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Archive for January, 2011

“Random chance seems to have operated in our favor” ~Spock

Posted in Expat Living, Friends, Health, Island life, science, Seychelles, tagged , , , , , , , on January 14, 2011| 6 Comments »

Not exactly an iPhone ...

On a rainy Friday in Seychelles I get a call from Mexico informing me that the Chinese calendar will be bringing me a year of good luck starting on the 3rd of February, prompting me to share that possible reprieve with friends in the US, England, Germany, Italy and South Africa.

Yep. Within about 30 minutes eight countries were buzzing about my radar, and that was without going anywhere near facebook.

It never ceases to amaze me how this world of ours has gone so tiny, yet stays so bloody big. Yeah, sure I can conference call … for free … with a half dozen people in as many countries when effectively connected, and that’s wonderful, but getting up-close and personal with anyone off this rock? That’s not so simple, is it?

It wasn’t long ago the Internet and its wonders were beyond the scope, but within a few short years it’s more common in my world that peeps have it than don’t. Not only can we now communicate globally easily and far more cheaply than in the days it took a pricy phone call to reach out and touch someone, we now have Internet ON our phones. Just take a moment to imagine how shocked we would have been had we been told ten years ago this would be at our fingertips? And with a touch screen, yet!

Yes, we’ve seen HUGE changes, but at the same time so much stays the same.

Ease of communication has leapt and bounded, but transport? Not so much.

It was 40-some years ago James T. Kirk and Co. were stepping up for getting around of the dissolve/stick-together-somewhere-else sort, but the only real change in how we’re able to move about that’s happened over all those decades is the size of the planes that cram us in, then subject us to endless hours of torture.

Oh! You can now make calls from your own phone on some airliners and connect to the Internet, but that seems just rubbing it in if you ask me.

I’ve been waiting for that Beamy-uppy thingy ever since I moved halfway around the world from my roots and shoots, but in vain.

So, what is it with all the sticking-to-the-planes deal? I admit my lack of science-y expertise may be tricking me into thinking it should be an easier row to hoe, but since I was equally clueless on the WorldWideWeb, I’m in no mood to allow any excuses.

Look at it this way …

The first telephone … the precursor to our modern communication wonders … was patented in 1876. The first car … the beginning of travel that didn’t require draught animals … came along about 200 years EARLIER, and the first gasoline engine cranked over almost in sync with the phone.

An automobile powered by his own four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and granted a patent in January of the following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie., which was founded in 1883. It was an integral design, without the adaptation of other existing components, and included several new technological elements to create a new concept. He began to sell his production vehicles in 1888.
A photograph of the original Benz Patent-Motorwagen, first built in 1885 and awarded the patent for the concept

In 1879, Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, which had been designed in 1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine feasible for powering a vehicle.

I know there’s a huge difference between the internal combustion engine and the Star Trek transporter, but so is there between the gadget you see Alex G. Bell mouthing into in the photo above and instantaneous video calls around the planet.

“I signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.” ~ Dr. McCoy

Yeah, yeah … it’s a bit of a scary concept, but if Bones could get over it, anyone can.

So … get on the stick, folks. I hate flying, always get a fuckin’ cold when I’ve had to freeze my ass off for 12+ hours and ingest the breath of 250 other people who are as just as uncomfortable as I am, and I don’t like the food.

But …

If 2011 actually IS my year … me being a metal rabbit and this being the year of the rabbit and all … I’m not wasting any of the luck that may come my way on R&D for rapid-er transit.

Nope.

I’ll be keeping all that for health, wealth and wisdom for me and mine, thankyouverymuch. And if that puts my ass on planes, so be it.

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Want to buy a house in Seychelles? Pick mine!

Posted in Expat Living, Island life, Seychelles, tagged , , , , , , on January 13, 2011| 12 Comments »

One search engine parameter that comes up often as I peruse stats for this blog is some version of Moving to Seychelles. Readers from way back know I don’t go out of my way to answer all the questions on the ins and outs of a relocation, seeing as how that brought a load of ungrateful grief at one time, but I’m cool with the occasional query on island life.

