Six-and-a-half weeks

I'm sitting here with the Spring term course schedule already.

This is week 6 of the Winter term, half over, midterms behind me, I shoulder the bookbag up and down the hills filled with library books loaned to me from all over Oregon about the ancient Hittite Empire, the Research Paper to write, then only the Final Exams ahead.
Afterwards, the 10 days off before Spring term starts on March 31st.

What do I need to do to retrieve my photographic memory of the first lap of my schooling? Only needed to read something twice, and I not only could remember it for exams, but could visualize it on the page. Before anyone calls out the AGE card, I think that the working world had it's own level of memorization requirements, as in unpacking 150 cases of books and remembering that in the flurry of sorting them into storage bins whether the third Spiderwick book came in and whether it was in paperback or hardcover. And how far back in the bin you stacked it.
So my memory skills were merely redirected to assist me as a customer serving boss instead of a student (or singer of rock lyrics).

Six weeks in, and my stair-taking is less embarrassing, I know which of the busses running through the fare-free zone stops have a drop-off stop at PSU (Portland, she rains) and which cross-over bridges between buildings are enclosed so I don't have to passively smoke a cigarette or two on my way to Neuberger Hall. If only there was one to the library...

I love that library. It has that mid-century smell that I remember from before the digital age and it comforts me when browsing through the stacks and finding an irresistible book on 1930's Mandarin Chinese poetry in translation, or repaired bindings on 100 year old books so they can still be read. Libraries are treasuries, attracting serious students, snoozers, and today a table of fully chadored young women playing with their cell phones and giggling when a young man sat down at their table. BTW, the Hittite books are fascinating, how am I going to narrow down which works of art to compare for the paper? I love these kind of dilemmas.

But I need a new laptop, clearly the 2003 Sony is so slow and noisy and almost 9lbs, it's not going to be hanging off my shoulder on the bus and throwing out the other side of my lower back. There have been days when I've come into a lecture hall and the whole back half of the room is wall-to-wall upright laptops, and the pitter-patter of Apple keystrokes has become just as integral to the lecture as the whir of the slide projector over my head. Free wi-fi access is everywhere on campus, so I could work on my online research at the table by the window with my hot organic coffee gripped in my hand, then speed off to my next class. I get a student discount if I get one through the online Apple Education store, or I can check Best Buy, but being able to carry around my files and add to them while on campus will really come in handy. As Steven would say,"Well, some bitches better get a job!" I'd rather get a grant, and shake some Apples loose from the money tree. Some bitches get wicked crafty...

My neighbor John was snickering at me today, he's a retired teacher, that I'm just so happy to be doing what I'm doing, loaded down with books late in the afternoon, coming home from the bus. Sometimes I feel seven years old again, can't wait to break open the books after class and mentally run like hell. There is nothing else in the world I'd rather be doing.

Ay, Carumba!

...I can't put in the Spanish inverted exclamation point, but it's implied, okay?

Semana Numero Dos is now history, and I have a legal holiday long weekend to spend like a student. 'Cause that's what I am! I had some beer, and watched the last episode of my telenovela "Amar sin Limites" last night, with every woman of child-bearing age either about to pop or holding a newborn, the single women having weddings, and the people over 50 holding their grandchildren and smiling. And the evil characters living a life of shame or dead, the bad always get punished, and forgiven before they die. Now I'm down to only one show, 9pm on Univision, the costume epic of colonial Mexico, with amazing estates, horses and carriages, gowns and pirate attire, aging conquistadores and their willful children...Pasion. Pretty much sums it up, really.

School so far is amazing, I'm keeping up on the reading, and I had a chance to meet with one of my professors who is the head of the archaeology dept. for 30 minutes of course advising, she was very helpful. She was trying to encourage me to take the two statistics classes, but honestly, it's not likely, not when there's two alternatives in the Linguistics dept. that have a lot more interest to me. Math? NOW? I shudder to think. Aren't there Excel programs to crunch those numbers by now? We were seeing slides of her and her team in the 80s excavating a site in eastern Washington, and they still had to use survey equipment and plumb lines from 500 ft away. She even had to concede that GPS is the greatest tool ever, technological updates from other fields are being grabbed up in archaeology and anthropology as fast as they come along. More support for my position, I say. Excel all the way.

