The Space Whereby I Type

Food (and Juice) for Thought

2011-12-12T16:55:00.000-08:00

Last year I brought cashews and juice to a stranger at a car dealership who sold me a car headlight bulb and installed it for me. He was installing it just to be nice, and, as he said, because he wanted me to come back. He cut his hand in the process of installing the light bulb on something sharp inside the hood of my car. I told someone that story and that someone said I was creepy for bringing gifts back to him. I saw the same guy today, as I was coming back to get something else on my car fixed. He walked out with me to look at the car and I told him he helped me last December. He said he doesn't remember. I told him I brought him juice afterward. He said, "Oh, I remember that. That was the nicest thing that happened to me all year." I laughed and said, "Well, but you cut your hand ...." Creepy? Magical? Sometimes there's a fine line.

Equilibrium

2011-08-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

My wise and thoughtful friend Suchanderina said recently, "If you give away too much of yourself too fast, you will get hurt." I've had my heart broken three times in less than a year, she observed about me. I wasn't counting. If you never give any of yourself, then you can be just as miserable. I guess I have to look for a happy medium somewhere, as usual.

Silly shortcuts that aren't much shorter

2011-07-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

Cake mixes are silly. Taking an extra step or two by using a recipe to make a cake is healthier and much more delicious. I am in disbelief that I had not discovered this long before now. I wrote the same thing about spaghetti sauce many, many months ago.

Creativity was Living Under a Rock

2011-06-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

Today I took a beautiful black and white photo, a portrait against some trees and a little sky. I made my subject laugh and captured a bit of true happiness, and I was satisfied with it on the first try. I was assigned to take this photo, and I was determined to do something creative with it in a job I have that occasionally and miraculously calls for the artistic nature in me to emerge. I also created a glorious dinner this morning that cooked all day and was perfectly and deliciously ready when I wanted it in the evening. On a small scale, I created what I probably alone consider a little magic today, and that is enough.

Sun Blue Green

2011-06-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

Today I found the change of perspective I'd been seeking, and it was blissfully therapeutic. Not too far from here, but far enough, there were tranquility-inducing negative ions floating from a little waterfall next to a giant fossil rock where the soothing sun was pouring down on all of me. I visited a friend's three-room cabin nearby, swept off a few pathways and steep steps leading down to the Shaver's Fork River. All was mostly wellish again.

Thursday

2011-06-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

Trying to clear my mind to let in new stuff. It's hard. How does one clear one's mind? Vacation? Fasting? Change of perspective? Deep breathing? Yoga? What am I doing wrong?

Waiting

2011-05-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

This is my friend Suchanderina's message to her teenage daughter:
There will be boys who like you. There will be many boys who like you. They will not all be able to give you what you need. You will be miserable if you let a boy into your life if he can't give you what you need. You don't want to feel miserable waiting and wondering if he will contact you; and feel miserable if he disappears for a week and a half and then contacts you and then disappears for another week and a half; and tells you he'll see you when he's finished with being with his friends or after this or that important thing, and then maybe, or maybe not, follow up after that. You need and should have more than that, because that lack of care will make you feel miserable. You need someone who makes you his priority, who will be there for you, who will care for you and about you, who will want to contact you as much as you need, who will wait for you and be respectful of your time and listen to you and do what you want to do, when you want to do it. The only way to be sure that you have found that person is to wait until you get to know him before you give yourself to him in a most vulnerable way. Once you give it, it's too late to not have feelings for that person. It'll be a struggle to let those feelings go, despite the lack of care you feel. You can only let someone else into your life to give you that after you let those feelings go, so let them go so you can make room in your mind and your heart for one who can make you his priority. You have to wait for that moment, until you're sure that person has the capacity to care for you and give you the time and attention you need, before you give in, because if you don't, and he can't give you all that, you will be miserable, hurt, lost, confused.

Daniel and Me

2011-05-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Greenness has crept into everything, and the scenery on sunny days is that perfectly spectacular combination of deep blue sky and happy healthy green. I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston last night, and I kept thinking about the patterns of shadowy stars, flowers, snowflakes and dusty spots that appeared all over everyone in what I perceived to be his imagination. He has a high, gentle voice in the songs he sings, and a gentleness and a wisdom in there that occasionally borders on the genius, the outrageous and the unstable. Some of his drawings shown in the movie look like mine. I saw one of an eye with no eyelid, flying with wings and that I had drawn about 14 years ago, a drawing of which I had presumed when I drew it to be original in as original of a form that is plausible. I wondered how else Daniel and I thought alike.

Sunday

2011-05-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

Happiness replaced negativity so much faster than I predicted, and nothing really happened to make me feel better except the advent of the return of equilibrium. And that makes me happy. Perhaps committing it to words helped my cause.

Moving

2011-05-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

My brain is fighting a brave and fierce battle with a spill of negativity in its many pathways, like a sickness that hovers and saturates the landscape of my well being. I wait in enthusiastic anticipation until it heals and passes. I know it will heal and pass, and I want it to happen quickly, but it doesn't work that way. I've learned this lesson so many times and it doesn't make it that much less painful, knowing that it's just a matter of time.

Slow

2011-05-02T18:16:00.001-07:00

Sunday I was an audience member in the play "The Wizard of Oz," and I cannot think of a better way I could have spent my afternoon. Aside from the amazing performances, energetic and talented dancers dancing, scarecrow falling with grace and perfection, and magical characters filling the theatre with sentimentality and sweetness, I finally took the story's message into my brain: everyone only and already has exactly what they need inside of themselves, and as soon as they know it they will find it. All that singing, dancing and fantastical characters and scenery had consistently distracted me from the obvious. I had understood it and heard the message the first time I read the book, with the lion and the scarecrow and the tin man, but this time, I didn't realize it was true for Dorothy as well. When I knew that, it all suddenly clicked and somehow that realization offered layers of new dimensions of understandings for me -- how we make all our choices and how only we can hold ourselves back.

Repetition

2011-04-18T04:06:00.001-07:00

Life keeps processing on, with plants to water, mouths to feed, walks to take, and words to write. The sun is pink and shining directly on my face this morning, and it feels like Groundhog Day, today, the day from the movie where everything happens all over again but it's another chance to get it right, better than it was the last Monday. I spent much of my time yesterday outdoors, working in a botanical garden, weeding and raking, and walking around in the cool, early spring weather.

Elephants in the Room

2011-03-09T04:16:00.001-08:00

My eccentric grandmother had the habit when I was young of using her own drama to convince me that whatever surprise she had to offer was special and rare and wonderful, and it never was. Whatever it was, it was disappointing, meaningless and empty. There was something wrong with everything, whether it was something she cooked or sewed or bought (I think most of what she said she bought were things that someone else gave her that she didn't want, or that she dug out of her attic). Her house was full of beautiful hardwood carved furniture and her house looked unlike any other house I'd ever been in, as it reflected a mind that was bizarre, eclectic, and from 14 hours north (New York City) of where we were. Clutter with bold colors of red, gold, turquoise and black and old furniture crowded the house. The house smelled of moth balls and if anything was removed from the house the smell stayed forever. When she died, she left behind mountains of stuff that was so old almost all of it fell apart or was on its way to disintegration. Every week or so I have dreams I am back in that house, and last night I was there with zoo animals. There was an elephant on the screened-in porch, taking up the whole porch, and there was a tiger in the living room. They were resting on the floor, and they were sad because they wanted to go back to where they came from. The first time I heard the expression "the elephant in the room," it was at a work meeting, and I had no idea what the expression meant or what the elephant could possibly represent. I feel I never really know what that elephant is supposed to be, and, because it's a big elephant, and a euphemism for something that everyone sees but ignores because ... (why?) ... I feel forced to feel that I should know but I don't.

Time

2011-02-26T07:56:00.000-08:00

At a college planning meeting, I heard a few informative and helpful words from a retired public school counselor who is from my hometown. At least 10 years had passed since I had last talked to him, and the way I remember him is that he had brown hair and a brown mustache. He is a friendly, funny, smart counselor and at one time he was a coach. He is the kind of man who a person would feel able to talk to about anything and it would be understood and accepted, as the best of the counselors would be. That brown hair was all gone, and he had much less of it and it was all white. He remembers me, or at least he claims he does, and I hope I did not offend him by telling him I remember him with brown hair, but he accepted my observation and laughed. I started to think about how, now, today, 10 years seems to have passed so quickly, but children grow up in that time and grown-ups may undergo a complete transformation simply because of mother nature's magic. One's perspective on time is ever-evolving as one travels the long and lovely path of years.

Infinity

2011-02-18T04:49:00.000-08:00

I read recently that the author of a book I've been reading believes that in our infinite universe, it is a given that life will repeat itself infinitely. Our experiences, thoughts, lessons, patterns, habits, fortune, misfortune ... it is all simply a system of repetition. The more life experience I have, the more I believe it.