Of course, now that I’m selling my place I’m happier to share my wisdom with peeps who could be interested in investing in my fabulous piece of paradise, and those folks would be wise to hear me out.

This being a whole country, not just an island resort place, there are many options when it comes to how and where one would choose to plop a load of dosh, then settle in for long or not-so-long periods of time depending on whether it’s a primary or holiday home. There are apartments available, small houses in local neighborhoods, bits of undeveloped land here and there, hotel-linked homes and … well … my place, and each option offers something different.

The dense living of developed areas is what it is, and although there’s a difference between units designed for expats and houses in local neighborhoods both come with their share of sharing … space, noise, traffic.

The closest comparison for my property would be the hotel-linked homes, both offering views, a degree of privacy and an existing structure. For those who like the idea of putting their home in a hotel’s rental pool for anyone to use for the time they’ll not be in residence, it makes sense to go that way. It’s also nice if you like the idea of neighbors near enough to eavesdrop.

The hotel will take care of many details for owners, a privilege that costs a fair bit, provide some security, also at a price, and make sure someone is always keeping an eye out … even if you’d rather they not. There is also the added advantage, if one deems it so, of having a home you can check in to and out of with a charming receptionist handing over the keys, wishing you a good day and paying attention to whomever you might invite over.

The advantages to buying my place include real privacy and control, the option of doing whatever the hell you feel like doing with the huge garden and the house … build another house or three, put in pools with water slides, even a dungeon if you like … and NOT having to deal with a receptionist.

And if THAT’S not enough for you, check out these photos, shot from the public road, of real-life hotel-linked living provided by Raffles Hotels on Praslin and some of Anse Soleil via me, … and keep in mind my place is far less expensive … and 200 meters from the public road!

And if that’s not enough for you, here’s a link to more.

Yep. This is marketing, so feel free to share this post around widely!

Raffles Seychelles ... from the road

The Raffles environment

Where Raffles meets the road

My house

The environment at my place

The view from the bed ...

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Shoes That Get Around … Dammit!

Posted in Family, Loss, love, Men, News, Older women, Sex, tagged , , , on January 12, 2011| 8 Comments »

I heard a story the other day about a woman who recently found herself standing in a pair of my three-year-old shoes … shoes that were feeling very comfortable until the day they sliced my feet off and left me to hobble on bloody stumps.

Members of the confab gathering around … apparently a lot of us wear the same sized slippers … have asked for my thoughts. They tell me she’s around my age and had been thinking herself well-married, happy, safe only to learn that her devoted husband had shifted his devotion from her to someone else.

She was blindsided … a very nasty way to take a blow … completely unprepared for the drastic change to life, and in the man she’d considered for many years a life partner.

“Who is this guy, and what did he do with my husband?” is the question she’s asking now, and with good reason since “this guy” is nothing like that guy. Or is he? Can you really miss that much in someone you’ve been sleeping beside night after night for decades? Apparently, yes.

With interesting timing, this article came across my radar this morning. Titled “He’s the One Who Cheated and Left; So Why is He So Angry At You?”, if nothing else, it proves that those old shoes sure get around.

I couldn’t understand why my ex never expressed remorse for what he’d done to me, just regret at what our daughter suffered. He’d always been extremely concerned about me while we were married, worried about my health, mental and physical. He’d always apologized every time he blew up at me. I was stunned at his coldness. He did say to me on various occasions that he felt “guilty” but he never apologized or showed any empathy for my suffering.

Sound familiar?

I don’t know the newly-dumped woman, so am in no position to give a hug and add to the chorus now teaching her the words to “I Will Survive” and encouraging her to sing at the top of her voice.

Not that she’s there yet. It takes time to move from “alone and petrified” to “savin’ all my lovin’ for someone who’s lovin’ me” … a LOT of time.

Unfaithful husbands–even husbands who have always been loving– can be inexplicably brutal. The incongruence between you makes it all worse. He’s already found a new partner, and doesn’t feel the loss of the marriage. You, on the other hand, are shattered, terrified of the future and collapsing on friends and relatives. His happiness is the unkindest cut of all. He’s already detached from you, or is in the process of detaching, which makes him excruciatingly insensitive.

