Silent Saturday

Everyone here at 's place is asleep, except for me -- and the cats who are just cat napping. The sun fingers the closed blinds looking for a way to get in and I am awake and a bit congested. Strange dreams chased me all night, dreams that I still remember despite their kaleidoscopic changes. Cleaning oilcloth covered tables and yanking off ants with their mandibles deep in my flesh who are determined to get the crumbs of food I'm washing away. Strangely intelligent men with bi-racial daughters asking questions about divorce so they can marry the woman of their dreams. Pools of water that anemically suck at me while I hang onto a granite-faced wall to flush out the pool. People I've never met discussing the night attire of women in pictures, women I know and whose over-sized clothes I pull away from their slender bodies to demonstrate how they fail to fill out the semi-transparent silk gowns. Expounding at length on divorce law and how to obtain a real quickie divorce without going to Mexico, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic (I did a series of short articles on divorce for a law web site recently) and running the risk of having your divorce ruled invalid. Walking silent moon bathed streets in unknown cities and passing pockets of shadow full of chattering people. And the dreams continued.

I wonder if all those dreams could possibly be the result of an enjoyable night of Constantine at Tinseltown in Colorado Springs followed by a wandering drive, after being separated from my friends I was following, down to the Broadmoor and the really ritzy side of town, then back onto I-25 and down Academy to Constitution where I stopped at a Sinclair station to ask the name of the restaurant and directions. came to the gas station and gave me directions and I followed her (sort of) to this little Chinese place off Powers where we had a feast and much laughter. talked to the service staff and asked them to sing happy birthday to me in Chinese, but I got away unsung. They must have forgotten and I didn't remind anyone. Then we went next door for a bit of ice cream (mmmm amaretto) and then back to the apartment to talk and enjoy a few quiet moments. As usual, the muse and I stayed up past midnight while poor , who also served as navigator to the restaurant after my solo trek, stood huddled in his blanket with a pleading, mournful and somewhat toe-tapping-you're-keeping-me-from-sleeping look on his face.

All in all, the contemplative drive from my mountain aerie to the Springs accompanied by some really good music on a sunny and peaceful day, and despite the hassle of traffic slow downs and congestion (worse than the one in my head and sinuses today), and a good time with great friends made up for the rotten birthday I had the day before. Well, that, and a quick chat with , who insisted that he did NOT forget my birthday the day before but rather did remember and just didn't send his natal day wishes until the time had passed because he was busy, early in the morning and before I left the snow-flocked fastness of my little secluded hideaway, made my day.

I debated stopping to drop off some books to but demurred since the traffic was so horrendous and I was behind schedule, and since I will see him Tuesday morning when he drops me off at the airport for my trip to New Jersey.

But this morning when the muse clan wakes from their television-accompanied night of dreams I have been threatened with apple fritters at Krispy Kreme and a chat with a notorious female of malign purpose who, I have been informed, will attempt to charm me and throw me off her fetid track (but will fail miserably). There will be a trip to various marts for business and a jaunt thru the local environs and dives so that I may learn a little more about my soon to be adopted home. Tomorrow will dawn somewhere beyond the darkened windows here and I will be off in the dark to Aurora for a hamfest where I fully expect to buttonhole some experienced hams and soak my psyche and dreams in the magic of electronics and radio for a few hours, a trip I am looking forward to with relish -- not to be confused with hot dog relish which is a much different condiment altogether.

I think I'll hop back in bed with Tolkien and finish Frodo's latest adventure while I wait for the house to wake. In the meantime, may your day be what you wish and may you find something to smile about.

Getting kicked...

...is no fun, especially when you have to pick yourself up without help, and I've been kicked a lot lately, which is pretty apparent in some of my recent posts. However, this time I'm picking myself up, dusting myself off, and focusing on a different horizon for a change, and it is out there.

The sun is bright and the clouds are a brilliant soaring blue with mare's tails whipping across the sky, whisking away snow, and pain, and sadness.

I am going to the Springs this weekend and will be gone for about a week. I also have to go to New Mexico for a story and interviews next weekend, but in the interim between trips I will be staying with my good and dear friend, elementalmuse, and her kids, both of whom I adore. I may sneak a chance or two to update while I'm there, but most of the time will be devoted to getting back all the energy I have expended on so many other things and people. I plan to see a few sights in the Springs, walk a few trails, and commune with nature in the Garden of the Gods. I need to get back to the source. I will also share energy with a very wonderful group of people who belong to Shadow Myst and meet some new faces while we mingle energies and stories for a little while. Then it's off to New Jersey for some training, a lot of reading, and maybe a stroll or two along unfamiliar pathways.

When I get back next week, just before I journey to the source of ancient powers and beauties and share a meal with the indomitable Mentalfuse just to shake up his world with a little intensity and a lot of shared laughter and smiles, I'll reconnect with some beloved energy.