2011-01-28T11:35:00.000-08:00

I hit a roadblock.

Straight Ahead

2011-01-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

Friday night the temperature outside my home was three degrees Fahrenheit. I spelled that correctly on the first try. Today is Sunday and it is sunny, bright, stark and clear. On my countdown to spring, we have only 56 days to go.
The family found a new house to have an attachment to. We all really, really love it and we've visited it three or four times now. It's closer to my workplace, it has beautiful wood floors, a very big deck that covers the front of the house, a grand view of a cemetery, lots of tall windows and built-in bookcases. A match for us that we all feel is meant to be. Alas, there have been many others before it that I have become too attached to ... places that I've become attached to that are unavailable ... am I victim of a tired human condition? Do I need to change or should I continue to dream and work toward making it a reality ... ? Well, of course I need to keep moving forward.

You're Dead; We're Changing Your Book, OK?

2011-01-06T03:56:00.000-08:00

So many stories in the news yesterday about modifying Huckleberry Finn to take out the words inside it that censors deem offensive racial slurs. On first listen, my reaction was to feel irritated and defeated at the homogenization of our world, our culture trickling into one stream of what is right and wrong and good and bad and fashionable and indecent; and anger at the audacity of those who have judged and then act by modifying art to make it non-offensive. I close my eyes and see the shelves of Wal-Mart, where everything looks like the same cheap plastic with no character or originality, because the corporations think we all need soulless products that everyone else has, so we can replace it in a few months after they break so we can get more assembly-line-generic goods that everyone else has.
I heard they were taking the "n" out of the book, so I imagined it would be called "Huckleberry Fi_ _" and that there would be small gaps on every page where they entirely eliminated the letter "n" from every word in it. It would still be just as easy to follow, and the_ it would_'t be obvious that they were cha_gi_g a_y o_e particular word or the other .... a subtle cha_ge, if you will.
Then I heard the logic behind the censorship, and I can see some value in making a version available, a choice, to help stop the perpetuation of racially based insults, so that our children can read and appreciate the story without the ingestion of what we recognize now as vicious attacks through name-calling based on where someone looks like they've come from. So, the idea is that the book will be better this way?
Censorship seems OK, as long as the original version is still available to see it in its intended form. Yes, it's not as sharp or authentic and it feels homogenized, but it's a way to enrich our young and impressionable minds in a more innocent way. I do see some value in that, but the problem is that the writer is dead. We can't ask him if it would be OK. I think it would only be OK if the author wanted the clean version to exist, too. Of course, he lived in a different time and he probably couldn't foresee the 100-year-later judgments and calls for censorship on his choice of words. Posthumous censorship seems evil. No doubt ... this censored version will be on the shelf of your local Wal-Mart book and magazine section shortly.

A Little Inspiration in a Dark Week

2010-12-28T05:24:00.000-08:00

"Art 21: Art in the 21st Century" goes into artists' studios and artists' minds, and offers fast-paced stories of the artists' motivations, thoughts, materials and backgrounds. The diversity of the mediums (media?) of the artists covered makes the viewer feel as though she were watching an all-encompassing stratosphere of summoning the imagination from the brain into the world through production of creativity and how it feels and what its value is. Each artist talks about what art is and how it fits into, inside of, and outside of our minds. Sometimes Netflix brings great things.

More Introspection

2010-12-23T09:36:00.001-08:00

Sorting through thoughts happens most often in isolation. Does isolation and thoughtful circulation of thoughts lead to madness? Why, yes, it does, sometimes ... but does it always.... ? that is my question. Fortunately I have never been a victim to that unfortunate circumstance, but I have been close enough, peripherally, through reading and isolation and observation to get a glimpse of it. I remember writing about this months ago and relating it to a trilogy I read by Paul Auster ... all stories dealing with that concept. Not all ended in madness. The logical and unimaginative private detective came out just fine. Good story. Bleak, gray, deep and cyclical. Tricyclical.

Pre-natal and Post-death

2010-11-27T06:46:00.000-08:00

I've been giving some thought to the funeral business in the last few months, as I've been reading about it in The Black Obelisk (the library is sending me e-mails to ask for it back), and stories all around speak of the production of caskets, the families who spend generations repeating the cycle of profiting from the ceremonial mourning process, and the ubiquitous nature of the lucrative aspect of deaths in society. Much is spent on the beginning of life, with perhaps seven months of hospital visits, possibly an expensive surgery, and mountains of baby gear. By my precise calculation, the expenditure of funds averages to be equal in comparison.
Nowadays, I think the trend of newspapers is to charge people for the publication of an obituary, whereas baby announcements are published for free, at least in my little corner here. You pay now for an obituary because they let you write it any way you want to. You can get a free one with the facts as basic as a birth announcement.
If a birth announcement were written as an obituary, it might be something like this ...
Alma Grace Potter, age .0000000000001, became alive on Saturday, November 27, 2010, in New Hampshire County Hospital in Youth, New York. She had been in her usual health and birth was sudden and expected.
Preceding her in birth were her parents, Horace Greenlief Potter and Linda Potter. Also preceding her in birth were her grandparents, Will and Mazie Potter and Flint and Ivy Worth; a sister, Alice Z. Potter, and a brother, Dewey S. Potter; two aunts, Mega Potter and Dreama Potter Weaver and husband Guy, an uncle, Simonton Potter, and five cousins and several step-cousins. An uncle, Rob Potter, preceded her life by dying before she was born.
She was active in the womb, and participated from the inside by listening to college lectures and children's stories, taking trips to Target, and going with her parents to prenatal yoga classes. She will most likely enjoy hobbies such as knitting, texting, cross-country skiing and gardening, and she is a Buddhist by faith. She is also an avid stretcher.
Friends will be received in New Hampshire County Hospital from November 27 to November 29, and at home for the next three weeks. Gifts can be purchased in reference to the Target baby register at the front desk.

Tuesday

2010-11-17T05:15:00.001-08:00

It's been gray and rainy the last four days, and I haven't been able to walk. Work has been sluggish and yesterday pushed me to my limits. I made something with apples that have been in the refrigerator about a month and a half, and some of the apples taste OK and some of them taste a little funny.

An All-Good Saturday

2010-11-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Saturday I left the home for an adventure, involving following an unfamiliar route to Pittsburgh on the east side, going to Monroeville. Later I went to Squirrel Hill, which is a lovely and interesting little section of Pittsburgh. I saw some British-reminiscent architecture, an endless variety of merchandise from all over the world, beautiful churches/mosques, and an intense golden light of the November sun illuminating the landscape to make it golden and spectacular, with what color there is left of the late, late fall. I went the wrong way twice, on the turnpike, but turned around and it was OK; and started the trip by getting stuck in traffic because of a three-car wreck about a mile from home. The wreck occurred in the middle of a dangerous intersection, and about a year or two ago a traffic light was installed after a series of accidents there. I remember hearing a policeman I know saying that traffic lights never make intersections safer. A young one in the house typed up an itinerary for us, and mapped out the drive and scheduled our departure time from home. We were 10 minutes late leaving, and I believe we would have ended up much closer to the accident had we left when we were scheduled to.

Babies

2010-11-11T06:32:00.000-08:00

I watched a documentary last night called "Babies," which followed the lives of four babies in four vastly separated parts of the world: Japan, Africa (I didn't catch which country), United States, and Mongolia. Worth watching, but I fell asleep. There was no determinable dialogue, as it was all about conveying images and mood.

Thursday

2010-11-05T04:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a day of travel. It was work-related, and I thought it would help me in a non-work way to get a change of scenery. It was rainy, dark, and dismal. It helped a little.
I found a Kermit-the-Frog classic tan trench coat at Target on sale, which I purchased for those Muppet-feeling days. Halloween candy and costumes are also on sale. Thursday nights are the best shopping days. Merchandise is marked down for the weekend shoppers and you can buy it before the weekend shoppers have purchased them.

What's Really There?

2010-10-29T04:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was thinking about labels, and how sometimes people who are quick to judge might label the people they are interested in dating. They label them quickly and they date the labels, and in that way people become objectified. Beautiful, shy, rich, emo, athletic, smart, young, artistic, easy ... and those people who label and objectify don't seem to care or bother with what's underneath. That makes a person feel hollow. That's why it always feels unnatural and wrong to go on a date with someone you don't know or who doesn't seem to bother much with wanting to know what's happening with you. I often wonder if they think it doesn't matter, or if they don't have the capacity to understand that other people are just as complex as they are, or if they just don't care. It's mostly on the surface, and it's probably doomed to fail. Or maybe they're not complex, and that's the whole problem.

