No one knew me

Is it a naive question to ask why people who are trying to make changes that go beyond the status quo of greed and intolerance are always killed, or "in an accident" or "take their own lives"? I've asked this all before, but with Benazir Bhutto's murder most likely at the hands of the CIA or some shadow organization, I'm going to suggest that perhaps there is really no chance for anything good to come of this place. The supposedly forward thinking Democrats in congress keep caving to Bush and his freakish warmonger demands, even though they were elected with the votes of Americans who supposed they would make some changes for the better, and what it's actually got me starting to believe, is that they are all the reptilian super race that we've been hearing about, and not actual human beings after all.

Falling on my head like a memory

My husband cried last night. We were at his parents house celebrating Christmas and he was describing a scene from the book "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning", in which a Muslim man provides milk for a Bosnian Serb baby that he is supposed to be an enemy to, for something like 400 days.
Jack and I flanked our patriarch and stroked him as he told the story to his Mother and sisters. We also began to cry either by instinct or empathy I don't know which; all I know it that for him to feel it so deep makes me proud and a little annoyed that he is short with us, his family and feels so much for the world around him that he is doesn't seem to have patience for us at home. I do the same thing, so I can't be too hard on him. In my case it's having grown up in a family that was far too socially aware and oblivious on a personal level to the degree of a pretty complete lack of any sort of real and relevant relationship; but, if it was regarding someone we didn't know; here come the waterworks.

Fear is the heart of love

Jack went to the office on Tuesday because he was not feeling well. After the nurse called me and we made a plan for me to come and get him, she sent him to his locker to get the rest of his stuff. He left a pile of books on a desk there and when he came back, a letter saying;

" Careful what you read an atheist wrote this book. and in

the third book the kids kill God. Don't take it for truth."

had been placed into his copy of the Golden Compass. Now, it is not the first time someone has given us the information we seem to have been missing for many years, but it is the only time it came from a thirteen year old.
Our neighbors two houses away are an amiable family who happen to be very religious and their son felt compelled to let Jack in on this little secret; and boy now do we get it. Apparently this fellow had been in the office while Jack was there and felt the compulsion to set him straight about the religious ramifications of this book series, and sort of ruin the end for him. It's compelling, the indoctrination that occurs in places of worship and subsequently in people's homes. The heart of the matter is that I didn't and don't care about the undertones that delusional people portend exist in stories, I just care about the everyday shit that seems to be missing when holiday cheer means a nice fuck you if you get in someone's way when they see the item they want to buy and you are an obstacle to the promised land.

It's knocking over fences

I don't think it 's just me that feels like entire albums rarely are as good as the song that was the hook, or the "single". There is always baggage and usually on an average I like three or fours songs and listen to them over and over once I've heard the whole thing through. In an interview I read, Connor Oberst was lamenting that people, when they download songs, don't get the entire listening experience. On an aesthetic music loving level I agree that the tactile experience of albums or even CDs, (his CD Cassadage is a swell example of how much fun having something to play with while you listen to the music, is a perfect example), is an integral part of the experience, however, there have always been singles, or ep's with the songs that are deemed the best and most listenable. It takes active involvement to make an additional step and find out more about the artist that is singing the song you keep hearing and love. As far as I can tell this is an example of the differentiation of the passive and the active participant in any art. Not to say that you can't transcend genre's and levels of interest, but for the most part, people are going to pursue what gives them pleasure. That, and nothing more.

The minds of pretenders

Retention, now there's a skill I don't have, and it's that concise and simple. I can't ever remember specifics, as in facts or data. Ideas work for me, but otherwise, even if my life depended on it, I could read a paragraph and would forget any pertinent details within minutes.
And really at this point it doesn't pose that big of a problem, but I lament that I never had the mental acuity to come up with statistical or specific events that might have enabled me to feel more confident in a classroom setting wherein I had an opinion but not enough evidence to back up what I was thinking. Now, if I could only remember the point I was trying to make.

Telling all those good things

Is it true most things can have a carnal nuance, probably yes. I had been making cookies all day yesterday as it stormed outside, and it was all day because we were supposed to have people over and they got snowed in and I ended up having dough enough for the entire Federal Reserve. As I was rolling my last piece of rugelach, with raspberry jam, I thought about what the cookie resembled and how these baked goods have historically and traditionally been made by women to give to others as gifts and that's where it all started to come together for me, in terms of it being more than just sharing some treats.