I have been upset and hurt and in a lot of pain lately because of someone dear to me who is dealing with his own pain. Instead of being a good friend and a loving support I have focused on the wrong horizons. Time to change the view, take off the blinders, and see the horizon anew.

So to my beloved friend I offer bright blessings and love in this time of confusion, doubt, and fear. May my insights light your path and show you that ignoring your problems and not taking care of yourself, punishing yourself for things you cannot change and should let go, will only drag you deeper into despair. When you're ready to lift your head, take a deep breath of the fresh air of hope, and step back into the light I will be waiting to walk beside you on the path.

Just when you think it's safe...

...to count on life again you find it isn't.

The next two weeks are going to be very hectic for me, so hectic in fact that I was rather looking forward to the change of pace, but as usual the flies have mated and spawned in the ointment, and all on my birthday. What a wonderful gift.

Sound a little less cheerful than my usual mood? You're right.

In the past few weeks although some things have settled down and I have had good news it seems that the warm spell, like last year's non-existent summer, are short lived. The news I was expecting today that all would be well and the drought was over came with a huge surprise, that the drought continues unabated. So now what do I do? I keep on breathing and walking and taking chances and living. There are no other options.

Lately I have been described as intense and a little like looking directly at the sun, which can blind you. However, I wonder if that's really a bad thing. Isn't it better to know where you stand with someone than to constantly have to guess or to play mindless, childless, and often destructive relationship games only to find the person you thought you knew was a simulacrum, a construct, barely human? It could be that I am too basic, too clear, too honest, and too focused, that I look people directly in the eye when talking to them and I make my wishes, thoughts, and desires known, that I don't do ambiguity well and that what you see with me is exactly what you get. I always thought those were positive attributes, but I have been told they are not.

I understand how difficult it is to face up to what you feel and believe and think and tell people exactly that, especially when it isn't rewarded in any way, shape, or form, but what are the options, subterfuge, lies, dishonesty, hiding? Eventually the truth will come out and then you get to spend a lot of time shoveling raw sewage, which is seldom pleasant unless you have no sense of smell at all and don't mind wallowing in filth. I used to be the same way, ignoring things and hoping they would get better or go away, but they never did. Instead they presented me with bigger problems that grew exponentially out of control to the point that they became unmanageable. Ignorance is not bliss, especially when you have to wake up eventually and face life.

Okay, so I can be intense and I am focused, and I look people directly in the eye, and I am exactly who and what I appear to be, there are worse ways to be. Look around.

Truth has become an option instead of the rule of thumb. Honesty is something to bargain with, a tantalizing bit of bait to dangle and pull away when the mood strikes or when the fish/person is hooked and it's too late to spit out the hook because it's deeply embedded, not to mention costly when you wish to disentangle yourself. Lies have become disinformation and strategy. Evasion is commonplace; after all who wants to piss someone off or hurt their feelings when you can side step the issue and play free and easy with the facts?

It's not for me, this wholesale devaluation of honesty, truth, integrity, and motives, so I guess that means I will continue to be alone in my ever shrinking world of truth and justice, and that will have to do this time around. There are worse things than looking directly at the sun and blindness, apathy and fear are just a few of them.

As for me, I will continue to be bold, intense, forthright, and unstintingly honest whatever the cost because the only other option is more of the same halfway attitudes that passes for living.

Happy Valentine's Day?

Valentine's day is an awful day if you have no one to share it with. But when you do...

It is also not a good idea to thank someone for sending you two dozen beautiful red roses without checking the card first. I got a shock and I'm still not sure it's a good one. I thanked someone for the beautiful roses only to be told they didn't send them. Embarrassed, I searched the box for a card that had slipped into the bottom. They were from Don and included a dinner invitation for tonight.

Now what do I do?

Sunday slow down

It's a beautiful sunny day and the first time it has been above 20 degrees for weeks. Snow is melting and plopping wetly onto the piles of snow under the roof. I may even get enough energy up to shovel the deck today out in the warm sun. But in the meantime, acoustic guitar and Michael Johnson are playing on the computer and I'm going to go downstairs and fix a real breakfast: ham, eggs, and fresh cut mango. Then I'm going to sit in my favorite chair in the sunshine, listen to the music, and leisurely enjoy myself before I have to finish cleaning house and doing laundry.

There are worse things in life than a leisurely Sunday morning alone in the silence and solitude of my mountain cabin, like expecting your lover to take the time to come visit and share a birthday and Valentine's celebration and ending up alone.

It's a 40 day

My youngest sister turns 40 at exactly 7:30 PM tonight -- that is if you count birthdays by the exact moment of emergence from the warmth and comfort of the womb into the cold and brightly lit world.

HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY,
BEANIE!

And one more thing...

