"He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.' "
~~ The Harrison Family
29 November 2005
Om
"He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.' "
~~ The Harrison Family
25 November 2005
Intimacy
Intimacy. A touchy subject for most. Sometimes I struggle to find the best way to touch the hearts of my loved ones. It’s not always easy to find the appropriate balance between expressing affection and respecting boundaries. While I am very grateful that my two most important relationships feel both close and nurturing with mutual appreciation and admiration, when I look outside the walls of my home I find that sustenance is not always so present. Perhaps, the good Lord just saw it in Her infinite wisdom to place me among family and friends that prefer to be emotionally distant. I’m not saying this to be cruel to any one in particular, but in general, it seems that if contact is made at all I am often the one who must initiate it. I do realise that I am responsible for fulfilling my own emotional needs but it does make me wonder just where the circuits are breaking down. Is it in my own inability to feel others or do I fail to elicit a sense of emotional availability? Or is it just the way people are? Maybe I want more than they can possibly give. I do think on these things. I never seem to find any answers but I think on them until I think on them no longer.
Relationships require attention. I tend to believe that most relationships fail not from some specific act of betrayal but more often from little acts of omission over time until the negligence slowly erodes all familiarity.
I grew up in a large family with a dozen or more cousins and second cousins, aunts and uncles who would often get together at holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. There would be good food all around and stories would be told and re-told. The adults would catch up with each other while the kids got reacquainted through play. I loved this sense of family connectedness. But after the grandparents passed away and everyone grew older I became more sensitive to certain dynamics that hindered that closeness. Undercurrents of slight to which I’ve not been privy. The families drifted apart.
For my part I have set up internet groups to try to keep everyone in touch. But it seems we go through long stretches of time where no one says a word. I’ve also been known to just call a distant cousin out of the blue for no reason other than to say hello. Sometimes my efforts are met with a warm response but other times it feels as if the recipient of my attention is suspicious of just what I might want from them. And then I just go back to my life, the daily work-a-day week, pay bills, watch boring tv and try not to wonder too much just why it feels this way.
I've learned the importance of not measuring our lives by their losses but by their blessings. This has been a crucial model for me this past week. My Lovely Daughter had her first child on Wednesday morning, she did not call me to let me know until 30 hours later. In fact, I had not heard from her for over four months prior to that call. She had already arranged to have the baby adopted. I plan to support my daughter as she tries to build a future for herself and I plan to be a part of my grandson’s life. But something very precious has been denied us all. A gaping maw of silence is left where an abundance of love and appreciation might have been. And I am struggling to find ways to re-build a misplaced intimacy in spite of that deprivation.
Relationships require attention. I tend to believe that most relationships fail not from some specific act of betrayal but more often from little acts of omission over time until the negligence slowly erodes all familiarity.
I grew up in a large family with a dozen or more cousins and second cousins, aunts and uncles who would often get together at holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. There would be good food all around and stories would be told and re-told. The adults would catch up with each other while the kids got reacquainted through play. I loved this sense of family connectedness. But after the grandparents passed away and everyone grew older I became more sensitive to certain dynamics that hindered that closeness. Undercurrents of slight to which I’ve not been privy. The families drifted apart.
For my part I have set up internet groups to try to keep everyone in touch. But it seems we go through long stretches of time where no one says a word. I’ve also been known to just call a distant cousin out of the blue for no reason other than to say hello. Sometimes my efforts are met with a warm response but other times it feels as if the recipient of my attention is suspicious of just what I might want from them. And then I just go back to my life, the daily work-a-day week, pay bills, watch boring tv and try not to wonder too much just why it feels this way.
I've learned the importance of not measuring our lives by their losses but by their blessings. This has been a crucial model for me this past week. My Lovely Daughter had her first child on Wednesday morning, she did not call me to let me know until 30 hours later. In fact, I had not heard from her for over four months prior to that call. She had already arranged to have the baby adopted. I plan to support my daughter as she tries to build a future for herself and I plan to be a part of my grandson’s life. But something very precious has been denied us all. A gaping maw of silence is left where an abundance of love and appreciation might have been. And I am struggling to find ways to re-build a misplaced intimacy in spite of that deprivation.
10 November 2005
02 November 2005
Does anyone really care?
What a great picture of Senator Harry D. Reid (D - Nev) taken by Jim Young of Reuters. Does he not look like one of those renaissance angels with that halo above his head? Can we even hope that he might be some kind of savior in the whole bloody mess of our current government? The Senator held a rare closed session today to protest what he and Democrats decried as the Republican-led body's inattention to intelligence failures on Iraq and the leak of a CIA operative's identity on Capitol Hill in Washington. For too long now, too many lies and too many deaths, it's been business as usual in Washington DC. As Jeff Beck once said so succinctly: "Nothing is being done." If you're not pissed off you're not paying attention. Does anybody really care?