Apparently, there are reasons for the excruciating insensitivity … not that it’s any excuse for it:

“Infidelity is harder on women, who are more vulnerable to feelings while men are a law unto themselves,” explains psychoanalyst Simone Sternberg. “Men don’t allow themselves to empathize with women’s suffering. It’s too threatening. Also underneath male supposed indifference or even hostility is self-hate which they project onto the wife. They can’t afford to empathize or they’ll have to experience the full force of that emotion.”

Well, whoopiefuckingdoo …

Oops. Sorry. Okay. Not sorry … and still pissed off when I allow myself to dwell, but, hey, I’m entitled to my feelings, too. There is, after all, such a thing as consequences, as William Congreve noted way back in the 1600s:

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

Being burned leaves scars that can itch and tug and it’s not in any furious, scorned woman’s mandate to forgive or forget, only to get on with it.

That’s about my only advice to anyone finding their feet now bound in those old shoes … get on with it. There’s nothing else you can do. Suck on the bitter pill … it won’t choke you … remember the flavor, and try to avoid the queue that forms in front of those dispensing another dose.

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A Tangled Web

Posted in Poetry, Writers, Writing for a living, tagged , on January 11, 2011| 4 Comments »

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
~Walter Scott

A conversation with a young writer a while back on honesty combines with an apparent lack of integrity in business and government coming across in the world news and personal experience with some who have a very casual relationship with truth and leads me to today’s post.

I make up stories. Of course I do; I’m a writer. I write about ghosts of pirates and old ladies who can fly and all sorts of other completely fictional scenarios. The fact that many of the tales I jot down never happened does not, however, make them lies. In fact, vital to each is its honesty.

My young pal is writing sci-fi, intricate stories of the seemingly impossible convoluted by circumstance outside the limits of anything but his imagination, yet my advice to him is: Keep it real; keep it honest.

How does that work? Well, the same way it does in life.

There are rules. There are always rules. Rules of action and reaction, of fairness, of balance, and through the process of creating a world, even an outrageous world of your own making, rules must be engraved in stone and followed.

For example, I just finished writing a scene in the book I’m working on now where a character is standing high on a rock contemplating the view before her. In reality, there is no woman, no rock and no view until I write it. It’s at that point it becomes substance, even if the substance is nothing but a string of words. I could easily endow her with superpowers that would allow her to leap, then fly, or I could make her as big as a cloud or as small as a gnat, but the one thing I cannot do is write what can’t be according to the rules of her world.

She feels the breeze upon her skin, so that breeze must be what a breeze is and her interpretation of it must be within the realm of what is possible for her. I can choose not to include the breeze in the tale, but it’s there and there’s no room for cheating, for glancing over what must be, what is. Her world isn’t airless, nor is she the type not to notice a warm, enveloping breath, so it must be written as it happens.

I wrote recently about my way of thinking of life as a series of books within a book, how I have a mental library I access as a meditation technique and where I store stuff in some sort of order I don’t always have access to.

Thinking in those terms, when reading news accounts of real people, I often wonder how their books play out. Not the truly evil, as there are plenty of horror tales that run according to plot, but those who bend and twist truth as if it is something bendable and twistable. It’s not, you know. It’s not. And the spiders weaving those tangled webs are very frequently left to dangle on a thread going nowhere.

It’s the same with people in the non-newsworthy world … whatever that may be at any given moment … who seem to think they’re getting along just fine by tweaking reality when it seems convenient, doing one thing, then saying they’re doing another … or nothing at all … living one lie after another as if life is nothing but a series of lily pads offering options to hop without consequence rather than a path that will be taken no matter how many times a plop in the muck happens.

The life books of those folks must be full of missing chapters and run-on sentences leading nowhere. All that doubling back must get tiresome, and since none of us gets a chance for a full rewrite, the story must grow terribly labyrinthine and cluttered with many dead ends.

