Political Gabfest - John Dickerson’s Navel Gazing: Time Travel Via an Assortment of Journal Entries
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🗓️ 25 May 2024
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
In this week’s essay, John discusses Mothers’s Day, playing tennis with the Attorney General, medical scares, and more
Notebook Entries:
Notebook 19, page 16. April 2011
Is it possible, through applied thought, to become systematic in an approach to life? If you were to do that how would you proceed?
Notebook 16, page 6. July 26, 2005
“I’m here with a bunch of midshipmen and wondering what there is to do around here.” - Boy trying to hit on a girl working @ The Reef in Castine, ME.
Notebook 15, page 30. September 2004
Head problems:
Sunday 9/5 morning
Tuesday 9/7 evening
Wednesday 9/8 before lunch
Notebook 22, page 22. April 24, 2014
Question:
What did you want to be when you were a kid?
- What do you want to be now?
- Why the difference?
Notebook 9. 1995
“That’s just the ticket the doctor ordered”
Notebook 13. 2001
“Free as a clam”
Notebook 17, page 67. December 2006
The man sitting next to me has a face on the boil and garlic and old booze on his breath. When he sleeps, he sighs. For this leg of the flight I am wrapped in his breathy gumbo.
Notebook 15, page 7. April 2004
“In all these there are messages for those who use their reason.” - Quran quotation
Notebook 15, page 80. 2005
Would like to meet her.
Notebook 54. July 26, 2020
“Writing requires a reader. You can’t do it alone.” - John Cheever
Notebook 15, page 71. 2005
In the light of sobriety not sure what this means
Notebook 13. March 2001
Yesterday I played tennis with John Ashcroft the atty. general of the U.S.
Notebook 13, page 108. December 11, 2001
Anne just called. There is one little heartbeat beating in her today. Everything is okay for this hurdle. I must say, I was really worried.
Notebook 20, page 10. December 24, 2013
“Sometimes Dad says weird stuff, just ignore him” - Anne to kids about me
Notebook 15, page 84.
“Life goes on,” Hayawi says. “We are in the middle of a war [in Iraq] and we still smoke the water pipe.”
Notebook 45, page 24. April 16, 2019
Our savior lives by the manner in which we live.
Notebook 19, page 23. 2011
People on their mobile phones in England say goodbye a lot: “Cheers, alright then, speak to you soon, ta.” (That’s four ways of saying goodbye). Amelia tells the story of a man who thanked a ticket-taker by saying “Ta, magical, cheers.”
References:
Disaster on the Penobscot - John Henry Fay for Naval History Magazine
One Man’s Meat by E.B. White
The House at Allen Cove I E.B. White House Tour - New England Magazine
Little Plastic Castle - Ani Defranco
“Two Years of War: Taking Stock” - Anthony Shadid for the Washington Post
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.
Email us at navelgazingpodcast@gmail.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to navel gazing. Episode 8, I'm John Dickerson. Notebook 19, page 16, April 2011, in London. |
| 0:12.9 | Is it possible, through applied thought, to become systematic in an approach to life? If you want to do that, how would you proceed? |
| 0:24.0 | Oh, no, not this guy again. |
| 0:26.7 | You remember this guy from episode six. |
| 0:28.8 | The entries are 10 years apart, |
| 0:32.0 | but this 2011 entry is written by that same getting your life in order again, guys. |
| 0:34.3 | Systems, habits, craft, flourishing. |
| 0:37.1 | We've had enough of that guy for the moment, |
| 0:39.2 | I think. Plus, here in this time period where I'm writing this episode, it's 5 a.m. early, |
| 0:45.4 | garbage trucks, sirens in the street coming through my window like a knitting needle in my ear. |
| 0:50.3 | I've left my computer at the office. So my systems are shattered. I've just gotten a text. |
| 0:55.0 | I've got to get to the studio. I have lost the morning. Forces of interruption arrayed all around me |
| 1:01.5 | have launched my day by Trebyshe into the sun. Okay, we don't want that guy either. We'll let that |
| 1:10.6 | guy go off to work and go back to the garret on the orange carpet, safe, the constructed atmosphere of navel gazing. |
| 1:19.8 | Around us, unopened moving boxes, the aroma of cardboard. Every now and again pays a visit to the nostrils. The one box I have opened |
| 1:29.6 | contains a lifetime of notebooks, spread over each other like the pile of holiday cards you keep |
| 1:35.4 | on the table. You're not sure why. The 2011 entry that starts this episode is the first one I |
| 1:41.8 | fished out of the box. I think it's the first one anyway. |
| 1:45.4 | What I can tell you, dear listener, is that in this episode eight, you and I will no longer |
| 1:50.9 | evaluate the notebook entries of those early days of September 2021, where we spent the first |
| 1:56.8 | seven episodes. The notebook entries in that yellow one-note notebook held together by blue |
| 2:02.8 | painter's tape along the spine. Instead, for this episode of Naval Gazing, its host and its audience, |
... |
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