After class yesterday, I gave myself a thorough tour of the library, got into the PSU student access websites, found the extra material my art history prof posted for us to access, and then found the Chinese and Japanese literature in translation sections and checked out two titles from 18th century dynastic eras. Ever since I read "Memoirs of a Geisha" in 1997, I love to read these type of stories of long-lost cultural eras in Japan and China, I just get lost in the beautiful imagery and genteel mannerisms. Like I don't have enough reading to do right now?

Last Saturday I had a chance to catch up with my pal from the B-store days, Linsey, and she had a new laptop, bitemarks from a Doberman puppy/piranha, and had enjoyed her first non-retail Christmas in forever. We met at a very busy Zell's, kept a table occupied way too long chatting, and left smelling of really good homefries. Smoked wild salmon omelette cannot be recommended highly enough, so so good. She's all in Career Chick mode, which is great, she's got a great gig right now, but I wish she'd get back to writing her blog. Now that she has the new laptop that doesn't overheat and crash, the world is waiting...

Betty finally got herself another dog, my brother and I heaved a huge familial sigh. Since she quit working her part time job after Christmas, she's been cooped up in her condo and going sour fast, she didn't have anything to take her out of her deeply grooved rut. Of course, any step forward is good in this prolonged grieving process for her old dog, and I know he'll be his own little personality and eventually she'll bond with him as much as the other one. Already she sounds better on the phone, she's getting some exercise again, spending more time outdoors walking him a few times a day, seeing her neighbors going around the block, all of the fringe benefits of dog ownership. The puppy sounds like a mix of some boxer, shepherd, shorthair, tawny and about 50 lbs full grown. I told her to get some new running shoes and check the non-slip strips on the tiled stairs to the condo, he'll be a handful for a few years, pulling her around on a leash. My brother and I are so relieved.


Wild weekend, right? Maybe a trip to Best Buy to play with the computers, maybe check out the new Apple "Air", see a movie. Save the homework for Monday...such a slacker.

The Tao of Pho

Everyone's been asking me how it's going, the school thing. And laugh at how I smile like a kid on Christmas morning. It's true, that's how the school thing is going for me, better than whatever Mary Poppins magic Santa ever left under the tree for me. I was always one of those kids who loved school, played school during the summer (when I wasn't reading under a tree) and thought August was truly the cruelest month.

It reminds me of that phase of infatuation when you don't need to eat, sleep, rest or think, the rosy sparkle cloud just carries you along effortlessly, buoyed by love and seeing the perfection of the Universe in everything.

That's how my first week of school has been. Sometimes the sparkle cloud is sky blue.

This morning I finally purchased my biological anthropology textbooks that came in last night, so we get a chance to catch up on all the reading before class on Tuesday. My first History of Prehistoric and Ancient Art class was divine yesterday, I barely got into it, thankfully a few people dropped it between Tuesday and Thursday. So for a few weeks I will be traveling in Deep Time and early history in all my classes, and reading for real what I've been gleaning from popular culture and cable TV for years. Like the 'Hobbitt' skeleton found in Sumatra that is in the center of controversy in paleo-anthropology right now; is it a new subspecies, or a child with encephalitic disease? This was on the National Geographic channel the past few months, and is showing up in my class, too. So so cool.

I'm finding out the category of anthropology I've always been the most interested in, it's called Post-processural Anthropology, uncovering the whys and hows of cultural history, and opening up the perspective to other viewpoints other than Euro-centric, Judeo-Christian, white male based. There. So now I know what it's called. (so happy)

Sipping chrysanthemum white tea and listening to classical 89.9, I find myself in a beautiful and unexpected place. There is a wonderful Vietnamese Pho restaurant near the campus that I stopped at on the way home for some lunch and chance to see the student flurry go by outside the wrap-around windows of the corner location. There are these occasions where I like to just observe and witness the whole picture and experience, to make it real each time while still marveling that it's happening. The restaurant was very busy at 12:30, and there were 5 or 6 women my age doing the 'table for one' thing, so I ordered a beer and the Bun Ga (chicken with vermicelli and the cilantro-mint-sprout-cucumber-carrot melange and sweet vinegar-chili sauce) and just relaxed. What a week! What a great beginning! Such a happy kid again. What a strange trip the past 12 months have been, and I could not have foreseen being here, now, doing this, from where I had been last January 11th, closing stores, ending so completely that 10-year phase of my life. It was a vast void of misty uncertainty to me then, what would start February 1st 2007. I like fog, I'm comfortable in it, can maneuver fairly well, and wound up here doing what has always been my greatest wish---going to school. Finishing school. Learning for real. And today the sparkle cloud is sunny yellow and gold, warm all around me, and stretching ahead as far as I can see.

