On Sunday
Every Grain of Sand
by
Bob DylanIn the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.
Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.
Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.
I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.
I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.
Copyright © 1981 Special Rider Music
* * *
Also, today is li'l Sis' birthday. Happy birthday, Li'l Sis! How does it feel?
A link from
blog teacher Colin McEnroe's blog,
"A Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents" contains a chapter that explains "How to blog anonymously" via the fictional story of Sarah, who wants to blow the whistle on her embezzler boss anonymously. Despite the technical descriptions and instructions, it was very interesting - add a few paragraphs about Sarah's personal life, her apartment, her co-workers, her sessions with the geeks that help her encrypt her stuff, and you'd have quite a nailbiting little thriller. Let's see, who could be in the movie? Maybe Sienna Miller as Sarah and Pierce Brosnan as the deputy minister stealing millions. I'll have to think about who could play the geeks.
I almost feel like a voyeur reading the
terse, compelling narrative by Sally describing her flight from Beaumont, TX in the face of Hurricane Rita. Half of me is heartbroken at this glimpse into the anguishing effect the evacuation is having on her life; the other half wants to read more. I hope for her sake the rest is a description of hours of boredom, waiting for the storm to blow over and her eventual return to her home, to find the yard flooded but everything else OK.
Powerball update: Out of 30 tickets, we won $10, and promptly bought 40 more. Hopefully I'll get lucky Saturday night (:
intro to science and politics / MWF 1:45-4:30
Well, if I may be so bold: in traipsing through the various blogs, I have come across
this one a few times, and while I quickly feel intellectually inferior to this individual, I am compelled to lurk and learn. I was pleased to discover that his explanation for his blogging is similar to mine, although he may be more justified than me!
I remain a distracted, yet interested, student.
Science And Politics: "6) Why do you blog?
- I think I was waiting all my life for the technology that would let me write my thoughts for everyone to read. I always think as if I am constructing an essay (or a speech) and felt that it is a pity most of that never got written down and shared. I never bothered keeping a hand-written diary because I crave the audience."
Back to normal
OK, we didn't win. Well, not really. We got 3 numbers. I don't know if we get anything for that. *sigh* It's just as well.
* * *
This has become our norm: listening to poignant stories on NPR about soldiers in Iraq, coming home, or more often, not coming home. Their lives: short, some sweet, some kind of tough, just out of high school where God knows they haven't really seen life, not like we know it is, and their mothers: oh my God, how do they even speak? It is a testimony to their love and courage that they can speak to a reporter about their sons and daughters.
This has become our norm: watching on TV and computer screens the colorful spirals of rain and wind and hail and clouds inch slowly toward our homes, our people, our lives, deadly inexorable beauty, unstoppable, implacable, without mercy or humanity; nature, oblivious to mankind. The horror of untimely death, the cruelty of the destruction of so many lives, so many that we all have someone to relate to.
This has become our norm: revelations of ineptitude, rumors of malicious intent, allegations of greed and stupidity and indifference. How can we believe what we are told? Who is really working on our behalf and who really has our best interests at heart? Who even knows what our best interests are, as splintered as we all are? I'm tired and I want to believe what I hear and see; I'm angry and I know they're wrong. He's our leader >slap< our enemy >slap< our President >slap< our captor >slap< we elected him! >slap< we hate him!
The fever!
This is it – on the edge of the precipice! Tonight my life will change forever. Tomorrow I will be me, but a completely changed me. Changed for better or worse? If history holds true, for worse, but perhaps that is not my fate. Maybe I can be the one that doesn’t prove the rule. I stand ready, waiting, to take on this new life:
I WILL HAVE WON POWERBALL TONIGHT!
T organized a group of six of us in my office who each put in $5. We will all quit our jobs tomorrow, ahead of our being laid off in the spring. Take your severance and shove it. Ha!
In addition to employing some accountants and lawyers to handle all of the details, I would of course want to establish a charitable trust of some kind to give something back to this big ol’ world that has given me so much. I would also like to invest in some companies that are looking for long-term solutions to poverty, education and alternative energy. On a more personal side, I will need to go on a little shopping spree.
What I will do with my $5 million dollars:
First on the list: buy a Maxima 3.5 SL. I’ve thought a long time about this, it is not an impulse purchase. Related: donate my Concorde to a charity. Also stop by the Hummer dealership & pick one up for J.
Pay the bills: mortgage, M’s college tuition, S’s h.s. tuition, credit cards, etc.
Give some money to all the sisters & brothers, in-laws, etc. How much? I have no idea. Whatever the going rate is.
I once heard Oprah talk about being rich – having “enough” money – and one of the things she said was, she could now buy a whole case of pantyhose, and the minute a pair got one single little tiny run in them, throw them out. *That* would be *nice.* Not that I paint the runs with nail polish anymore. I just let them go until they are embarassing.
OK, never mind the Maxima. Buy a white Cadillac, cruise out to Austin and sit in a honky-tonk with Willie Nelson and drink tequila. Not enough to make me sick, just enough to make me forget for awhile.
Or maybe the Florida Keys. I’d really like to be in one of those Corona commercials, sitting in a chaise lounge at the beach in the shade, with a beer. I’m sure I could learn to like Corona.
[Strange how my Powerball fantasies involve so much alcohol when I barely touch the stuff now.]
Buy some Green Monster seat tickets to the NY-Boston series at the end of the month. Oh yeah. Money’s no object there.
