Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster.
I lasted two chapters. It was horrific. I’m not squeamish and have plenty of morbid curiosity but I couldn’t do it. I thought I could gain some insight to help me reconcile the events in Japan, but no. My deep fear of nuclear annihilation (thanks, Reagan!) is still alive and kicking, and I felt panic rise at the utterly desperate stories, fresh and raw even after all these years.
Sad. Scary and sad. I pray for our planet’s soul.
My dad Jim died almost five years ago. He fought in World War II.
Among his papers are letters and drawings sent to his parents while he was a soldier. Here, he recounts basic and medic training.
I’m not all The Secret-style gaga about manifesting good things for myself through the power of visualization and positive thought.
However, I spend a couple minutes every few days trying to levitate, or (if that’s physically impossible) to have my soul-self rise above my body-self in the traditional out-of-body experience.
This usually occurs when I’ve just woken and am still in bed and groggy. I already feel quite light and almost disembodied and so I concentrate on rising … rising … rising!
So far, no dice, but I haven’t given up.
Oddly, I did have two out-of-body experiences previously, and neither were pleasant, so I don’t know why I’m trying for it again. The ingredients for those previous experiences had nothing to do with manifesting nor visualizing, and everything to do with a perfect storm of flu, vomiting, and fainting.
Aren’t you glad you asked? Oh, wait, you didn’t?
To end this post on a less gnarly note, I did some other attempts at manifesting on Friday night. The manfriend and I went to Hollywood Park racetrack to play the ponies and to see a concert by Rose Royce of “Car Wash” fame. Prince happened to be playing the Forum very close by at the same time — the venue was so close that we could see the show was letting out just as Rose Royce busted out their finale, which was “Car Wash” (of course!)
As we were urged to “keep those rags and machines humming,” I closed my eyes a moment and visualized Prince making a U-turn in his purple limousine and heading back over to Hollywood Racetrack stage. Once there, he’d mount the stage, grab the mic just as it was time to sing “Hey! Get your car washed today!” And maybe he’d do a little “pretending to buff a grille with a rag”-inspired dance step.
Shockingly, no dice on that one either. But looka what I did without even trying to manifest:
$17 won on betting on two long shots that came in the top three! Right after this picture was taken I manifested a large beer and bag of peanuts that wiped out my winnings, but was delicious anyway.
I had high hopes for what I was going to see inside this car. Alas, not one sequined fedora nor languid snapping hand nor swiveling shoulder to be found.
I speak, of course, about the singular vision of the late great Bob Fosse. Follow me, won’t you, to view some of these classic (but perhaps lesser-known) Fosse moments? It helps with you follow me in a low, sexy crouch. Oh, and please thrust those hips.
Hey, Big Spender – Sweet Charity
Who’s Got the Pain – Damn Yankees
There’s Bob himself! This is pretty apropos, given my current pain. Maybe I should just mambo.
Steam Heat – Pajama Game
Commercial – Dancin’
Here’s an oddity — commercial for Fosse’s Dancin’ on Broadway. I remember this commercial vividly as a teenager. Whoa. I begged my dad and stepmom to take me to the show, and I remember hating it. Fickle youth.
It’s the Fourth Friday Challenge for May. My friend Paul and I, both posting daily in 2011, decided to give each other a job once a month to keep things spicy. In his words, “we want to push ourselves to do something more interesting than we might otherwise.” I will put his challenge to me at the bottom of this post — it’s your choice to read the challenge or my response first.
– – – – –
I am a great, strong beast of a bird. I know how menacing yet graceful I look as my cohorts and I spread across the horizon, single file. It seems hardly possible that I am able to stay aloft — I am huge and my flapping seems almost languid — too slow to be purposeful.
Yet we move fast. We are not quite in sync, not quite in a perfect line; we’ll leave that to the flocks of lesser birds with smaller minds. We are not cogs in a greater machine. We are individuals.
I spot a fish far below, just under the surface of the sea. I aim, fire. I drop like a bomb, but don’t explode — I cut into the water like a surgeon’s knife cuts into flesh. In a swift motion I snap my prey in my mighty jaws.
I pause on the surface of the water, looking up into the blue sky as I swallow my prize. Gathering myself and launching upward, I return once again to my brethren, following my drumbeat, ever in motion.
I am Pelican!
– – – – –
This post was in response to Paul’s Fourth Friday Challenge to me, May 2011:
A mischievous spirit transforms you into an animal for a day. What kind of animal is it? Describe your adventures in animal form.
– – – – –
Read Paul’s response to my challenge here
This is my sister’s to-do list that she created while visiting me last month.
Organized, aesthetically appealing — and most importantly, all of the to-dos have been efficiently checked off. That is the way of my industrious yankee kinfolk.
Let’s compare that list with this … thing.
This is a bag of old, used up cosmetics that I have been carrying amongst my possessions for a few years. Well, 10 years. Actually, 12 years. OKAY, SIXTEEN YEARS. Sixteen years I have hauled around these MAC makeup items. Since the middle of the 1990s, when light blue lipstick was a fashion choice. Yes, there is a light blue lipstick in there.
There’s a reason for being the crazy MAC hoarder lady. This is part of my to-do list. You can trade in your old MAC cosmetics for new cosmetics — six old ones gets you one new lipstick. This exchange has been on my to-do list through 16 years, 7 moves and 4 cities.
