Since the first part of this spell was about remembrance as a tool for creating boundaries, the spell's word is

remember

*The picture is of Mnemosyne, the ancient world's personification of memory, as portrayed by Rosetti.
This looks like an easy one, doesn't it?

• Re = "back"/"again"
• Member = "a part of an organized whole; literally a limb"

And with dis = "apart" and dismember as an apparent opposite, meaning "to break down into constituent parts," we can tell a fine story of how "remember" is a process of putting things back together, taking the separated parts and putting them back together, how all parts of a memory are essential constituents.

It's a great story, and I think it can be a valid story, but it's not the actual etymology of "remember."

"Frame" and "reframe" have been a recurrent theme lately.

• Trying to provide for family, or wanting to deplete fossil fuels to the point of no return?
• Dressing provocatively, or wanting to maximize vitamin D absorption?
• Sharing the benefit of hard-earned knowledge, or trying to sell more books by whatever means?
• Deepening my mindfulness, or starving myself?

I'll be writing more about this, but let's start by looking at the word "frame" itself.

Since we've just been talking about monkey minds and about attention span related to sentence length, it's only natural that the word of the week should be 

attention

If we take a look at what we're saying when we use that word, it'll come clear that really there can be no such thing as attention deficit; it's all a matter of quality.

A keystone principle of my work as an editor  is confidentiality. I believe this is crucial, whether we're working on a poetry collection or an academic thesis, a science book or a cookbook.

No matter the subject matter or genre, my client is pouring heart and soul into the project.  If I'm to help him or her produce their best possible work, the art that's in truest harmony with their creative impulse, s/he must be comfortable confiding in me, confessing to me, trusting me with sh*tty first drafts and skeletons in the closet.

Ad here's the paradox:  confidentiality gives birth to confidence!

In creating a blog, in performing a gong, in writing a book, in planting gardens, in the march of days, nights, seasons, there's repetition everywhere. What do you associate with repetition? 

• "practice makes perfect"
• conscious replacement of memes
• focus, mindfulness, creation of second nature
• "fake it till you make it"
• tedium
• "why do I have to sweep the floor/eat/pull weeds when I'll have to do it all again later?"
• So many words I could pick for "word of the week" here ! To push against the negative aspects of repetition, I chose "rote."

It's the great paradox. "The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get." No one seems to know who was the first person to say that, but it rings true. Likewise: "The muse is more likely to show up if you sit at your desk ready for her."

Likewise, when you're not depleted and deprived, you're better able to respond to emergencies.

When in tune with the cycles  going on around you, and when you create your own cycles, you're laying the groundwork for liftoff. If you know what your goals are, you'll see your way clearer toward achieving them. If you don't know what they are, you'll see clearer toward identifying them.

That's what the 100-day Gong is for. Here are some resources that will help. (Edited once, and likely to be edited more as people suggest to me resources that have worked for them.)

As a young person, I bought into the idea that books were unalterable. I remember lying on the grass for hours  with an eraser, cleaning up my used copy of Herodotus's Histories, not wanting someone else's notes on his Greek or his content, offended that this previous owner had presumed to write on the book!

But in reality, we've been talking back to books for as long as... well, actually, for as long as farming and economies of scale gave us the free time to do so. The root of "scholar" and "school" means...