Spectacles and Retrospectives

Yesterday, I had an angry day. A day filled with so much emotion and pain that I spent the day in a broken, onion-skin-fragile state. Today, I was in recovery –survival mode. I let myself sleep in. I ate cinnamon rolls for breakfast at lunchtime. I watched a Red Box movie and got lost in the sensory experience of folding towels fresh from the dryer. I didn’t get dressed until dinnertime and I didn’t leave my house until 7:00pm. Yesterday was such a strange experience. It was like having a fight with a lover while on vacation. Enraged simultaneously with passion and frustration, with love and contempt, with devotion and confusion. Fight all you want, you’re still going to be forced to sleep in the same bed and continue your journey when you awake. You can even make-up and move on. It’s still a relationship changer. As yesterday ended, I showered, brushed my teeth, took my medicine and crawled into bed with myself… and my misfiring immune system.   I have no enlight...

I am an avid reader of Consumer Reports. For three main reasons: 1.) I enjoy reading how human beings quantify and classify human-made products. Typically the products reviewed within the pages of this publication are items of luxury, the focus of the (perceived) American Dream. Televisions, stereos, Mp3 players, vacuums cleaners, refrigerators - these are the things that are dissected in Consumer Reports. These are the things that belong. 2.) I feel that as a person with monetary power (a power that only a minority of the world possesses) I have a responsibility to myself and to the larger global society to be informed when I make a purchase, especially a large one. 3.) My Aunt Jody read Consumer Reports religiously. As well as Reader's Digest (I read that, too. I have since I was about 9 years old). She was one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered. Reading what she read makes sense. Having qulified that this is a publication that I enjoy and...

Illness is the other; The uninvited guest To welcome in this stranger, Radiates protest I remain the host, At a party I didn’t plan; I remain the host, Until the fatal end But at the party there is laughter Sweet love and precious life There is trueness There is wholeness And the uninvited guest