After School Snack

Well, really it's lunch, but it is after school, my first day of school, my first round-trip to class and back. Toasted white tuna sandwich with lettuce and sweet relish and an orange.

Bliss.

And even more synchronous, my textbook for today's class arrived in the mail this morning already, so I can do the reading assigned before the next class on Wednesday. Is this perfect OR WHAT? My Intro to Archaeology prof is a funny woman who manages to keep her reading glasses hovering above the very end of her nose and they never slide off. About 40 students in all, three over 40 years old, and only two cell phones rang during class. Prof showed some slides at the end of the class period, and then it was suddenly over. Sixty five minutes, syllabus in hand, I went and activated my student email account, then headed home. I'm also seeing new shoes in my future, because it is quite a hike from the bus top to campus and all my Birks need re-soles.

I know it's goofy to be this excited about undergraduate classes, but getting to this humble place has been a 25 year journey. Bringing lots of baggage along. Yes, I'll get a job doing something, I reassured Betty, and gave up trying to explain why I'm majoring in Anthropology. She thinks I'm going to do Forensic Science like on television. Whatever. It's my money, I'm not going to worry about who gets it or not. Everyone else I know is thrilled for me, and that warms my heart so much, my enthusiasm is contagious, my face glows with it. "I got a fever, babies!" says my inner Christopher Walken. Say no more.

Chop wood, carry water. That's what you do before you are enlightened, and what you resume doing after you are enlightened. So today, I'm doing laundry and washing dishes, while reading my text between loads of clothes and dishes. I'll try not to be a total spaz and call everyone to twitter about class. But as I went over the Hawthorne Bridge this morning, it dawned on me how many of my deepest life wishes have come true in the last couple years. Big BIG wishes, major Life's Dream types. Going back to school, to get an upper college degree---in motion again. Meeting Robert Plant in person---September 2005. Having my own bookstore---done. Being a writer---varying degrees of consistency, but happening. What's left? Well, going to Provence is huge. And large-canvas painting. Singing in public. Creating a permanent grand-scale garden with a varietal bamboo grove and tea house. Finding a great guy. I think that's about it. And I think they all look doable from here, because the really big ones at the top of the list are checked off already. Holy shit! So so cool.

Tomorrow morning is Intro to Biological Anthropology, and Asian Women's Studies, a senior level class. Hominids, neolithic tool makers, the beginning of art. Asian cultures to prehistory and the roles of women in it. No wonder I can hardly sleep at night, I feel incendiary about this stuff. "So why aren't you taking any business classes?" Betty wanted to know. There's no fire there for me, it's a bucket of someone else's cold ashes, not even mine. Finally, I'll quit explaining, it should be evident to everyone by now.

Entering Surrealandia

The first tingling of uncertainty began running down my neck late last night, that feeling that someone left a door open to the cold somewhere in the house and it had found me.

Holy shit, what am I doing? I'm turning my life completely upside down (again) and walking straight into the unlit expanse of a new place I didn't even know I was going to until last week.
Am I crazy? Can this work out? Can I really pull this off? Do I still have it in me to be a student? Will the money come through or will I hit the ground really hard on my face in 8 weeks?

This morning the cold draft is only my back porch door cracked open to the sunrise and it's warming quickly in the sunshine. The creepies from last night are gone, but I should have expected them just about now, after making so much progress in this whole project in so little time. One more poring through the catalog's flagged pages is enough to restore my certainty that it's about damn time I'm doing this, and the biggest regret is that it didn't become this obvious to me earlier in the year. Not sure why, but it didn't, so that is past and start from here.