I finished opening the mail just now and found the results of my tests, the ones I've been waiting to see for over a month. No cancer. No cysts. No nothing.

They apologized for the mistake. An apology is nice, especially when it doesn't change anything, and it has about as much meaning, too.

One of those days...

...a beautiful day, actually, with lots of things for me to do and see.

A quick shower and combing out my hair showed me that the hair is growing back in and I have arrested the falling out process. But I had lots of other things to think about, mostly errands and getting out of the house for a while. The trip to the post office was uneventful, but at the post office I found lots of good news, a little money, and even more good news, which propelled me on my way in to Fraser to the library, but I was early so a trip to Starbucks to use my free drink coupon was in order.

Chantico is the word of the day. It is a decadently rich and smooth and nearly orgasmic silken libation of chocolate that I can still taste. Utterly and completely delicious. I wish I had more. The cup is really small but the taste is lingeringly, unbelievably large. Mmmmmm, chocolate.

Off to the library to finish my chocolate power drink until they open and then a quick, short walk to the door to pace and wait for them to open -- it was past 10:00 by my watch anyway.

Then into the hallowed halls where soft murmurs of sound wrapped me in camaraderie and common cause. A small fine to pay, books and movies to reserve, and a measured, hawk-eyed scrutiny of the shelves to pick up books, check available magazines, and sit at a computer not my own to peruse, search, and otherwise track down books, subjects, and information for use in writing and reading, and other nefarious purposes.

The library here in Fraser is small and vastly incomplete, but it is worth the trip just to enjoy the feeling of delving into dusty archives and playing hide and seek with books and words along the sun dappled aisles between the stacks.

And now off to look up more books and reserve more reading material. It is a very good day and it's not even noon yet.

That is all. Disperse.

Aaah, back in control

There is nothing like a day spent in the library among the dusty stacks and leather and plastic clad spines of portals that take you to different worlds. I'm boning up on Michigan trivia to write a whole bunch of articles for pay for a book about...you guessed it, Michigan. I've been so focused on things I can't change or affect and wallowing in self doubt and confusion, so it was time for me to move on to something I can control -- writing and researching and writing some more.

I hate being out of control. It's an ugly feeling. Of course that doesn't include being in free fall high in the sky above clouds and anthill towns and tracks, but that's a different story. I mean feeling like I'm free falling through life without a net and without a crash helmet, parachute, or soft landing spot. But no more. I'm back up on the horse.

And I have a host of things to catch up on. I have plans to make for a trip to Alamogordo, New Mexico to do an article on a seniors only Harley motorcycle club in two weeks and a trip to New Jersey for job training in a little over a week. I also have to practice taking some decent pictures on chrome but may opt for the digital version since it's easier and faster to see when you screwed up. I'm going to make a stop in Albuquerque to see an LJ friend and share a Mexican repast, lots of eye contact and talk, and I will get to hear his voice and he will hear mine, and I will get to see his much praised and vaunted green eyes.

On March 1st I will stick around in Colorado Springs long enough to see and hear Michael Johnson and bask in the sound of classical guitar.

Walk into the fire...

Fantasist and novelist, H. Rider Haggard, wrote several larger than life tales, among them King Solomon's Mines, featuring Allan Quatermain, and She, about an immortal goddess, an Egyptian princess of ancient lineage who found the secret of immortality and spent the long centuries waiting for the reincarnation of her murdered lover. Even Hollywood has taken Haggard's tales for their own, casting Ursula Andress as She.

In Haggard's tale an English gentleman of mixed descent named Leo inherits an ancient artifact that leads him to a lost city in the depths of Africa where he finds Ayesha, the immortal queen called She Who Must Not Be Named. He falls in love with her beauty and grace, wit and intelligence, but is awed and frightened of her power and her unshakable control over her people. She is an intense woman who intrigues and excites Leo even while he is frightened of his feelings for her and his overwhelming attraction to her.

Ayesha tells Leo, and provides proof, that he is the reincarnation of her murdered lover/husband, Kallikrates, and she offers to make him immortal so they can be together forever: beautiful, unchanged and powerful.

The secret of Ayesha's immortality is bathing in the cold blue flames of a cosmic fire, arresting the decay and ravages of time. Leo loves Ayesha even as he is overwhelmed by her so he follows her along a treacherous path to the cave where he will join her in immortality. Even as Leo approaches the fire his fear overtakes him so Ayesha walks into the flames, taking his hand, urging him to join her, and he finally follows. However, Ayesha ages and dies in the flames, withering into an ancient mummy in his arms, leaving a terrified and trembling Leo to gape in horror. His fear to venture alone into the flames cost him his love, and he must wait for centuries until Ayesha is reincarnated and they can be together again.

Leo fears Ayesha's intensity even as he is drawn to her. She is all he has ever dreamed or desired and yet he fails her, fails himself, in taking that last crucial step, unwilling to trust completely in love and walk alone into the heart of the blaze, scared of making a necessary change that will unite him with his one true love, his soul mate.

