Since I am not heading off to summer session four days a week, I have less and less interaction with the outside world now. And this seems to have an effect on my ability to write here or at the very least observe things with my usual scrutiny for later use here.

What interaction I’ve had has been mostly on the phone. I don’t have the best phone ettiquette, though I often try to be patient and pleasant when dealing with business calls. Some people just don’t want to hear what I’m saying. It can be extremely frustrating to explain something to someone 3, 4, or 5 times only to have them respond as if I never even said a word about it. And usually it isn’t even a situation I can control, and yet they will expect me to work miracles and change an entire governmental organization’s methods to accomodate their need for urgency. Sometimes I wish I could and I do feel sympathy for them, but I promise that I’m not an all powerful being (even though I play one on the sitcom of my mind).

Also, when will the cable (insert other agency here at will) company phone tech guy believe me when I say I’ve already tried a manual reboot of my cable box, and the things he is having me check, I have checked, and that the box is actually sending the information to the cable company and the error is coming back from the cable company, not from within my box? Ah well, I humored him, and did everything he said, because I understand to many people cable boxes and such are foreign objects. I just know that when the guy comes out on Sunday to “check my box” (oh sexy) that he is going to find nothing he can do here, but something they have to do back at the home planet, err I mean, office.

So, life right now is a bit boring. My arm is still injured, though I’ve regained quite a bit of painfree movement. And other than watching TV, reading and doing laundry, I’m not doing too much. Hope everyone else is having a more exciting time.

I’m typing with just one hand, and not even my best one at that—my left. Seems I strained my right and have a possible case of tennis elbow, which is much better than the other possibilities like a heart attack. Waking up to an unexpected pain can be mentally draining.

I was walking to class last week when I overheard a snippet of conversation that made me pause in my own thoughts for a moment and think, “hmmm.” One young woman said to the other as they passed, “...it’s a poor place called San Pedro...” If she meant the city near Long Beach, I don’t really know it, but I’m fairly sure it has some shipping docks, and being such it wouldn’t be a beach comber’s delight. But poor? I guess that’s one perspective. Or maybe she meant San Pedro Town down on an Island in Belize, which seems like a nice tourist spot for scuba diving. And it is quite possible that the place is poor.

But if the place is poor, then the people are poor, right? Does that then mean that life is poor? Well, that would depend upon the person, I suppose.

Would I be able to be poor? Maybe. I was driving recently and it came to me that if I had to depend upon public transportation my life would be different. I couldn’t do half of the things I do today. I get depressed sometimes about my life as it is, and all in all, my life isn’t bad at all. In that moment I knew that I need to have some more appreciation for the people who have helped me, the life I have and what I’ve done.

One night as I was falling asleep, halfway between wakefulness and slumber, my grandmother came to me with a smile, and it felt as if she brushed aside the hair from my forehead and I felt loved, and there was a male figure and it was as if he was apart, separate, but watchful. He was looking at me from around a corner, almost like from within a room down a hallway and he was leaning out the doorway. Maybe it was my grandfather that I didn’t see much of after the age of fifteen. I don’t really know.

I do know this. I’m not ready to die. And that being the case, I know I need to take better care of myself. Nope, I’m not ready to die yet.

There have been times when I’ll finish reading a book and I’ll immediately want to take up another in order to distract myself from the churning emotions and stumbling thoughts (like right now). This impulse is the same one that pushes me to open the refrigerator in order to fill some hole that repeatedly is uncovered inside of me.

Anesthesia.

It is some hope that fresh words, a different voice will clear away the haunting one left in my head. In that moment I want to hide from this thing I love—reading. It is frightening to give power over to a stranger, a writer, living or dead; to give the power to raise, sustain or crash an emotion that is very much essential to my living, breathing, and dying self.

So, what does that mean to me as a person who writes?

Because somehow writing can’t be about that power. Writing can’t be about wanting that power. Writing isn’t justified by that alone. And my ego, is it brave enough to step aside? Because it is the last thing I need in order to write. My ego seems to want to control the things I have to say in writing, and those things don’t come from the ego. I want to sit it in the corner, or perhaps place it in a cage and work on words from a different place. A more true place. A vulnerable place. And yes, it is frightening, because that damned ego has been a shield, a deflector, a mask behind which I can be smart, sometimes witty, and even engaging without having to take a risk to see if I will truly succeed or fail gloriously.

For those of a Democratic inclination, I have a message from MoveOn.org urging for signing of an online petition. As I’ve mentioned before, I tend not to immerse myself in politics. However, somehow the folks at this website have drawn me in to caring about our nation, my nation, this nation that lately seems much like an arrogant teenager to me—knows everything, can’t be wrong, and completely self-serving.