Everything is sent off now, the ball is beginning to roll, and now I stay busy finding work and getting other projects done (another Etsy sale came in overnight) and actively wait. Work through the self-doubts that are like having a bad hair day, they come and go. Time to start winterizing the garden, restock the booth, ride my bike to the library, sew a few pillows, check into scholarships online, go through craigslist and jobdango 3 or 4 times a day. Maybe Powells to sell a few books, check Belmont and Hawthorne shops for job openings. There's a scholarship contest I found that is judged on a written essay from one of their topics you choose to write about, for $10,000. That's my housing expenses for a year, so a worthwhile time expenditure I think. (waiting waiting)

It's going to be a few weeks at least, so busy is best. Gotta run now....

Regroup Again, With More Feeling!

There was one entire sad day last week when I discovered I didn't get any of the jobs open at the Glorious Stained Glass factory. Not the manager's job, and not even the sales job, and the "thanks but no thanks" letter must have been mailed within 24 hours of that last interview, when they had another four days left until their deadline for making a decision.

Blue blue day, a half hour of stunned silence, then the rest was the swamp of dejected shadowy disappointment.

However, by the end of that day, I had circled the wagons and then set off in an entirely new direction, left the paved roads completely and blazed trails towards ----going back to school.
Started the online part of it, and the next day got the Portland State course catalog and schedule for January 2008, and sent off for transcripts, test scores retrieved from the electronic bowels of the ACT and SAT (skip PSAT) warehouse of students of the 1970s, and felt so much better.

By Friday I had had many of my questions answered by Jane Sproul at the Women's Resource Center Continuing Education Office, and I now have a sensible chronology of what to do when and what's next.

I get so psyched I can't fall asleep the past few nights, until I haul out the course catalog one more time and go over the requirements (Freshman Inquiry??? WTF???) and the tagged pages in the Anthropology and History sections, skimming Business and English/Writing, and what the different Masters' programs look like. Then I doze off thinking of studying and sitting in class again and taking notes....zzzzzzzzz until morning.

This does have a huge impact on the job search, obviously. A high-powered manager's job for only the next two months is not so hot of an idea, unless I can't get admitted until Spring or Summer Term, then that route is the way to go. If I can get admitted in time for the January 7th 2008 start of classes for Winter Term, then that $12/hr temp office thing is the way to go.
Or the mindless holiday cashiering job at any local retailer. If I'm starting school in 8 weeks, I don't care as much who's nametag I'm wearing, suddenly my Sense of Meaning is strung to a very exciting comet of finishing my degree, a solid gold Get Out of Jail Free Card, $200, Pass GO!!

Monday morning (right after Pet walking and feeding) I'm hitting the admissions and financial aid office to sign in for appointments to get more answers, and hopefully by the end of the afternoon have a rounded-out idea of a "YEA" or a "NAY" on a January start. If I have to wait a term or two----not my preferred choice, but at least I'll know and set my teeth on the bigger bone. Head down, make cash happen, stay focused on deferred gratification, still good.
If I can start in January, my neighbors will think I won the Powerball lottery, I'll be running around and screaming until the police arrive.

Winter in School, it's been 25 years since I've done that, but all intuition lights are full on green for it, all reaction by friends and family has been positive, and Jane Sproul was optimistic. I could work in the PSU Bookstore---who there would be more qualified than me?

Official Blog Day Official Post

My favorite blogger has stopped blogging, and I'm concerned.

But I don't want to be a nudge, so I'll just hash it out here, in my safe little blogspot.

This esteemed person has put years into building this blog, has thousands of readers, hits and links, hundreds of posts, topics and famous persons who read it...and it's fizzling it seems due to situations beyond their control, and I'm getting frantic that all that work will be lost to the ethers.

Reading this blog re-started my own blog engine last year, after I had already given up on one that was pious and book review-based, and I couldn't keep at it in my free time because it was just more work, at home and that killed the thrill of doing it. This inspiring bloggerperson set the spark to the gasoline that was forgotten, and I was ignited to write again.

So I'm kinda worried, and how can I help out?

And how does one end a blog, anyway, if one wants to be done with it? A formal, Fare-Thee-Well posting, with a connecting link to someone similar for your avid readers to try instead of you? A quick and brutal, "F-you, I'm outta here!" and eternal silence? Delete the whole thing at your server page with no peep, evermore? Like breaking off a starter-phase romance that you just don't have the time or energy to hand-hold at all, "Look, it's not you, it's me, and you deserve some blog who can better meet your needs, I'm just not in a good place right now, no it's nothing to do with you (but it does, you're drippy) I just need some space and maybe started this without being really clear about what I want yadda dabba doo" and it's over before the drinks even get to the table? TMI, I know.