Each of these

Would you leave your wife or husband alone in a room to cry? That's the question I asked myself when the doctor told me I had to let Jake cry for awhile when he would awaken in the night. It seemed endless and it was probably about five minutes, but I got up and brought him to our bed; he was around five or six months old by then, as he was in a crib in another room and up until then had been in a bassinet next to, or in our bed.
I didn't have any friends with babies at that point, now the family bed seems so much a part of what people do, but 18 years ago, it was me alone and a crying baby in another room; and there was Eamon, but he was hard to wake up. So, when I thought about being alone and crying it only made sense to me to go get him.
Yesterday at Target, I heard a fellow long before I saw him, and he was pissed. The sound began to come towards me, and I felt a pang of dread, and then humanity crept in and I thought about what it's like to be that far gone. He was wailing by the time his mom got near me in the snack food section, and she was dragging him somewhat and kind of ignoring the episode. He managed to come back on his own after about ten minutes of hard time, and then he had the deep snuffles and was resetting himself. And once again, I was reminded of my very, I think empathetic inquiry, would I drag Eamon through a store if he had big streams of snot and tears all over his face? Yes, yes I would.

Well so could anyone

The building that I work in has many departments, so we try and do something to kind of bring us together in a holiday cheesefest kind of way. In the past, there was the secret Santa route. With the requisite stalking and placing of token gifts and chocolate treats in a cubby or mailbox. Well, that wasn't for me so I renamed it and polished the process up a bit and it became known as the "Elusive Elves".
We are deep into the week of wonder and I've made all the requisite elfin, vertically challenged and elusive jokes that are possible.
As I was telling Eamon about what I was planning for my recipient, he chuckled and said something like, or maybe it was inferred, but it came out like, " Elusive Elves, what asshole came up with that name"? And I'm like, "um, me".

Through the revolution

Aging and perspective, hmm; well what I said in my previous post, applies here as well, until you're in it and know it physically, it's meaningless. Eamon is almost five years older than me, and I watch him for clues, he's a specimen to gage what I can expect and where my head will be.
I know he feels done with the child rearing portion of his life, however we still have children and therein lies the rub, I am actually starting to enjoy the process, it's less of a challenge and more of an adventure at this point. Not to say that it isn't difficult and demanding as all shit, but it feels a little more on the rewarding and credit side rather then living on the precipice with an enormous deficit and constant feeling of dread. Yup I'd say it's certainly a better place to be relatively speaking.

I always stagger back again

I'm all about the Netherlands, or maybe Scandinavia, more specifically Denmark and Holland. The movies, literature, history, culture, people; I'm into it and I want to go and see how it really looks and take it all in. I have a bit of the traveling bug, and as I was waiting in the endless line at the world's second smallest post office, as I used to live in Litchfield which tops that list, I was looking up at the passport sign, calculating how much it would cost of all of us to go to Europe, and unless I'm willing to part with an organ, I'm stuck here for awhile. I have an urge, it's like I want out of myself; and really there is nowhere to go that 's not going to be where I am, so I guess I have to learn to stay put and be here.
This brings me to the Buckaroo Bonzai saying that kind of has some perspective on change and going places to get away from what you know; "No matter where you go, there you are." Bummer.

Pointless passing

The eyes have it.
I think we are finally done with this seasons difficulty that will forever be labeled "doctors don't know shit".
Otherwise, as the end of 2007 approaches, I always reflect on the preceding year, and for once, there are very few regrets, perhaps not having gotten the restylane, but otherwise no. Jake has done very well in school this quarter, and that's an enormous relief to him. For me, it means that he has reached a developmental stage that has finally allowed him to do his schoolwork and make connections that he hadn't been able to in the past. On one level, I could say that maybe he's now just applying himself, but really, if you can't figure out how that would matter, it's not going to happen. So, in many ways, various and specific, I'm glad he spent 9 months away because I think there was a paradigm shift; for all of us.
Jack asked me if I was a good student in school; I immediately pointed out that there was some Halloween candy left, and if he wanted some he was welcome to it. Now, I don't know how long I can keep that up, I've said it before, I wasn't a competent student until college and I have admitted that to the boys, but lucky for me, the tv must have been on, and it was time for The Simpsons.

Things will be great

Yesterday Jack and I went to downtown to check out some art. We started at the Bazaar Bizarre which was kind of an indoor artmart with lots of beaded and knitted stuff. Then, we went the center of town to look for artists studios and galleries for their sales and open houses. For Jack it was an eye opener to see people living where they work and produce their art, for me, it was a much needed reminder that there is a huge amount of creative energy in Cleveland and some of it being used for good not just evil commercial hijinx.
When I was in college, I looked for a loft space to rent and back then, they were all really cold and unfinished spaces that would always be a challenge to live in because the area wasn't zoned for residential living. Yesterday I was frequently hot, and blown away by the elaborate living spaces. In part I was disappointed that all of this was a surprise to me, because it means I don't really get to think of myself as at all hip and artsy. And on the other hand, I really never was, I remember sitting in my friend's loft and wearing my coat and gloves and loving it to some degree except that we had to listen to her roommate fight with her boyfriend because a divider does not make a wall.