March 23, 2002
"AFTER SHOCK"
Their plights pulled a tear or two, I must admit. But the majority of the abundant tears I shed were for events not at all connected with this particular movie. I'm not sure when this movie was filmed, but certainly it was well before September 11, 2001.
After the major earthquake tremor has ripped apart most of New York City, a newsreporter in a helicopter is describing the sights she sees of the damage. When the plane hovers near the World Trade towers, she happily tells her listeners that they are intact. It seems a point of relief that these symbols of New York strength still exist, unscathed. Tears streaming, I shout to that fictional character, ''Oh no, they don't! Not any more!''
But, of course, she pays no attention to me and my world here. The real world, here. The one in which a REAL New York tragedy happened.
Then, I follow the flow of the movie: the pretty ballerina and the Russian taxi cab driver, the mother frantically searching for her little boy, the black public defender having second thoughts about the man she just got acquitted, the old lady trapped under a pile of debris, discovering the boy she'd hired to sweep the church has gone through her purse, the chief of fire at odds with the mayor; all their tales envelop me.
I'm in movie-sway until the husband of the mother searching for her boy catches the sight of the New York City disaster from the water. (He has had to get a boat to take him to Manhattan, for the roads were all guarded.) So there it is, the city skyline, with smoking everywhere. I am jolted to that day last September, when all of the nation, all of the WORLD, had their eyes on the New York city skyline, full of smoke. Tears again!
no 'SPECIAL EFFECTS' here!
So if you want to watch an absorbing and intense movie, AFTER SHOCK is one I recommend. But I just wonder how much intense it would have been against a different reality back drop.
To end this journal entry, here is a current New York night skyline scene:
New York City skyline now, defiant twin beams of light rising high!
March 26, 2002
"Breather"
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A deep breathed prayer for the day - strength will come to the sinews, poise to the mind. Float up with a breath, float down with exhaling. Float up, float down. Feet of dancers, have I? Float up, float down. Strength will come. I am ready. Float up, float down. I am ready.
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I like the sensory image of the 'Float up, float down'. I've thought of it several times these past couple of days while taking a deep breath.
"Triskelions"
There is a flag all right, from the Isle Of Man, which features three human legs:
Those mini-breaks are pleasant. The three of us took a break tonight at Monarch's Rest, a lovely restaurant with an English theme. Pieces of Olde England, such as pottery, advertising signs, and so forth decorate the walls and beams of this happy place. They have a brewary there, and Julia especially likes the brews, though Laura and I enjoy taking a few sips. And the food is good. We shared a lemon-lime cheesecake tonight, though Laura only took one taste, and Julia and I split the rest. It was luscious, and afterwards I was amused at the pattern of our forks on the plate:
Triad yum!
March 27, 2002
But I imagine there is only ONE triskelion featuring FORKS!
April 1, 2002
"Hot Flashes?"
Saturday was filled with usual things, such as walking with Laura and Julia at 'Smucker Park', and playing 'Everquest'. I succeeded in getting 'Ebonwolf', my Erudite wizard, to fourteenth level. By Sunday, he'd gotten knocked back to thirteen again, but for a brief while, he'd advanced.
Saturday was filled with not-so-usual things, too. Laura and I had some happy 'alone time'. We dined out, sitting facing each other on a thick brown table, various foods in front of us. Laura had an 'Italian salad' and French fries, while I had a baked potato, covered with broccoli, bacon bits and melted cheese. A tasty salad with restaurant-made bleu cheese dressing accompanied it. The server proudly told us she'd made the dressing that morning. It did add to the tastiness of the salad, with big chunks of bleu cheese scattered through out it.
We returned home, happy and full. While Laura answered her email, I began a mandala. No doubt the tri-symmetrical triskelions I'd discovered the other day inspired me to a quadri-symmetrical design.
Click on Thumbnail for full size
Click on Thumbnail for full size
I had the beginnings of the headache yesterday, but not so strongly as to ruin the day. We'd hoped to see Laura's son James with our friend Danice, but they did not show. James had a cold.
We missed them, and consequently, we ate late. Laura didn't check her email until 5:00pm, when she learned the reason for the 'no show'. We originally had plans to visit the 'Monarch's Rest', so just the three of us went there later. Alas, we walked up to a locked door. The sign on it said they'd had a Easter buffet, by reservation only, and had closed at 3:00pm. Being past five o'clock, we decided to go back home, after getting some special foods at the grocery store.
Home sounded good, anyhow. The sky was largely filled with a huge, alarming smoke cloud. From Old Town, we could see orange flames shooting up high within it. At home, we would be farther away from its source, and maybe we'd learn what was causing it. I could tell the fire had a broad base: what was afire was huge.