The fact is many of our stories interconnect, fact and fiction, and once we’re part of another book or another’s book becomes part of ours plots mingle. Everyone is on their way to their own ending, but one influences the other and plot twists often happen in tandem. When all is based in real, in truth and honesty and integrity, scenes open, run and close in an order that makes sense, that scans, that works no matter how deep the tale, how serious the diegesis, how diabolical the outcome.

It’s cheap and easy to write bad fiction … there’s certainly a lot of that about … just as it is to live it. When the frog eats the spider and the lily pad sinks we lose interest until they’re scrambling to find something with substance to pull themselves up by. That would be truth.

There are, of course, various interpretations of truth, degrees of certitude, some flexibility in defining where accuracy and honesty go in different directions. In writing, such partings must be … well … spelled out, clearly or obliquely, or readers may feel tricked into a web that’s lost its form. Bored and frustrated, they’ll turn away, stop caring, toss the book at the wall and vow never to go THERE again, and the dishonest writer has just slit their own throat.

In life, however, a lie is a lie, and although some may appear to gain ground with the telling thinking they’re paving the way toward what they may think is a right direction, in the long run gossamer lily pads go nowhere.

Gossamer Lily Pads and Where They’ll Get You

If a frog eats a spider
and the spider’s had a fly
where’s the nutrition if
it’s all been a lie?

The spider says, “I’ve done it,
and there’s a way to go”
So a hop to a lily pad
makes sense to the toad.

When the spider can’t be trusted
and there never was a fly
and the frog knows the lily pad
is nothing but a lie,

just loosely woven spider spit,
a floating maze of fraud,
it serves them all quite rightly
to be left to swim in mud.

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Talkin’ ’bout the weather … and NOTHING else …

Posted in Island life, Nature, News, science, Seychelles, tagged , , , , , , on January 9, 2011| 8 Comments »

I’m thinking I want to talk about the weather today. It always amazes me how much dialogue can center around a topic so far out of human hands and often … especially here … so benign, but “Is it hot enough for ya?” can usual light a conversational fuse that may go on for quite a while.

I really don’t want to immerse myself in all today’s news about the horrific shootings in Arizona, although I can’t help but wonder WTF is happening in the country I called home up until 1994.

It’s not that I’m shocked by deadly violence from the business end of a gun, as that happens all the bloody time … bloody being a British expression, not an American descriptive term, although it fits that way, too … and well-armed nutjobs are a dime a dozen in the US.

No. It’s the idea that the us/them thing has inflated to the popping point without peeps seeming to care much about anything other than winning … although what it is they want to win evades my grasp.

I get that crushing universal health care is a rocks off goal and that some are pissed off about the demise of DADT and other such rights being offered to fellow humans … hence the term “human rights” … but how such issues end up on the “must do” list is beyond me, especially when “must do” translates to “must kill” to make it happen.

I don’t want to think about mass deaths of all those animals either. Not tonight.

Sure, I could dig around the info on how this sort of thing has been going on for yonks and how it’s only a wee bit odd that it’s raining dead birds and the world is awash in dead fish and dead crabs and … well, loads of dead stuff in many shapes and sizes … and there is entertainment value in considering the possibilities both conspiratorially-minded and other-worldy, but I’d really rather not be freaked out right now about the end of the world.

If I had more energy, I might actually get off on sinking my teeth into the Twitter story on how the US gov’t is strong-arming social media into bellying up and handing over info on ANYONE who might know someone who knows something somehow about Julian Assange.

The thought that they want to dig into the communications of an Icelandic official is appalling, and the fact that it’s the Obama admin doing this … Democrats, FFS … not a Bush/GOP/Tea Party mega-Nixonesque thing … is freaky and has me thinking we most likely have NO idea who is really running any show anywhere.

Quite frankly, I don’t even want to dwell on the condition of the Anse Soleil road as the Keystone Konstruction Kompany turns it into 4×4 only access, having … according to Radio Bamboo, the local version of the grapevine … pissed away Sheik Rattle&Roll’s tarmac bucks on Whoknowswhat.

