Solution to Friend Going Beyond Insult....

Breathe, breathe.... breathe more. Wait a week, at least, to respond. Anything I say now will only end the friendship.

Completing a Much Dreaded Task

The older I get, the more I hate doing things for people. Even people I like.

I think I burnt out on charity too early in life.

And with that, I give up on trying...

Not Like It's the Second Time Around or Something "Magikal" Like That...

Didn't realize this post was never posted - was supposed to go up on Easter. Oh, well, better late then never....

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UGH!

Everything is closed today. Flat out closed. Not Starbucks, praise the heavens. But everything else. And I, for one, am ticked off. Why in 2008 must we observe random pagan holidays so much so that we cannot participate in normal everyday business and commerce? I have credit cards and I want to use them, damn it.

The problem is -- and I know I'm not alone here -- that I live in a world where I have 2 days per week during which I have the option to be a normal human being. The other 5 are spent working 12+ hour days and driving a horrendously long commute alone in a car on a highway listening to solitary music of my choosing. For those 5 days I'm in a complete bubble and totally unaware of the rest of the world. On the weekend I get to find out what I've been missing. These are not the days to screw with me by closing shop in observance of a day that frankly, with each passing year is less and less spectacular. I mean COME ON... Nothing miraculous has happened in 2000+ years, and, really, the world has gone to shit, doesn't that, in it of itself, tell us all something about the nature of the accuracies or inaccuracies of a primitive people's storytelling???

And, that aside why does someone else's holiday mean that I can't have a day doing normal, productive errands? Why do I have to pause and contemplate the nothingness I feel in the universe just so 33% of the world can imagine that once upon a time, long ago, something magikal happened in Oz?

Suicide by Fitness Center

I had the unbelievable honor and privilege of seeing Joyce Carol Oates speak not once, but twice, in the past week. Live. Speak live. In the same room as me.

On the second occurrence she read 90% of one of her newest pieces of short fiction "Suicide by Fitness Center".

Joyce Carol Oates may be the funniest, most brilliant woman in the country. I'm riveted still by the feeling of listening to her read.

The Science of Sleep

Few things seem as interesting to me about our creative minds as dreams. Where they come from, what they mean, how to control them, what to interpret from them, etc. I've spent a great deal of my life chronicling, studying, and interpreting my dreams from as far back as the age of five. And I never seem to run out of material.

The other day, on Discovery Channel I learned about how our muscles, hand-eye coordination, and brains learn or re-learn the day's activities during sleep. In one segment they followed a soccer player who practiced a particular move 100s of times while awake and then described how that agility, coordination, motion, and muscle memory were reinforced during his sleeping and dreaming. Sadly, my dad's constant nagging about practice, practice, practice with everything in my life, finally make sense. And, trouble is, it appears, at least thanks to "science lite" a la the Discovery Channel, that his persistent nagging had a point.

Sadder is that for the past month and change I've been having a series of vivid dreams about all my failed past relationships, so, if the argument follows, my brain is trying to reinforce lessons learned on the romantic front. While I don't play soccer, if I have to learn in my sleep, I'd much prefer lessons in becoming a faster typist (my most frequent activity) or BETTER still, lessons on how to become a better driver (my second most often done activity). And, the latter, especially would be very much appreciated by the rest of the world.

Instead it seems that my brain is schooling me on the failures of love and men night after night after night. Maybe I can save it all that trouble by t-y-p-i-n-g out the fact that I've already learned those lessons and understand them to be true. If only I could now determine how to sign up for nocturnal tutorials in something creative, like becoming a better story teller.