Lately

Monday I went to Uptown Pub to visit with Tiffani. Her fiance Ryan works there. It was nice seeing them interact casually even though he was at work. They can still talk in bytes, touch each other's hands on his way to deliver a drink. A positive example of erasing the borders between work and life, in a way. They're getting married two weeks before Bri and me, and they won't quite be back from their honeymoon to S. Africa/Ireland in time to take part in the Peters-Robinson hitching. Sad. But life, in general, for them appears to be good.

I'm at work and supposed to be — what's the word? — ah, yes ... working. Very distracted. I'm really wanting to leave and do a long-ish run somewhere. Not sure why.

I saw a sweet gmail from Ty that he sent the other day, and I haven't responded yet (hiiiii Tyyyyy). I could just as easily be responding to it now. But it's one of those you have to absorb, let it moisturize your cracked parts, massage. Only then can you take up the craft of response.

Brian is being my hero lately. And man, have I needed a hero. Hard for me to admit, but geez, a wedding can threaten to take out the sanity of even the most "I don't care if I have a wedding or not" women in the world. Not just because of the pratical stress — money, planning, inviting, etc. But whatever issues you attempt to keep buried, at bay, managed in life ... a wedding will beat you at that little game. So just be prepared to deal.

Holly brought me this week's TV guide thing from inside the paper, with a picture of Christopher Meloni on the front. I cut it out and stuck it on my cubicle wall, so now he's staring at me with his arms crossed, all Law & Order-like.

Sunday the family celebrated mom and dad's birthdays (72 on 4/21 and 75 on 4/26, respectively). Went to church with them and then to Abuelo's afterwards. It was a good time. Next big event for them will be their 50th anniversary next January. We (their offspring) originally were planning to send them to New York so mom could visit her twin sister, who moved up there a few years ago and whom mom misses terribly. But mom doesn't fly well and dad would have to miss too much work for a road trip that far. So now we're thinking a Hill Country road trip for them. Which suits them much better anyways.

Tomorrow night is going to be very haaaaaaaaay. DMN publication Quick is hosting this event at Palladium Ballroom called Quick's Big Thing, with performances from locals like Polyphonic Spree and PPT, and with panelists discussing local music stuff. Beforehand there's a VIP reception with food, which is why I'm going ::urp:: Afterward, me and some of my paper girls (and a paper boy or two) are going to Minc, following the DJs who used to do the old school hip-hop night at Slip Inn before Slip Inn decided they didn't like the "element" it was bringing in. I.e. It was all white people at first then OMG black people started coming. Imagine that. How dare black people think they can go to a dive to catch a little HIP-HOP music. Ridiculous. That's ok, because the loudest way to protest is with the $$$, and Slip Inn won't be getting anymore of our DMN dollas.

Who remembers Roosevelt Franklin from Sesame Street?

You can see his dy-no-mite LP cover a few posts down at bizarrerecords.blogspot.com, which has a hilarious collection of record covers whose art is anywhere from, well, bizarre to disturbing (exhibit A to the right).

Vague points mixed with ones that are, unfortunately, crystal clear

Two-day journey

I'm on the recovering end of a difficult 48 hours. The past two days or so (mainly Monday and Tuesday) have jostled my bones. Because of a healing blend that Ty and I like to call "God + pills," I don't go into code red crisis mode too often (anymore). So this week has felt, whether objectively it was or not, tough. I believe God used the time to slow me down and show me a couple of things, things he probably would have shown me sooner if my daily avoidance tactics didn't require a crisis mode to shut them down.

Chronological order. Set up: I've been stressed at work, which yes, yes, is an exotic affliction unique only to me, I know. Nevertheless, work's sucked for quite a long time. In life, I've been stressed. Not knowing how to resolve these particular stressors results in an "there's always a billion people who have it worse off than you" coping mechanism. It's great for a temporary attitude adjustment, but the fact that the Sudanese and the Tibetans and war veterans and so many others have life worse doesn't make my stress simply go away.

Fast-forward to Monday. We had gotten a memo at work about the vents or mold or whatever getting cleaned on our floor Sunday night. We'd been warned that we might want to work from home (smart co-workers did; I did not) because of the fumes or something. They'd done the same thing the previous Sunday night, with Monday resulting in a mysterious migraine and nausea. Power of suggestion, I thought. Then this past Monday afternoon, another migraine with stronger nausea came on, and I almost fainted at my desk. I've never almost-fainted before. I was slightly dizzy. Also, even more mysteriously, I started getting ... crazy feeling. I didn't understand it, but that's how it felt. I later would realize it was the beginning of an anxiety thing grabbing hold. I have no idea how those symptoms materialized, and they were so strong that I couldn't blame the power of suggestion (the cleaning came to my mind only once early in the day, then I forgot about it). I finished up what I was doing and left early. I texted my editor and told her I was for sure working from home Tuesday.