The Frames, The Reframing, The Reframest

2010-10-26T18:20:00.001-07:00

There is nothing quite like writing. Sometimes my mind feels like a blank slate for future experiences, and learning new things, but reading over some of my historic troublesome times and ways I've dealt with them helps me remember that once I was wise, worked it out through the passage of time and the commitment of words to paper, and from nebulous thoughts to tangible articulation, and have created conclusions and angles that transform the bad into good. The future would be much more clear if I could keep all I have learned in mind, but it probably would have all slipped away had it not been scribed and kept for my future.

The More Things Change, the Mo .... re They Stay the Sa ...... me

2010-10-20T04:34:00.000-07:00

My strange spate of absorbing random advice of late ... "you can't change who you are" ... made philosophically funny by an episode of Arrested Development ... has brought me much more to think about today. Jason Bateman's character, Michael, says this over and over as he realizes he is inherently good. He tries to get past that by devising an evil plan to get back at his brother, but it turns out that what he tries to do ends up being perceived as something good, after he started to feel guilty about it, and after the events unfolded differently than he had planned because of events out of his control. I, as I'm sure all humans have for all time, have never tired of debating about whether people can change or not. People do change some things about themselves, I think, but what seems to stay the same is how a person treats other people, which all pertains to a person's kindness (or cruelty), peacefulness, combativeness, honesty level, confidence level, arrogance, humility, modesty, diligence, possessiveness, passivity, apathy, thoughtfulness, inconsideration, obsessiveness, ability to let go and move on, addictive behavior, tendency to internalize or externalize blame, control freakishness, response to conflict, response to rejection, response to achievement, response to fear, and response to stress. And, of course, the older people get, the more rigid people seem to become in the qualities of their personalities. I remember my grandmother, who was born in 1906, said to me about 20 years ago, people are no different now than they were hundreds and hundreds of years ago: society has the same problems, people are violent and self-destructive, and men will always be ready for war. And I will probably never stop over-thinking things. Unless I don't live forever.

Monday

2010-10-18T18:30:00.001-07:00

Lately I've been picking up on bits and pieces of advice I hear ... trying to make sense of things, as I always do, and last night I heard on the movie "The Haunting of Molly Hartley," the comment, "Human weaknesses always bring consequences," or something close to that. I'm glad a fluffy teen horror movie could give me something to think about today.

Tangents

2010-10-18T03:50:00.001-07:00

As I was reading last night, reflecting about how I like things in other people that I like, or would like to, see in myself, and how it relates to The Black Obelisk, I fell asleep soon after. I looked back at the previous page of the book the next day to re-read the conversation I wrote about yesterday, and I couldn't find the part comparing people to mirrors. Maybe I just imagined I read it.

Reflections

2010-10-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

In The Black Obelisk, the author goes on about mirrors and reflections for about a page. He (Erich Remarque's character) was talking to his beautiful female friend who lives in a mental institution. She asked him how mirrors work, and what happens to the pieces of the person that go into the reflection. He said that they reflect back, and that's all they do. Then he went on about how people we like work like mirrors to us, that we keep them around because they reflect us, that we see likable qualities in those likable people because we recognize in them parts of our likable selves. Bits and pieces of ourselves sometimes do disappear into those other partners and become part of who they are. Could it be then, that what happens when relationships end is that we no longer see any parts of ourselves in that other person, that the mirrors shatter, or get hazy ... and it's more like an impenetrable wall?

Healthy

2010-10-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

This fall weekend's weather should be sunny and in the mid-70s all three days. What more could a person want? I will be going to a big festival that is centered around the celebration of being young, pretty, rich and politically connected. But I try not to think about that part.
Going to the dentist for tooth-drilling and filling this week was predictably miserable (I don't understand ... I take care of my teeth!), but my dentist is experienced and quick. That counts for a lot! I tried to appreciate all that I could about it, that I am responsibly seeking and taking dentist help, that the walls in there were a nice, calm blue, with brick on one wall painted white, and this particular room did not have Fox News playing in it as most of the other rooms do. As I watched in the waiting room, I was informed, after a story about sugary drinks being OK for kids in moderation (further evidence, as if I needed it, that Fox News is poison!), that the Fox News channel is celebrating its 14-year birthday right now. The news people had a tall, round, candy-coated cake to help commemorate. I couldn't believe my eyes. My dental office should ban all sugar-related stories unless they are anti-sugar stories.
A few days earlier, I saw my former (young and therefore much less experienced) dentist at a health fair, with a giant poster of him on it behind him. I last saw him almost four years ago. When he filled my cavity, it took more than an hour. My jaw couldn't take being open all that time. After sitting there for a very long time, with him struggling over my tooth, he dropped a metal tool on my eye (I noticed my new dentist passes tools under my chin, not over my eyes). I had to go back the next day and the next day because it wasn't done right. He left some things in my mouth that shouldn't have been there. He put too much filling in my mouth. I couldn't use the tooth for eating like I should have been able to. I had to go back three times. The tooth felt like a marble countertop, smooth and flat, not like a tooth should feel. After three years, I finally made it back to the dentist, but to my new dentist who someone had recommended. At the health fair, the young dentist remembered me, saying that he remembered I had some sensitivity on my tooth, after I told him he had worked on a cavity of mine. Four years ago! He asked me how it was doing now, and I said, fine, but I was afraid to go back to the dentist for a few years, and that my new dentist had fixed it. I was just being honest, and he asked, but I couldn't help feeling guilty about it, in case he felt bad. You don't want to go to a health fair, at your booth, putting yourself out there, and have someone talk to you about how you messed up. I guess that's just the risk you take. Lately I've been telling people when they do something that bothers me. At first, I feel good about it, like I really needed to do it, and then I worry that they think I'm mean or a little crazy. I think I prefer the healthier way (note I WAS at a health fair) -- to tell people rather than keep it to myself and let it eat away at me. I guess you call that getting older.

Stuck with Subjectivity

2010-10-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

Thinking about what goes on in my head vs. what goes on in other peoples' heads. We're all about the same, I think (we think), and heard this same thought on the radio as I woke up last week. Actually the bit I heard was a comment that men's and women's minds and ways of thinking aren't as different from each other as people have believed.
It seems like the more time I spend thinking about stuff, the more self-absorbed I feel. The more self-absorbed I feel, the more conscious I am of my thinking and of my actions. I want to start thinking from a different perspective, but I have a hard time getting out of one place in my mind. I think about what I did and what I said, and what effect that has had. But I want to be thinking that how other people in my life think and act has more to do with them and not with me. Maybe that comes with time, when the sting of a painful experience with someone I know has passed and I can look objectively at it and I can stop thinking about how it has to do with me.

Advice and An Awkward Encounter

2010-09-23T19:10:00.001-07:00

I have been doing a lot of walking lately. I listened to a song yesterday and today that advised me to say to myself several times a day, "Always be calm, cheerful and confident." "Let go." I wish it were that easy.

Last Tuesday, I walked about a mile from my house to run an errand, and another mile or two to find some unmarked trails not far from where I live, that I had heard about recently. On the way, a property developer/landlord/senior citizen drove by and asked me for a ride from his luxury SUV-mobile. I recognized the car and the man because he had driven my co-worker and I for a tour of some property that he was leasing about five months ago, and my neighbor is his employee. Of course, he didn't remember me. He simply wanted to know if I wanted a ride. I told him which way I was going instead of accepting. A few minutes later, I was in dangerous walking territory because I was looking for the trail, cars were going by very fast, and there was no walkway -- just steep slopes, high grass, and a cornfield. He drove by again and asked if I wanted a ride, and I accepted to get out of the way of the fast-moving cars. I told him I was looking for a trail. I think I was almost there, but he drove me far past it and around too far. About five minutes later, I found the trail and he dropped me off. I walked on the trail for about an hour, and as I was walking back on the dangerous road, he drove by again and offered another ride to me. I accepted, as I was in the same fast-paced no-sidewalk situation. He told me he wanted to show me his house, and it was right on the main road. I know I should have said no, but I had met him before, knew he owned most of the neighborhood (all of the neighborhood at one time), and was curious about the sort of home he would have in our small area. It turned out to be one of the nicest of the houses. He had albino deer that had been taxidermitized and were sitting on an overlook over the kitchen. He offered me rum raisin ice cream and venison balogna, which seemed to me to be a new and disturbing concept. I thought to myself, if someone could just be kind to me without me being afraid I was being hit on, life would be sweeter, and sweet ... maybe it could be this guy. He's at least 70, and I'm young enough to be his daughter ... I think. So, after a tour of this beautiful and interesting house and several of the balconies, I was ready to go home. I said I could walk, but he offered to drive again. I had already been gone for quite some time, and had some delicious pot roast ready for me at home. I should have said no. Actually, I think I did say no. So, when he dropped me off, he asked for my phone number, touched my arm twice, and said he'd like to take me out to dinner. Foiled again. My belief that strange men who are super friendly will only be looking for an impersonal date was further solidified and I felt disturbed that I was open to the possibility that his intentions were any different. He wrote my number on a birthday card his grandson had mailed to him. It said "Grandpa" in giant red letters. I should have said no. I should have said no.