Buy all nine seasons of The X-Files on DVD. You’re welcome, Chris Carter.
Will being rich make me fat, or will I get skinnier?Will people from my past really come out of the woodwork to look me up? Even Jim Lanier, who I haven’t heard from since I left him at the Wilmington, NC bus station 25 years ago? I wonder what ever happened to him. Jim, go ahead and give me a call. I’ll buy you a beer, but that’s about it.
background
So, my kids are still a big deal to me, maybe too big, but M's imminent flying from the nest is making it more and more obvious that I need to "get a life" for when they go out on their own ... I have my little hobbies: quilting, knitting, and I dote on the dog, Rudy. It simply makes me feel good to create beautiful things, and what a boost to my ego when I give them away and people exclaim how wonderful they are. I run one of the cameras at blues shoots that get made into the "Blues Plate Special" on public access TV, and direct the studio interviews with the bands, which makes me feel like I'm still a little cool. I'm still very much a fan of the Red Sox! Last fall was an incredible time! We - all four of us - watched virtually every game all summer - that's just what we do in the summer, this summer, too; most all other TV shows just go away - and so we were swept along on a magical ride that had a fairy tale ending! At the time I thought a lot about my grandmother, my dad's mom, who I remember so vividly supporting and heckling the Sox on TV as she puffed away on her Pall Malls and knitted hats and blankets; she died in 1992. I could relate to all of the people who told their stories of relatives who had passed away without seeing the Sox win a World Series. Now, J and I share our love of baseball - he is relatively new to it, as Texans generally don't pay much attention to it, but he has been forced to by his proximity to me. As the years have gone by, (six this past June) I realize how little I knew him when we married, but maybe that's to be expected. How could you really really know someone before you have lived with him for six years? Makes me wonder what more I will know six years from now, and six years after that? Is a marriage a lifetime of getting to know someone more and more? Do you think it's true that the first year is the hardest?
Last Thanksgiving we (J, S and I - M had to be at school) drove to Minneapolis to finally see my sister's home there. We spent the weekend with her, her boyfriend and his son, and then we drove down to El Paso to see J's family: his parents and two brothers and their families live there, and one of his sisters and her family drove over from Killeen, TX. It was quite a family reunion, and I'm glad we did it. The driving thing was at once glorious and grueling - I love seeing the country, but unfortunately, to make good time, you really have to stick to the interstates which start to look very much the same.
Here are some of my impressions from the trip: there are many dead deer on the side of the road in Pennsylvania. Chicago is a beautiful city, with a distinctly Midwestern design. Cheese is sold liberally in Wisconsin. Iowa is very neat, all squares and rows, with virtually no people. Tumbleweeds really do exist, and not just in ghost towns: we had a run-in with one in the Texas panhandle. We were watching it come bouncing along the street, and it attached itself to the front bumper of our rented minivan; we had to stop at a 7-Eleven, laughing hysterically, and disattach it. I think now we should have kept it somehow. There was a young guy who worked at an all-night gas station/truck stop in Oklahoma; we were the only customers there at 4 in the morning, and he pointed me toward the coffee machine. He was writing something in a notebook while he sat at the register, and when I paid for the coffee, I could read upside down in his notebook that he was making a list of Christmas gifts for people. Several people had "poetry" next to their names. I was again reminded that ordinary, seemingly insignificant people have whole unique worlds inside of them. We drove on smaller roads south from Amarillo all the way down to Odessa, past cotton fields, where we stopped on a long lonely stretch and picked a little branch of a cotton plant, to the famous oil fields, where the pumps or drills or whatever they are called, bobbed rhythmically up and down, and then up the border through the desert, at sunset, with beautiful mountain ranges and strange plants into the large city of El Paso. It was wonderful. I love Texas, in spite of all of the negative stuff associated with it, and would love to spend some time there. Someday maybe.
Prince Rudolfo Bocanegro de Navarro
OK, let's get the nauseating stuff out of the way:
Is this the cutest
dog you've ever seen or what? I took this picture at my daughter's field hockey game about six years ago. That's my husband petting him. Rudy is now about 15 years old and doesn't look so good any more. He doesn't like riding in the car, his fur is not so fluffy and plush, his teeth are dwindling and he often doesn't make it outside to go, but he is, like virually all dogs, a sweet companion and a faithful friend. He never forgets a treat, and he would protect me from all foes if he could see or hear them.
(uh-oh, the dreaded) random thoughts
- Let's watch what happens in Germany vis-a-vis their too-close-to-call election . . . . Gore v Bush 2000, anyone?
- Weighing in: if New Orleans was white & wealthy, FEMA et al would have been there on Tuesday 8/30. Obviously, their real first priority was not saving lives.
As previously noted (in real life, not here), I'm generally overwrought or numb. TV and newspaper coverage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina brings tears to my eyes. How can this happen in this country? It is heartbreaking and frightening. We need to find a way to bring something good out of all this misery.
- Today is my parents' anniversary, and my sister's birthday.
Happy anniversary, Mom & Dad.
Happy birthday, Lisa.
there's a first time for everything
and today is it. My first post to my first blog. What have I been waiting for? Well... perhaps we'll get into that as time goes by. Suffice to say, I would like to being by solemnly swearing to maintain an interesting, insightful blog that does somebody some good, somewhere. Even if it's only me.
a note: I must forget that you are all out there, or I will never write a thing.
