finished up the artwork for next week's newsletter.

Some thoughts on being lost and what you can find.

If you'd like to give it a read when it goes out on Wednesday you can subscribe below:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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Working on this week's newsletter. There's nothing quite like a library with a view.

If you'd like to check out the newsletter when it goes out you can subscribe at the link below:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

duanetoops,
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@joonhyeok_ahn @bookstodon it definitely does! Makes the whole process feel more open and breathable.

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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"We arrive in this world with birthright gifts," Parker Palmer says, and "then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them." Sometimes the second half isn’t much better. We’re told we’re not enough and we start to believe it. Parts of ourselves put up for auction. Pennies per the pound. Sweat equity bottled like snake oil and sold by the ounce.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/less

@bookstodon

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Honey touches the tongue, activates a cell, and sends a signal. All in one-tenth of a second. In one hundred milliseconds. A hundred camera flashes. A hundred flaps of a fly's wings. Receptors bind to the memory of a substance that's already slipping away.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/moments

@bookstodon

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Maybe you could start to believe.

That small moments build into bigger adventures. That magic, is something real. That the greatest of all the world's alchemies is the discovery that a life is something cumulative.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/life-is-cumulative

#reading #writing #art #poetry #amwriting #writingcommunity #books #wednesday @bookstodon

duanetoops,
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@bunnytown @bookstodon thank YOU! Can't tell you how much it means to me that you take the time to read this!

duanetoops,
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@bunnytown @bookstodon wow! Then I'm even further in your debt than I was before! 🙏❤️🙏 you're awesome!

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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Sneak peek at the artwork for tomorrow's newsletter.

Some thoughts on the big significance of small moments...

Subscribe below if you'd like to give it a read when it goes out tomorrow morning:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

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This is how it happens for me. Perhaps, also how it happens for you. My morning begins with words, or maybe the words begin with me. Either way, you sit at your desk. You study. You stare. You read. You search for tracks and trails. Impressions in the snow.The marks of something worth following. The signs of something following me. A slow and awkward gait towards anything resembling spring...

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/snow

@bookstodon

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"That was the truth of magic - blood and guts and semen and spit, organs kept in jars, maps for hunting humans, the skulls of unborn infants. The problem wasn't books and fairy tales, just that they told half the story, offering up the illusion of a world where only the villains paid in blood, the ogre stepmothers, the wicked stepsisters, where magic was just and without sacrifice." - Leigh Bardugo

@bookstodon

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A trivial point in what Stephen Hawking describes as “the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies” in the vast cosmos of which we are only an infinitesimal part.

The harsh reality is that "history can live without one person", Chuck Palahniuk says. It does not need us at all. The world keeps turning whether or not we're here.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/everything-is-significant

@bookstodon

duanetoops,
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@BackFromTheDud @bookstodon perfectly said!

duanetoops, (edited ) to bookstodon
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Finishing up the newsletter for next Wednesday.

Thinking about how fleeting our moments can be, and if there is anything stable to which we can cling.

Subscribe below if you'd like to give it a read when it goes out:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

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This bounded infinite of empty is a source of consternation and possibility. A fathomlessness that breaks all beliefs, beyond all we could ever ask or think. The white whale. A blank page. An eye-level ether. A pale winter. You know the feeling. You sit at your desk. You stare. The blinking cursor glares back at me...

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/snow

@bookstodon

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Life on the other side of adolescence. When high-school is finished. When college is done. After you're all grown up. After you realize you really haven’t at all...

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/afterthoughts

@bookstodon

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It's the after-thoughts, the thoughts about what comes after, the afterwards, that are the hardest things to imagine. Whatever's next. Whatever the new normal is. What comes after 'this', whatever 'this' is; the trauma, the heartache, the celebration, the achievement, the event.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/afterthoughts

@bookstodon

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Finished the art for Wednesday's newsletter.

Some thoughts on the blank page...

Subscribe below if you'd like to give it a read when it comes out:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

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A different world comes into view for an instant, hidden within the bits of this one. Pieces and particles below the surface tension of solidity and immutability. A network of whispering secrets reaching out to all the unspoken things.

And you start to think, that maybe, just maybe, if you could collect enough of them, you could be different too.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/life-is-cumulative

@bookstodon

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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This week's newsletter comes out tomorrow morning.