The good news is that I have received no such phone call inviting me to the previously suggested "dinner," to which I would most definitely protest.

The inner/outer critic

2010-09-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

When we're living closely with someone else, it becomes easy to blame our annoyances on the other person and find incredible fault with him. When we don't have another person in our lives with such one-on-one closeness, that fault-finding is then directed inward. I think.

Sometimes Re-Framing is a Struggle

2010-09-08T19:57:00.000-07:00

When will I ever see empty promises, unfulfilled offers, and consistent indifference to me as rude and offensive, rather than unconsciously internalizing all the blame? I need to see that it's not all about me! Now I suddenly see, the problem is self-absorption. Wait, now I'm blaming myself again! It happens so easily!

Little Things

2010-08-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today was going unreasonably bad. I think it's because I had dessert for breakfast. The whole idea of positivity was seeming impossible. The sunny, bright sky was mocking me with its perfection while I was miserable. The smile someone gave me was bubbling with evil and insincerity. I was grumpy until I had more dessert later on, after some bread with pepperoni in it. I read some advice about imagining that the day was beginning with the seemingly limitless energy of the morning, even if it's not the morning. Then I realized that life wasn't so bad.

Forgettable

2010-08-21T17:06:00.001-07:00

I went to a park for a festival last weekend in my hometown. She's only been coming to that hometown once or twice per year, for the past 18 years or so, and even then not even out in public, but still two people called me by my sister's name. I was thinking ... I guess it helps me take myself less seriously, which is something I could really use. I corrected them, and I said it happens just about every time I come home. I guess that's what happens when you have siblings who are girls like myself. We're practically the same person.

So hopeful, so illogical.

2010-08-18T20:15:00.001-07:00

I woke up today with a single thought that calmed me and made my day better. It was after a long nap. I thought that I had no justification for being unhappy because of the way someone acted, because those actions were in conformity with what I had already experienced, again and again, with that person. Disappointments would be so much easier to deal with if I could keep that in mind. I wish for something better, something more, something more positive, and then I am disappointed when someone acts in conformity with how they have acted in the past. It's illogical to expect anything different, yet I do hope for the best. I guess it's human nature.

Wednesday

2010-06-23T16:08:00.001-07:00

Here in the calm, mountainous area away from the coast and away from the hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes of the coastal and flat lands, we had calamitous weather complete with an earthquake tremor warning not too far from here. The sky went dramatically from light to dark to light to dark and rain to sun. Later in the afternoon there was a tornado spotted on the road about an hour or two from here.

Jonah Hex

2010-06-21T06:38:00.001-07:00

Friday night I was roped in to watch a new Western movie, traditional in the sense of the lone hero, violence, swagger, horse-riding, action and tragedy, but with a supernatural twist in that the hero, Jonah Hex, played by Josh Brolin, could talk to dead people. Megan Fox was in this movie, so I could finally see what all the commotion over her has been about. Despite being tired after a long day, I did not fall asleep while watching it, but I'm not sure why. It's definitely not my kind of movie, but Josh Brolin was channeling Clint Eastwood in the best of ways. The plot was formulaic, but something kept me interested and alert -- possibly the margaritas from the Mexican grill restaurant I consumed beforehand. I learned by reading the end credits that it's based on a comic-book story. Then the campiness made more sense. I wasn't sure going in whether it would be a comedy; and I could tell right after it started that it wasn't, but there was one funny line when Jonah Hex looked at a dog that suddenly appeared, and he gruffly addressed the dog: "I don't know what to say to you," he said. Funny because that's how I feel sometimes about babies and pets. Even though the movie was rated PG-13, it caused my sensitive brain to have a couple of scary dreams about fires.
Before the movie started, I looked around the theater, and then asked my friend, "Is this the opening night for this movie?"
"Yes," was the answer.
"There are six people in here!" I observed.
Next time I pick the movie!

Bravo!

2010-06-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't sat down to watch regular old television in months and months and months ... but last night my friend ushered me off the phone at 9 p.m. so she could watch Top Chef on Bravo, and urged me to do the same. So, having nothing better to do, as is probably the case with most reasons to watch television, I watched it. I felt so bad for the gray-haired, dred-locked, spectacled chef who was rated the bottom chef and was asked to leave the show. They showed him wiping away a tear from under his glasses and I felt his pain. He used a store-bought pastry to add to his maple syrup and macadamia-nut creamy dessert, and the judges were very unhappy that he hadn't made his own pastry in the half hour or so that they were given to make their things. I woke up this morning feeling bad for him all over again. He had a nice smile. Next up, the same show except they replaced the cooking concept to art challenges. Finally, a reality show that I wanted to see the end of. The challenge was to take a mountain of old appliances (mostly a lot of old TVs) and make a 3-D work of art. I feel like I just discovered what to do with all of that post-dinner, pre-bed doldrums! But I don't want to be a casualty of normalcy, so that's probably why I have resisted.

Streaming Movies!

2010-06-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Streaming movies from Netflix via Wii is the best thing that happened to my TV! Beetlejuice is a great movie, no matter how many times a person sees it. Last night I started watching the Julie/Julia movie. Julie has a blog, which is a big part of the movie. She makes Julia Childs' food and then writes about it. What resulted was a movie deal and a book. It sounds so easy! The big wide world found her blog and liked it. If nothing else, I felt like cooking after watching for a little while. It's unavoidable. I remember watching Julia Childs's cooking show on PBS once a long time ago. It was one of those days, a very, very long time ago, when I had nothing to do, and there was nothing to watch on TV so I watched the only thing that was not golf, tennis, an infomercial, or the shopping channel. I watched it for a few minutes and decided I would rather do something else. But the movie glamorizes her in a very appealing and charming way. By the time either Julie or Julia became tiresome, the movie makers switched to the other one. The one thing that holds me back from cooking creatively is the expanding waistline ... but in my mind, I'm about ready to put together the most amazing grocery list.

Sunday

2010-05-30T08:16:00.001-07:00

Repeat.

Wednesday

2010-05-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Live, learn, evolve. Forget. Repeat.

Airwave Enlightenment

2010-05-13T18:57:00.001-07:00

In my head I have been hearing a phrase I heard on the radio this morning as I was traveling to a contest of sorts: "I compete only with myself."

Norm-Lull

2010-05-05T16:37:00.001-07:00

Life seems incredibly dull at the moment, which I am appreciating because when something remotely novel happens, then I will be superfantastically ecstatically happy about it.

Green

2010-04-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

New growth, sustainable living, recycling, environmentally friendly, and jealousy. That last one has spawned the tiniest bit of envy and sadness of lacking into centuries and centuries and centuries of hard feelings, thinking, action and consequences. A hard concept to grasp is that one's feeling of jealousy exists and is known to only the person who is feeling it, yet it is a universal emotion that is felt by anyone who is human. When a person with the jealous feelings tries to convey it to someone else, especially to the subject who is envied (better quality of life) or who is the object of the jealousy (possible or genuinely strong feelings for someone else), it is difficult for the receiver to relate to the reality of that feeling. Yet it can be so profoundly present in the jealous person's mind. It can consume that person until there is nothing left for that person to think about. Often the qualities or state of life the other person is jealous about are created from sources, events and experiences of which the jealous person has no concept. I read something like that once. Does thinking about such things help when I feel jealous? Not especially. What helps is thinking about all the good things I have that I like about myself and my situation, and thinking that I am glad to be where I am and be who I am.

"Classic English Literature"

2010-04-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

This morning I was wide awake at 2 a.m., perhaps anticipating that I would have to be awake today earlier than usual (but not that early). I was hungry, my knee hurt (bad jumping decision about one month ago), and then the automatic sensor light over the driveway turned itself on and illuminated the place where I sleep. I looked out the window. In front of it, near where my hand landed, was a book, "Pride and Prejudice," that I purchased for 50 cents at a book sale at the public library about three weeks ago (50 percent off sale!).
This weekend, I finally watched a movie about Jane Austen's life, and, after watching it a few times repeatedly in various parts because I kept falling asleep, realized I had never read any of Jane Austen's six novels and then set out a plan to find one (perhaps in my own home). Then I realized early this morning that I had just bought one. So I began reading. I managed to get to page 11, and then the sleepiness crept back in. Despite its sedative effect, I do want to read more.

