And so... I have been busy, behind the eight ball, and my June page languished- but for all good reasons. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it.
Carrie graduated from college, my parents and sister came for the graduation and a visit, and 
I packed up my life and moved up to Mount Vernon to be home with Jay.
It is good. And now the words will flow, once again. C'est magnifique!
The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink, and somebody to love you.- Brandan Behan
"Welcome home", he said.
Jay has lots of flowers planted at our house, mostly perrenials and some self-seeding plants. There is a large Nicotiana just outside the front door, wafting its mild fragrance up at you as you pass. Check it out...
And there are bright daisies along the fence by the shed that we built in May. Near the water spigot are more of our prolific poppies and Sweet Williams, plus some of my purchases- variegated Jacob's Ladder, a hosta, and some Lungwort... what fun!
More poppies along the house... continuing up front, past my white car and the lavender, cherry tree, roses, and... more.
"Welcome home", he said.
"Thank you- I am so glad I made it here to you." she replied.
No one can go back and make a brand new start. Anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
When something happens to you, good or bad, consider what it means. There's a purpose to life's events.
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.- Rainer Maria Rilke
"We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - you can blame anyone but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change, you're the one who has got to change. It's as simple as that, isn't it?" -- Katharine Hepburn
Good-bye Katie, you're quite a gal...
(click her pictures, each links to a different site...)
Thank God for NPR. National Public Radio helps us keep our intellects sharp and sooths our senses with the arts.
If you click on Bernie's picture it will take you to an NPR page with the story about Bernie being the World's Oldest Male Stripper. I heard it on the radio and just had to check out the full story...
My daughter Carrie graduated from The Evergreen State College on Friday June 13th. My parents and my sister, Linda, flew in from Michigan to see the event. The college is in the middle of a forest and the ceremony was held outside in the midst of the buildings she spent so much time in these last three years. Carrie concentrated on environmental sciences and the last quarter took a class that included a lot of art exposure- hands on. Carrie had never done that sort of thing and enjoyed the adventure immensely as she expanded some boundaries.
If you click on the picture of the college logo above to the left it will take you to some pictures taken there at the college on graduation day and if you click on Carrie's picture with her graduation hat-board thing on it will take you to pictures of her art work...
Part of the graduation ceremony was dedicated to Rachel Corrie, an Evergreen student killed in March in Gaza. Evergreen is a "hippie" college and the students are active in politics and social awareness. Click on the long house eagle at left to go to a page about Rachel. The picture of Mount Rainier at right takes you to Evergreen's main page.
The mountain, eagle and TESC logo pictures are all courtesy of their site...
I know a lot of you are trying to watch your weight, so I thought I'd help by putting in this yucky picture...
If you click on it, it will take you to a site called How Things Work that talks about Krispy Kreme doughnuts...
Click on the logo to the left for New Scientist magazine to link to an interesting article for those of us in human services. It reviews research on the effectiveness of one session, one on one debriefing counseling provided right after a traumatic event.
Amusing links:
Happy Keaster
Blonde Joke...
The flow from Cindy is slower these days; some of the angst has passed and life flows on into quiet pools.
July 4th has come and gone, everything is moved in and in its place, although home projects continue.
Optimism is an intellectual choice.- Diana Scheider
7/11/2003: Ten months of sobriety- almost a lifetime for an 18 year old. From September 1999 until September 11, 2002 my daughter was a raging alcoholic. She ran away from home, was brought back by police, was arrested by poice, physically tore up our house, stole many things out of our home to pawn and turned life into an incredible nightmare that would be hard for me to imagine if I had not experienced it. The pain was incredible, waiting to identify my child's body at some morgue and wondering if this would simply be the sum total of how she would be. It was like watching your child die, over, and over, and over.
And now, it is equally amazing to see her clean and sober, to see her thinking, to see her planning, to hear her thoughts. And to realize that she has come home to herself. She has thanked me for being there for her and that was important, yet my being there did not get her here- she was the only one who could do it.
I am incredibly proud of Kira. She is a wonderful human being. She has a lot of growing up yet to do, but she has learned some lessons very early.
Fate and Free Will
I have talked about fate vs free will many times over the months that have now stretched into years (almost 2!) that I have been writing my pages. I talked about the passage in Moby Dick in which Melville describes mat weaving: it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates... The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course... freewill still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions modified by freewill, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.
A year ago May I wrote of a conversation with my friend Margaret, when we discussed fate vs free will: She said that we are all connected, that we are all part of this web of life called humanity, and we all have roles or burdens to fulfill that are part of why we are here. Yes, there is free will, but it does not include everything that is.
And earlier this year I wrote of that great philosopher, Forest Gump, and how he wonders: could both be right, if maybe both are happening- that destined fate and random luck or free will are both happening at the same time.
Such diverse sources regarding all of this- and all three seem to agree that fate and free will are concurrent forces, both acting at the same time, running together throughout this experience we call life. Did I also mention Robert Frost? Two roads diverged, choosing one, and that has made all the difference. There is a song on commercial radio that is getting play now, and the singer's name escapes me, but he speaks in his song about how everything happens for a reason and yet how he still needs to, is required to, determine if he is making the right decisions. That is an interesting distinction. Yes, things happen for a reason and the lessons that are available for us to take into ourselves are never-ending. Yet within that web we do make decisions, and the lessons reflect that path we have chosen because we are all here for a reason. As my daughter Carrie told me, we are here for a reason but the reason is different for each person.
