The Great Wide Open

well, here i am on the eve of my first transcontinental trip. i'm 12 hours from check-in and i'm starting to get excited. to feel the freedom that awaits me. the wild abandon. the cluelessness. ahh, to be clueless. living in a pocket of life. suspended time. on the other side of the Date Line.

it's not even real over there is it? more like a drawing i'm about to step into. mary poppins.

No Fear

i want No Fear surgery.

Going, going, gone

the honeymoon to bangkok and bali is back on. sympathetic loved ones are loaning us the money to go, and so we're goin'.

all day today i shopped for the very best place to stay in bangkok's banglamphoo district for $20 a night. it took hours and hours. but i found a reasonable, hopefully, place to stay for $24 a night right off khao san road, which is a major shopping/nightlife district.

things are feeling better around here. we're both starting to reach critical excitement level. i started to pack. i'll be retrieving some tranquilizers for the 20 hour flight to BKK. there's a reservation for a place to stay our first night in bangkok. we've figured out our budget per day. this fluctuates depending on where we are and all that we'll need on that day depending on where we are. having an answer to these questions is very calming. having a 2-week escape from the here and now is priceless.

time for celebrating.


(the above photo is where you can stay for $60/night near seminyak, bali, a major shopping and nightlife neighborhood.)

every christmas, the great artist yoko ono publishes an ad to rolling stone asking for people to pray for peace, work for peace, think about peace. i love her words and believe in her and her message completely.

some argue that peace doesn't "fit" in our world, that it's human nature to fight. i can see this point, but i can also see what john lennon says about how the world has always been in turmoil and never given peace a chance, so how could we possibly know what we're talking about.

last night i saw an episode of the amazing series "Iconoclasts" on the sundance channel. unfortunately it seems (don't know for a fact) that one can only catch this show on cable, and may not be able to rent it. anyway, the show puts two thinkers/movers/shakers/creative people together to see what they may say in the presence of each other. this particular episode featured Mike Myers (the comedian/writer/director etc etc) and Deepak Chopra (the first person to ever combine "old world" beliefs with modern science).

(I'd like to go off here on deepak and how he has blown my mind a few times, but not as much as i'm about to let him)

On the show, there is a segment showing deepak in a radio studio where he goes to do a radio show called "healing something something", and an 11-year-old boy calls in and asks deepak what he should tell people when they ask what his religion is. the boy explains that his religion is catholic by birth, but that he has muslim friends, and likes aspects of judaism and has just discovered buddha and likes buddhism now. "What do i tell people what my religion is?"

deepak says, "You tell them it's 'LOVE.' Love is what Buddha and Christ were all about. Love is what ties us all together."



once again, it's the christmas season, and i LOVE yoko for putting out her message of love and peace as a way to get through the day in a fucked up world with fucked up values. as well as just an idea to spread around.

for those of you who are technologically inclined, i encourage you to break the law and find a copy of this to download. mike myers contributes many great thoughts to the episode as well.

when i was "getting known" at my job that fired me for no good reason, it became known that i'm a huge yoko ono fan, and it was said to me that i'm the only yoko ono fan any of them have ever known. to that i say, shame on you for believing the propaganda on this amazing woman artist, and rebel, and revolutionary.

ps. i've had the "war is over" magnet on my fridge for years, but i think this year i'll take the tiny effort up a notch and stick it in my car window like she suggests. i'm thinking of my friend E. and his car window messages as i write this. yay E. for your car window messages.

Love thy neighbor

i love my neighbor. this is good, because our houses are very close and her and her husband's living room backs up very close to our bedroom and looks down into our yard. we talk over the fence whenever we hear each other's voice. i feel like i'm in mr. rogers' neighborhood or something. or sesame street. it's so not the City, which is so what we wanted when we moved here.

my neighbor checks on me and gives me encouragement over this unemployed thing (as she did over the wedding thing too). i ask her regularly how her husband is doing. he is a great musician who's battling cancer. when we get to hear him play from over the fence, it feels like a privilege. he is beating his throat cancer, and bravely, with chemo of course, but also some kind of voodoo hippie shit where "doctors" come over and shake their hands over him. why not the whole gamut? she says some of the techniques are pretty weird but, "oh whatever. we'll keep doing it all because it's working."

she's forward and generous and sincere and i think i have a new friend. she just called me on my video phone to say she's checking all her sources for work for me.

the world is feeling warm again.

Remembering Dr. Bolivar

just thinking about Dr. Bolivar, my cats' city vet, today. maybe because it's raining, and i'm broke, much like most of those city years. (or because it's almost a year since syd died).

dr. bolivar was an angel. not sure of his exact latino heritage. he was a small, but solid man with huge brown eyes that spilled compassion with every blink. we never even really had to speak. i have never believed in shots for my cats, so i've almost never had to call the vet on them. i think dr. bolivar might have fixed some problem of syd's but his stand-out visits were those when i had to call him for euthanasia. twice. each time it was, "my cat is very ill, i think he needs to be put down" and doctor bolivar would say, "i'll be right there." then he'd show up and look at my cat, and feel his heart and say, "you are right. this cat is dying." and then, while my cat laid in my lap, he'd give the valium shot and then the death shot without saying a word. he would look at me with sad eyes and gently take my cat from me and put him or her in a towel, give me a hug and take them away. i would write a check and then we'd nod at each other as i wailed out tears and closed the door.

i marvel at the strength that must take on his part.

i give thanks for dr. bolivar today.

will i ever write on the Jones again?

maybe not.

oops. i just did.

there's been showing guy's parents around our county.
there's been thanksgiving in our house with 19 people.
there's been the meeting of the two families, and mine misbehaving.
there's been a rehearsal dinner.
there's been a wedding.

there's been a firing of a job (me).

there have been so many experiences, that i've gotten all shut up and can't write.
being fired for not being able to write has been sadly humbling.
maddeningly stupid.
frustratingly scary.

a sudden shut-off of the faucet of money has caused...
the cancellation of a honeymoon to bali.
the return of every gift from our registry that we received.
a shut-off of the lights (the light in our eyes, not our house).

there's been incredible highs (saying vows to guy) (seeing old friends).
there's been stomach-churning lows (see above).

what i really didn't think would happen again was a Jones post...