Since I’ve been working all day and just now getting around to putting a blog post together … just now being 7:08 pm on a Sunday with one glass of wine down … I don’t have it in me to blather on about any of that heavy shit, thankyouverymuch.

So …

Hot/cold/windy/wet/dry enough … whatever … for ya?

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Feckin’ musicians …

Posted in Celebrities, love, Men, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, Writers, tagged , on January 8, 2011| 11 Comments »

Thanks completely to my dear friend Robbie, I’m now deep into Keith Richards’ “Life”. Not only am I enjoying the read, it’s setting me off in many directions through time, but criss-crossy-convoluted as Keith jumps through all of his.

I’m recalling events directly Stones involved, from the first time I saw them in concert … I must have been 13 or 14 at the time … Brian Jones was alive, of course, Jefferson Airplane opened for them, but before Grace Slick — a girl named Nicki Anderson (not sure of the spelling) sang with them then … to my personal experience with the charming Mr. Richards in New York many years later.

Also coming to mind are the times and the music, the many moments in life set against the backdrop the timeframe dictates and scored by the Rolling Stones. Although I’m not exactly chuffed by the fact that I am now a woman of a certain age, I wouldn’t trade the experiences my era provided for the perky tits of tepid Twentiesville or the smooth-faced bland of Thirtyopolis.

Nope. Although I’m quite a bit younger than Keith and without so much of the rode-hard-put-away-wet-look he’s earned and mastered, living through the time I lived provided something special.

I started young, which ended up being a good thing as by the age of 16 I’d been sent to the hinterlands. Before that, however, I was in the right place at the right time to witness the reinvention of the wheel that rolled over just about every aspect of life as it had been known, and being without much in the way of parental supervision or smarts I had access with buddies or a bus pass providing transport.

Art, literature, fashion, music … all experienced a rebirth, and what popped out was earth-shattering, unexpected. All these changes were considered by many to be mere flashes in the proverbial pan, but considering how many present-day teens flock … and pay a fortune … to hear Keith rockin’ it at 60-some, that would seem to have been a short-sighted view.

Reading through his version of life as I pass this day in paradise, though, I’m wondering how deep the impact of all that change had on me.

For sure, the image of being June to a Ward had little appeal as the world shifted from 50s dregs to 60s mania, although Ricky with the conga was pretty hot. And speaking of Ricky, Ozzie may have had the suit and the nebulous ‘job’, but when his youngest picked up a guitar … well, did they get any cuter? If anyone wanted to be Harriet, I didn’t know them.

Like every teenage girl of the time … and no few teenage boys, as well … I entertained fantasies of portions of life partnered with one of the rock gods who filled every corner of my life from the walls of my bedroom to the tunes playing endlessly everywhere. Not only were they amazing to hear and watch, creative, explosive and beautiful, they were also dangerous bad boys who literally marched to a different drummer.

I watched Jim Morrison stumble around and was enchanted. Coming across Jimi Hendrix blowin’ chips outside the Fillmore was almost a religious experience. (Apparently, it was the flu … yeah, right … ) And I still swear I levitated Country Joe McDonald three feet into the air once at the Avalon …. but the acid was really good in those days, and he didn’t seem to mind too much, although he could be grumpy.

No, there weren’t a lot of ‘nice young men’ taking the stage at that time, at least not in the classic sense of ‘nice’, and I liked that. The rude, crude and raw attracted me like a fly seeks shit and the drama of it all stripped the coating from the wires making everything alive.

What followed was a long string of musician boyfriends … mainly guitar players, although there were a few drummers mixed in, but they are a fidgety bunch … and some were very nice, polite young men who kept their manners about when my parents were looking. None were as dangerous as they appeared to be, nor mean, but some did break my heart and all required ego-feeding at regular intervals. (Funny thing is, the non-musical men had the same bloody ego issues with much the same bloody demands. Go figure. But the fact that they didn’t hang their dicks around their necks demanding adoration did make some difference.)