Later, seated in front of the TV, a delicious salad and ham sandwich in front of each of us, we learned the fire was in the grasslands alongside the Colorado River. But the reporter didn't know what caused the brush fire. Experts were 'researching it'.
Whether the fall out from the ashes added to the sinus headache I am suffering from today, I don't know. But last night, a new symptom previously unexperienced accompanied the malady. I woke up about 2:00am, totally soaked in sweat. I had to shed my wet nightgown for a dry one. As the sinus headaches are always linked to my monthy cycle, my first thought was ''Is this the beginning of menopause?'' Forty-three would not an an entirely unlikely age for its onset. But most likely, I have many years yet ahead of me, with 'monthlies'.
April 2, 2002
"Weird"
Anyway the black and white images flit by in my peripheral vision. Occasionally, my eyes catch a clear sight of the odd protagonist. Julia and Laura are having their allotted five ounces of wine. I'm sipping unsweetened green tea. I'm going to try cutting back the sugar in my diet. It worked so well when I began it April of two years ago. Then six months later, and ten pounds lighter, the convenience store job, and its all too convenient peanut M&Ms and Klondike ice cream bars seduced me. Over one year and thirty pounds later, I quit that job to move to Yuma. What a relief! It was like an eight hour advertisement for junk food. I couldn't stock the candies without succumbing.
Now, at my current job, I know there is a vending machine filled with peanut M&Ms a short walk away. But because I do not see them, I am not motivated to eat them. However that thirty pounds sticks like glue. Every piece of health advice tells me 'lose weight'. I can no longer regard them as nagging.
'Hot Flashes?', I wondered yesterday. Hot flashes, indeed. There I was, in a cool room at work, when the oddest sensation hit me. An internal furnace welled up within me, flushing my face with heat. A few minutes later, I was again cool. Several times, this 'internal furnace' shot forth its inner flame. I've never before experienced anything like it. Darn it, I'm getting OLDER. Pah!
One web site I visited listed 35! possible symptoms of what I have just begun to undergo. Another site said every female experiences this stage of life differently, however. Some lucky women have little symptoms at all. In any case they advised, of course, sugar reduction helps. I know it will help ME, most importantly.
The mathematical nut on the TV screen is playing with a computer. Odd numbers fill his screen. Then he goes nuts, screaming. He sees the face of the devil in his hair and wacks his head there with painful objects. Later, he screams ''Get out,'' to his heavyset landlady and some dark haired younger woman. ''Are you alright?'', younger woman asks. I don't think so.
It's hard to ignore the movie. Now he's shaved his hair, cut a design into his scalp, where he'd seen the devil before, and won't answer his phone. This thing is WORSE than watching a train wreck. Even Laura and Julia are starting to agree.
At least the sinus headache that tormented me yesterday and a large part of today has subsided. One has to be grateful for small things.
April 4, 2002
"The Softened Heart"
"Response To A Christian"
I am terrible at answering my email. I admire those who reply within a day or two. Sadly, I am not one of them. Thus it was that I finally looked at a message that had been in my mailbox nearly a month.
The respondant began:
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Joan, Began a search plugging in crystalline and mitosis, as I have read at the time of mitosis (when a cell divides for the first time) a star-like crystal is formed. I have also found crystals in salt (which is in humans and the ocean), and naturally in rocks . . . God has put crystals everywhere . . . I am praying that He softens your heart, opening it up to receive Him. May God Bless you, dear one
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Maybe other people ignore such letters. At least he wasn't a hostile believer. He must have found my writings initially through a search on crystals, for I collect the beauties, and have shared pictures and tales of crystal collecting through out the years.
Where he meandered from there, I couldn't know. Still, I felt inspired to answer him:
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I'm not sure what you read of mine. I don't think I belong to
the 'hardened heart' category. Actually I have a rather soft heart,
though not accompanied with a soft head, (meaning I am happily open
to the mystical and intuitive, but am grateful for the sense of
reason.) But you must mean that I am obviously not YOUR BRAND of spirituality. Nope, I'm not a Christian. I could answer that I pray YOU get opened up to the WHOLE spiritual smorgasboard, but I won't. You must follow your own path, where ever it takes you. Just don't hurt your feet on any brambles along the way. Sufficiently Soft Joan . . . |
Thoughts of this interchange must have been brewing all night in that intuitive side of my brain, for shortly after I woke up this morning, I 'heard' the muse whispering to me. Yes, in the midst of the morning scramble, a poem happened!
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I feel the rain,
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