Maybe some anonymous reader (who happens to know the blogger's location) could send them some incredibly decadent chocolate somethings, with a teeny note that says "Get writing soon" and a smiley face.

Or a new laptop.

Not that I am in any position to manage anyone else's life (my own is barely managed) but sometimes a person has an insight, and it can't be too nosy to pass it along, right? With cookies or cuppycakes? Or that lively young stripper who works at---never mind, it was just a thought.

Nobel Prize for Literature: Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing interview

Gosh what a lot of carping about her winning this year, some of the comments are so snipping (Harold Bloom, of course) and almost sophomoric, I was laughing in my coffee this morning.

"Unreadable" Harold said. When has that ever stopped someone from winning the prize?

And I have to confess that when I tried to read "Love, Again" this summer, I put it down and walked past it for a week or two, then finally tossed it into the next bag of books to sell at my booth.

It's still there.

And I gave it a really genuine try, but the fault is entirely my own. After a long stint of reading only magazines this spring, Doris' book was not appropriate for me to pick up then, I hadn't yet adjusted my language cortex vocabulary back to books and British English. She never had a chance. But I've fixed it now, and will pick her up again. And the new War and Peace translation I've been waiting 20 years for.

But I've loved reading about her in the online articles, of which there are the usual slew after her win. The link above is an interview from a few years ago that I liked the best; honest, just crabby enough, and unapologetic. Don't mess with a woman who wants to write, you're going to get hurt.
Doris on P.C.
Doris Wins Nobel

Sorry for the interruption...

Let me introduce you to my little friends...

l to r we have Senorita Zapotec, behind her a stripy black Brandywine, assorted Sungolds and Sugar Babys, and two Black Princes.

Plus I've been making a large dent in a fragrant pile of bark mulch, that only caught fire one time last week, as I'm happy to join any landscaping party that involves frozen strawberry daiquiris and rum raisin ice cream as a parting gift. Bring on another pile!
As we Portlanders know, we are about reaching the tail end of our splendid summer, and I have been spending every possible moment outside with the sunshine. So bring out some pillows to blind-stitch, buttons to card, the lap-top to write, weed some more and water the herbs, deadhead the roses, ride my bike to the library, read craigslist on the porch---tick tick tick as the sun heads south and sinks earlier behind the houses across the street. We put hoodies on by 6:30 lately, and that used to be the intense solar bake time. Next year again, I console myself.

I am so happy to declare that all my pillows sold out at Groovy Rhubarb, so the crush is on to crank out some more, as well as do some research for some friends who are interested in maybe starting up a book-type store that serves coffee. As a joke I told customers in January that after being laid off by Borders, I was going to open a consulting business. No joke after all. It's an exciting project for me, and makes the multi-stream new career that much more interesting.
Between the photography and the writing, research and selling, manufacturing and gardening, I am almost there. With heirloom tomatoes everyday! Other than my pal Linsey, I don't miss the old retail grind at all. I still get a little managerial when I go to Powells and see the can't-pretend-to-care service, and am disappointed these folks aren't a little more happy to be playing with books all day, but I'm getting better. I'm not buying books there, I'm selling, by the way. Plus, they sell CRAFTzine, okay?

Either Writing, or Not-Writing

Being so impressionable, I must admit to a certain ennui about blogging when my bookmarked list of favorite bloggers are not posting, thinking, "Wow, we of similar genius and brilliance must all be on the same no-blog-today page, and I didn't even get the memo---cool."

And, NO, I am not reading that dreaded doorstopper of a book that just came out which shall remain title-less in this space. Ee-gads, perish the thought!

I have been reading, and not magazines, some titles I found through our esteemed Multnomah County Library system, on Hollywood before the Decency Codes were enacted, pre-1938 films.
There is "Complicated Women" featuring the amazing sirens of the time, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Kay Francis, Norma Shearer, Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, Joan Blondell, Jean Harlow, even Loretta Young and Myrna Loy. There's another title I am waiting to be returned, about the male actors in this pre-code era, and another one with huge photographs called, "Sin in Soft Focus" putting it all together. I can blame this all on finally getting the cable package with Turner Classic Movies, where you can start in the 1930s and not emerge until sometime the next day. So it has compelled me to begin reading again, perhaps finally warming up enough to read the new non-fiction Barbara Kingsolver book, "Animal Vegetable Miracle," the new novel "The Blood of Roses" about a young girl in Afghanistan (I think) who makes carpets, and another book on the new physics wave/particle field emanations theory. Summer will be over shortly.