Gaps happened, years that had no musician serenading day-in-day-out, but soon enough … for sure … they’d pop up again. After my first divorce I went on the road with a wonderful bunch of guys … still friends after all these years … and came across more as decades passed. I fell in love with some. Some fell in love with me. All-in-all … well, it was what it was.

As regular readers know, my last relationship was with … yeah, you’ve got it — a musician … another ‘bad boy’. (And who knows if it’s really bloody over or just on pause, as the contact continues daily and the fat lady has yet to sing real loud.)

My lot now is to figure out if it’s the bad boy thing that draws me or the fucking music. Did Keith and his ilk ruin me for guys with regular jobs? Will I put up with anything as long as there are songs dedicated to me and named for me? Or … do I actually LIKE it? Can strife really be settled with a strum? Is there magic in music soothing my soul even when my nerves fray and my temper flares? Do I NEED the drama?

Reading Keith’s life reminds me that musicians aren’t “normal” people, and thinking on my life has me realizing I’m not “normal” either. As I wasn’t built for mopping in pearls, some aren’t made to put on a suit and head for a ‘job’ and a box and a handle… and maybe … just maybe … that’s okay.

OR …

Maybe it’s time I set aside my … what? fascination? attraction? tolerance? … for musicians and developed more of an appreciation for nice, for reliable & honest, for passions of a sort that don’t require being charted … for those who are satisfied being stars in their worlds and neither need nor seek wider adulation.

The rules broken by Keith Richards and the bulk of my childhood heroes left little in their wake to ski on since the ideas of happy coupledom continued to be based more on June and Ward than Mick and Marianne and that left some confusion over both goals and expectations. Sure, John and Yoko pulled it off, but for the most part musicians have not made for a whole lot of traditional relationships still thought of as ideal. In general, they are demanding, self-centered, self-indulgent, temperamental and insecure, traits that manifest in high levels of self-motivation and creativity, and in behavior not always conducive to a comfortable home life and monogamy.

I’m an artist, which means I must be crazy, and the art and crazy in others draws me … even when my art takes that infernal backseat to theirs. My art is words, and often my words are undervalued … used … considered less than what appears on canvas, sculpted, composed in notes and chords … yet demanded for adulation of all of those. Artists appreciate art and understand the requirements for creating, however, so although what I do may be seen as a useful appendage to musical endeavors it is valued and my work is validated and the processes that take me where I need to go are never questioned.

Writing happens in isolation, not on a stage in front of an audience, and kudos come … when they do … quietly and singularly –“Nice job. Really liked your story. It touched me.” — so is work requiring a different set of needs, but creation is creation, something I have a deep and abiding respect for.

I know how a book gets written, how a poem takes form, how an actor climbs into the skin of a character, even how paint can be applied to canvas with beautiful results, but musicians are versed in a language I can hear, yet never fully understand (and I don’t mean Spanish). The process of creating music seems like magic, magic that casts a spell. It always has.

Does that mean I will forever be subject to falling under the power?

Shit.

Gee, thanks, Keith …

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Pigs fly, birds die … we’re doomed

Posted in Nature, News, Religion, science, tagged , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| 13 Comments »

All this bird dying, fish floating, mass crab croaking stuff is creepy, and I don’t care how many scientists trot about spouting on about how these are normal events.

Sure, I can understand how finding oneself in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year’s Eve could prompt the mutilation migration that had thousands of birds falling from the sky and nearly 100,000 fish rising to the surface in a nearby river in the days leading up to the holiday, but rural redneckitis doesn’t explain major die-offs in New Zealand, the UK and Sweden. (Although I suspect the Swedish situation may be pinned on broken condoms, but I’m not going there today.)

As some drunken Scot put it: We’re doomed, Laddy.

We’re one year away from 2012, and if predictions are to be awarded their due, apparently the road to global annihilation starts the paving process with fish and birds.

Given that one portent of doom suggests $5 a gallon gas by 2012, my world … where gas is about $7 a gallon … is already up there with the bloating snapper.

We’re also well on our way to learning all the steps to the natural disasters pas de everybody and just the global weather of the past month alone is enough to warm us up for 2012 terrors of the climate kind.