28 October 2005
Voice
Still trying to find my "voice" here. I maintain my insistence that this is not a political blog, there are already plenty of those. I suppose I am just posting my observations mostly, which occasionally tends to include current events in the news, as well as more personal issues. I don't tend to be too opinionated. I simply observe. I don't make strong opinions until I've done a lot of observing. But that tends to make me seem vapid and weak minded. I know what I like but I don’t push that onto others. So I beg your indulgence while I struggle to find my voice in this medium.
25 October 2005
I hate fucking liars
I hate fucking liars. Lying liars everywhere.
I even hate white-washed lies that fall under the guise of exaggerations. I get it all the time. From the benign “I’ll be in at ten.” from a co-worker who doesn’t arrive before 11. Why not just say ‘I won’t be in until 11’? Does it make you feel better to have me think that you’ll be in a ten when you won’t. And if I tell people you’ll be in at ten and you’re not does that make me a liar by association? In all honesty, I’ll admit I’ve done this myself. For example, when I have a personal appointment across town during my workday and I know there’s no way in hell that I can make it back in under an hour but I say I will anyway, hoping that my co-workers will be so busy that they won’t notice I’ve been gone for almost two hours. So I am guilty of that. But I still hate it.
Some people exaggerate all the time. They’ll say “I’ve talked with ten potential clients this week.” or “We’ve represented fifty other clients with that same problem.” I take everything that people like that say and just divide by two. Probably gets closer to the truth that way. In the end it simply dilutes everything they have to say.
But I really hate the bald-faced lies. Like when someone tells me they’ll have what they owe me by the end of the week, and then it never happens until a week or more later than that. Or that they paid the storage bill when they knew full well that they had not. Believe you me, I’ve lived with a liar and I looked past the lying eyes long past what was even healthy much less forgiving. So I know.
People can be so gullible. I’m sometimes guilty of that too, although I’m getting better at being skeptical in my advancing years. Take the American public, for example, and their believing Bush’s lies about the so-called need for this war in order to protect us from this invisible enemy called terrorism. WMD? CIA? Cheney apparently lied to the grand jury in the Plamegate affair. Who can we trust?
Indeed.
Not the Who->. Yes, the rock band. Or perhaps their marketing people. But there are rumours circulating that in the upcoming DVD release of Quadrophenia, a performer, who has had some less than socially-acceptable behaviour associated with him, has been digitized out and replaced with another performer, who played the character some time later and who supposedly has a less-controversial personal life. I have no actual proof of this, so I could be guilty of spreading vicious rumours but it makes me wonder...where will it all end?
Can you see the real me...doctor?
I even hate white-washed lies that fall under the guise of exaggerations. I get it all the time. From the benign “I’ll be in at ten.” from a co-worker who doesn’t arrive before 11. Why not just say ‘I won’t be in until 11’? Does it make you feel better to have me think that you’ll be in a ten when you won’t. And if I tell people you’ll be in at ten and you’re not does that make me a liar by association? In all honesty, I’ll admit I’ve done this myself. For example, when I have a personal appointment across town during my workday and I know there’s no way in hell that I can make it back in under an hour but I say I will anyway, hoping that my co-workers will be so busy that they won’t notice I’ve been gone for almost two hours. So I am guilty of that. But I still hate it.
Some people exaggerate all the time. They’ll say “I’ve talked with ten potential clients this week.” or “We’ve represented fifty other clients with that same problem.” I take everything that people like that say and just divide by two. Probably gets closer to the truth that way. In the end it simply dilutes everything they have to say.
But I really hate the bald-faced lies. Like when someone tells me they’ll have what they owe me by the end of the week, and then it never happens until a week or more later than that. Or that they paid the storage bill when they knew full well that they had not. Believe you me, I’ve lived with a liar and I looked past the lying eyes long past what was even healthy much less forgiving. So I know.
People can be so gullible. I’m sometimes guilty of that too, although I’m getting better at being skeptical in my advancing years. Take the American public, for example, and their believing Bush’s lies about the so-called need for this war in order to protect us from this invisible enemy called terrorism. WMD? CIA? Cheney apparently lied to the grand jury in the Plamegate affair. Who can we trust?
Indeed.
