Just a reminder, loyal readers, banned books week starts this week. Go pick up something the prudes dont want you to read, and read it just to spite them.

Personal favorites include:
A Wrinkle in Time
Flowers for Algernon
A Light in the Attic

and of course

The Anarchist Cookbook

Enjoy!

The worlds oldest woman

She turned 116 today. Something about this article gives me a real sense of wanting to live... of wanting to be loved this much.

On this afternoon, home is a warm, crowded place full of family. "We are going now, great grandma!" chorus eight-year-old Kengo Tamura and his 10-year-old sister Sachiko, as they hold her hand.
Not longer afterwards, her 17-year-old great granddaughter, Tomoko Kurauchi, arrives, as she does every day after school. Mrs Hongo has a strong bond with Tomoko. The pink nail polish is Tomoko's work.

I never met my great grandmothers that I remember, but I have heard many stories about my paternal paternal and maternal maternal great grandmothers, that I am very much like them in personality and apperance. My father's father's mother came to America with barely a word of english (she spoke gaelic), possibly as young as 12, with a permanent limp due to a broken hip at a young age, and found a job, and a husband, and a life she loved. She may have lived to be over 100, if the babtism records we found in her home village in Ireland were right. My mother's mother was a strong woman, apparently the most beautiful in the area where she lived. She had long red hair, past her waist, and my grandmother remembers helping her heat water and ladle it out so she could wash it before they got running water. My great grandfather wouldnt have plumbing or electricity or even a radio in the house, for fear of lightning.

I wonder, with all that has changed in the last 100 years... what will I see in my life, even if I life half of that?

The Child's Aria

(A dark stage, no set. A male child, perhapse seven or eight stands slightly to stage left of the center, in a single white spotlight. The child is dressed in oversized, patched night clothes, and hugs a pillow to his chest that is tattered and limp with use.)

Oh, Mother, Oh Father,
Voices carried through the floor,
I can hear you, from where I lay
Listening, not understanding,
But feeling frightened all the same.

Do you love me, do you hate me,
Will you love what I grow to become?
Rich or Poor, Wise or Bore,
Hold me back, or let me go
The choice is yours, there's no mistake.

Oh, Mother, Oh Father,
Faceless, nameless, arms that I seek,
You are my comfort, my shelter,
forget me not,
Oh, Mother, Oh, Father,
forget me not.

It seems like the most eventful parts of my life are the least blogged. Perhaps that is best, since those of you who read this who I Don't know about may have a totally different idea of my life than is the case.
The point is - I'm making some changes in my life.

No more nights out drinking with my friends when the love of my life isnt there. No more dual life of intelect and person, no more extention inclusion dimorph of existance between love and friendship. (As the song says, the Drinking bone's connected to the Party Bone, the Party bone's connected to the staying out all night long, and she wouldnt think its funny so I'd wind up all alone, and the Lonely bone's connected to the Drinking bone) If I'm going to have friends, they will be OUR friends, not mine or his.

I'm going to make an extream point of taking better care of myself and my enviroment. I cannot neglect the external or the internal physical, because their neglect is causing my emotional relations to suffer. And that I have to stop from coming to a head worse than it has already.

But more changes than externals. I am on an inner quest, in a way, to examine reality around me - to become, as the zen budhists say, more present. To think about each thought, feeling, and action and its origin and cause and reason, and to understand it before acting on it or feeling it. This is my excersice for myself for my life and living. To do nothing that would cause negative emotions in others, to do well and do good as best I can.

Does that make any sense? I'm not sure it really conveys the shear scope of what I'm trying to do, but its the best way I can say it.

Famed fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his gruff assistant Doctor Watson pitch their tent while on a camping expedition, but in the middle of the night Holmes nudges Watson awake and questions him.
HOLMES: Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.

WATSON: I see millions of stars, and if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it is quite likely there are some planets like earth, and if there are a few planets like earth out there might also be life.

HOLMES: Watson, you idiot! Somebody stole our tent.