Add to it all things like the birth of a panda cow in Colorado … presaged by that wise woman Christine O’Donnel’s ManMindMouse … and the appearance and immediate shooting of a strange creature in Kentucky and there’s a whole lotta strange goin’ on.

After all, a black man is President of the US of A and it’s now okay to be gay in the army, so apparently hell has frozen over and pigs do fly, so the only horror yet to happen is THE END OF THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD.

I could make a couple predictions myself from today’s news alone … a Momon nutjob taking over the House Armed Services Committee will result in battles of prophecy fulfillment, or not … thousands upon thousands of people will soon suddenly be unable to identify their location due to Starbucks removing their name from the logo. Yes, creepy things are coming at us.

I’m also guessing strange lights will be seen in the skies, entire nations will mysteriously place idiots in powerful positions and millions will be moved to tears by the news a perfect couple has decided to divorce. Yep … all this over the next twelve months leading to 2012.

I can’t help but wonder when the first time was humans prepared for the end of the world. For sure the predictions have been going around a while and no few religions buy into the idea of Armageddon, but did early man include a sense of total destruction as he painted bison running across cave walls? Could unexplainable events in the ancient natural world have been assumed portents of doom?

I’m guess, yep. I’m also guessing thoughts of surviving such made up a whole bunch of that old time religion that’s morphed into what we have today.

Since we can’t even figure out how to keep oil companies from wasting millions of gallons of their pricy product on useless endeavors like turning the Gulf of Mexico into sludge, much less how to travel to distant, possibly more habitable, planets, what hope could there be in trying to avoid the coming apocalypse?

The only question really then, is: What to do between now and the end of the world?

Of course, a number of options present. We can, for example:

1) Curl up in a ball and do the “Oh, woe is us” thing
2) Turn to a higher power in hopes that gives some leverage
3) Live life to the fullest every day while considering each a gift
4) Figure out a way to make a buck while riding the hysteria wave
5) Ignore all
6) Consider all an adventure and go with the flow

Okay … there are a whole lot more options and I’m willing to hear others, but that’s all the list I have time for right now since there’s no use wasting too much of that on just another bloody blog post, is there?

For my part, I’ll try my best to concentrate on ducking falling fowl, putting one foot in front of the other, having a good time when I can, writing about stuff I find interesting … or amusing … or annoying … taking care of my kids (just in case there turns out to be a world for them to inherit), hanging with my friends, laughing, loving, snorkeling and trying not to spend too much time fretting about stuff I can’t fix.

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This is cool …

Posted in Uncategorized on January 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Just sussed out how to post blogs from my BlackBerry. Not that I want to write 350 words on my phone, but at least now it can be done if it must!
I do love the age we live in …

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Blank pages …

Posted in History, Hopeful thoughts, I wanna, On getting older, Poetry, WTF? on January 4, 2011| 12 Comments »

Apologies for this convoluted mess of a post. I’m processing, and that’s not a tidy endeavor, so this thing is all over the place …

Being a reader and a writer, I suppose it makes sense that I often think of life in terms of books.

One of my favorite images, developed when I was a kid and honed over the years, is of internal libraries we each carry with us; volume after volume of stories lining endless shelves and constantly being added to. The history section grows as we age, as does general knowledge and reference works, and although some are better than others at retrieving info we know is there, just about everyone is aware of the fact that dusty corners hold stuff we haven’t bothered to look at in a very long time.

I use my library as an aid to meditation and often find illumination for troubling issues while wandering the stacks. There’s an entire section with nothing but numbers on the spines … all in Roman numerals. (I don’t know why, but that’s what it is.) The first is marked “I” and I can trail my finger along … V, X, XXV, XXXIII, XL, L … and stop where it feels right. Each book is a rough accounting of one year of my life, yet none are finished but have blank pages interspersed throughout since many of the yarns have yet to complete their weaving.

The library itself is inside a book inside my head, but much like reading on my iPad, I have no idea how thick this book might be. I know I’m a good way through, but just how far from The End, I can’t see. It could very well be that the next turn of the page is the last … or perhaps there are still quite a few chapters.