Tomatoes have begun coming in, the SunGold and the SunSugar cherry toms, bright orange when fully ripe, and so sweet they are barely a vegetable, more like a tiny plum. The heat two weeks ago was great for the toms, but wiped out my marigolds and forced them to seed and they died all at once. Scattering seeds where the parent plant expired will hopefully return a few sprouts before November and frost, plus I replaced a few because I missed the sunny globes on the porch step planters. How can basil die so easily? Just a few days of heat, they were watered every day---I may have to cheat and buy a few big plants like I did last year from Trader Joe's. I was eating peas from my neighbors' garden this morning, and they said the patch was done for the summer. Ha! Before they left town, that is. And the pods are tender and as edible as the peas inside. Now, about the three ripe figs about to fall off the fig tree, purple as black grapes and soft---might have to bring those home. They have about 200 new green ones on their way to ripe, they won't miss these. Fig leaves, all jokes aside, are actually very elegant and beautiful, I'd never seen a real one so closely before, what a great woodcut or rubbing it would make. All jokes aside.

This is a week almost every year that I would have taken for vacation time from the store. I believe there was almost an unacknowledged agreement with myself about the bookends of February 1st--- being the first date of being jobless and also the announcement of the release of the 7th and final volume of that dreaded book, that would be occurring with accompanying frenzy on--- July 21st. A weird kind of stasis, purgatory-lite, now that That Book is out and done, not worked through like the past ten years of my work life (paperbacks, remember!) I feel absolutely free of it. A big book retail ritual that I missed completely! Imagine what being on the other side of a book retail Holiday Season will feel like? Giddiness is overtaking me. Kind of like when ending a relationship, just getting through the first set of holidays by marking little anniversaries, you really begin to let go for real. Two years on, you don't even remember to remember. Usually.

Official Re-Invention Chapter 3: Create Your Job

I'm job hunting.

Seriously job hunting.

As in "just a decent job I like to do" instead of "this is my next expedition up a corporate ladder."
(sooooo lucky that there are so many jobs out here right now)

What kind, where, what hours, what money, who with, how long, gotta get away at the holidays.

One of my friends suggested that I float on Groovy Rhubarb and not distract myself with another group of associates and workplace politics, just "do" the GR 60 hours a week and it would make money. And that is probably good advice, and partly true, just not enough money to live on yet. My strength is in idea formulating, conceptualizing, and BIG PICTURE stuff.

My weakness is in the details. "Where's My Staff?" Too much Martha, not enough Assignment Editor. My astrologer would say it's the Venus in Gemini, a double helping of an Eye for Beauty, more Snow White than the 7 Dwarves. Collaboration is great, I love it, but it has to be with the right person, and I do better with a layer between me and the masses. I can't do barista again, or even busy bookstore.

I am a Maker of Things.

Hopefully, of beautiful things, delicious things, useful things, descriptive and unusual things. Not so much a Seller of Things, although I have been known to fool people for a long time that I was. A Seller. But never, not really. I was rather a Provider of Place for Things to Be Bought. The Maker of Place, I am very very very good at. Provider of Selection of Things, again, very very good at. Hostess, Cheerleader, Girl with the Fan, not at all so much. I honestly don't want to be involved in making people buy just anything, as much as making something they feel they have to buy, or have to go to. What they do then is up to them. But I'd love it if they told everyone they know, "You've got to go get ______ at ________!!!" There is the perfect situation for me.
Completely pleased about making my living this way. Thank you, see you back soon.