Deja vue is an interesting phenomenon. There are many theories about it ranging from it being filled with mystic importance to it simply being a result of electrical impulses in our brains (the latter explanation, of course, explaining nothing, but simply describing the event...). For me these experiences are important. They are reassuring. They tell me that I am on the right path- the path that gets me to everything that I am here for. This point of view does not threaten Western organized religion, even if it is experienced as threatening or misguided. There was a joke years ago in which a very religious person was caught in a flash flood and a number of rescuers came in boats, helicopters, etc. and each time he declined their assistance because God would save him if that was what was to be. Of course he dies and goes to heaven. When there he asks God why He had not saved him, to which God replies that he had tried many times but the man had declined each time... Life is full of meaning; to me God is life.
I recently met with an elderly lady at a nursing home and she kept interrupting me to exclaim how very much, how uncannily I looked so much and spoke so much and held my head so much like the family of girls her brother had married into. Later we met with her family and discussed options for her discharge; how to get her home with enough assistance or to senior apartments rather than just home alone- where she was not really safe. She balked at some of the ideas- actually at about all of them. She said that she was religious, that God would tell her if that was what she was to do. I asked her if maybe God had sent her a gal who looked like that family of girls so that she would consider what she had to say. She decided to go check out some senior apartments.
Last year Barbara and I went to a Samuel Beckett play, a one man play about life and death that I enjoyed immensely, and its dialogue was familiar in that it reminded me of what goes on in my head much of the time... I think about fate, free will and chance often- not always specifically, but it is an underlying theme in many ideas, in many choices, as I traverse this life and daily look at the signs and daily make the choice of which divergent path to take, over and over. Life is good. Life is. Be Here Now. Yes, Be Here Now.
Later man...
:)
My folks and sister came to visit in June. For the limited audience who are interested in those family pictures (that include a couple of Jay)...
(CLICK) THESE WORDS ARE THE LINK...
Kira gave me a lovely orchid for Mother's Day.
Its blooms continued through May, and then June. It moved to the home I now share with Jay, and then last week developed a new bud, and put out a new flower.
None of its original blooms have faded.
I have listened to the realm of the Spirit. I have heard my own soul's voice, and I have remembered that love is the complete and unifying thread of existence.- Mary Casey
Jay has had a strong interest in and affinity for badgers since he visited England in 1978 and encountered that country's fondness for the critters. The badger picture at left links to a badger informational site and the picture at right links to my heart.
Too many activities, and people, and things. Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well.- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.- Thomas Carlyle
C'iao! :)
I was somewhat surprised this morning when I walked into my office and
discovered them having sex on my desk in my cubicle.
Not only was I embarrassed, but they were as well.
After all, getting caught is only half the problem...confessing to their partners, that will be another issue all together.
They might deny it, but fortunately I had my digital camera and was able to quickly get a shot before they both ran off.
June 28, 2003
The day after Moving Day, and Cindy, The Trucker, is off and running, taking the rented truck back to its home...
A lot of people approach risk as if it's the enemy when it's really fortune's accomplice.- Sting
To believe yourself to be brave is to be brave; it is the only essential thing.- Mark Twain
Where we are from is always a part of us. I am from Eaton Rapids, Michigan. ER is a small farming community about 20 miles south of Lansing. If you saw the pictures from my last visit there in November you might remember the picture of the sign greeting people as they entered- "Eaton Rapids, the only Eaton Rapids on Earth". My mom tells me (just yesterday) that you can mail something from anywhere and only put "Eaton Rapids" on the address (no State or Zip) and it will get there. She did not want me to try this in mailing Carrie's graduation pictures to her...
Click on either picture here and it will link you to an Eaton Rapids site, complete with a web cam. Yes, where I am from.
...that is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.- Doris Lessing
The realities of life come to us in mysterious ways. We fight so hard, only to learn that what we need will never be ours until the struggle is forsaken. Surrender brings enlightenment.- Hazelend Meditations, Each Day a New Beginning
Thank you everyone- let us all find everything.
A food adventure story from our home and kitchen...
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I LIKE THE POETRY OF WALT WHITMAN...
He likes to put...(yes, the three dots...) in his work, just like I do...
The picture at left is when he was younger, the picture at right is Walt Whitman in 1887 (Photograph by George C. Cox, New York). He lived from 1819 to 1892. Clicking on the left picture will take you to a poetry site about him.
If you click on the name Walt Whitman that is underlined, it will take you to a page that I have put some of his poetry on and will be adding to as I go along... :)
(Last added to 07/21/03) WALT WHITMAN
CLICK for ongoing writings/quotes from JUDITH VIORST'S book: Necessary Losses
(Last Added to 07/21/03...)
If you have comments on my topics or content, please send them to me at:
thecindyj@hotmail.com or click: MAILTO
Comments received from responding humans and my responses can be accessed by clicking on the picture of the chimp at left;
My dear old friend Ken, AKA: Grappler, was the originator of the idea for this...
Music: Click on the Licking Lips Page Created July 2003 |
