brrrr....

According to weather.com, the local forecast says its fair and only 5 degrees but feels like minus 9 degrees. I just came inside. I think its bitterly cold, bright and sunny, and to say that it only feels like 9 degrees below zero is a generous estimate. But I parked far away on a hill and it was very windy when I left the car. I'm just gathering the courage to venture outside again...I want to see if my school's bookstore sells better socks than the ones I'm wearing.

When I was 8, I left New York state. I was young but loyal. I vowed to myself that New York would always be my home. But after living in other places, who knew I'd feel like such a transplanted westcoast/southerner when I finally came back?

I just read "Seeing Red," an article in the Jan. 16th Washington Post magazine about the outcome of the election. The author states: "The decision to vote for Bush instead seemed wrapped up in the age-old city vs. rural dichotomy, change vs. tradition, theory vs. horse sense, new vs. familiar." This is what I remember about the election outcomes: I was in a cafe with an old friend and his friend, and both of them were railing against the voters who had re-elected Bush. They did indeed seem to embody what this author criticizes. That is to say, they were making broad generalizations in saying that the people who had voted for Bush were obviously so very closed minded and ignorant, etc. etc. etc. I told them I had many friends and family members who had voted for Bush. They treated me to an chilly, unforgiving, piteous silence and then resumed their railing against those voters. They'd also both donated to Kerry's campaign, and I do think that maybe it was just the heat of the moment and a bit of post election bitterness on their part. But I'd also have to say that, in that state of mind and verbal expression, they certainly were not the sort of people I'd nominate to go out and recruit to influence the vote. As an aside, in that chilly silence, I couldn't help but remind myself that both of them were in much better straits financially than I was, and had a lot more free time on their hands. (They didn't seem much happier for it in light of their supposedly wasted efforts due to the election results however!) So in reading this Washington Post article, I could relate to this author's take on the situation, i.e. that maybe there were a lot of people who voted for Bush, not because they absolutely loved him, but simply because he was less threatening and more importantly, because he didn't represent this idea that the "elitist intellectuals" don't respect their opinions. I personally disagree with that stance and I did not vote along those lines, but in light of that post election get together with a friend and an acquaintance, I feel like I can understand it. I thought that it was a good article with interesting photos, and a compelling graphic of "red America."

After reading Long Quiet Highway, by Natalie Goldberg

it is also very important to follow it up by reading The Great Failure.

http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/

Link to Bandelier

http://www.nps.gov/band/

Spent Christmas in Santa Fe, New Mexico and visited the Santo Domingo and Cochiti pueblos and watched the dances on Christmas day. There were smiling young men dressed in red around the kiva at the Santo Domingo reservation. At first, they reminded me of Buddhist monks...perhaps because I've been rereading Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg.
www.nataliegoldberg.com

Also revisited Bandelier National Park, which I visited when I was eight (?) I think, and my father was living in Los Alamos.

The large sky made me feel very present and human.

view the pre raphealite painting, and then the photo....

http://members.fortunecity.com/cadieux3/preraph.html

(by artist Marie Chantal Cadieux)

Tried to find a depiction of "Temperance" from Christine de Pizan's Epistle of Othea online, but I couldn't. Instead...

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH_214images/Manuscripts/15_century/Chris_Front/BN_fr_848_pres.jpg&imgrefurl=http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/christin.html&h=450&w=254&sz=50&tbnid=h5lBAQBwi40J:&tbnh=122&tbnw=69&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3DHector%2BOthea%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

temperance in the history of ideas

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-49

Went apartment hunting and walked into an apartment filled with painted glass windows (not in the windows) and photography. An old fashioned film projector and a large silver screen in lieu of a television set in the living room. Upon leaving, discovered I was in the apartment of a kid from last year's yoga/meditation class.

new life over in a studio apartment over a health food store on another street in a new city folic acid 800 mcg 3x day paba boron vitamin e vitamin a dosage not determined

quote of the moment

"Just accept the fact" she said "that you work better under pressure."

songs

The Stranger

http://www.leonardcohen.com/lc14_07.html

Hang on Little Tomato

http://www.alwaysontherun.net/martini.htm#hang

Pure

Way more than you ever really wanted to know.

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Pure

But kind of interesting.