Maybe my assessment is a bit harsh, and I understand that laying blame on just one person like the president, isn’t going to solve all of the problems of our national government, but it is one place to work on. Besides, MoveOn.org has been tackling quite a few issues (like the FCC’s recent decision) and I’ve actually seen things happening as a result. It is a crazy thing to actually feel like my voice (coupled with hundreds of thousands of similar voices) is being heard in politics. If you have ever felt like your voice and your vote didn’t matter, it might be time to shake that feeling aside and be heard.

For those who aren’t Democrats, don’t you still want to know if and how we were misled?

The President took the nation to war based on his assertion that Iraq
posed an imminent threat to our country.  Now the evidence that
backed that assertion is falling apart.

If the Bush administration distorted intelligence or knowingly used
false data to support the call to war, it would be an unprecedented
deception.  Even if weapons are now found, it’ll be difficult to
justify pre-war language that indicated that the exact location of the
weapons was known and that they were ready to deploy at a moment’s
notice.  With a crisis of credibility brewing abroad and the integrity
of our President and our foreign policy on the line, we need answers
now.

Rep. Henry Waxman has introduced legislation to create an independent
commission to investigate the Bush administration’s distortion of
evidence.  Please ask your Representative to pledge his or her support
at:

http://www.moveon.org/wmdpledge/

A President may make no more important decision than whether or not to
take a country to war.  If Bush and his officials deceived the American
public to create support for the Iraq war, they need to be held
accountable. 

Thanks.

A companion website for this message: misleader.org

I wasn’t aware of this new trend in some products until my husband told me about it. Instead of raising prices, companies have chosen to lower quantities. For example, previously a package of diapers held 25 for $9.99 (I’m making this up, since I don’t buy diapers) and now for the same $9.99 they sell a package with only 22 diapers and maybe slap some new colors or graphics on the package, perhaps encouraging the consumer to think that some revolutionary technique in packaging has made it smaller, and voila, the consumer is fooled. Tricky. Very tricky.

We saw Pirates of the Caribean last night and it was fantastic. Depp was funny… funnn-neeee! Bloom was engaging as the romantic rescuer. And high praise from my husband was after thirty minutes of pre-movie grumping about the crowd that showed up for the late showing, and after having experienced the movie he said, “Well, that was definitely worth seeing on the first night.” And we smiled, and talked about how good and funny the movie was. Those who have been on the ride at Disneyland in California (and I think they have the ride in Florida too) will get some more out of the movie having to do with specific scenes along the ride’s path, but I don’t think it is at all necessary to enjoy the movie. And Johnny Depp was funny, and saying he was funny doesn’t at all encompass the scope of it.

As if my 4 am posting for the day wasn’t enough to read...

You know you’re old when walking along you are caught in the crossfires of a shout by five young women sitting around a table in the campus commons area to another woman who is passing by on one of those tour shuttles (think: limousine of golf carts) directing a tour for visitors, and the shout entails “Eye to the UH OH!” (drag the last OH out, so that the entire thing sounds like a chant at a dance club). And you stick a finger in your ear to shake out the ringing, and you mutter to yourself, “What is wrong with people these days?"

Yep, that’s the moment you realize that you are getting old (in relation to today’s youth).

P.S. I’m aware of how calling them “today’s youth” is also a sign that I am getting old. *big sigh*

I was driving around in the middle of the night as I am apt to do in my line of work, and I was was outlining a blog entry in my head, as a few of us bloggers have been known to do, and then I came home, checked my email account for school, and found that I have been awarded a fellowship which involves teaching creative writing to either K-12 students or Seniors. And it took wind right out of my contemplative mood-sails, and blew it into my Yippee!-sails.

Now, I’m excited about something again. I didn’t realize just how mopey I was for the past three weeks. I thought I was just relaxing and slacking and being useless, but I have been downright lumpish (as in on a log, yep) in attitude not just in physical imitation.

Putting that excitement aside for a moment, let’s get back to my driving thoughts. I wanted to leave. I wanted to drive someplace I’ve never been that’s hundreds of miles away. It wasn’t the first time I’ve had that thought while driving alone at night. It is always at night. There is something about the cover of darkness that makes all things seem possible to me. I never would leave, though. Not just on a whim, anyway.

And then I thought about the first vacation that we took as a couple, my hubby and I. It was up to the Sierras, and to visit his brother near the Bay area, and we drove and we had never been there before. And I had the big map, and it was the first time we found out how good we were at finding places with him driving and me navigating. I read a map like a mofo. Yes, I do. And I remembered the smell of the redwoods and pines. And the fact that we drove on some pretty deserted roads blaring Offspring and singing loudy to it. And I made him listen to the “Best of George Michael” and he humored me. We were new, our trip was new, and it was the first driving vacation I ever took without my parents. I felt grown up on that trip at the tender age of 21.