Once upon a time, in a land far ago and away, lived a pretty but shy girl who loved books. Being in a village full of bookstores, she soon found the three that she loved more than anything else in the whole small world, and she made a wish. "Someday, I want to have my very own bookstore! It will be just how I want it, and I'll be able to unpack all the UPS boxes of new books, and read everything, and meet cool customers, and live so happily ever after!" The young girl had made some friends at one of the bookstores, run by a friendly beautiful Jewish Buddhist Witch, who let the girl learn things and volunteer at the store, and order cool incense and crystal necklaces, and invited the girl to participate in her Crafty Buddhistic Fairy Witch Circle. For some years, not enough in a row, the girl was happy to do this, and felt closer to her dream. But the girl had to leave the magic village by the river, and found herself somewhat closer to Hades, and very much farther away from her dream, or so she felt for a long time, too many years in a row.

One day, the now not as pretty and not as young woman found herself in a coffeehouse filling out an application to a bookstore, which back in the village had been only one tiny store, but had magically grown in size to encompass the entire whirld these many years. It was a serf's job, but she thought it would be a beginning. Unbeknownst to her, she was soon sucked into the gruesome, grinding Managers' Maw of the Underworld Corpse-oration the little bookstore had become, and she lost her soul, her name, her youth, her girlish figure, and her mind. How ironic, that this place had once been one of her favorite three bookstores back in the little village by the river.

Grasping at a glimmer of light she desperately hoped was the sun and not another red eye of the Beast, the woman slung herself across the land to another less grinding Managers' Maw of the Beast, and then soon again after to an even quieter eddy pool of swamp she called My Own Store. At last, gathering every fiber of beauty, kindness, laughter, magic, wit and whimsy, the woman wove a nest of wearying but entertaining labor of a noble sort, the bringing of magical books to the souls who wandered in while caught up in the Swirl of the CrassMall, the marble Tomb of the Unknown Salesgirl. There was, for a short time, a momentary Oasis of Knowledge and Wonder. Insanity and illogic, of course, still being an appendage of the Corpse-oration, but then suddenly, at the most insane, at the most frantically intense, the fairies were all set free.
The spell was broken, the ring of fire became gentle rain, passing to the clear blue sky and happy sun above and plenty of hours to sleep and be rested. There was much rejoicing.

And the woman had a large View of Realization---having emerged from this tale of enslavement and enchantment, two of her biggest wishes in her entire life had been granted. First of which was to have her very own bookstore, that had her stamp upon it, and she had completed the fulfillment of that wish. The Second Wish, well, meeting Robert Plant in her very own bookstore was pretty much the Sword from the Stone kind of event. She was completely and deliriously satisfied how miraculously the second wish had been fulfilled. And called everyone she knew. And cried.

And the Third Wish? Obviously to the woman, embarking on this was the next part of her journey. And, curiously enough, it was not instantly revealed to her exactly what that Wish was. She had been a stranger to herself for so many years, there was an awkward small-talk and getting reacquainted phase to accomplish, getting to know and trust this bold and free person she was becoming. Some mornings, she awoke excited and ready to live the rest of her life as this creative and fearless person. Other times, it was all just too much, she was shy and completely at a loss, alone and afraid. Her Fairy Stepsisters were off in far off lands, cranking out their own Realization Magic, and sent their love and sparkling encouragement, hugs, emails, and cackles. One afternoon, the answer to her seeking, the Vision of the Third Wish bloomed in her mind, and she felt a relief to her many questions. There was now a direction to head into, a place to look towards for her bearings. And she knew it was the right thing to do, completely.

Anything else was a path back to bondage, a compromise and distraction from her clear sight.

"All of my power, all of my gifts are in the Making of Beauty, the Creating of Beautiful Space. These years deep in the earth have shown me how to make something from meager tools and ingredients, to keep it alive and finally succeed. The Masters I have served pressed me into a Diamond of Light and from now on, I have to keep shining, keep making, keep sparking the fires of creativity.

My Third Wish is to live as an Artist, at this age I will not sell my soul again, I won't give up on what I value, I am eager to live my Genuine Life, bring to life what I see in my mind, and give it to the world. And do it again and again, as long as I live. And I'll continue on even after that."

No, I don't have needy friends (sorry)

I have splendid friends, diverse and supportive people, I guess I had my blog on real hard. (that sounds risque) Anyway...

Do you know what my great friend Laura told me to do today?
She told me to go outside by 10 am, walk around the neighborhood with that second cup of coffee, then start bringing out things from the basement that need to have the cement dust hosed off and left to dry on the lawn all day in the warm breezy sun. Then I snapped some pics for selling things on craigslist, and then I washed, waxed, and detailed my car in the shade, and got the Mother's Day card mailed.