How One Second Lasts One Week

2010-04-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

At a library book sale last week, at which I arrived about three minutes before its closing time, I picked up a Sophocles book and randomly read the page I turned to. It was a poem that lamented that, at least in my interpretation, the moment of an event is far shorter than the effect it has on a person's mind. I thought about all the time spent dissecting all the momentary incidents, short relationships, and longer relationships I've had and realized how true it was. I've been thinking about that very short moment of reading the line in that poem and I've been thinking about how long I've spent thinking about its implications. So true, so simple, and so strange. All those things that happen to us, momentary or not, make up the intricate structure of who we are. And then I was thinking about how long ago that little line was written, and how long that thought must have been going around.

More Adventures in 3D

2010-04-01T06:29:00.000-07:00

How to Train a Dragon ... now I know, after watching this computer-animated adventure movie, which I was ushered into with comments like, "It's not JUST a kids' movie," and "it was better than Alice," what it's like to fly with one and make it my pet ... just like having a cat except that it flies. Like a cat, it purrs, offers love, communicates with its eyes, circles around to find a comfortable spot to sleep, eats fish and protects me from other creatures. I felt a little seasick on one part, and felt things coming right at me with alarming speed. It was a good ride, though, and having low expectations for a movie always makes it better. Halfway through the movie, things were going very well for the protagonist, and I wondered for awhile when the conflict, chaos and near-tragedy would begin. It finally came and of course everything worked out pretty much for the best. And, I didn't fall asleep as I did when I watched that Alice movie.

Sunday

2010-03-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

I jumped hard on my knee five days ago. I didn't fall, I didn't land funny, I just jumped too hard. I hope my knee goes back to normal some day.
Little tiny buds are coming out everywhere today. Yesterday, some green stalks for flowers came up about a half inch out of the ground in my front yard. Today, they are about three inches out of the ground. I hope the frost doesn't come and whither them to destruction. In the amazing winter we had, it seemed to snow every day in February. Then it didn't snow anymore. Everyone I talk to about the weather thinks it will snow again soon.
The weather is like people's personalities. Sometimes you can make some predictions based on past experiences, but you never really know.

Lucky

2010-03-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I took a walk through the neighborhood, my usual route up and down some steep hills. Toward the end I walked past two women, who had just pulled up into a driveway right next to the road. One of them walked close to me to retrieve the mail from her mailbox. She yelled to woman #2 and said: "When we first moved here I had to get Lucky." Woman #2 said, "What?" Woman #1 said, "When we first moved here, I got Lucky." And Woman #2 said, "WHAT?" As I walked on past, I heard, "When we first moved here, I got Lucky in the car. He was so small back then." Not knowing how the rest of the story went, because I had walked out of hearing range, I smiled the rest of the way back home about the "Who's-on-first" beginning of her story. I repeated the overheard conversation to my friend when I got home, but she didn't laugh.

Scenery

2010-03-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Just a little drive two and a half hours south of here yesterday for work was amazingly uplifting. The closer I got to my destination, the scenic landscape showed gradually disappearing snow all along the sides of the highway. After driving for about an hour and a half, the ground was finally visible and I thought all the brown, yellow, reddish and gray colors of the earth that were illuminated by the brilliant sun that shone everywhere that would have seemed dull at this time of year were .. I don't know how else to say it ... absolutely beautiful. The sky was at its darkest, deepest blue and I listened to old and new songs that made me happy: 1) Sweethearts by Camper Van Beethoven (old), a cynical song about Ronald Reagan, and 2) Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (new), a song that makes me feel that crazy, abandon-all-else, glorious, sunny, all-consuming giddy feeling of being in love for the first time. While I was down south, I heard by telephone that my friend's baby was being born in the afternoon. I got to see photos of the mom and baby.

Friday

2010-03-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Today and yesterday the sun returned after a long absence. Everyone was happy. Yesterday I went to a fundraiser, an event that composed one of a string of fund-raising events I seem to be a part of, or a visitor of, lately. There's another one on Sunday, and yet another a few weeks from now that I will be attending. Friends are bringing a baby into the world today, a lot sooner than expected. Life is amazing.

Please Melt So You Can Help Heat My House Again

2010-03-04T04:06:00.000-08:00

The heat pump has been broken for more than a month. We've been using what is called here "emergency heat," which is traditional electric heat, minus the "air handler." True to what the repairman told me yesterday, the heat pump reduces cost by three to one. Usually the electric bill is $100 per month, and the previous month's bill was three times that much. Repair guy says he can't fix it until the huge block of ice melts the blades of the fan outside, and he insists on having mother nature do the work for him.

Peppermint

2010-03-03T04:04:00.000-08:00

"The Green Pharmacy," by James A. Duke, says that peppermint is good for anti-aging, backache, bad breath, earache, emphysema, fever, gallstones, gingivitis, headache, heartburn, hives, indigestion, morning sickness, nausea, pain, scabies and sinusitis.

Existential Monday

2010-03-01T15:47:00.000-08:00

I thought long and hard today about how to break up the monotony. I thought about it, and I tried to think about all the great things about my life. I'm glad I don't live in an earthquake zone, I'm glad I don't have a son who just committed suicide (I'm thinking of Marie Osmond and the parents of that guy who acted in Growing Pains), I'm glad I have my own room and my own place and I'm glad I have enough shoes for awhile. But as for the monotony ... I'm still thinking. It could last forever; forever, that is, until I die, and then what? I could be doomed to eternal monotony, but only I control my destiny. And when I refer to "eternal," I mean however long that will last.

Saturday

2010-02-28T08:41:00.000-08:00

Three weeks until the first day of spring. I spent lots of time removing ice and snow from the driveway and front porch. Last night I watched "A Prairie Home Companion," but I either fell asleep or got otherwise distracted toward the end of the movie. I couldn't decide whether you had to be a solid fan of the radio show in order to appreciate the movie. I've listened to it from time to time, in bits and pieces, and sometimes it's a little funny, and sometimes the musicians are really great. It used to play at our house on Saturday nights when I was five, six, seven years old. My mom thought the "Ahooa Hot Sauce" commercial was really funny, but I did not.
Today I will try to travel somewhere.

Things That Start With "Z"

2010-02-23T20:48:00.000-08:00

Sometime this morning I dreamed that my children went to the zoo with a friend. When everyone returned home, I discovered that the friend had helped the children take some seals, or perhaps sea lions, from the zoo to have at home as pets. We did have a pool that was kind of hidden in the floor. But it was unclear to me what to do with them. I thought they should be returned, but then we would all face serious consequences, no matter what. We could keep them as pets, but why? Was chlorinated water OK? Every once in a while I would check in on them, while pondering what to do, and they seemed to have enough water and food. What should we feed them? What if the pool ran out of water? Do they have to have water to swim in, to live? I was stuck with the burden of figuring out a problem that someone else created for me. A big problem. If only I could take those seals back to the zoo, and not raise any suspicions and not have to answer any questions, everything would be just fine. (Can you imagine? "Pardon me, Zookeeper Al, we mistakenly thought these seals were ours, and then, upon getting home, realized we should never have taken them out of their rocky little habitat here.") It just wasn't possible. The consequences were inescapable. The burden was just too big. There were too many of them. Six, maybe 10, 12.
In waking life, about two weeks ago, I lost the zoo magnet that was on the back of the car. I miss that magnet.

Quiet

2010-02-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

The children were gone from the house all day and all night. The house was very quiet. We all worked to clean up before they left. One hat was left on the floor in front of the couch, a striped, funky handmade hat left behind in the rush of their departure. The little hat has been with us for 13 years, and was a gift from a friend. The hat made me realize how just a few short years of childhood after the busy toddler years lead to little pieces of our youth being left behind for bigger and better things. And then we are all grown up, a long and painful and never-ending process. I hope they return soon, so I can help make the rest of their childhoods the most productive, educational, healthy and love-filled childhoods they can be.

Altered Realities

2010-02-15T05:30:00.001-08:00

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus mysteriously appeared with no fanfare at the little theater downtown this Friday. I'm not sure when this movie was released, and I'm pretty sure it didn't come to the bigger, modern theaters at the mall and the new town center here. This is Heath Ledger's last movie, the one in which he died during the filming and Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Collin Ferrell replaced him in the Imaginarium through-the-looking-glass parts. My expectations were probably too high for this movie -- I anticipated fantastical special effects, an unusual set of characters and situations, explanations that made sense, and good acting, but none of those expectations were met. When one steps through the imaginarium, scenes unfolded that seemed no better than the 1960s-ish effects from the scenes in the Mary Poppins movie in which Mary Poppins and friends sing with the penguins, fishes and carousel horses. Maybe that was supposed to make it charming and old-fashioned, but it seemed gritty and unimaginatarium-like to me.
The following day I watched "The Wolfman," for which I had no expectations. I suspect this movie had a bigger budget, because the scenery was beautiful and dramatic, the characters were believable, and Anthony Hopkins was just a little bit terrifying. In both movies, reality was changed by the supernatural, but in very different ways. There are those movies and situations in real life when our realities are altered, sometimes as if by magic or the supernatural. Some people crave that altered reality and some people steer as far away as possible from it.

