Rice was 'onto to something' mentally, that would later become her reunifying with the Catholic Church. Now that no more conversations can occur with Stan, except in memory, I wonder now where her writings will take her.

She must hear him in memory. I hear Laura in memory, know what she would say at any given moment. I hope for her it is the comfort that this is to me. She gives Pandora these words, as Pandora sets out to write her long life history:

''. . . the more I write, the more the concept of narrative excites me, the more I believe in the weight of a coherance which is possible on the page though not in life.''

I, through out nearly seven years of chronicled life via my journals, agree heartily. I come here to know my mind, to sort out the vague gray flutters which would only sift to dust were I not to force them into an ordering. Again, order works with chaos to force a meaning. Ever, always, that duality in paired effort.

So I come here, seeking to know my mind. I never know what I will find, if anything of merit will come from the search. But the endless value of the search, that is confirmed daily. I can never go back to the 'gray' of the unexamined life. No, I shall continue to bring my stark blacks and whites into vivid profile, delineation, so that never again in the unfocusing they turn 'gray'.

Such is the life of a writer.

Now, in the darkness that is the beginning of this new day, I await what the day will bring. Clogged sinuses are trying to weigh this down. I breathe deeply, relax the muscles, in particular the ones around my eyes, and this helps. I am a female, my spirit housed in a body with regular cycles. That is, my cycles used to be regular. On the average, every twenty five days, I would see red. Now it is doing crazy things. It was fourteen days, then thirteen days and yesterday it would have been the twenty fifth, and nothing has happened. I wonder if what women find so unnerving about the menopausal process is this chaotic uncertainty that unconsciously outlines their lives. Even if they were not given to charting and marking the calender, the regularity of the cycle gave a rhythm, an order to their lives. And when the order is upset, our lives can be subtlely thrown out of balance if we don't understand the process.

It is just a thought. The sinus headache has long been a thing associated with my cycle. It used to come after the finish of the bleeds. Now it comes before or during, but still associated with the bleeds. Are females more attuned to nature, simply because we are more aware on an intimate level of its cycles? The steady-state of the male knows not such fluctuations. But after menopause, females become more like males, and attain their own steady-state. It's the process getting there that so many women find difficult.

Not my mother, though. She spoke of the ease and relief to be rid of the 'cycle'. In all things, it is our attitude informing us and thereby making our reality. Our friends speak of their father, a man who has had a heart-valve put into him. How different his attitude became when he learned it was the same one the very macho Arnold Schwarzeneger had put into him.

Truly, attitude is almost everything. Yes, it's the backbone, or more aptly put, the SPOKES in the WHEEL of the 'willed conscious evolution', the 'process of becoming'. I remind myself of this often through out the day, as I breathe away minor irritations and relax my muscles to ease the tension causing stress.

Julia is looking much better. The medicine and painkiller are helping her body to heal. Our friends, who came last night when I was visiting Julia, are sending their healing energies, and THAT is helping her body to heal. How grateful we are to be so blessed with good friends!

And in this meander, once again I return to the pages of Pandora, and agree once more with Pandora:

''The finest thing under the sun and the moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition or despair. I marvel at human endurance.''

That marvel, the basis of the conscience worshipping that enlivens the lives of humanists who believe in human potential, is the spark which encourages our endurance, gives us hope and will not let us despair utterly, whatever trials befall us. I seek ever to stroke its flame, that no fierce wind blow it out completely. It has bloomed flamelike, these forty four years of my life, and I expect it to warm me all my days.

''So mote it be!'' I say with jubilant determinism. Order will come out of whatever befalls us.

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