My Birthday

Hey, hey, they say it's my birthday!  So I guess it is.

56 years young.  WOW.  I join many fabulous women in their fifties:

• Amy Sedaris
• Julianne Moore
• Vanessa Williams
• Lena Olin 
• Caroline Kennedy
• uh, MADONNA
• Jennifer Tilley
• Gina Gershon (be still my heart)
• Kathy Najimy 
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Sharon Stone
• Melanie Griffith 
• Gwen Ifil
• Megan Mullally

Okay, I'll stop now.  There are many many fabulous women in their fifties.  And many more in their sixties.  And beyond.  And still more, uncelebrated, older women who are raising their grandchildren, working multiple jobs to make ends meet, going back to school, healing the sick, caring for the poor, tending their gardens, running large organizations, working for world peace.

It's a joy and a privilege to get older.  I'll try to represent well.

P.S. Long time readers may remember that this time last year I had 4 stays in the hospital for serious health issues.  This year: so far so good!  Forward movement and progress.  Also this time last year I was newly in love and smitten.  While it was fun, I breathe a sigh of relief this year that I am single and very happily dating.  Gratitude is oozing from my pores.  Or is it just sweat?

One Nation Under the Gun

Can you feel it?  The wind blowing right through your insides?  I came up to the mountains to hang with my favorite tag team, sit by the fire and listen to the rain fall.  It's all I can do in response to this deep black sadness.

Alas, discussions will begin again about gun control.  If you have some time, there is an excellent article in the New Yorker about guns and America, and some of the framer's background discussion regarding the second amendment, here.

Pema Chodron's teacher has this to say, "This is the most incomprehensible tragedy of insanity. There is no way to even begin to understand what has happened. We can only sit with the overwhelming sadness and loss of the innocent. The guardian of humanity

could not have to face anything more grave than losing the young unopened buds that were on their way to bloom. We pray that some relief may come in this time of loss and to the broken hearts of the parents, family members, and our countrymen and women. This kind of tragedy is happening way too often in our country, where only a few miles away in Canada, it is a rare occurrence. I join my palms in prayer for America to find a positive resolution to this problem."  (Italics mine)

Senator Feinstein, California, has announced she will introduce gun legislation in January.  The President is on board for some meaningful change.

In a news story I read there was a banner up in Newton that read, "Heaven was short 27 angels."  If I were there, I'd rip that sucker down.  How dare they?  In their ignorant, desperate search to make meaning of this tradegy, they have unskillfully expressed something repugnant.

Original Face or Facebook?

photo by taradharma

Jackie Greene, one of my favorite musical artists, posts about his concerns with social media and our addiction to it, especially its impact on kids and teenagers.  I encourage you to read the whole thing.  I can't imagine being young today with social media...and video games, and the oppressive prevalence of popular culture/celebrity.

I've been getting teased by a few friends lately about how frequently I post on facebook.  I do love my facebook life, but Mr. Greene's post has really struck a nerve deep down inside of me.  I've been blogging for six years and have been on facebook for a couple of years.  I've met some wonderful people through my on-line presence -- hell, I met my girlfriend through blogging six years ago!  How wonderful is that?  I felt as if I knew her very well.  Her writing was smart, funny, heartfelt and provocative.  It could have merely been a manifestation of her on-line self, but as it turned out her writing was honest and a true reflection of many parts of her being.  I fell in big time like through reading her posts.

Social media, like everything else, can be used for good or evil.  I say evil because some kids and teens are horrendously bullied through social media.  Some have committed suicide because of on-line harassment.  And a lesser evil, insidious, is the tethering of one's life experience to one's on-line presence.  Okay, "one" being me.  If I don't blog or facebook about it, who will know I experienced it? 

I will, of course.

I know that my internet persona and expression has become exceedingly important to me when I acknowledge that the idea of giving it up sends me into a panic.  What is the result of this -- let me be honest -- addiction?  Or, put more compassionately and gently, perhaps my on-line expression is an extension of my life-long desire to express through writing, music and photography.

Can we really experience and cultivate our Original Face* on the Internet?  The answer is: I don't know.  But I am thinking about it.







*A term used in Buddhdism to refer to an individual's true nature in the sense of the true identity, or ‘face’, which lies behind the ever-changing, evanescent procession of identities that one takes from life to life.

So What

Sometimes people let the same problem 
make them miserable for years 

when they could just say, "So what". 

That's one of my favorite things to say. 
So what.

Andy Warhol

Indeed.  Indeed I say.  Or, as the character Annie Hall said, "La-di-da, la-di-da, la la."

Monday Musings

Photo Credit: Lynn Zanetta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gi3VNLhHq4

The world is round and the place which may seem like 

the end may also be the beginning. 

--I.B. Priest

Monday, Monday

"It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love.  It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger.  When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.  If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others...I have felt the wilderness stretching between us.  Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourish us--or having found them dry."  Italics mine.

-- from Ann Morrow Lindbergh's "Gift from the Sea"

Into the light

With all the tragedy going on in the world right now, I feel very self indulgent here, but Lindbergh's book said this so perfectly to me, I had to share it.  A keen reminder of the value of being balanced and true deep within ourselves.  It is the only way to nourish ourselves, and our relationships.

In my own little world, relatively free of true hardship, I have a sense that I am coming out of the darkness.  Like us all, I have no idea what comes next -- that's a heady mixture of terror and excitement.  And mild amusement.  And some boredom.  It's everything, including the kitchen sink.  Down the rabbit hole I go!

Monday Musings

As per usual, Citizen K has posted a doozy. And if you didn't watch the 60 Minutes interview with Sec. of State Clinton, I suggest you watch. It made me want to send her a note thanking her for her service to our country. Maybe I will.

Between getting our financial house in order, and taking care of the basic needs of our citizens, our government has its work cut out for itself. If Roosevelt's words still ring true today, however, I'm guessing it will be many generations still for the "Second Bill of Rights" to be realized - if ever.

What's a mystified citizen to do? Watch in horror? Take our small victories where we can find them? Have another martini?