Long Distance Kin

I just shot awake to find an email that my Uncle Mel did not survive the mysterious e-coli infection that cropped up last week. It went to his blood. He had polio, so anything going near his spine or brain is ever worse. Mary was by his side as much as possible. She had gone home to rest, during that time, he died.
Mary is a former nun, Mel a former priest. I don't know why either of them chose differently. They never talked about it, and I never asked. Somehow, I knew it was not because of each other though. He continued to minister on the White Apache' reservation where the called him White Man who Brings Bread. He and Mary had free passage on the res and were frequent attendees to the more private rituals.

Mel had a firm kindness about him. He was handicapped and taught college classes to handicapped individuals. If there was anyone who could actually see only a person's soul core, it was Mel. If there was ever a man who knew how to make sure a handicap was the least inconvenient possible, him also. He had an off road scooter and took the kids on a hike when we visited for the family reunion. He was good through and through.

Good Hair Day

My hair is being 'that way' today. You know the one- when it's so silky I can't keep it pinned up. It just falls slowly down on my shoulders, and all I can do is brush it back from my face and sigh or run my fingers through its volume to keep it from my eyes. What's a girl to do?

Homesickness

I remember being amazed at how big the sky was my first night in the deep south. The stars seemed further apart, though jut as many. I noticed everything of that type and found it interesting how the northern and the southern ends on the country were so vastly different parts of the same body. After all this time, these new traits are how it is.
I am homesick- maybe for the place, maybe for the wild eyed child I was in my hometown, but I am homesick.
I miss the angle of the sunrise on the first day of spring.
I miss forsythia and lilacs, Lily of the Valley.
I miss the echos of voices and water in the gorges and the blackness of the deep lakes in the height of summer.
I miss the sounds and shots over the cornfields as summer turns to fall, like a calling to the end of the season.
I miss the scent of hickory and oak leaves crushed under my feet in autumn.
I miss the smell of snow and eerie brightness of a full moon reflecting off fresh snow drifts.

Filters- week 5

Rosco is the industry standard, Lee is more durable, but Gam is still my favorite. The swatch book had an easy layout and 4x4 pieces made lighting design much easier.

The Drama would throw away all the lighting gel at the end of the season. (I last worked there in 1993, and I still have 20 or so fragmented sheets.) My first apartment needed dressing up, so I cut gel into random shapes, overlaid colors and attached them to my windows. The kitchen went from vague weak white to amber sepia like Auntie Em’s kitchen. It was warm and generous though I never made anything more extravagant than scrambled eggs or Ramen noodles. The living room windows had different color themes in each; a blue one, a purple one, a red one. Sunlight filtered through making faux stained glass puddles on the floors and walls. My bedroom was shades of yellow. I had heard that yellow was the color of hope, so I wanted to see it first every day. A friend visiting for the first time said she didn’t need directions. She knew exactly where my apartment was. The colorful windows were easily seen from the street and she just knew that had to be my home.
The sun shines low through the southern windows during winter in my current home. For the sake of energy efficiency, I need to cover them in plastic. I had used sheets of lighting gel to remember that first home compliment.
‘My love, she comes in colors’- I had hoped that song was about me.

I used my Gam swatch book when I didn’t have the proper filter for my camera- magenta for shooting under fluorescent lights, blue for tungsten. I miss my 35mm very very much. I could spend hours watching in one spot for the perfect shot. Successful days were rated by rolls of film. Three was an exceptional day. Five and I might not be heard from for more than a week while I examined every tiny detail to narrow down my favorites.
I would play with my polarizer and color filters, especially with snowy shots. Somewhere I have a set of blue, and red icicle covered waterfalls in an ice storm in Watkins Glen, NY. Dan, Bill and I didn’t care about the treacherous road conditions. We wanted to play with color and snow. Sunsets are made more vivid by filtering out some of the excess color. Tree bark becomes abstract confusion; a wine glass, clear but red, and empty.
My camera sits in its dusty bag. It has a jammed shutter and I can not justify the cost of repairing it. I sold most of the filters for grocery money. I still have my Gam book – just in case. Every few years, I get out my old pictures and miss my days of dancing with color and light.

Things and stuff

I have time to be alone. I can be alone - unbothered- when I vacuum or mow the lawn, water the garden or for most of a shower. I am alone when the boys are in school and I spend my time doing for the house, or a random sewing commission. I have time to be alone. The wrong word has been nagging me.
What I feel a lack of is privacy. It's the nature of 5 people in a small house. It's the nature of a relationship where I don't have to edit my unexplains. When you don't have to hide anything, is privacy a necessity?
"A girl needs a place to keep her secrets" Darcy says of her vanity case in "Vampirates"
Is it a good thing to have a harmless secret?
A bag of chocolates in the back of drawer
A sketch pad no one ever sees
That first love letter you ever got, even if you don't remember his name any more?
Absolutely. In my case, it's not that I want to harbor something. Having that option though is something I need. Maybe that's why I like little wooden boxes- secret little boxes.

Synchronicity - feminine voice dare

Synchronicity –
Rule # 2 Two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time. Two thoughts can.

Prudentia is as Athena. The masculine science of Prudentia is the understanding of measure and tempo- my mind’s keen perception of Where my opponent is and exactly how long it will take me to dispatch him. Her feminine art, her improvisational wisdom of the When is painted with my eyes and by my body.