Not the Who->. Yes, the rock band. Or perhaps their marketing people. But there are rumours circulating that in the upcoming DVD release of Quadrophenia, a performer, who has had some less than socially-acceptable behaviour associated with him, has been digitized out and replaced with another performer, who played the character some time later and who supposedly has a less-controversial personal life. I have no actual proof of this, so I could be guilty of spreading vicious rumours but it makes me wonder...where will it all end?
Can you see the real me...doctor?
20 October 2005
Changes
To all one of you out there who are reading this blog regularly you may have noticed some subtle changes I made recently to the Links column. The old Favorites are still there. While I’ve been linking around, trying to still figure out what the buzz about this blogging thing is, I have stumbled onto a few that I wanted to share, or if nothing else, provide quick and easy access to for myself.
I started reading Leonard Pitts when I subscribed to a daily newspaper. I think I am agreement with him about 90% of the time. I since stopped subscribing to the daily newspaper convinced that it only brought sad/bad news into the sanctuary of our home. So I look up Leonard online. He writes for the Miami Herald but his columns reflect a national conscious.
I remembered reading something by Robert Scheer that I liked around 9/11. I found him again recently on Truthout. He’s a straight shooter. I like that. I’ll be getting re-acquainted with his writing in the near future.
Working For Change is a site I found today while researching Prop 80. We’re having a special election out here next month and I am determined to vote against everything Arnold is pushing. But the wording in my voter pamphlet on this proposition was more confusing than most. So I went to the Secretary of State website to see who was putting funding behind it and against it. Discovering that Working Assets is in support of it I am comfortable maintaining my straight line against all of Arnold’s initiatives. If you have some information with which you feel might sway my vote the other way, I welcome it. But be forewarned I plan on mailing my substitute ballot by early next week.
Wunderground is a site I’ve linked to for quite a while. Members can upload photos. Some of them are quite beautiful and professional in quality. I can waste several minutes a day here.
My Wish List is just what it says. I saw some other bloggers post their wish list and so I thought I’d be shameless too. It’s just for fun. But just in case you’re wondering what to get me for Christmas or my birthday, I’ve made it quite easy for you now, eh?
Bitch PhD is yet another liberal blog. I’m still getting to know this feminist liberal blogger, but I could not resist linking up to her once I saw the photo in the header. I’m the shocked one in the background.
Blue Streak is one of those blogs that makes me wonder, “where do these people find the time?”. But at first glance, I like that she has a link to a Yiddish Dictionary. Knowing Yiddish and some Latin phrases makes me seem pretentious but I like it anyway. The blog has mega-links and seems to have some cultural depth with book and movie reviews. I can always use a little culture and not the moldy bread kind.
Ok, well that about does it for today. I’ve actually been handed some real work. Uggh.
I started reading Leonard Pitts when I subscribed to a daily newspaper. I think I am agreement with him about 90% of the time. I since stopped subscribing to the daily newspaper convinced that it only brought sad/bad news into the sanctuary of our home. So I look up Leonard online. He writes for the Miami Herald but his columns reflect a national conscious.
I remembered reading something by Robert Scheer that I liked around 9/11. I found him again recently on Truthout. He’s a straight shooter. I like that. I’ll be getting re-acquainted with his writing in the near future.
Working For Change is a site I found today while researching Prop 80. We’re having a special election out here next month and I am determined to vote against everything Arnold is pushing. But the wording in my voter pamphlet on this proposition was more confusing than most. So I went to the Secretary of State website to see who was putting funding behind it and against it. Discovering that Working Assets is in support of it I am comfortable maintaining my straight line against all of Arnold’s initiatives. If you have some information with which you feel might sway my vote the other way, I welcome it. But be forewarned I plan on mailing my substitute ballot by early next week.
Wunderground is a site I’ve linked to for quite a while. Members can upload photos. Some of them are quite beautiful and professional in quality. I can waste several minutes a day here.
My Wish List is just what it says. I saw some other bloggers post their wish list and so I thought I’d be shameless too. It’s just for fun. But just in case you’re wondering what to get me for Christmas or my birthday, I’ve made it quite easy for you now, eh?
Bitch PhD is yet another liberal blog. I’m still getting to know this feminist liberal blogger, but I could not resist linking up to her once I saw the photo in the header. I’m the shocked one in the background.
Blue Streak is one of those blogs that makes me wonder, “where do these people find the time?”. But at first glance, I like that she has a link to a Yiddish Dictionary. Knowing Yiddish and some Latin phrases makes me seem pretentious but I like it anyway. The blog has mega-links and seems to have some cultural depth with book and movie reviews. I can always use a little culture and not the moldy bread kind.
Ok, well that about does it for today. I’ve actually been handed some real work. Uggh.
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