How About That Weather?

2010-02-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

I believe, without measuring, we got about 14 inches of snow Saturday. I shoveled six to eight inches out of the driveway Friday night, about six inches more Saturday morning, an inch or two Saturday afternoon, and another inch on Sunday. Make that 16 inches, then. I would venture to guess that the amount of snow in this county depends on what side of town you measuring from. I saw the blue sky and a glimmer of brilliant, sideways sunlight, ever so briefly on Saturday from about 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. I also made some amazing rack of lamb with couscous and lima beans this evening.

How a Rock and A Leaf Can Make a Drive Home Better

2010-02-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

In October we were taking a walk in the neighborhood. We found a cement post by a dentist's office that was about three or four feet high. It's the kind of post that prevents cars from crashing into a dentist's building. We put a red maple leaf on top of the post, with a rock on top of it to hold it down. From October until now, we check on our leaf and rock, when we think of it, when we drive by. It makes us smile a little bit, to know the leaf and the rock are still there, and because, in a way, the leaf looks like it's waving to us. They've almost become our friends. It also makes me happy because it reminds me of how we can amuse ourselves, and construct our own intricate realities, to make life sweet.

Travel

2010-01-31T17:39:00.000-08:00

Amazing what a change of scenery, beautiful landscape, and friendly people can do to lift a person's mood, as I state again like I have stated before, I'm sure. Today was sunny (but bitterly cold) and immeasurably bright, and I got to drive home in a glowing, exhilarating sunset that gave the earth a pink aura. I think of how we are all stuck in our boxes at home, and how so many people missed out on a great sunset. The way society has evolved has turned us into constructs of solitariness, and away from what makes us feel alive -- travel, connections, horizons, sun, trees, clouds, wind, fresh air, buildings, rivers, flowers, communalism and amazing coincidences. You can't get so much of that at home.

Loaf, is what she said. And more.

2010-01-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

Sunday a waitress explained to me what "scrapple" is, and I almost wasn't hungry anymore.

Distance

2010-01-25T16:48:00.000-08:00

This past weekend we took a journey to the homeland, and saw Avatar for the second time. We celebrated a birthday and sang Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog as requested by the birthday subject, enjoying her closest 20 friends and family members as we ate at a Chinese restaurant. We sang and ate there last year, except that last year I arrived close to the end of dinner because I went, in search of the right place, to the other three Chinese restaurants in town first, even though I had passed by the right restaurant when I first drove in to town and would have been on time if I'd known that restaurant had changed its name from the name I knew.
This evening I contemplated going over to my neighbor's house to explain that his two bags of trash had fallen into my driveway and a lot of it had spilled out onto my hillside and yard. I don't think he could see it from his place. He wasn't friendly, but said he'd take care of it. I was nice. He was standoff-ish. I hate it when the pull of energy is not the same between two people. It leaves me feeling off balance. I was thinking about the dynamics of physics and space in relationships yesterday when I took a walk. It is rare when two people share the same energy and feeling for each other. When it happens, you somehow, somewhere, feel the connection and the other person feels it, too. I just think it's physical, physics, in the invisible energy waves. As basic as it seems, it feels good to commit it to words.

Traffic

2010-01-21T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today I was amazed and blissful about seeing an ad for Blue Moon on the back of a beer delivery truck. It was a giant moon, with streaks and variations of blue, orange, and yellow, created artistically to look like a painting that should be framed. All the colors were cheerful and moody at the same time. It was beautiful. I thought, "Blue Moon just gets me." Oh ... also, the sun was shining brilliantly, something we haven't seen in a long while.

Wednesday

2010-01-20T17:19:00.001-08:00

I was dwelling on the negativity I've been feeling in the last couple of days, and trying not to but not doing such a good job at it (it's wholly irrational, really), and then I read this today and now I feel as if I've transcended all evil. Momentarily. It was exactly what I needed.

Friday

2010-01-16T07:21:00.001-08:00

No books, no movies, no spectacular moments or amazing coincidences. Just work.

Planet turns

2010-01-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

Roads are icy. My head is full of sickness. It has been 20 degrees outside. Thanks to my dad, my car's tires do well on this ice. I'm remembering my wish lists that I've written about in the last year or so. In one way or another, I've obtained almost everything I wanted. It's great to go back and think, made possible by documentation, of how much I've accomplished. Our natures cause us to keep pushing forward and think about what we want to accomplish next, what we need and what we want. When it feels like we're stuck, we can see that life has been constantly moving forward, little by little. Sometimes we don't feel the earth moving under our feet.

Slow

2009-12-31T07:25:00.000-08:00

I saw a little rabbit in my neighborhood on my way home yesterday. It was dark, but there it was. I had Thai noodles from the Kroger deli. I don't even like Thai noodles. I usually forget that it means, at least here in the U.S., that it has peanut butter in it. It has been a long, slow vacation. This week, being the parent of a teenager stings a little bit, for all of us in the house. I want to do the right thing.

Again

2009-12-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

What is it about repetition that makes us who we are, or who we are not? Do we repeat the same mistakes because we have to? Our brains know no other way? We haven't learned the lessons that our pasts have tried to teach us? We have more to learn from more mistakes? When will we change? When we want to? We all say the world is constantly changing. We also say that life repeats itself. A cycle of circles we live in. All are different, yet all are shaped the same. Make one circle, go around again. Trees grow this way. Seasons go this way. Birth, life and death go this way. Why do I want something better for myself, when repetition is life? How often is the word "again" used in a positive context?

Chance Passage

2009-12-29T08:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I came across this part of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan Kunder, which caused me to read it over a few times and think a little more: "Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup." Thanks, Mr. Kunder; when you're not extolling the virtues of womanizing (through Tomas), you're helping to enrich my day.
Post script: I've never talked to anyone about coffee grounds at the bottom of my cup. I thought I was the only one who tried to make sense out of the patterns.

What I Take

2009-12-28T07:11:00.001-08:00

There was a brilliant, full rainbow on Christmas day at about 4 p.m. Our best gift! Our best Christmas ever! We had snow, sunshine and not-too-cold temperatures. We had family, we had friends, and we had great food. My friend gave me his i-Pod, the very i-Pod I found in the trunk of my car last March, full of amazing songs. I got to spend the night, Christmas night, at a president's house, with great and wonderful people, some of my very favorites.

So

2009-12-24T23:35:00.000-08:00

Today I started reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which had been recommended by a friend who touts it as The Book He Would Have Wanted to Write Himself -- maybe the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a book. So far, I've read to about page 20 and it has made me feel so sad. The main character has so carefully constructed his life to have made no emotional attachments to women, and many affairs, with rules involved so that he does not become attached. He calls it the rule of threes: either be with a woman three times in what he calls rapid succession and then never see her again; or carefully schedule engagements with a woman so that at least three weeks pass by before each encounter. That is the story of the successful lothario/womanizer. I suspect the reason my friend likes this book is not directly related to this character's womanizing habits, but more based upon the quality of the introspection and placid analytical style this author has exhibited that I have observed so far. I perused through a few of this author's other books, and I find similar womanizing themes in at least one of them. I wondered what it's like to be inside the head of someone who has no feeling, no emotion, no attachment to women and creates this state of being on purpose. But to read about it makes me feel used, abused and kicked around. I don't like it. None of the qualities of the women being used must matter much to that person who seeks no emotional attachment. That's a horrible feeling. This is a problem I have with some of the other books I've read. And they have one thing in common. Male authors. They know this stuff.

Winter bliss

2009-12-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

Today I've looked at hundreds of photos of snowy vistas. I know some people who know some other people who have great cameras, four-wheel drive vehicles, and like to ski. I wonder if I would be a skier if I could afford it. The fresh air, the exercise and the camaraderie seem exhilarating.