Women are called the weaker sex, and yet when you look at the world as it was in Haggard's day, and even today, you will see strong, intelligent, and exceptional women everywhere, women who brave the heart of the fire every day of their lives, beckoning for their men to follow, to be with them.

Was Haggard writing a fantasy or was he voicing some universal truth that resonates even now? Did Haggard fail the woman of his dreams, the bright heart of his fantasies? Did he realize too late that he must face his fears and take the final step in order to attain all he deserved and desired?

We all crave intensity, overwhelming and heart stopping intensity, but in order to touch it and make it our own we must fearlessly walk alone into the heart of the cosmic fire. Will you brave the flames for true love?

The good depression drug

When I'm down I cook. I frequent a site where we exchange recipes and talk about our personal lives, problems, wishes, and desires. Tonight I decided to do something with the chicken in the fridge. Here goes:

Chris's Golden Mushroom Chicken

Boil your favorite chicken pieces or a whole cut up chicken for 20 minutes. Add a little salt and reserve the broth for chicken soup or beans or whatever. Arrange chicken in a casserole dish or roasting pan. Cover with one can golden mushroom soup, sprinkle on shredded mozzarella cheese, cover with tin foil and bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Take off foil the last five minutes and let the mozzarella bubble and brown.

You can add diced potatoes (Chris's favorite idea, but add another ten minutes of cooking time) or add sliced red pepper and black olives before adding the golden mushroom soup.

Sprinkle with fresh grated parmesan cheese before serving, dig out the good china, silver, and crystal, dish up your favorite vegetable and salad, pour your favorite wine or beverage, and dig in.

The only problem with living alone is that when you cook something special there's no one to share it with and you eat it for several days. Still, do something nice for yourself anyway if you live alone and make a really special meal like this one. Add a decadent dessert, like my favorite apple-cranberry crepes with cinnamon cream, kick back with some great music and treat yourself to a luxurious evening of pampering. Better than Prozac, Xanax, or any other pharmaceutical drug. The only side effects are a warm glow of accomplishment, a soothing and relaxing evening, and maybe an extra pound or two if you over indulge, but you can always walk it off in the fresh air the next day and increase your endorphin production. To really kick up the endorphins, make the dessert chocolate.

Enjoy.

The bottom line

Many years ago medical insurance was a rarity, but it was a boon to people who could not afford to be ill when specialists were hideously expensive. Now all doctors are expensive. Medical insurance has become more expensive than the cost of buying a car or a house or food and people have to choose between a roof and food on the table, gas in the car to get to work to earn a living to pay for the roof and food on the table, and buying medical insurance. It's a simple equation really.

Doctors inflate their prices to cover the cost of their education and the poverty of their student years, to pay for their roofs and food on the table and gas to get to and from work to buy roofs and food, and to pay for malpractice insurance because everyone wants to get rich quick by suing doctors/hospitals for every imagined mistake, real or fantasy, and to pay for incompetent doctors' mistakes who should never have been licensed in the first place. There is also the cost of trials on drugs that need more drugs to offset side effects that will need more drugs to offset more side effects (the cycle goes on ad infinitum, ad nauseam) and tests that aren't necessary, but lucrative, and more doctors and hospitals...and the list goes on.

Because of this obscene cycle of bottom line conscious doctors and hospitals and insurance companies majors surgeries that require more attention, time, and care end with an overnight stay, at best, and a lot of uneducated and inexperienced family and friends taking care of the patient, not to mention those without such a network of familial and friendly support taking care of themselves or hiring nurses and health care workers at their own expense (the cost sometimes partially defrayed by insurance). One of these major surgeries is a mastectomy that ends with an overnight stay and then home to recuperate on your own.

This is a travesty of justice and a clear breach of the Hippocratic oath, not to mention common sense. If you agree, go to Lifetime TV and sign their petition. I am not talking about a tonsillectomy or removal of a hangnail or even an appendectomy, but a mastectomy, major surgery, life threatening surgery.

Doctors and hospitals and insurance companies are watching the bottom line on their fiscal reports, more interested in profits than health care or human life. Let them know the bottom line on the humanity report has been drawn and they are over the line. Speak out. Let them hear your voice. Let the government, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals know that their greed will no longer be condoned and that humanity will no longer lie down and take their actions without rising up and being heard.

That is all. Disperse.

Snowy days

It was snowing when I woke up this morning and the salty fall reminded me of going to Hot Sulphur Springs last week. It's the first time I have been that far west of Granby since I moved here. I thought it was a busy little spa town. That's not what I found.