I might sketch notes in the corners if I could get to those pages by somehow jumping ahead — they are fairly blank, after all — but thumbing forward is futile and ends up heading back through chapters on history. That’s not a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, filling in gaps can be quite helpful even without knowing how it all ends.

One rule of fiction writing dictates everything included in a story must either reveal character or advance plot. Interestingly, reads back through my book seem to indicate that rule was followed even though at the time it seemed either nothing was happening or what happened was scripted by the William S. Burroughs school of writing. Oh, those not-so-lovely Deus ex Machina moments that make no sense at all … the shit asteroids falling from a clear, blue sky … the people popping up seemingly out of left field and tagging up … the bright, shiny objects floating into the path and compelling me to follow.

Yep, those WTF moments, the where-the-hell-did-that-come-from issues … when looking back in the Big Book of Sandra I do get the idea that all these shredded threads actually unspool from a source and following the fragments is possible. Some of it even makes sense when looking at it backwards, or if not sense at least symmetry. After all, I’m where I am now and getting here is what the story’s been about … so far.

As a new year begins, the image of blank pages ready for filling presents, but I’m not writing my life, just living it. It’s not me setting the scene but the sea and the clouds and the blue sky above, the bird chirps, the sound of the dog’s leg tapping along in time to her scratching happening with no need to be described … it all just is.

I can’t write others’ actions or reactions. I can’t build a character who loves me enough, never lets me down or saves the day. It’s not for me to calculate another’s trajectory and where it intersects mine. I can want to, but I can’t DO it. No. What is, is.

What also “is” is the part I can’t know — the part composing on its own. Are we coming toward an unexpected plot twist? A lottery win? The death of a loved one? Someone wonderful about to enter stage right? Cancer? A job offer? A heart attack?

Any or all of that could be part of the plot … well, not the lottery thing, since apparently you have to actually buy tickets and I don’t … and if I die tonight, my book is done and I’ll be filed away in the libraries of those who know me, but will continue to fill pages in others’ books … cross-references are a huge part of the life of Life books and parts of my story will continue to be included in the story of others for a while.

My volume varies in size from library to library … much thicker in my grown daughter’s than in Cj’s, for example … and there will be many different versions of my story. The version I have access to now will never be read by anyone, so no one will ever know the me of me that I know, just as I can’t know the them of any of them. Our stories are not only unique, they are forever beyond the comprehension of anyone, even ourselves; unfathomable biographies covering millions of seconds, each leading to the next until they stop doing that.

And there will be rewrites, some kind, some less so, but all tailored to fit the edition to the library hosting.

If I could write the rest of my life, I would end the book for MMX with ” … and she lived happily ever after to the end of her days”, then start on a new one with an outline for just how that would unfold making sure there were many, many pages left for all the great stories about to commence. For all I know, however, it’s already written, and perhaps that is how it goes. Maybe I do live happily ever after. Maybe all the carefully composed outlines have forged themselves in some sort of unassailable form that MUST be followed. Maybe. For now, though, all I can do is look forward to the read … and the ride.

For all who’d like to take a look,
my life is but an open book.

But please, I beg you, all my friends,
some word if you know how it ends.

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2010: Blog in review

Posted in Uncategorized on January 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Many thanks to all for stopping by, reading, commenting, interacting, and generally helping me to feel I’m not shouting in an empty room!

The following is from WordPress …

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 124 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 462 posts. There were 86 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was December 4th with 4,463 views. The most popular post that day was News from NASA: Life comes in other flavors. No kidding ….

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were wordpress.com, facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, WordPress Dashboard, and worldpress.org.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for sandra hanks benoiton, paradise preoccupied, sandra hanks, baby octopus, and bachabaze.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

News from NASA: Life comes in other flavors. No kidding … December 2010
272 comments and 171 Likes on WordPress.com

2

Sandra Hanks April 2007
85 comments

3

What’s with the tits? May 2007
15 comments

4

Pulling on the “big girl panties” … August 2009
26 comments

5

Answering questions on life in Seychelles February 2008
17 comments

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