After time consuming mulling over, I rather suddenly understand the definition by Rudolfo Capo Ferro; “tempo is the measure of movement or stillness”.
Seeing stillness had eluded me. You don’t often see a fencer stop in the midst of any play. Where is all the stillness I need to see? It’s found at the other end of my blade.

Tempo measures my own stillness as well. I can not fight effectively if I do not have a frozen instant to access, a moment to reflect on how to continue. A dull axe cuts inefficiently. Hone to hewn. Stillness to movement. Fiore’, Capo Ferro, and the rest change their frustration to a sigh of relief. My realization is more powerful than their instruction. My greater realization is to take this speck of a spark and fit it to my life outside the lyst.

Prudentia moves in her own time. She is still in her own time.
I have been writing since 1982. I have so many years of writing poetry, short essays, anecdotes, and three unfinished novels on scraps and in notebooks. I could sit down and post for days straight. But I won’t. Too many times, I have seen myself come to loathe something I loved because I became too head over heels for it. My own enthusiasm of the goal drowns the satisfaction until I am lost. Too much focus, even on joy, will sap your passion. I become too engrossed and have to walk away for my own sanity.
No, I will use what I have learned from Prudentia. Slowly, carefully, with greatest precision, I am acting within my own stillness.

With any luck, by the end of the weekend, I will know the easy way to transfer what I've written from my lap top to here. I hope so. I'm looking forward to sharing. I'm going to go read this week's challenge- synchronicity is the theme- about a dozen more times so I can post it. I'm not sure if I'm saying what I think I'm saying. Public opinion is the way to know that!

Yard Work

The most important safety precaution you can have when studying a martial art is knowing, understanding, and respecting that it is meant to hurt and kill people.

Automation made the work more important than the man doing it. Mankind as a whole has never recovered from the blow.

Joining a group, esp. a church, because you are angry at another one and hoping it make you happy will lead to disappointment.

The Last Family Reunion

July 5, 2008, edited July 4, 2010

My mom, the boys, Arin, and I had spent the morning at the Georgia Aquarium. The dash board lights lit up on the way home at the corner of Windy Hill and 41. The car was coaxed into a gas station parking lot. Tired boys and Grandma piled out into the shade while Arin popped the hood. I stared at the engine hoping it would tell me where it hurt and how to fix it. Arin called his boss to get the afternoon off, our mechanic, then AAA. This added too much to an already burdensome weekend. I was hosting the first family reunion since my father died. He was the central key of everything I felt as family. Without him, I honestly didn’t know if we had anything to hold us together. I had prayed for weeks for Dad to let us know he was with us at the reunion- if it was any way possible, please show me you hear me. Now, here I was, broken down and 37 brothers, and sisters, and cousins, and friends arriving at my front door any minute. Calls and messages for help to those siblings went unanswered, even as they drove past us. I asked Dad how to fix this. There was nothing about this easy enough for me to take care of on my own. I remembered when I got my first car. Dad hurried around the garage and handed me a bundle of random, mismatched tools. He said to always keep it with me. Even if I didn’t know how to use them, someone would always stop to help me. There are no tools in this car. I paced around as the afternoon traffic began to back up ridiculously in all directions. An accident had lanes blocked in 3 of 4 directions, cars as far as I could see in every direction. Dad, help me figure out how to get us home when no one is answering.

After a few minutes, I watched a small car cut a perfect arc through the parking lot and come to an abrupt stop in the space next to us. With speed and efficiency, a young man in fatigues got out and looked under the hood. He found nothing helpful either. He looked at the group of us and without hesitation, offered us a ride. I knew it would be ok. Arin stayed with the car, waiting for the tow truck. The rest of us climbed into the small car. The accident cleared, and the traffic backup evaporated when we pulled out. I thanked him repeatedly. He said he had a wife and kids and he would hope someone would help them if they were stranded, so it only made sense he should do the same. He was a Marine. So was my Dad for a short time. The young man began to tell me about his day. Hours earlier, he had started running late. A lost set of keys, misplaced equipment, a broke down car of his own - one inconvenience after another kept putting him further and further behind schedule until the accident on 41 infuriated him into the U-turn- the perfect arc that landed him next to us. The only reason he was right there at that time was because of his awful day. Even he saw the coincidence. He had to take care of what he felt was the reason for it.

It was hard to speak, but when we got home and I invited him and his family for our Fourth of July cookout later. He graciously declined and disappeared. I forgot his name. The enormity of the moment was too strong. I thought about my weeks of prayers to my Dad and the one sided conversation I had with him half an hour ago. I thought about the stumbling coincidences of a young soldier's day that forced his course to us in a time of need.

From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, a Marine ends up exactly where he needs to be.

Thanks for following orders.

Thanks for answering prayers.

needs extension cords-

I have been writing like mad on my lap top. It is not set up for internet. I have the computer savvy of an emu, so I can't figure out how to copy any of it over to here without getting an HTML error code. Nor do I know how to poke around and be confident I will not lose what I have written. It's getting disappointing. I don't have the opprotunity to rewrite everything from scratch over to here. I have a hard enough time finding privacy to write the first time. It's discouraging to work on something and have a road block in sharing it.

An inconvenience, not a tragedy. Defiantly annoying. And it makes me feel stupid.