On the way there I drove a black ribbon highway between dazzling fields of snow and ice where bushes like herds of dark humped buffalo straggled aimlessly through the fields, up and down the hills, topping fluffy drifts and ice sheened slides glinting in the eye-searing glare of the winter sun. I drove the main street of Hot Sulphur Springs in less than a minute even though I drove less than 20 mph looking for my destined street. I blinked. I missed it. About a mile outside of town I realized there would be no road or driveway where I could turn so I stopped, looked both ways, made a hurried Y turn and headed back to town, (town seems too big a word for such a small and seemingly insignificant almost village collection of old west style buildings puffing anemic trails of wispy smoke into a dazzling blue Colorado winter sky).

Weaving a way down through the back road (there really is only one), I stopped a lone man sliding along the snow-packed track that passed for a street and asked him where Hemlock Street was then drove two more streets, almost to the edge of what passed for civilization, and quickly found my destination. Ninety minutes later I was back on the black ribbon heading home to my little aerie at the top of my mountain, safe and warm and content to gaze out at the snow powdered trees and rocks out my deck windows.

There is no place like home even when the home will soon no longer be yours and all you will have to remember these times are well fingered watercolor memories and vignettes like these.

This is not the way to start a day

I was blissfully, happily, and deeply asleep when the phone screamed at me and yanked me back to this world where I stumbled, nearly blind, to the phone for an unavailable call that just had to be answered. It was the secretary for the new job I just got, the one for medical transcription that will let me stay home and work in various states of disarray and deshabille (if I wear anything at all) but for which I must fly to New Jersey, land of toxic waste disposal, landfills, and The Sopranos, two weeks from today to take two very expensive and at my own expense days of training. Oh, they will send a car to pick me up at LaGuardia airport in New York and take me back and they will ferry me back and forth from the hotel (way too expensive for my tastes) to the job for training, but I have been informed everyone is happy to put themselves out for training that could very well be accomplished online because they are a family. Somehow waking me rudely from needed sleep is actually what my family would do so maybe they are telling me the gospel. At least after weeks and months of being told I'm over qualified (employer speak for you're worth more than we want to pay and you probably wouldn't stick around long anyway) I have a job that pays a hefty salary every two weeks.

So here I am trawling blogs and journals to see what everyone else has been up to while I have been pupating.

One friend is awake at 4 a.m. because of his and his wife's colds and another is writing about self absorption that does not seem to me to be self absorption at all but focus on his work and his livelihood. That's not self absorption.

As I told him, self absorption is focusing on clothes, shoes, handbags, belts, and personal appearance to the point you must turn a room or two into a closet to house your things, working endless hours at a very good paying job to make more money to buy more things for yourself and thinking of no one but yourself to the exclusion of anyone or anything...not children, friends, spouses, lovers, family, or even passing strangers or the people who offer their service to you. You don't look anyone in the eye and you couldn't give a description of your own family because you don't look them in the eye or even know who they are, which is evidenced by the fact that the last time you remembered their birthday or bought them a gift at Xmas it was the kind of gift that you would buy for a charity drive. That is self absorption.

Of course you could argue that even having a public online journal is akin to self absorption, or that keeping paper journals is focusing too much on the self, but that is not necessarily the case. A journal is also a place to explore the world and your views on the world which you must look in the eye, study, devour, and catalogue in order to write about. Yes, writers are peculiar people and most of us are research hounds who love the thrill, the exhilaration, the sheer joy of delving deeply into the archives of life and coming up with insights, thoughts, and story lines that will one day bear fruit, and sometimes diving deep into the pool of memory to resurrect, relive, and otherwise chronicle the lives of people who will not always walk this earth. That is fascination and curiosity and love of knowledge, not self absorption. You may disagree if you like and tell me I'm out of my mind, and you would likely be right--most writers are somewhat out of their minds, especially when they're writing, or they would not be able to create and people such fascinating alternate realities, but we are far from being self absorbed.

Trail a writer and watch their expressions, body language, and interaction with the world around them and you will find them life absorbed. To be sure there are clothes hounds and writers who are devoted to acquiring wealth, material and financial, but while they are self absorbed momentarily they are most obviously life absorbed especially when they're writing, researching, and editing, or simply giving a bit of their knowledge back to the vast pool of information from which all writers--and people--dip their cups. Writers can tell you the intricate details and mental workings of someone they met five minutes ago with insights and acuity that would stun the subject of their intense scrutiny as well as their families and friends who do not know them so well. Writers are nearly psychic about people and events in the near and far future--look at Jules Verne and many other so called science fiction fantasists for proof.

My family has always looked at me as though I were a cuckoo in their nest or a changeling left by gypsies and called me a dreamer. As I told them, and tell them still today, without dreamers and their dreams we would all still be eating raw meat or lightning struck animals still smoking and charred from nature's electric attention while we huddled deep in autumn's drift of leaves in some dank and wet cave instead of communicating in a heartbeat's time with people around the world with flashes of light.

Okay, so maybe this is the way to start a day.