We’ve never had a trip like that since. We’ve gone to Maui repeatedly, because well, it is Maui, and how can you say no to Maui? We’ve been to Vegas for short jaunts (and drove), but there is no sense of adventure in it except the slight possibility of hitting something big at the slots, and that’s nowhere near the same. It’s a man-made playground, and I want to discover Nature’s playground. Though, to give reverence to man-madeness, I had a bit of the excitement of discovery in New York last September. Those several days on my own in the city really fostered that in a way that a tour group or guide to the city would not have.

So, I’m still having escapist thoughts of fleeing this place. And while that fantasy of today may become a reality of tomorrow (aka summer/fall 2004, hopefully), I’m trying very hard not to place too much burden on any given destination, for fear that once I arrive some place else, I’ll feel the need to escape once again.

Johnny Depp. (How’s that for a non sequitur?) This is a man I can respect. He could have gone the way of teen idol icon, and instead he took himself off of that track and followed his instincts in his career. I think as a teenager, I wrote him off simply because of the fact that he was so beautiful and during the “21 Jump Street” era, he was so commercialized. I didn’t actually fall madly for the Teen Beat idols growing up, though I got that magazine for awhile (and later, Sassy). I think it was always an effort to fit in for me. Yes, I was most seriously a subject of peer pressure, before I figured myself out at around age 17. Worshipping teen idols was just one more way to fit in, I thought. But back to Mr. Depp. It was only a short time ago that I saw “Chocolat” and decided that Johnny Deep was truly sexy, and deserved more attention from me. And then to see him on “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” and see his humor and presence just made me think, wow, this is one of the truly special, thoughtful individuals inhabiting the earth.

Johnny Depp’s humor… how do I explain what I saw? He would make a comment that was perhaps a bit ironic or sarcastic or just observational and never once was he offensive, and he would have this look on his face, a smile that taken out of context might seem shy or reserved, but I imagined he was thinking, my goodness, I’m getting away with this. I can say anything and they will laugh. Do they realize the power I have over them? Oh, shit. The laughter is dieing out. Better say something else funny... Of course, that’s just what I imagined, and probably not even close to the truth. In fact, there was probably a little bit more of the embarassment factor on some of it—like I can’t believe I just said that on television. Well, they are laughing, so it couldn’t have been too bad. And after giving it even more thought, it may have been playfulness I saw in his eyes—that devious spark that combines the getting-away-with-it and the sweetness that enables such a quality in a person. And really he was very witty, and seemingly humble (probably actually humble, but his gorgeousness leaves him suspect in my mind which I know is a stupid prejudice on my part), and I couldn’t help but respect him more than I ever thought I would.

There are critics of the show and of James Lipton’s schmoozing style. And I don’t care to play into whatever thoughts are for or against the show. I only know that when I see an actor in that way, it helps me to think of them as a real person just like the billions of others out there that I’ll never know.

The giggling boys in statistics class have stopped. Now there is just the occasional quiet chatter in the back, and the heavy sighs of several different students (male and female) whenever the instructor goes from definitions and theorems to examples. But all in all, considering the number of questions asked during the examples, they are definitely needed. So, class is going good.

Also in the news of my life, our air conditioning was fixed tonight! I’m already basking in the cool flow of artificial air, and I love it.

I’m about to get ready to move into action… Any minute now. Wish me luck.

There are moments when clarity arrives, and I’m sure of just what needs to be done. Yet, somehow I manage to do nothing, as if willing the failure to come. I’m not sure what I want to prove by doing this. Is it a nihilistic tendency floating on the river of my mind? Nothing matters, nothing exists, nothing has impact. I know it isn’t true, but it sometimes feels like some part of me wishes it was true. What huge fear (for that has to be it, right?) creates this within me? Can I truly be afraid of success, true success, as much as, if not more than failure? I mean, I can handle the easy successes. And trust me, for me getting good grades is an easy success. But the ones that take effort, consistent, constant effort, are those the ones I’m afraid of?

I don’t know. This whole idea of being afraid of truly succeeding I’ve had before, and always quickly turned away from. It makes no sense. It’s irrational. The common sense within me is covering its ears and humming really loudly, waiting for it to go away, but this tactic never works for the truly Big things. A very rational perspective: ignoring a problem only makes it worse. So, after I pull the hands from the ears and listen, what do I do then?