And, finally, finally, today it happened. I’m now the proud owner of two brand new MAC lipsticks, $28 value!
So, that’s one thing checked off my to-do list. Yay me!
I going on the radio today to talk about crafting and quilting which are things that I sometimes do when I’m not obsessing about food or whining about my hip flexor.
I am making appearance #2 on Lyn and Cyn’s Women Talk program on KKZZ. You can read/hear about the first appearance (where I talked about online dating) here. I’ll be on sometime between 11:30am and noon PST today (5/25). You can listen online or I’ll probably post the audio file later.
For those of you who found this blog by listening to me blab on the radio, welcome. Here’s how to find craft posts among allllll the other crap important information on this site:
Just writing all this is making me feel guilty about not getting the craftass in gear in many months. Yeesh, time to sew!
Thanks for the support in my blog’s comments and in my real life (is there a difference?) regarding the loss of my friend. Those of us who knew him are still kind of shocked and wrung out. I got the news on Saturday morning and have been sinking lower and lower as the reality gets absorbed. A growing-horror kind of feeling.
Sleeplessness and lack of exercise has not helped. I am tired and sluggish, and much more prone to sadness and overwhelm-ed-ness. My hip flexor injury has been the excuse not to move this past weekend, even though it’s feeling a little better and I certainly could have tolerated some non-impact exercise. Instead, save for a quick orgy of beers and nachos on Saturday night, I have been slow and sad and inward.
These ingredients are all part of a grim recipe for the Big D. Depression. Oh yes.
But oh no! I’m not going to let it happen. Grief is not depression. I need to feel my feelings, but also need to take care of myself every way I can.
So here we go. I am about to go to a yoga class with a great teacher — she is aware of my gimpiness, and has been helping me have great yoga sessions, but with careful modification to accommodate my hip. It’s a kickass class, but a safe kickass class. Exactly what I need.
So I’m going to check in now, then check in after the class. I’m hoping the positive contrast between before and after will help me remember how transformative a little bit of meditation and exercise can be.
PRE YOGA SCAN
Okay, I’m back from class. The teacher is so great. She smiled when she saw me, reminded me not to push myself too much, then proceeded to make me sweat.
POST YOGA SCAN
When one prepares for yoga, one can dedicate one’s practice to someone — a nice way to focus and transmit positive energy. Perhaps you felt a little bit of warmth or energy recently. That’s because I dedicated my practice to you who are reading this. Thank you!
My friend Jon died.
I keep composing and deleting, composing and deleting. I’ll just try to get some stupidly incomplete and inadequate words out, and be done with it here.
I met him when I was 18 and he was 19, in the dorms at Berkeley. He was weird, wonderful, odd, wild, troubled. He married my roommate. The three of us were especially tight in our tight-knit group.
He was sharply funny, something that he never lost. He and I maintained a vast mental repository of private jokes, bets, and provocations.
He was fond of screaming, loudly and suddenly, every time we drove over the patched part of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge, the part that broke in the earthquake. He never failed to startle me in over 20 years, and that just delighted him.
He despised shoes, and would do what he could not to wear them. When he would wear them it was so noteworthy I would take a picture of it. This is in 2003.
The past few years, he got lost in addiction, and just kind of gave in to it.
His life had to have pretty painful towards the end, so I suppose I can say that some peace has been attained now that he’s gone.
I don’t completely buy that, of course, at least right now. Right now I’m in an unrealistic script rewrite mode, wherein I am fantasizing about going back in time and fixing the wrongs, removing the traumas, taking away his pain, his triggers, his genetic predisposition. Or showing up like a Ghost of Christmas Future and trying to make him see what he was giving up by giving in to his destructive behaviors.
Or I can just sit here and feel gross and empty and disappointed and sad. And resigned.
It’s sure been a big wave of darkness for a lot of people I love lately.
This is a trite sentiment, but: I am grateful for my own life and health, and all the people whom I love, have loved, and have yet to love. That love is worth the pain of loss.
I got some lovely things for my birthday. I had indicated that I did not want presents but would accept consumable and libations.
My friend Karin gave me a dozen bagels and a unbelievable schmear from a secret awesome bagel place out in the east county. Oh my god. So good.
The flowers are from my friends Chris and Adrienne, except for the roses — those are from my man friend. He also took me out to a delectable Indonesian restaurant. Dammit! Still winning the man marathon!
Other consumables gifted upon my unworthy self: a gift card to my favorite coffee shop (thanks, Jim and Cheryl!); a whooooole conga line of mojitos (thanks, zdoiwgiurpgoaweki); several meals (Turq! Linda! Carla and Jeanie!)
People who flaunted the rules and got me non-consumable presents: Tom and Sally, who gave me a Patti Smith photo book, my old roomie Tracy who sent me a Polaroid of us from 1991 (that’s going to be a separate post); and Cloudy!
She sent me a photo frame made by an artist who I admired when I was in Seattle two years ago, with a collage she made all framed up. So, so, so thoughtful!
Oh, you must admire Narboo here.
Wow, this was such a great birthday! So great I’m still admiring its loveliness more than two weeks later! Thanks, everyone. Yet again.
Okay, I think I have blogged about my birthday enough. Maybe.