Ten short days

Ten days from today I hit the half century mark. Yes, folks, I am actually going to be 50 years old and I love it. There are some things about it I don't love -- like not being able to share it with the man I love, but into every life and all that rain-on-my-parade blather.

Sometimes it seems he and I are completely in synch and other times facing off across a great distance and having to shout across the mountaintops to even be heard. Life isn't perfect and love doesn't solve everything. Ask anyone who has truly loved--or thought they did.

There are times when a few hours of passion is enough and other times when it makes the silent hours of waiting too difficult to bear. Time and distance lend enchantment at times, but they also make the loneliness louder and more painful to hear and feel.

The first half century of my life has been marked with joy and pain (a lot of pain sometimes), but in the last few months before this natal celebration of golden proportions I realize that passion and life and even the act of living is fraught with pain and without that pain we would not know we live at all. I am not a big fan of pain but I can--and do--endure its venomous sting because the moments of pleasure and happiness, the feeling of sinking deep into passion's embrace for a moment outside of time, is worth all the pain.

For my birthday wish I want more passion and less suffering and pain. Anybody know to whom I make my desires known? If so, give me their email or snail mail address and I will storm their crenellated towers.

In the meantime, enjoy the moments of happiness and never look back.

I'll shut up now.

The Hours

Two years ago I went to see The Hours with a friend. It was the first of many movies we saw together. I left the theater a bit unsettled and pensive. There was something about the intertwining of the lives of the three women portrayed that left something with me. I decided to get the movie when it came out on tape and bought a second-hand copy the first chance I had.

The movie is about three women: Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Clarissa Vaughn. Since these women lived in different times it would seem they had nothing to bind them together. Virginia Woolf's book, Mrs. Dalloway, is the tie that binds.

Woolf decided to tell the story of a woman's whole life in a day and Mrs. Dalloway is the result of that vision. It is a tale of a very confident woman who chose a life of society and parties and safety instead of a life where passion ruled her days as well as her heart. Shortly after the War to End all Wars, WWI, Clarissa Dalloway throws a party, one that will end in disaster and someone's death.

The Hours begins with Woolf's day, the day she began writing Mrs. Dalloway, segues to a pregnant Laura Brown's day in Los Angeles in 1951 where she wakes up and picks up Woolf's book and reads the first sentence--"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."--and on to 2001 to the beginning of Clarissa Vaughn's day where she decides to buy the flowers herself for the party she is throwing her friend Richard who has just won a prestigious poetry award. Each woman's life is defined by the book and one day, telling the story of their lives in that one day just as Woolf envisioned it in her book.

I watched the movie again the other day and it struck me that Woolf's words to her husband Leonard at the end of the movie define not only the book but the lives of the three women: "Someone must die so that the rest of us should value life more." This from a woman who took her own life because she could not bear the burden of her mental illness any longer and saw what it was doing to her friends. She died so that those she loved would value life the more--and have a life to live. Death is the current that runs through each of the character's lives. It is an ever present specter that haunts their thoughts and steps.

At the end of the day someone is dead, but the story is not finished because Woolf must also decide Mrs. Dalloway's future. In so doing the futures of all three women are also decided. Woolf writes her strongest book. Laura Brown sets the course of her future. Clarissa Vaughn sees and finally knows true happiness. And in the final moments of the movie the real theme is revealed.

Death is an ever present specter in all our lives, although we manage to ignore him quite handily until he is about to put his skeletal claw upon us or someone we love. Then death becomes all too real and we realize we can no longer postpone the inevitable. What follows is a frantic binge of life.

All too often we mortgage our present for the future, a future that may not come, but a future that will surely end in death. Death is the only sure bet. But we postpone thinking about death until it touches us and continue to pile up our treasures for the future and old age, forgetting to live in the moment. We don't value life.

We put up with unhappiness and discomfort waiting for some bright future that may never come. We live for appearances, doing what looks right but never feels right. We follow guidelines and paths set down by others even when they aren't right for us. We do everything but what our hearts tell us to do. And we lose life, letting it slip through our fingers believing that there will be a tomorrow and a tomorrow after that, and so on, when we will finally be able to do what we really want to do, what stirs us and makes us happy. Too many of us are dead inside and just haven't figured that out, walking dead who haven't the sense to lie down in the graves they have dug so carefully and furnished so well, like the Etruscans who left only their beautiful and well appointed tombs to show the ever existed.

