My Sunday List
November 30, 2025 || The forty-eighth weekend of 2025 || The weather in Nashville: High 43 degrees, Low 27
Words
“Try to will yourself into—or out of—loving someone, try to will someone into loving you, and you collide with the fundamental fact that we do not choose who we love. We could not choose, because we do not choose who and what we are, and in any love that is truly love, we love with everything we are.” —Maria Popova
Music
1920s and 30s Hot Jazz: Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington.
The door opened on the novel I’ve been trying to get in a groove with for two years. One way to develop a character is to figure out what the soundtrack to their life is—a richly drawn character has specific tastes and interests—what do they listen to and when, why, how, with whom?
More on that later.
“Beneath our intellectual assessments, untiring but seldom listened to, we have a swirling internal formation called the intuition, the imagination, the heart, the almost prophetic part of a person that at its best somehow seems to know what is good and what is bad for us, but also what pattern is just about to precipitate, what out of a hundred possibilities is just about to happen, in a sense, an unspoken faculty for knowing what season we are in. What is about to die and what is about to come into being.” —David Whyte, The Three Marriages
Catalog of Gratitudes
Seasons. I love hating the cold.
Seasons. I also love sweaters and fires.
Knowing when to step away.
Knowing how to step away.
Knowing how to make a killer pot of Cream of Tomato Soup.
My sister, through thick and through thin.
Early sunsets, in that they encourage early bedtimes.
Working for an organization that gives me sick days. There’s so much to be said for being part of something.
The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
What I’m Reading
I finished Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick last night. I immediately cracked Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. Wow—are these books something else. They are so thoroughly and lovingly researched while being endlessly compelling, at least to someone like me, a woman who was raised on The King and bears an indelible musical mark because of it.
I’ve got Silent Spring by Rachel Carson to my left at my writing table. The description on the cover: The Classic that Launched the ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT. First published in 1962, it figures in to the development of a central character in the novel I’m pursuing. More on that next.
What I’m writing
It finally happened. For whatever reason, the purge that comes with being down with something has brought clarity on how to begin something I’ve wanted to write for a long time—you know about it—the spirit, the dimension straddler, the hydromancy, the four generations of a family deeply tied to the magic of the earth. That might all sound nuts, but y’all know I’m mostly nuts, so, here goes the story of how an avenue toward a real narrative opened.
I tested positive for COVID in the middle of last week after waking up Tuesday morning feeling like a train hit me and then someone beat all my joints with a tiny little hammer until they turned to powder.
Other than that, it wasn’t that bad. I felt better in a few days. It took forever, however, to test negative, so I had a lot of time alone to think. I couldn’t go back to work and I couldn’t be out in the world, and though I felt I might slide off the edge of the universe a few times, I emerged from what felt like an altered reality with a clear idea of how to begin, but only after my friend CB texted me to tell me she’d had a dream with me in it. She said I was boxing up a lot of stuff and moving out of a house and that someone else, a man, was moving out too. I told her about being sick. She said “Uh huh, lungs are where grief is stored. It’s a final purge.”
I had to pull back the curtain on whatever past version of myself I was holding onto. The part that was holding out, waiting for something (or someone) to fill the space that is shaped like this story I’ve been carrying for thirteen years.
I’m grateful I’ve taken another step toward doing something I’m scared to death to do.
Prayer
Let me be good. Let me remember to talk to you and hear what you have to say to me. Let me value your divine knowing over anything and everything else, over anyone and everyone’s opinion. Let me be choosy about the counsel I seek. Let me be loyal, kind, and compassionate to my friends and family. Let me use good judgment and strength of character in every moment. Let me never forget that each breath is a gift from you, from this universe, from the miracle that is this moment of perfect combustion. Let me be strong in my faith. Let me receive inspiration. Most of all, let me love and be loved.
Intention for the week to come
May I be the best version of myself.
May I be patient.
May I be kind.
May I have self-awareness.
May I clear clutter from my life.
May I welcome change.
May I love unconditionally.
May I travel, and tread, lightly.
May I slow down my emotions and keep them at arms length. They are clues—not answers, not truth.
Something I’m thinking about
Landscape architecture. The meaning of gardens and why they matter. One of my characters plays an influential part in the development and care of 1920s Beaux Arts-inspired gardens in New Orleans. Symmetry in wild environments is interesting.
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. — Buddha
Talent: hitting a target no one else can hit.
Genius: hitting a target no one else can see.
Wishes
That we all receive the love we deserve.
That we all find comfort and peace.
That we all find time for the things that soothe us.
That you will forward this to one person you think might like it.
Have a wonderful, peaceful, joyous week. And thank you for supporting my work here at The Autotelic.
Peace. Love.
Allison
There are first edition copies of I Dream He Talks to Me and Blood in the shop. I will sign each copy that is ordered. If you would like it personalized, please send an email with your order number and the name you would like on the signature page to allisonmoorercontact@gmail.com.
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In my Catalog of Gratitudes:
The Sunday night moment when I open my e-mail and your list appears...full of depth, thought and feelings that resonate with me. Grateful!
Looking at that soup in the picture made me really hungry. Also, I am not a writer but if I ever were to write a story, a main characters would be completely obsessed with Beethoven.