I am still a productive and contributing member of society.

By this time my back was done, and for old times sake I read the NY Times Book Review on the porch swing, and made the French Bulldog bark, laughing at Dave Barry's review of "Send", a primer of email etiquette. These are times I miss calling Linsey at the store and telling her some hot titles to order on my day off. (sigh) So I called her anyway, woke her up from her nap, and she generously chatted with me about her new temp job and all her wild escapades.
We made plans to drink. We bitched about Harry Potter stupidity. We talked some old shop.

She's already surged ahead to the next stage, and there's nothing like a new job and new co-workers and supervisors to make that a daily reality. Or a new season. Winter is history.

I seem to be hovering, and it's a curious feeling. Below me are acres and patches of lives I could choose to live that would depend on new source of income generated, people contacted, places visited. So far this choice hasn't been made, and I am some kind of one-celled organism right now. There are days I feel I'm surging ahead myself, breakthroughs tripping over revelations, long distances covered without one footfall in the material world. Losing my job really stirred up the muck, and allowing sediment to fall and the water to clear makes me hold my breath, how long will this take? Will it ever be clear enough to decide?

Sitting meditation is gentle, easy, low impact. I do it almost everyday. Then there's the observation and mindfulness meditation, the wash & wear, no ironing needed kind, that you get used to doing. No biggie. Pay attention. Okay, got it. The kind I forget about is the vigorous action meditation, when your body is the mind and your critical voice takes a long-overdue break. An entire afternoon can go by, and you've gone light years in your processes, but the chronos hands never moved. Working it out by working it through a task.

The advice my friend gave me this morning was to step out of the brain car and walk for a while, do some necessary tasks that need doing, completing something would be good for me, and network some more with people I know. I've only found one job I've ever had in a classified ad.
Everything else came about by being out there, poking around, talking to people and friends of friends, following up hunches, and being adventurous. I'm closer today than I was yesterday, plus I got a lotta stuff done in the breezy sunshine.

Back with a gentle vengance

I won't go into why, it had to do with Mom-ageddon, pre- & post-, and then the gardening...

Enough with the excuses...

May is my favorite month of the year, and I intend to spend as much of it outdoors as possible. In spite of the two waves of hail we got this afternoon, as well as thunder & lightning, I ran out to see how the tomato starters did, and all was well. Right now it's raining and a beautiful sunny sunset is starting over the West Hills and the last of the hail is melting in a slush pile on top of the scooter tarp out back. Is Spring great or what?

Before anyone thinks I'm going all too Martha these days, I just finished reading "The Intention Experiment" today, uniting quantum physics with laws of attraction, and bioelectromagnetic fields and an awful lot of studies and research in labs all over the US & Europe. It takes off where the author's previous book "The Field" leaves off, and ties in with more science than Abraham likes to get tied up with, but interests me somewhat. I enjoy some science with my spirit, to keep the whole universe as large and limitless as possible. Like my earning potential...

That's funny in itself. Everyone is now ready for me to get back to work. I've tried not to be annoying, or bloatedly gloating, or hanging around too much in any one place too often, but the question has now shifted from "Wow, just relax and take your time," to, "So-uh, what the hell do you do all day?" I have started making notes on Craigslist, Monster, PDX classifieds, and starting the third resume version. I chat up acquaintances for leads, I'm checking into school or at least a summer class, and asking every person I know who works at home how they arranged this situation for themselves. My cell phone arrives tomorrow from UPS. I'm now ready to call "Common Grounds" my home office, 'specially since they started serving Voodoo Donuts. Hoo-wah!

I pored over Danny Gregory's two books, "Everyday Matters" and "The Creative License" on how the dogged NYC adman became a self-taught professional artist and author. I bugged Linsey about her friends who have cool jobs, does she know of anymore cool gigs going on?
I did not buy a new laptop with my severance money.

There was that almost imperceptible burst of realization about a month ago that I had stepped off the career ladder climb. There's writing and painting and projects to do, people to stay close to, trips to make, my body to be kinder to, friends to keep, and the job title just isn't as important as it was. There may be romance to be had, ee-gads!! It feels good to be here, and the steps forward from this place are exciting, it's going to be good.