We furnish our tombs with the latest and most cutting edge technology, the brightest and most expensive furniture and tools and toys, with fancy china that never makes it out of the cupboard because it's too nice for every day, with 500-thread count sheets that lie in plastic in the linen cabinet, and beautiful clothes for special evenings that are continually postponed until later. We spend money on vacations to exotic locales and fill the days with an itinerary that leaves us breathless and gasping for a moment's rest. We trim the verge and mow the lawn, lavishly casting chemicals and fertilizers about, ruthlessly waging war on ants and bugs and crab grass that spoils the look of the perfect lawn. We richly furnish rooms that no one is allowed inside. We collect toys and lures and all manner of things just to leave them in the boxes because they're worth more that way. We work longer hours for bigger, fancier, and more expensive houses, cars, and luxuries that we never enjoy. We put everything into our tombs without ever having lived. We choose death in life when we should walk away from all that makes us unhappy, from living for someone else or someone else's expectations.

One of the characters tells another that when he dies she will have to face living.

Who has to die to make us value life and face living?

Googling

Ever Google yourself? I did this morning because I was searching for an article, profile actually, I wrote that was translated into Polish I wanted to show a friend. I found more than I expected--much more.

I found out there are a few notable scientists and literary characters who share my nom de plume. I found out that I had won honorable mention in a contest with one of my stories, Daytona Summer. I found out some of my work has been republished without my permission or notice. I found lots and lots of links to stories and articles and essays I've written. But the most surprising bit of all, besides the contest, was finding out that I have been quoted in a book in the very first paragraph. I was called a biographer.

Granted, I have written lots of profiles, but I've never been called a biographer. This is also the first time a book has even openly referred to me or to my work even though I know some books have taken their inspiration from articles I have written.

If this is the tip of the iceberg that's going to hit my life this year, it's a bloody big one.

I was contacted last night by an Indian publisher (in India of course) about publishing some of my work, a couple of novels in fact. I was also given some information about a Canadian publisher who is interested as well. Pretty good. An American writer who will be published internationally before I'm published here in the States. Being translated into six different languages is one thing, but a novelist read by millions of Indians and translated into Bengali is pretty interesting. I guess this newborn year has lots of surprises in store for me. I love surprises, don't you?

I'll shut up now.

The power of the people...and the BLOG

If you want a look at what blogging has become and where it just might go in the future check out the Free Republic reporting of a Time magazine article about the phenomenon of blogging and what it has done to Dan Rather's news career.

However, in one quote in the article, ham radio has been relegated, spuriously, to an "...embarrassing hobby...", which it most certainly is not and has never been.

Most of you know that I have been studying to pass the exams for my ham radio operator's license. In the course of that study I have learned more about electronics and history and people than I ever thought possible, opening a whole new vista for me of ideas and science that was denied me because I'm a girl. My family had strange and archaic ideas about what a girl should and shouldn't be interested in and I have never been mainstream or typical of that mind set. I'm still not.

For instance, how about a quick look at one ham operator's point of view or a closer look at an Indian ham operator's point of view at the heart of the tsunami devastation. And don't forget, the ham operator in question is a housewife.

Talk about your "...embarrassing hobb[ies]..."

That is all. Disperse

I wasn't going to post tonight...

...but I changed my mind.

This weekend has been a roller coaster of sorts, from getting lost to flunking my exams for making stupid mistakes and not trusting what I know to feeling as though I failed my friends and being blissfully and completely happy.

The drive to Colorado Springs was uneventful and the directions for the first part of the journey were excellent. I had a really great Mexican lunch at Salsa Brava on Rockrimmon and spent some time in a great electronics parts warehouse called OEM that was dusty, dirty, a bit disorganized, but really fascinating. My hands itched wanting to pick up and handle everything, fill a basket with parts and build/rebuild computers and radios and all things electronic and magick. That is one place I want to visit again the next time I go to the springs.

I got turned around and a little lost when I tried to find 's house and ended up calling from a pay phone. She came to lead me back to where we were having the initiation and, although I was late, it turned out great. It was fun talking, laughing, and joking with friends and getting to know them a little better. Back at the muse's apartment we talked to after two even though I had to get up at seven. Woke up about 6:45, got up, got showered and dressed, and went outside in the fresh air to wait for my ride to the exam.

One thing that amazes me still is the difference in weather between here and the springs. This side of the divide is snowy and cold and that side is more like sere autumn than the beginning of winter. Colorado Springs is laid out like a stadium audience around snow-dusted Pike's Peak. The surrounding hills and peaks are craggy and bare, dark faces that frame Pike's Peak while spread out at their feet is the half circle hub of the town. As usual, the good seats are close to the stage and the rest of the seats vary between corporate types and an all encompassing mix of squalor and the different levels of success. Hotels, motels, businesses, strip malls, restaurants of every kind, stores, and car lots dominate the landscape, overwhelming little pockets of houses and apartments and dotted with nearly hidden parks and slowly disappearing lots. It is a much different Colorado Springs than the one I met 30 years ago when I visited Garden of the Gods and Pike's Peak for the first time. It's a much more commercial area where the noise of traffic and construction vie to be the loudest, a symphony of civilized, social chaos. It is also home to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame (I'll have to check it out some time) where white con trails from Air Force Academy jets streak from nowhere in a hazy blue sky and disappear into the ether. The overwhelming smells of diesel fuel, gasoline, and the reek of civilization were stronger than I remembered, a palpable smack in the face of progress and people and crowded spaces, smells I have forgotten in the crisp, clear rural air of my home.