How to Fix Regret

2009-12-13T19:59:00.000-08:00

Today I was going over in my head a small event that happened in July of 1993. A day of a seemingly carefully weighed decision happened that triggered more than a decade of regret. I was 20 years old. I had been dating someone for two weeks. I was blissfully happy and thought I had found an amazingly awesome person who had everything and offered everything I could ever want in someone. He was easygoing, funny, tall and good-looking. He had sparkly green eyes, beautiful hands, and liked everything I liked and his artistic nature was something I resonated with. I knew that after two weeks there was a lot more that I would want to get to know, but I loved what I knew so far. He wanted me to come with him to where he lived, 40 minutes away from my house. I was expecting an old friend to come and visit me then. He was traveling an hour and a half away. I left to be with the new guy to go to his house. The new guy told me if I waited for my old friend, I would never hear from him again (new guy). I tried to call my old friend and tell him I wasn't going to be home. I called and there was no answer. I left. I left a note. I thought about it and I didn't want to lose the new guy, or lose a chance to get to know the new guy better.
Later I realized this was the first of many control tactics the new guy would use to manipulate me. Later I realized how badly I treated my old friend. My old friend is still my friend, but probably still has not forgiven me for my utter inconsideration. At the time, when I apologized, he said that he was coming to town to visit another friend anyway, so it was no big deal. I don't know if it's true, but I do know that I still feel badly about it. If I could go back and change the past, this would be the one thing I would change. I would have stayed for my old friend. I would have picked up on the control tactic and made the new guy go back to his house by himself, no matter whether he would have talked to me ever again. I guess the question is how can this regret make me a better person? What can I do to make it better?

Saturday

2009-12-06T07:51:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I went for a walk in the snow for about an hour. I got a phone call toward the end of my walk and I had trouble talking because my face was kinda frozen. Earlier that day I read through a cookbook and decided to make a few recipes from it, mostly involving baking. I bought ingredients for three of the recipes, plus a lot of other food, and ended up spending way too much at the store. I had to walk by some bubbly college students who were running the Salvation Army bucket outside the store. They were serenading everyone who walked by, including me.
The day before that I had a conversation with someone about another person who practices witchcraft, and it got me thinking about manipulation. Does the draw to become a witch attract people who like to manipulate people and things? But at the same time, does it involve peaceful interaction and respect of nature and mother earth above all else? Don't the two contradict each other? How to reconcile the desire to manipulate and the desire to live in harmony with all existence? I wonder.

Saturday

2009-12-05T10:28:00.001-08:00

If not for John Cusack, 2012 would have been a miserable failure. It's just that I have something against disaster movies. One of my favorite parts is when some guy puts his hands on his face ("Home Alone"-style) and exclaims, "We're all going to die!"

Wednesday

2009-12-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Things are very quiet here. I made some chicken burgers and baked whole sweet potatoes. I took a walk. It rained a little on my walk but I had a hat and a raincoat. Things were very quiet outside. It's been hard at work. It's been quiet. It gets dark so early in the evening. I want to get this Wednesday over with.

I Love You, Mr. Fox

2009-11-29T08:43:00.000-08:00

After a string of movie-watching of lackluster blockbuster films, I finally saw a magnificent movie that kept me laughing and interested from beginning to end. Wednesday I watched Twilight's New Moon movie (sappy, melodramatic and dry); Friday I watched A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey (I fell asleep 3/4 of the way through it); and Saturday, The Fantastic Mr. Fox -- quirky, witty, artistic, crafty, hilarious, doll house-like, picking up on subtleties and details of life that make a movie great.

Combinations of Stripes, Blocks and Color

2009-11-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

Today the three members of our household each wore a plaid shirt. Funny how we all enjoy a good plaid. Plaid is fascinating to me because some of the combinations of color can evoke a variety of imagines and feelings, like of woodsmanship, scotsmanship, privateschoolmanship, scotchtapemanship, order, process, and complexity. Varying widths of stripes come together to cross, overlap, and weave to create new colors and layers of squares and rectangles. Plaid can be versatile -- understated or overstated; conservative or liberal; cheery or dark. But with all those things, plaid can still maintain a neutrality that is unparalleled by any other type of pattern. Flowers can be too floral and feminine, stripes can be too stiff and confining, circles can be obnoxious, argyle too conservative, and checkers too uninteresting.

Yay, The Fiddle

2009-11-25T05:24:00.000-08:00

Ah, the fiddle competition. My annual visit to the Mountainlair brought me fresh pasta from Elkins, pasta chips from Elkins, a packed-house fiddle competition and the usual perusing of West Virginia-made art. Oh, and maple sugar candy. I cannot figure out why the delicacy of the maple sugar candy is not more widely available. I find it about once every two years. Better than anything, I tell you.
Each competing fiddler played two songs. There were five prizes, and a wandering fiddler from Chicago who just "happened to be passing through" won two of the prizes. Really? Was it by chance, circumstance, or compelling competition-stance? The youngest competitor looked to be about six years old, and she was brave and skilled. The oldest (well, probably the oldest), Elmer Rich, is a local musician in his 90s who is amazingly and magically talented. Sweet, sad, slow, graceful, perfectly in tune, and just perfect. I didn't want him to stop playing. He was funny, too. Most of the fiddlers told short funny stories to introduce their songs. This was my first attendance at a fiddle competition, I believe. I am certain I will be going back next year.

Early Week

2009-11-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

Sunday I visited the pristine Mason-Dixon park, climbed a ridge and walked along it to the post that marks the line between West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The walk was leafy, sunny, peaceful and, of course, beautiful. Before that day, I didn't know a couple of benches could impress me so much. They were put together so simply, and were placed along the route in the most picturesque of places. There were some lessons around on the white signs that had to do with the history of some of the battles involving the Catawba and Delaware tribes (I think) and a story of a woman who axed three people to death near there.
Back at the flea market on Sunday, people were packing up when we got there. You go too often and things seem a little stale.
I didn't sleep well Sunday and was miserable on Monday. When the week starts, I wish to be ready for it. Sometimes that level of predictable responsibility seems to me to be most mundane, though.

2009-11-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

The previous posts are significantly uninteresting. Please don't read them.

Sunday

2009-11-08T16:34:00.001-08:00

Today when I was driving I came upon the scene of a car accident. The first time I passed by, nothing was happening. About 20 minutes later, I came by on the way back from where I was going and saw a lot of black smoke. Fire engulfed about half of a Toyota and the car's windshield was shattered. The flames were high, maybe about five or six feet above the car. Then I saw a body lying in the median. He wasn't moving and he looked completely lifeless. I found out later he died there. He was driving his motorcycle and hit the car on its side, and that's what caused the car fire. We passed by before the emergency response people came, but there were some fireman there (without trucks) trying to direct traffic while the fire blazed.

Not So Good Monday

2009-11-03T03:07:00.000-08:00

Almost every day for the past week, we've missed the bus and I've been later than I have wanted to be for work. Two people were having birthdays at work, so we went to the Olive Garden for lunch. Our waiter was super-fast, super-hyper, and smelled good. He didn't care how close he got to anyone to lean over to put cheese on our food. A waitress was in training with him and she was twirling her hair.

Halloween

2009-11-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

This weekend I watched the movie "An American Crime," with Ellen Page and Catherine Keener. The movie is based on a true story about a terrible, terrible crime. I was sad about it for the rest of the weekend. After I read more about the story, I felt even worse. In Indiana in 1965, a 16-year-old girl was imprisoned in a basement and was tortured. Her parents worked for a carnival, and they paid a woman who had six kids to take care of the girl and her sister for $20 a week. The mother and her children and the neighborhood kids all participated in the abuse.
The movie I watched the day before was surprisingly good -- War, Inc., with John Cusack. I'm always amused, as are most people, I'm sure, when Joan Cusack unexpectedly turns up as one of his cohorts, costars, sidekicks, in some kind of cameo appearance or small character. Why is John Cusack so infinitely cool? Is it because he plays complicated characters? Is it because he has pretty good taste in the movies he picks? The soundtrack was great in the movie. Hillary Duff stars in the movie and plays a sickeningly trite pop star, and she sings a couple of the songs. The movie seems to take place in the present, but in an alternate world where corporations have essentially replaced government, but the difference is that their influence is not subversive. The movie has, as all good movies have, a blend of the elements of many different kinds of movies in it -- comedy, beauty, tragedy, action, violence, philosophy, literature, action, and something interesting to think about. I'm sure there's a good word for that, but I'm too tired to be creative.

Tuesday

2009-10-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

The sound of an old satin dress tearing sounds like the noises from a cat fight. Two hours of shopping for Halloween costumes yielded nothing. So we are getting creative with old dresses.

Sunday

2009-10-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Today the weather was its most brilliant, and the colors were golden, red, and yellow against a beautifully deep blue sky. I spent a lot of time outside, and got some good deals at the Sunday flea market. I found some Star of David glasses for 10 cents, and a couple of silver racks for 25 cents. For a total of 90 cents, I came away from the flea market very happy. There was also an old Schwinn bike with basket that made someone very happy after the expenditure of $10.
Last night I attended a Dracula play, a production of college students. The costumes, sound, set, scenery and the acting were spooky and captivating. There was an incredible, eerie, black and white illustrated tapestry that was about three stories tall that served as some of the background scenery and scene-changing screens. Most actors were wearing freakish wigs and there was a lot of fog onstage. In a couple of graveyard scenes, the fog rolled perfectly across the stage, as if emanating from the hallowed cemetery ground, and at other times the fog looked like apparitions of paranormal activity. At some plays, I can shift listlessly in my seat, wondering why I thought coming was such a great idea, and wondering how much longer I have to wait to see whether it will get any better. But at Dracula last night, I had an affection for theatre.