The latter part of Monday was hard. Same physical symptoms. Increasingly, the crazy part got worse. It got sickening and oppressive, to where the other parts didn't matter anymore. I'll stop calling it "crazy" now — I'm fairly certain it was some sort of anxiety, I guess, attack. I have depression (beautifully managed by God + pills), but I don't experience anxiety, at least not on that level. If you had asked me what the matter was, or what I was freaking out about, I couldn't have told you. These things have no root in logic. The mental/emotional fissure, however, was allowing a whole bunch of my stowed-away junk to surface. I didn't want it to. Stuff from as early as six years ago to stuff that hasn't happened yet, that I won't go into here. Much unwanted weeping took place. You know it. The deep down kind, the polar opposite of the belly laughter you can't stop. I prayed and prayed and prayed. The fact I hadn't prayed like that in a while wasn't lost on me. Which made me feel guilty, adding to my already-crazy condition.

I knew things were bad when I busted out the steno notebook. It's the non-descript spiral I only write in about once a year or so, and only when in total despair. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I hate to get all "the power of journaling" on you, but in the process God showed me the root of much of my current life-stress. As you might notice, when I DO write, it's a novel. Writing kept me up til around 4:30 a.m. I was mad about that fact. But it offered revelation and detox, which is, apparently, what I needed.

It was awesome rolling out of bed and immediately sitting down at my laptop. That's two hours of getting ready and commute swapped out for literally 2 minutes in order to begin my work day. I thought, Why don't we do this more often? (Note to self: Talk to editor about that).

I woke up with classic cold symptoms, on top of raging nausea. The nausea either caused me a little anxiety or vice-versa, I don't know. I scarfed some of my sister's herbs for bad moods. The fact I could take a break from the rat race and work alone without constant office space drama for a day made a major difference in my recovery yesterday. I was thankful for it. And much more productive than an average Tuesday in the office, too.

I periodically read my Message-version Bible that was sitting by my laptop. I was in Ecclesiastes. When you think of parts of the Bible people typically read for comfort and assurance, Ecclesiastes wouldn't be the first answer. I love the translation — the book's running theme is "it's all just smoke and spitting in the wind." Essentially, all the things we normally dedicate our lives to, like making money, accumulating stuff, pleasing people, having babies, staying healthy, traditions, politics ... it's all meaningless. We all end up at the same place — dead. On its face, that's depressing. But it very much wasn't. It gave me comfort to know that someone thousands of years ago understood that truth. The solution made it even more worth while. Since you're going to die anyway, just try to be a good person and seek out good times. Good times! That's what I'm talking about. People with depression tend to view their connectedness to the world as much greater and more important than it actually is. It's not. So just have fun. That's liberating.

Still feeling ... crazy? .. so I took a break. Took my yoga mat into the backyard with plans to stretch, breathe, pray and just be for 15 minutes. Being in the sun always cheers me up, but it was overcast. That was ok. The 15 minutes was wonderful. But I still had that inexplicable "thing" inside my chest and stomach, the anxiety, fear, confusion, darkness, whatever you want to call it.

My sister's yard is spare save this faux-concrete miniature statue thing of a lion and lamb lying down by each other. She also has little matching stepping stones leading up to the statue with scripture on them. "Be still and know that I am God." I know the verse like the back of my hand. But for some reason, I was transfixed. They've been in the yard for a long time but I've never paid much attention. I sat in the grass and stared at the verse for a while, trying to absorb it down to my bones. I touched the lion, which was gazing peacefully down at the lamb, and the patina rubbed off on my fingers. For whatever reason, touching it, stroking it made me ... get it. I sat and just touched things for a little while: the lion, the lamb, blades of grass. It made me feel grounded.

I felt better. I took Mylanta for the nausea, and I felt even better (see? God and pills). I slept well. I had a dream that affirmed the message God had written inside me. But I'll save that for another post.

Life life life life life life life

Sigh. I'm just ... tired. Whine whine whine whine whine. How about I count my blessings. • Brian • My health • Employment • More to eat than I know what to do with • I live with my sister and niece, and that's fun • The fact there's no way to describe how good God's been to me • Mom, dad, Danny, Beverly, Keena and other family • Brian, Mandy, Ty, Liz, Tiffani, Marissa, Tiara, Holly, Derek and other friends • A place to worship, and the freedom to do so • A working vehicle that carries me wherever I need to go • I'm a woman in the 21st century • Coffee • Traveling, adventure, exploration, discovery • Jazz • Mangos with salt • Words and the ability to read them • Access to medicine, health insurance, herbs, vitamins, green tea, a gluten-free diet, exercise • A bed • Lip balm • Outside • Those random, unexpected encounters that proves God heard your prayers.

Ok, much better. Kthanx.