Saturday morning I was the only female present during a ham version of show and tell. One of the hams had built an ingenious antenna for his backpacking rig. I met a shrunken, grizzled old Army Air Corps veteran who learned code during the war and was still obviously in love with the magic of radio and communicating (working) other hams all over the world. One thing is certain, it is evident that those men are still very much little boys playing radio, and it was a pleasure to see and share their enthusiasm.

Although I flunked the test because I didn't trust what I know (even to the point of changing right answers into wrong answers), I don't feel bad about it. A friend reminded me that I have been going thru a lot this past week and that I can take it again. And I will take the exams again in January in Longmont. At least I know what to expect and things (meaning me) should be calmer by then.

My friend and I left, went to the bank, and stopped at Arby's to pick up lunch. He drove to Palmer Park and we sat in the park and talked and ate. The day was cool and breezy, but still fairly warm. There were children playing on the swings and monkey bars a little ways away from us and their laughter and squeals of delight were like music on an errant breeze. After we ate, we went somewhere quiet and talked and laughed and joked and got to know each other better.

I could tell he was antsy and excited and he finally told me why. He had brought a Xmas gift for me. He even wrapped it himself, apologizing for what he felt was a bad job. On the whole, he did pretty well, especially on what was inside. He gave me a copy of Conversations With God, which he forgot to inscribe, and Ken Burns's documentary on Mark Twain on DVD. He knows how much I love Twain. For someone who does a great impression of Scrooge during the holidays, he failed miserably this time. He was excited as a kid on Xmas morning.

He drove me back to the Muse's but no one was there so I waited. Thru a miscommunication our plans with were canceled and instead we ordered a decadently greasy and wonderful pepperoni lovers pizza from Pizza Hut and drank a couple glasses of wine while we watched Room with a View on video. I dozed during part of the movie because I was a little tired and eventually we all went to bed.

This morning we got up, shared a cup of tea for me and coffee for the Muse and her son, and I got dressed, packed, and headed for the door with a bigger bag of books than when I arrived. More reading and reviewing to do. The drive home was quiet and uneventful and, although I was a little sad to leave, once I got onto the highway and I looked forward to going home, back to the snow and cold and peace of my little mountain aerie.

The sky was full of gray wool but patches of robin's egg blue that deepened into summer cornflowers between the dirty, gray lowering clouds were like banners welcoming me home. The snow on the sides of the mountain looked like high tide marks on a morning beach, wet tan ripples below pristine sparkling white powder that drifted and climbed around the pines. Here and there splintered, bare giant's toothpicks leaned against dark green boughs as though discarded and flung like darts to the ground, their pointed ends pricking the sky. I traveled from the sere brown valleys into the thick white clouds surrounding the sparkling white peaks and back down into the snowy valley road that led home.

The guys plowed my driveway all the way to the end while I was gone and I had clear space on either side where I park my car in front of the door. Once inside, the scent of lavender and growing herbs and the familiar cool air greeted me.

There are times, like this past weekend, when the clock does not tick so loudly and I am able to share a wealth of time with my friends, but as precious as those hours are, as much as I enjoy them, I am grateful for the clear, untainted peace that surrounds me every day. One thing I know for certain is that I will visit again because I enjoy the luxury of time with friends, but I will also be glad to come home and open the doors of my refuge to my friends so they, too, can enjoy a little respite from progress.

Another week is...

...to a close and I have plans for the weekend for the first time in a long time. I'm going to Colorado Springs to see my favorite Unique Luddite and have lunch and then on to Elementalmuse's so we can get ready to go to an initiation. Then Saturday morning a friend is picking me up to take my ham radio operator's exam and then we're going to have lunch and celebrate, maybe even get a chance to sit and talk for a while. Saturday night Elementalmuse, CreamyReamy and I are going to go out on the town and I have suggested going to a karaoke bar because I've never tried it. Don't know how much time that will take out of the evening, but as long as CreamyReamy keeps his word and feeds me a great Philly cheese steak sandwich I won't quibble. I'll wend my way homeward back into the snowbound mountains along the dragon's ice-scaled back over Berthoud Pass and to my more than likely snow buried cabin and back into my comfy womb of silence and peace, so the continuation of So you want to be a writer will appear when I am back home safe and sound after my hedonistic, pleasure-filled weekend. Emails will be answered when I get back.

In the meantime, have a good time. Kiss someone just for fun. Let the people you love know it. And have fun this weekend. You never know when you will get another one.

That is all. Disperse quietly to the left with a smile.