It is time to pause and take stock.  Flailing about wildly, making cosmetic decisions will not change how I feel.  My 30 year involvement with the teachings of AA has made one thing abunduntly clear.  God's will is generally that big stone  wall that you cannot climb over, crawl under or begin to stand to look at.  When that wall appears it is time for change.  Only rarely is the nature of that change clearly explained.  Therein lies my problem.  I have been doing what I do for so many years that finding myself suddenly out of an avocation is startling.  

I know all the door, window crap, and I do understand that this too shall pass.  What I don't know is how to forge ahead on in an unknown direction.  I need something plain and simple something to fill the void that has compelled me for so long.   The thing that dragged me out of bed when bed felt so good.  I have been thru huge loses in my life.  Loses that are far greater than what this change brings.  I know that I did those by putting one foot in front of the other and just  "movin on",.  I learned just "scrubbin the floor"  when the floor was dirty would get me to the next day.  

It is the trust.  It is the lost of trust in things I have held in great esteem for so many years.   I believed. I mean I really really really believed.  Actually it started with JFK.  The whole damn thing is his fault.  He made people of my generation honestly believe that we could change things.  We believed him and we marched in the streets, and fought for people who had less than we did and we saw it happen.  We stood with MLK and watched the child walk thru those doors in Little Rock.  We watched everyone drink from the same water fountain, and eat at the same lunch counter.  People sat wherever they wanted to on a bus.  We watched the train that carried RFK .  We believed.  Even when they were taken away from us we kept going because they would have kept going.  We believed.

There is a lot of talk about change and I fervently hope that it happens.  There is a lot of talk about unity and I would welcome that  most of all.  But one thing I know.  "Dont listen to the words watch the behavior".  The behavior today is not about unity, and it is not about change. The behavior I witness is people crossing to the other side of the street rather than trying to respect the difference or understand.  What I see is people wanting to destroy, even kill  someone they do not agree with.  I see people hurl hatred and insults instead of looking at the person they are defiling. The behavior I see is arrogant entitlement. 

We have spent the last sixteen, eighteen months clamoring for someone fix our world.  During this period we  have done little to fix our own world.  Until we can come together in peace regardless of race, religion, gender or nationality  it will not happen.  People want what they want when they want it.  All sides, all participants no exceptions.  No amount of calm deliberative observation or commenting made a whit of difference.  The media took every opportunity to tear us apart, and we let them.   We turned into a reality show where we expected our opposition to disappear into oblivion overnight because we voted.

I have raged at the wind, and the wind has won.  I need to find a better way to do this.  I need to find the spark that makes it work.  I need to spend time with my friend whose quit line is "God bless everyone, no exceptions"

 I am going to mentally take a nice long walk in a place I love,  Byodo In ion Oahu in Hawaii.   I am going to imagine the birds eating out of my hands, and the koi climbing out of the water for food.  I am going to listen to the birds and imagine sages. I am going to light incense at the shrine and gaze at the strings of peace cranes.  I will mentally ring the peace gong and then I will sit on the marble bench and cry.  Cry tor the child it commemorates and cry for the children of the world who have a right to believe.   

I added it up last night.  I have moved, or more accurately been moved 32 times in my life.  This roughly works out to every two years my surroundings change. This has a good many drawbacks, but a surprising number of advantages.  Not the least of which is being able to meet people from many different places and environments.  I have lived In California, Florida, Michigan and several states along the east coast.  I have lived in Istanbul Turkey. There were brief moves to Atlanta and a long stay in upstate NY.  I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite.  Florida is my choice for the least liked.  They have way too many bugs and the heat and humidity are exhausting. 

One of the distinct advantages is you do not collect large amounts of "stuff".   I did haul my books for many years until the cost became prohibitive, I now only keep a really select few.  I have the habit of re-reading old books at different times in my life and enjoy the new perspective each reading supplies.  I love when I am able to visit the site of one of my author's books, like the visit to Big Stone Gap.   Gathering of stuff becomes oppressive.  You have to find a place to put it, you have to maintain it and you have to make it fit in with a lot of other stuff.  Never having been a clothes horse my wardrobe is very small and probably laughable.  I tend to wear a summer "uniform" of slacks and kurta type tops, in the winter the pants get a little heavier and I were turtleneck sweaters.   I never keep something I do not wear. 

I have also minimilized the acquisition of things to put around to look pretty.  This makes visiting shops much easier, I inspect, admire and pass on the purchase.  I do have a modest collection of boxes of all sorts.  I keep small trinkets given to me by friends in the boxes so that they are not only lovely but useful.  I kept a large basket of cards and event programs in a huge wicker laundry basket, but that started to overflow so I sorted and kept the most special and disposed of the rest.  For your information nursing homes are really not interested in you used cards.   The one thing I will not part with easily is my rock collection.  I have a rock from every place I have ever visited.  Some are fist size or a little larger, most are pebble size.  I have them in baskets and bowls.  I enjoy trying to remember the placesI found them. 

My furniture is "early relative" and pretty well used.  Someone told me one time that tif hey saw my furniture on the side of the road they would instantly recognize it as mine.  It is pretty eclectic.  There is the round solid oak dining room table I bought from a woman who had raised five children around it.  There is the sadly deteriorating marble chest that I found in a garage of a rental and cleaned up to it's original beauty.  The owner was so impressed she gave it to me.  Thank you Lottie it has brought me much pleasure.  There is the chest that my husbands mother kept in her dining room.  I store my non digital photograpy inside.  My husband would prefer to get rid of it but it reminds me of the childhood he so successfully overcame.  I like plants.  Plants do not generally like me and frequently die from my lack of a green thumb.  Currently I am attempting orchids.  If you can't grow a normal plant why not try an impossible one. 