War: Apparently not mad enough yet

Picked up a cool book at work today, and it reminded me about how upset I used to be at the war until it dragged on and on and I became meh about it. Are you meh, too? Let me help with that. Excerpts:

"More than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent." Charles Eliot Norton

"Wars are not 'acts of God.' They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man has made, man can change." Frederick Moore Vinson

"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." C.S. Lewis

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Leviticus 19:18, KJV

"Love rules his kingdom without a sword." George Herbert

"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. Just as a mother would protect her only child at the rist of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings." Buddha

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." George Washington

"Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew." John Greenleaf Whittier

"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people refuse to go to war." Albert Einstein

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." John Donne

"No nation can find its own salvation by breaking away from others. We must all be saved or we must all perish together." Mahatma Gandhi

"As a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers' lives are lost." Natalie Maines

"As far as we are concerned, every death ... in every war that was ever fought represents life needlessly wasted, a mother's labor spurned. We are for life and creation, and we are against war and destruction." Betty Williams

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience." Julia Ward Howe (created Mother's Day in response to the Civil War's effects on society)

"War loves to seek its victims in the young." Sophocles

"In peace, children inter their parents. War violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children." Herodotus

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." Jonathan Swift

"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated." George Bernard Shaw

"What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." Confucius



"If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick or with a knife, you should abandon any desires and utter no evil words." Buddha

"You have heard that they were told, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But what I tell you is this: Do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other also." Matthew 5:38-39, revised English edition

"When we see a blow struck, we go on and think no more about it. Yet every blow aimed at the most distant of our fellow creatures is sure to come back, to our families and descendants." Walter Savage Landor

"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Matthew 26:52, KJV

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility and its stupidity." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." Jose Narosky

"It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live; before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands." André Gide

"Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough." Martin Amis

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending its money alone — it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Today every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness." John F. Kennedy

"So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occassionally kill theirs." Elbert Hubbard

"The world is drenched in mutual slaughter ... Held to be a crime when committed by individuals, homocide is called a virtue when committed by the state." Saint Cyprian

"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Violence is an admission that one's ideas and goals cannot prevail on their own merits." Edward M. Kennedy

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Isaac Asimov

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." Henry Wadsworth Lonfellow

"We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us." Rachel Corrie

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." Ernest Hemingway

"War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell." Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman

"'Terrorism' is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it. 'War' is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it." Sydney J. Harris

"Almost all propaganda is designed to create fear. Heads of governments and their officials know that a frightened people is easier to govern, will forfeit rights it would otherwise defend, is less likely to demand a better life, and will agree to millions being spend on 'Defense.'" John Boynton Priestly

"Old men declare wars because they have failed to solve complex political problems. They send young men to go fight them. Of course, the old men have to make up patriotic and emotional rationales to justify their stupidity." Arthur Hoppe

"Blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed." Bruce Springsteen

"Fuehrers will cease to plague the world only when the majority of its inhabitants regard such adventurers with the same disgust as they now bestow on swindlers and pimps. So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable." Aldous Leonard Huxley

"The master class has always declared wars; the subject class has always fought the attles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

"Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible." A. Philip Randolph

"All ferocity is born of weakness." Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger

"A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity." Jimmy Carter

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

"History is a vast early-warning system." Norman Cousins

"Throughout history, the world has been laid waste to ensure the triumph of conceptions that are now as dead as the men that died for them." Henri de Montherlant

"I do not recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is eternally and systematically engaged in the destruction of its own species." Thomas Jefferson

"The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people." Molly Ivins

And finally, the top Skidoo-pick:

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." Mark Twain


Peace.

Never been so glad to be wrong!

My girl HillClint took Texas, bay-bee! The delgate count still isn't through, though. But the popular vote is hers, which matters on many different levels.

You know, I did something so cheesy when I got home tonight. I can't believe I'm telling you this. I live in the country, and at 1:30 in the morning, an incomprehensible number of stars blanket the sky. I got out of my car, stopped halfway up the driveway, looked up for a minute and just sort of took it all in. I stared at the stars, smiling, thinking about when my mother taught me in third and sixth grades and she told the classes that we could be president someday - the girls, too. I thought of how there was no precedent for that, but mom said it, so it must be true. I remember feeling so empowered by the very fact that, even though there was no way on earth I would actually be president, I *could* be president. It made me feel important, and I've always been thankful to mom for going against he flow of her generation and believing that I, a girl, could feasibly hold the highest office in the land. That, in turn, made me hold my head up high, whether president or peasant. Because of this, I've always wondered if this theoretical possibility would ever happen in my lifetime. And now here we are.

I looked hard into the sky as if to find God so I could wink at him. He knows where I'm coming from on the whole matter, and for a second it felt like he made Hillary win just to speak to me on this very personal issue. I grinned.

Did I just tell you that? I believe I did. Nice. Oh well. This has been an episode of "When You Wish Upon a Star You Start Thinking God's Talking to You," with your host, Christy Robinson. Thank you for your participation.