Deep inside early morning Denver
OK, so I don't LIKE to be up at 4:54, but I woke up at 3:30 and thought I would bless you with my wisdom since I can't fucking sleep.
Years ago Todd decided he wanted a firm bed. I went along with his idea, because who can turn down something that's so good for you? The problem is, everytime I do anything in a workout that strains my shoulder, I wake up at some ungodly hour with one or both hands tingling and my neck sore.
And then I have some cereal and go online. What else can a sleepless girl do?
Usually the repetitive motion injury I got in the 1990s doesn't bother me anymore. But in Krav Maga last night we were doing kick defenses (I wrote "dick defenses" the first time), which are amazingly graceful when done right. You can reach out and push the leg away, with hand or foot, depending on the height of the kick, and blade your body at the same time. It's like an aerobics workout ('twist and bend and twist and bend').
At one point we were punching down and across our bodies to defend from a low front kick, and every time my hand met my partner's shin pad, I got another scratch from the damn velcro.
Normally I'm proud of the bruises I get in this class, but scratches I don't like. They'll leave another scar on my arms.
Now I think I'll go sleep in the soft bed in the guest bedroom. My mother-in-law insisted on padding. Now SHE has some sense.
And then I'll get up at 6 and go look at loons (the avian kind).
Bad, bad teeth
Great, it’s Halloween. I’m still paying for all the Halloween candy I ate as a child.
Yep, on November 1, I get not one but two onlays. I get to spend the morning after trick-or-treat with a lovely green dental dam in my mouth.
My new dentist looks like Cameron Crowe. He has specially made tiles on the ceiling with leaf designs in them. He has fancy x-ray machines in special closets.
I really like that.
But then I’m easily impressed.
I can only hope they’ll give me laughing gas. And then put me in the closet with my mouth wide open and green plastic hanging out. At the rate I’m going, that’s the only costume I’ll come up with for Halloween.
Planets of Cold Illusion
I like astrology.
There, I’ve said it. You may all label me a new age freak now.
But I don’t care. I’ve actually been interested in astrology since I had my chart done in high school, and I’ve been carrying around that chart with me ever since. I pull it out and look at it sometimes, noting how most of my planets fall in the bottom half of the chart, which is a sign of an introverted person, and how I have no planets in fire signs. Those of you who know me will find this information appropriate.
I guess saying that “I like astrology” doesn’t do my feelings justice. It would be more accurate to say that I enjoy astrology as a way of thinking about myself.
It’s hard for me to admit that I think about myself. I grew up in a family where it wasn’t appropriate to brag or to perform too much, unless one was performing on an instrument, such as a piano. Self-knowledge was admirable, but doting on oneself—say, by thinking about one’s positive character traits or beauty—was frowned upon. Go figure that one out.
Now I don’t mean to make my family sound like a bunch of Puritans—they’re not. They’re fun people, just a bit reserved. They’re more likely to ask about you than tell you about themselves. I find myself in this situation a lot, listening to my friends talk about their lives. I always end up talking less about my life than they do about theirs. I truly do try to break this habit, because I think it allows people to take me for granted, but I’ve done it for so long…
So I compensate by reading about planets and houses and aspects. I wonder whether the gravity of the outer planets really might affect my personality, and if I might ever feel it. It’s a little bit like thinking about God, except that I know that the planets really exist. People have seen them through telescopes (is that like “through a glass darkly”?). Probes have burned up in their atmospheres.
In some ways, astrology is much more satisfying than praying, because I never have to wait for an answer. It’s all interpreted for me.
And I don’t use astrology to predict what’s going to happen in my life. I have had the experience, occasionally, of reading a past horoscope and saying, “Yeah, I really did crash and burn that month!” But if I had read the horoscope before the crashing and burning, I would have disregarded it.
What I like best about astrology books and charts is finding bits and pieces of my personality there. If something doesn’t seem to fit, I just ignore it. If the description of Virgo, say, is a bit too neatnik for my tastes, I can use it to wrestle with my insecurities. Or I can use a more positive description of my chart to inspire myself.
And who wouldn’t rather have inspiration than sermons?
What would you do?
I just read the most amazing book, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail. I have never read any story like it. It’s the story of the Oufkir family, who were imprisoned for 14 years and then held in house arrest for another 5 years after their father attempted to assassinate the king of Morocco.
Here’s a sample (the speaker is Malika, the eldest):
“Each of my birthdays was like a dagger piercing my heart. At the age of thirty-three I became resigned. I would never experience a great love; I would never have my own family; no man would ever take me in his arms and whisper sweet nothings or words of burning passion in my ear; I would never know the physical and mental thrill of being in love.”
At that point, she had been in prison since age 18. Her youngest brother had been 3 when they were spirited away.
They escaped from prison in 1987 by digging a tunnel. For most of the time they were in the last prison, they lived in cells next to each other but were not allowed to see each other.
Can you imagine? Being a few feet from your mother or brothers and sisters, being able to hear them, but not seeing them for something like 8 years?
They decided to dig the tunnel (using a spoon and a can lid) after almost all of them attempted suicide at the same time. It sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Like a melodrama.
Here’s a description of what they ate:
“Every two days, the guards brought us bread in cardboard boxes. I would tip the loaves out onto the floor and Soukaina and I would quickly lift up the flaps on the boxes and remove the thin layer of paper that lined them. We used it to write down the stories I told. The paper was as precious to us as food.
One day, while I was busy pulling off the paper, I saw the three girls licking the floor for crumbs that had dropped from the box. From that moment, I established a rule. Instead of fighting like stray dogs, they would each have their day, their turn at the crumbs.
At Bir-Jdid we were never once given a normal egg. The shells were green, and inside was a vile black liquid, the smell of which made us feel ill….”
They were incredibly resourceful, thanks, according to the book, to Malika. They made up plays; she told a story she made up on their "radio" that they used to connect the cells, even though they could hardly see each other; they laughed at whatever they could. In short, they constructed a life for themselves out of what they had.
Oh, it's the work week again
It's the end of the weekend, and I feel a little bit sad because I have so much left to do. But I had lots of fun this weekend, including shopping, returning, and more shopping, and birding. We even went to see a play.
I knew nothing about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, except that those characters escort Hamlet to England in Shakespeare's play. And this particular company (Upstart Crow) tends to hire some really good actors and some really mediocre ones. But every performance in this production was excellent. The two actors in the lead roles fed off each other wonderfully well, which was essential since much of their dialogue was repetitive questions about the meaning of life or memory. The repartee and physical comedy were wonderful. When they disappear at the end (even though they're already dead, according to the title), it was poignant.
The program described the plot as a play within a play, but it's not that, it's more like the random thoughts of two characters inside a play, waiting for their cues. Or like a Jasper Fforde novel in which people from the real world visit the book world and watch characters going for a smoke between scenes, as if it were a movie set. The same line appeared in both: "It is written."
It reminds me how much power writers can have. We can get words in the dictionary, inspire psychos, set trends, but most of all, we can show people the life they want.