I remember a neighbor when my children were small that had immigrated from Nazi Germany.  Her father was a scientist and she was named for one of his theories.  She described their departure from Germany.  They dressed in everyday clothes so as not to call attention to them as the four of them walked away from everything they owned to begin a new life.  I think it is a good thing to be able to place your welfare above your possessions. 

I watch the horrible weather that has hit the midwest this early summer and see the people who have lost everything struggle with the concept of starting over.  Occasionally there are the ones that say we are alive.  Alive is what matters.  The pitiful destruction of Katrina that sent people out of their homes and many to far away places still stings as a failure of the American Dream and how much you can rely on your government to come to your rescue.  The waste of valuable supplies, rotting in expensive warehouses rather than be distributed at the time to people in dire need. 

Everyday of my life I am moving.  I am, as Bill Moyer so aptly put it, camping one day closer to my death.  I love my life and I particularly love the fact that I have had an incredibly diverse life that has offered me so many unique opportunities.   I am not terrified by death.  It will be just one more move to the unknown. 

This is a quote from Alan Watts, a philosopher, and the author of several of my must have on hand books.  Most books I read and pass along,  My favorite Alan Watts book is "The Wisdom of Insecurity", it opened being alright with not knowing..  My bookcases are filled with eclectic choices that if they are all brought together define me.  Jean M. Auel and the "Cave of the Clan Bear" series.  Her impecable research of plants and condition at that time are so inspiring.  Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged".  I won a trivia contest because I loved this book.  Anything by Alison Weir makes my imagination of the Henry VIII and Elizabeth I era bring to life these incredible people.  "Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood", Rebecca Wells, brought me to terms with my childhood insanities.  James Thurber's "My life and hard times" saved my mind as a teenager.  HH Munro "Short Stories of Saki"  kept Wren and I amused when we were roomies many years ago.  We would listen to Nina Simone and read Saki.

Richard Feynman,  along with "The Secret life of Plants" foisted on me by a mentor so I could fix my impaired logic. "Taming your mind" by Ken Keyes given to me by both my father and my mentor, many years apart.  "Only in America" by Harry Golden who wrote for the Detroit Free Press and defined the change of racisim.  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance" by Pirsig.  I have read that countless times to clear the muddy waters.  I love re-reading "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Imperial Woman" and enjoy "Geisha"

My granddaughter just bought  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "  by Douglas Adams and "Brave New World" by Huxley.  I sent off copies of "1984" and "Victoria's Daughters" to  help complete her summer reading program.  She will want to read Robert Massie's  "Romanovs" and I just know she would love "Nicolas and Alexandra".  It was kind of fun talking to her about books and hearing what music she was downloading.  When I asked she carefully included names she knew I would recognize.  She is a born reader and it will meld her into what she will be in years to come.

My faith developed with "If You Meet The Buddha on the Road Kill Him" by Sheldon Kopp.  My sense of who I was as a woman came from Betty Friedan's "the Feminine Mystique" and  Germaine Greer''s "The Female Eunuch"    "The Prophet" given to me by a Detroit Mafia don taught me morality and how to bend with life.  Living  through the death of my son was softened by John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" So many milestones of my life were defined by what I was reading.  I joined AA shortly after reading Sylvia Plath's "A Bell Jar".   Other alkies would giggle that I got more about sobriety from that book than I ever gleaned from the "Big Book".  I found my soul mate in AA.  He also reads extensively but mostly throw away mysterys that after a while all meld together in my mind. 

We are blessed to have books.  You can hold a book, feel it's cover, run your hand over the pages and print.  Remember when  the hot chocolate stains got on the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" that was a childhood gift from my father. I think Watts might have gotten wrong I think you can define yourself.   You are not only what you eat, you become what you read. 

I offended a friend today.  Someone I hold very dear as a friend.  We have differing views on the upcoming election and frankly he is bedazzled by Senator Obama. I have not committed but "at this point in time, knowing what I know today" I will not be voting for Obama.  I will also be very unlikely to vote for McCain.  I can't stay home, so who knows where my vote might end up. 
The quotes in the prior paragraph are from an old mentor who taught me to "never say never".  I may have information at the time I vote that I do not have today, I might have come to a different place in my life at that time. 

Frankly I would be delighted to have a different view than the one I hold.  I would have loved to see Senator Obama stand up for "Change" by keeping his word to fight the immunity of the telecom industry.   He has indicated he will vote with the majority to allow the immunity and he did not vote on the measure to allow debate, which was the only chance we had to change the bill.    We have just given the telecom companies the perfect right to read our email, listen to our conversations and put our asses in jail if they do not like what they hear.  The companies that agreed to provide this information to the government without a warrant are going to be given immunity for breaking that law. 

 Do you understand that folks.  Your 4th Amendment just got torn to shreds. 

 "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be  violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,  supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 -- United States Constitution, Amendment IV"

Do ordinary citizens have time to keep track of all this.  Of course not.  Do you hear the in depth explanation on the news of course not.  You spend a week mourning Tim Russert who was paid $5 mil a year to lie to us.  Real journalists like Amy Goodman and Sy Hersh are not household names. 

Do you know that the Democratic National Committee has permanently moved it base to Chicago?  No of course you don't   It was not even a sound byte on the 6 o'clock news two weeks ago.  The Democratic party has moved out of Washington and you didn't get the memo.  Anyone who is my age remembers Daly Politics from the Southside of Chicago.  The memory is sinister at best.  The reasoning was it would make a central base for the Obama campaign.  What happens if he is not elected.  Since the move is permanent what happens then?  Anybody even mildly curious?

As tor the friendship it will endure.  It has been  strong enough to withstand disagreement.  But I have to tell you the bi-weekly dinners for the next few months are gonna be a little uncomfortable for both of us, and they should be.