Open the Duir
A little something for the yin in you. (click on picture and then flash movie)

Deep Thought:  One afternoon, when I was about ten, I decided to walk over to the “wrong side of the tracks.” At first I was a little scared. But then I noticed that the yards were nice, and so were the houses. In fact, most of the houses were better than those on our side of the tracks. A lot better.
Today I am grateful for:  Dick and Jane
End of Day – 8:43 pm (just realized I forgot to do this for a few days)
+ = Perfect temperature this afternoon for being in my garden in bare feet getting dirt under my fingernails.
- = Dennis Miller

9/11 PTSD

It was a morning pretty much like this one. For whatever reason, I was home from work and had the TV on. When the first plane hit, I called my son and woke him up and we watched the second attack together over the phone. For a good year afterwards I checked the news online every hour on the hour at work and watched daily passers-by warily, almost as freaked out by the flag-flyers who came out of the woodwork as I was by possible terrorists. I can’t even imagine how bad it would have been for those on the east coast, let alone New York City, let alone immediate family and friends of victims. So I’m not thrilled to hear that we may be being toyed with by current orange alerts based on information that was floating before 9/11 even happened. What a convenient Catch-22. On the one hand, we’d want to know, wouldn’t we? On the other hand, I can totally believe it would be staged for political purposes. How many Wag the Dog movies do we have to see – hell, the original Manchurian Candidate came out 30 years ago. Here’s what really eludes me. The polls stay the same, neck and neck, in spite of it all – the Democratic Convention, the bad Iraq War intel, Michael Moore’s movie, etc. I could understand the rich people voting for Bush but that’s only 2% max of the population. Are the other 48% wanna-be-rich people? Who are these people? A friend of mine says that her friends who are conservative are just fearful of the liberal agenda. So I guess that’s it – the people who are against gay marriage, for capital punishment, against abortion rights, against environmental protection, for gun owning, against Head Start, etc. etc. yadayadayada, are just not going to be swayed by something so far away as a war in Iraq. And the ironic thing is, when the next Big Attack happens right here on our soil, they’ll probably rally round their leader even more. I wish the Democratic Party had more pizzazz. I wish Kerry talked like he did back in the day when he opposed the Vietnam War. I saw some footage of his testimony and a debate he had with a conservative at the time. It was impressive. I’m not so sure now where he stands about war. I’ll vote for him because of his social agenda – it’s got to be better than what we’ve got. But I’m watching. And another 9/11 is coming up. And it’s a beautiful morning in my house.
Deep Thought: I think a good scene in a movie would be where one scientist tells another scientist: “You know what will save the world? You’re holding it in your hand.” And the other scientist looks, and in his hand are some peanuts. Then, when he looks up, the first scientist is being taken away to the insane asylum.
Today I am grateful for: Smoke alarms

Once More From The Beginning

thenarrator wrote a fine little piece on first memories that made me think about the value of them. Because I have been trying to write my own story from day one on up to now, I’ve been pondering a number of things: Is the original slate completely clean or do we bring anything into the world from the womb or even before that? How much difference does it make if we are yanked into the world head first by forceps or cut out by caesarian? What do we take into our cells about the world before we have words? Are we born extraverts and turned into introverts by circumstance? Is an extravert just a very loud introvert? Nearer to the end of my life than I would have it, I’m finding value in peeling away the layers of crap splattered on me from years of adjusting to the daily flow, conforming to dress (and other) codes, keeping my mouth shut and mouthing off at the right or wrong times, curbing my strongest instincts, finding paths through the woods that no one else but me would have thought of. After all the complexity of all the years, I would like to find my way back in the end to the view of the world from my soul at age one. I think all the answers were already there.
Deep Thought: When I was about ten years old, we set up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk in front of our house. But we didn’t sell many glasses, and after a few hours, we took it down. I think that was the first time I realized that the world doesn’t give a damn about you or anything you do.
Today I am grateful for: Paper shredders