Energy

2009-10-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

Last night all this energy consumed me to such a boundless extent that I cleaned, cleaned, cleaned for hours. I threw away months', maybe years', worth of clutter in my room that had accumulated from the U.S. Postal Service and school functions. I did laundry, folded and put away laundry, cooked, got the oil changed in my car, found some good stuff at Goodwill, cleaned up another room, and vacuumed. I did all that for 10 hours. I think all this energy comes from happiness! It scares me a little bit because I know it's only temporary and I don't want to see it end.

Wednesday

2009-10-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

I finally got to the woods! My walking companion took my photograph with her iPhone, as I was standing on the rock overlooking a giant canyon, and posted it to Facebook while we were standing on the rock. It was brilliantly sunny and colorful all day at work (at least the view from my office window told me so), but by the time I got to the overlook, it was a little overcast, but really not bad.

Tuesday

2009-10-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

Everyone is talking about the weather today. Brilliant, sunny, warm, a world away from last week. I'm talking about going into the woods this afternoon. There is nothing better.

Balconies and Bootstrapping

2009-10-18T05:21:00.001-07:00

Last night I read some stuff I had written down about eight years ago. I was again reminded by reading it how much I got out of evidence class. I wrote, "Everything I learned about life I learned in evidence class." I wrote about the concept of bootstrapping, which my professor talked about, to mean that one event can be used as a tool to accomplish something else. I was writing that I was trying to put clean laundry away, hanging up the clothes on hangers. The hangers were getting all tangled and I had clothes in one hand and hangers in the other. For a second I got annoyed because I couldn't untangle the hangers with just one hand, then realized that I didn't just need one hanger, I needed both, and I could use one to pick up the other, like they were plastic monkeys in a plastic barrel (also known as using the path of least resistance). I thought a lot about how that could be applied in other useful ways, and about how interrelated each event is to all other events in our lives. I started trying to figure out solutions to problems that will help me with other problems. I believe the concept of bootstrapping that my professor was trying to get across, is that a piece of evidence at a trial might be able to be introduced for only a certain purpose, but its value might be in something else that that piece of evidence happens to show.
Something else I had written down then was interesting that I was reminded of, completely unrelated to the above except that it was something I came across from the same time period. In one of my other classes, the book used for the class had advice for how to objectively view any given difficult situation. The author said to imagine yourself standing on a balcony, looking down on the situation from above, and evaluating at a distance what is going on and what should be done. I wonder, do other people do that?
I'm really, really, really glad I wrote so much and still have what I wrote from that time. Life repeats itself, and things that were happening to me in there are coming around again, and I'm remembering, in a visceral way, how much I had to deal with and how I got through it.

A Weekend Education

2009-10-17T05:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I'm taking a refresher class on Evidence by a somewhat famous (at least to me) professor from a law school in New York. He's a lively talker; he's funny, pauses at all the right and dramatic moments, and he's anecdotal and direct. The way a good professor should be!
Taking the class reminds me of how interesting I found the topic of Evidence to be. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years have gone by, tweaking the development of how we present the Truth to the Court. What is considered True? Not something that someone else said or wrote (most of the time); just what someone has observed or experienced herself. What makes something more believable or not? Not that that person has been convicted of a completely different, unrelated crime (sometimes) ... unless it's used for a certain specific purpose and the conviction was a felony (most of the time). What kind of information do we need about a photograph before we can consider the truth of its contents? Who took it, where it was taken, when it was taken, what it represents, why it's relevant ... and does its probative value outweigh the likelihood that it will be prejudicial to the jury?
I was trying to explain to someone how exciting I find Evidence to be. She responded by saying, "It's all so subjective, isn't it?" And I said, "But it is objective. Our society has tried to create a system of presenting the truth in the most non-subjective way possible; that's the beauty of it."
Later on as I was cleaning up after dinner I thought some more about those hundreds and hundreds of years of developing Evidence law. I remembered earlier that day, walking through the room where the lecture was being presented, seeing large portraits of distinguished-looking men. I realized that probably 99.99 percent of those books and laws and cases and rules were developed by legions and legions and legions of men, at least prior to the 1970s.
I wonder if it would be different if more women had been involved in legal history. Would it be the same? Can the men speak for us? Is it all just a bunch of gender-neutral logic?

Monday

2009-10-12T08:10:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I had an eventful and amazing Sunday, just as a fair-weather Sunday should be. Coffee, wilderness, great food, walking, driving, and taking in the fall scenery. I checked out the dog park downtown, for the first time, and it was a friendly and laid-back place. I saw a man with an easel set up by the river downtown, and he was creating an oil painting in purple and gray of the Mon River scene. The day before I heard some good music and talked to good people.
The annoying trivialities of trying to get through life had been eroding my usual buoyancy on Friday: strings of inconveniences and disorienting events, like dropping things that should have been easy to hold, forgetting things that made me circle back out of my way to retrieve them, which made me get caught in a flood-making downpour, getting caught in traffic behind the drivers who drive 15 miles per hour, hitting all the red lights and the potholes, one after another ... and being sensitive to those trivial setbacks without the ability to be impervious to them. I used to think that meant that I was tired. Or unhappy. Or both.
I don't know how I turned it around for myself this weekend, but I did.

Signs

2009-10-07T17:34:00.000-07:00

I found out that no one got to say goodbye to my neighbor before she died. Last week, on Tuesday, she broke or fractured her hip. Her husband told me they thought she would be home soon, but he was called early that next morning and was told to come to the hospital. They told him that his wife was gone, and he said, "Where did she go?" Apparently she had a heart attack, possibly as a result of the trauma of the fall.
Today I passed the Sheetz sign that tells customers, quite loudly, that they have the Lowest Cig Prices Around, or something like that. I feel so bad. Only about a month ago or two, at her request, I went to Sheetz with $2o she gave me and bought about four or five packs of Lowest-Priced Cigs for her. I suppose I wouldn't have refused to buy someone cigarettes, and wouldn't have done anything differently, but I still feel somewhat ... irresponsible for helping her do something that was probably killing her.

The End

2009-09-30T19:34:00.001-07:00

I found out my neighbor died today. I didn't see it coming. I hadn't seen her outside on the porch in a few weeks, but I related her absence to the weather getting colder. She was too young to go, but she had health problems. We were geographically close. We shared a wall in our duplex. Her husband came this afternoon to tell us that she died this morning. I tried to think of people I could talk to about it, but I was having a hard time figuring that out. This has never happened to me before. (I do recall when my grandmother's neighbor Kitty died. I thought of her mostly because my grandparents gave me Kitty's wooden art supply box full of paints and brushes, and I used that box a lot. I only talked to Kitty a few times.) I wonder about what to do and what to say to my neighbor who just lost his wife. I haven't yet talked to him about it; only heard the news from my daughter who heard it from him.
She had a special name for my cat. We helped each other out. I didn't get to say goodbye. We knew things about each other that no one else knew, like when I stayed at home from work or when she was out of cigarettes.
I wonder if there will come a time when I will be that neighbor. Maybe I'll just slip away peacefully in a forgotten nursing home cell. There, the neighbors'll be kicking off all over the place so it'll be just another event there at the rest home.

Stuck

2009-09-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I've been thinking into the long-ago past, revisiting some unpleasant memories about me having to pay back a loan during some rough times. It wasn't my idea to take the loan out in the first place; it was at my then-husband's insistence. We divorced, and I got stuck with 100 percent of the payments for almost three years because he wasn't able or willing to pay his half. I paid the $142 faithfully every month, and made the last and final payment due when I finished graduate school. The loan originally went mostly to buy a new computer, which I never saw or got to use. I tried (and try) not to dwell on the tragedy of the totality of it all, about how all of our individual monetary choices started and ended exactly the same way, but now it comes back to haunt me in the future, when various current events force me to revisit the past. I generally think of myself as someone who hasn't had very many bad things happen to her. Last week a co-worker told me that I seem to have a lot of bad luck, and she thinks it's because I'm such a nice, pleasant, and positive person, and that the universe has to temper that by having me run into bad luck. I found that observation to be rather preposterous, but at least it contained a few compliments. I just try to think of each negative event in my life as a learning experience, but it's difficult to keep that focus when the past keeps coming back around. Sometimes it helps to remind myself that things are so much better now than they used to be.