Some thoughts on the moments that come after something that ends, the thoughts about happens now, about what comes next...

Subscribe below if you'd like to give it read:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

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We can only measure our velocity in relation. In the velocity of our relations. But, what is the worth of measuring the aim and rate of something so fleeting and so small? Minuscule mammals on a mid-sized planet. Wanderering dust upon a wanderer, wandering around a common yellow star...

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/everything-is-significant

@bookstodon

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We buy time. We pay attention. We wonder about our worth. Try to steal a moment. Production, consumption, and trade. Gifts turned into commodities. Dividends distributed, but not always to the highest bidder. Sometimes simply the most convenient. The supply of yearning with the loudest demands. The hollowest shell. The emptiest well. Scarcity, craving, deprivation, and fear.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/less

#reading #writing #amwriting #blog #art #poetry #books #monday @bookstodon

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We come into contact with an eschaton. An apocalypse. Revelation and disruption at once. A moment that redefines what everything means. “A moment that changes [all] the moments that follow,” Erin Morgenstern says. One that revises and reshapes. Starts and concludes. One that marks the end of everything you thought you knew, and the beginning of a whole new way to be you.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/life-is-cumulative

@bookstodon

duanetoops,
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@Bluedepth @bookstodon definitely will! Thanks so much!!

duanetoops,
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@kimlockhartga @bookstodon she is! I devoured The Night Circus, twice. And I'll definitely be rereading it again. I can't wait for something new from her!

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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Just finished up the artwork for next week's newsletter.

Let me know what you think?

If you want to check out the completed newsletter when it comes out on Wednesday, link below:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

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Something happens when you give yourself to the simmer. To the sound of soft breathing. To the heat of skin on skin. When one thing leads to another. Something happens when you unravel. When you unfurl. When you unfold.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/slow-things

@bookstodon

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There are patterns that govern our lives. Postulates that outline what we think to be true. Methodologies. Beliefs. Strategies. Assumptions. Master narratives and grounding principles. Our own personal unified theory of being in the world.

And then, there are moments when we discover that all of our itemized presumptions don't mean shit.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/life-is-cumulative

@bookstodon

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None of your actions hold sway. Each step a practiced choreography. Something coded in your genes. Orchestrated mechanics keeping time. An Unconscious turning. As if a clockmaker made a watch and walked away. A world indifferent to everything you were, everything you are, everything you thought you’d be...

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/fate

@bookstodon

duanetoops, (edited ) to bookstodon
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This week's newsletter goes out first thing tomorrow morning.

Some thoughts on the way the fragments of a life compile into something bigger.

You can subscribe below if you'd like to give it a read when it goes out:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

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A love story of the obscure...

https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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Finished up the artwork for next week's newsletter.

Some thoughts on the way moments accumulate into a message.

You can subscribe below if you'd like to give it a read when it goes out on Wednesday:
https://duanetoops.substack.com

@bookstodon

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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Working on next week's newsletter.

Thinking about the small moments that make a life into something more.

If you want to give it a read when it goes out on Wednesday you can subscribe below:
https://duanetopps.substack.com

@bookstodon

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There is no frame of reference that is absolute. Nothing is unmoving. Everything exists in transit. Everything is transient. Neither subject, nor object, but verb.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/everything-is-significant

@bookstodon

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Something happens when you feed a thread through a needle. When you sit cross-legged counting breaths. When you learn every lyric to a song. Something happens when you give your awareness to things that happen gradually. To the sure strum of a chord, to good books, to writing, to words. Things that need time to proof. Things that rise and bake. The things that make you wait.

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/slow-things

@bookstodon

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duanetoops,
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@jillrhudy @bookstodon thank you! That means a lot to me! I appreciate you taking the time to read it 🙏🙏🙏

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duanetoops,
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@kimlockhartga @bookstodon totally agree! I'm so glad this struck a chord with you! 🙏🙏🙏

duanetoops, to bookstodon
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A daisy chain of numbered boxes marked off in neat, successive rows. The unavailing hope that today will be different. And yet, none of your actions hold sway. Each step a practiced choreography...

https://duanetoops.substack.com/p/fate

@bookstodon

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