Stone Reader

I must have passed this video a dozen times at the videostore, picked it up and read the jacket, and put it back. Videos being one of my handful of active addictions to numb the pain of living in the real world, I usually go for something that will take me as far away as possible (note sidebar). But something about the subject – reading – kept drawing me back. It almost seems like a contradiction in terms – a video about reading. Isn’t that what’s happened to the most recent generations – they’ve gone electronic and the closest they get to a book is a film version of it. We didn’t have a TV when I was in grade school, and I saw reading happen as the main form of entertainment when my hardworking parents sat down in the evening. My dad taught me to read BEFORE I started school. I got skipped over second grade because I read all the first-grade books and second-grade books the first year. An aunt gave me every Oz book there was from #1 to #47 or whatever it was and I read them all. My mother became a children’s librarian for the last 20 years of her working life. And then, of course, in school we read for classes. As a college freshman I took a required Humanities course and read some of the world’s great literature with the kind of ear you have to have to write a paper on it. So today, all these years later, I still read, although I too have found the visual media and I’m busy as hell with survival. I now feel like an oddity that I read at all and am dumbfounded when I discover another reader. Well, to cut to the chase, I took the video home and discovered one of those readers. This is the true story of one man who loved one book enough to spend a journey on finding the author, who had apparently disappeared into obscurity after the book’s publication. Heralded by great reviews, the book itself fell between the cracks and out of publication shortly after it appeared. This one man went in search of an answer to this mystery. He got his answer, made a beautiful film about it, and because of him the book was re-released in print. I’ve ordered it from the library and if I like it as much as he did I just may buy a copy. And for sure I’m going to own a copy of the film. If you love books or writing – or even filmmaking – you will find this video still in the Current Films section of your nearby videostore.
Deep Thought: We’re all afraid of something. Take my little nephew, for instance. He’s afraid of skeletons. He thinks they live in closets and under beds, and at night they come out to get you when you’re asleep. And what am I afraid of? Now, I’m afraid of skeletons.
Today I am grateful for: Documentary films

It’s the first day of August and the last day of Chapter 6. Now I will start with a new scrapbook for Chapter 7 and it will probably be at least a month before it arrives here. Thanks to everyone who commented and encouraged me through this one. It’s so interesting about Xanga that after you’ve been here awhile (for me a year) you begin to settle in with a little found microcommunity within it whose work and thoughts you respect and value. I must say about Ch. 6 that I couldn’t get a lot in about the emotional internal stuff going on because there was just so much activity and I was trying to hold to my page-a-year plan. But perhaps one day when I’m really completely retired I can return and flesh out this chapter more. Oh, and I know the poem is a mixed metaphor but cripes I was only 24. The next chapter will be pretty busy too – years 25-30 (1964-69) were when my children arrived and I was in the Haight-Ashbury. Stay tuned. (BTW I can’t believe I just discovered my Guestbook – sorry to anyone who posted there and was not read till today)
Chapter 6 – Metamorphosis (cont. – for previous chapters click here)

By the beginning of August 1963 we were installed in an apartment where my young companion would write the great novel and I poetry when not working at the United Nations typing pool, a job for which I had to pass an IQ test and a security clearance. This laundry list of activities should have been enough drama for a five-year period of my life but before the end of this year I would meet the great love of my life and father of my first child. With him I would make one last voyage across the ocean to live on the Balearic Islands, then return to Paris and New York City before I turned 25. I will leave this for the next chapter. ______________ Huge is the shore. Though I whimper with the weight of my shell, the track I carve upon it is futile and anonymous. Incongruously, I dream of the triumph it would be to crack this prison and escape into the street of butterflies.

Deep Thought: Every summer we’d get our baskets and buckets and go out into the hills and woods, looking for wild strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries. We never found any, though.
Today I am grateful for: Address books
End of Day – 8:46 pm
+ = Stopped in Barnes & Noble today and bought a few books including a tiny one called Selma, who is a sheep and it shows a little drawing for each page and says (one sentence per page): When I just couldn’t take it anymore, I went to the wise ram…What is happiness? Happiness? Let me tell you the story of Selma…Once there was a sheep named Selma…Every morning at sunrise, Selma would eat a little grass…She would play with her children until lunchtime…exercise in the afternoon…eat some more grass…have a little chat with Mrs. Miller in the evening…and finally, fall fast asleep. Asked what she would do if she had more time, Selma replied…Well, I would eat a little grass at sunrise…play with my children until lunchtime…exercise in the afternoon…eat some more grass…have a little chat with Mrs. Miller in the evening…and finally, fall fast asleep. “And if you won a million dollars?” she was asked. Well, I would love to eat a little grass in the morning…play with my children…exercise in the afternoon…eat some more grass…and it would be nice to have a chat with Mrs. Miller in the evening…before finally, falling fast asleep.
- = Went to see The Manchurian Candidate and the theater had the sound turned just low enough it drove me crazy. I mean it’s already a movie about paranoia and so there’s lots of whispering and mumbling, but when you lower the sound to the point of needing a hearing aid it’s a tossup between falling asleep or tossing a grenade back up into the control room. Otherwise it looked like it must be a great film.