Online looking up obscure things, like references to a guy who lost a battle to Joan of Arc and later got written into a Shakespeare play (Falstaff) and getting info about the representations of the cardinal virtues in medieval/Renaissance art. When I was younger I had a boyfriend who told me that he thought that in a previous life he was a Renaiisance painter, and I was kind of a pouty rich girl and he thought I was okay but he didn't really have such a crush on me. Or wait. Was that what he said or did he say something nicer? Maybe it was something Jungian. The youth had such refreshing honesty, and combined with such humility ;-) I'm giving a friend (friend turned boyfriend turned ex maybe turning friend again now) a ride tomorrow. I paid over $200 to fix my car today. I can't sleep; I think its just going to be one of those nights...

On the radio this morning:

"And on this day, back in 198-, millions of television viewers were tuning in to see who REALLY killed JR..."
Ah, Dallas. I vaguely remember adults congregating around the television set to watch that show and thinking it was boring. Not that I didn't like evening television. My personal favorites were The Great American Hero, Simon and Simon and Wonder Woman. Dallas was just boring, and the show I really hated was The Incredible Hulk. I think I liked the first two because their theme songs were awesome...and I thought Simon and Simon were cute. Wonder Woman was just the coolest. But I understand how watching television shows about filthy rich people who have unhappy lives is the opiate of the masses, probably. For a while, I too lived for a certain soap opera, or telenovela, when I was in Peru, living in a small town on the edge of the rainforest. "Sonadoras," the show was called. (Dreamers).

When Sonadoras was on (I think it came on around noon) everyone would crowd around the television set. Never have I been more mesmerized by a soap opera. I would tell my boyfriend and his family that I wasn't really an "engreida," no, but look at those girls on Sonadoras. Those were the real "engreidas!" I remember that his aunt was amused with me, and she'd laugh, but I'm not sure that they believed me. When I showed them photographs of my aunts wedding, they told me that we looked like movie stars, and wanted to know if the building where she got married was my house, and if that was where I lived. I'm sure my family would love to hear that they looked like movie stars but...

"In your country, do you have swimmies?" one of his young cousins asked me one day, as I was drinking water out of a liter bottle.
(She was referring to those things that kids wear on their arms to keep afloat when you learn to swim).
"Oh yes! In my country the children wear them, too." I said. She eyed my water bottle.
"Here, most families are too poor to buy swimmies. So they save those water bottles and the children hold onto them to keep afloat."
"Oh," I said.
"People from your country have so much money."
"I know."
"Why?" Por que?
"I don't know. Maybe because there are a lot of big companies in the United States."
"At school, I told them that I have an American girl staying at my house, and they didn't believe me."
I don't know what I said. I think that after that, I passed by them one day on the street, all the school girls in their uniforms. I said "Hi," to her and she smiled brightly and waved at me in front of all her friends.

I remember a Christmas parade, perhaps the nicest one I've ever attended. It was at nightfall. All of the school children made lanterns out of paper and burned candles inside of them. I was mesmerized by the sight of the children marching, the light of their glowing paper lanterns.

Inebriate Asylum

http://nysasylum.com/bia.htm

mistakes corrected; possible surrealistic changes

"antimal" for animal

"wounds" for woods

The day came to euthanise the cat, but she didn't come around until nightfall and so the appointment was cancelled. In the morning, another furry creature with black and gold markings showed up. It was not the same animal; it was stealthier and had a shorter tail. There was no wound on its chest. As soon as the door opened, the cat ran away.

Later, as she fed the wounded stray again, she looked over her shoulder. She thought she could see a shadow in the woods, among the dead leaves. "Is that your brother?" she asked as she set the bowl down. "Maybe I'm just seeing things." The shadow moved. It watched them furtively, with healthy eyes.

She thought
that maybe
she could have
a boyfriend
and a cat.
But the
"boyfriend"
candidate
never called.
The cat had
a cancerous
tumor in
its chest
which bled
all over the
bed sheet
all over the
newspaper
she spread
all over the
bedroom floor.

Only 27...

And yet so wise...After viewing an evite to a holiday party, I reflect: surprisingly, I'm rather social compared to many in my immediate family (at least at the moment!) But, perhaps I'm not naturally all that social compared to some people. Rather, I tend to make a friends who have a large talent at being social, and, they kindly invite me to parties and things. Then, I get to mooch off of their efforts and meet interesting people, etc. I owe them a debt of gratitude.

I have been spending too much time thinking about large and weighty questions at 2 a.m. From "little" things, such as stray cats who have to be euthanised, to slightly larger things such as personal relationships, and throw in a little bit of self psychologizing about "childhood memories" and then, onto to larger issues such as politics and the state of the world today (oh me me me, again!!) But, its difficult to write about these things in any sort of intrinsically artistic and intriguing way. How calmly I write this...

(how do I turn "I" into...something less "I" sounding...)