Note: For those of you who worry, this was a routine mammogram and my thoughts about the experience :).  No results yet, but so far so good.  

Currently listening to:  Under pressure by Queen and David Bowie

Breasts are pink ribbons and what lurks inside are butterflies.

I was shown a quilt. The quilt featured numerous ribbons with butterflies on them. Symmetrical butterflies meant all is well.  Even slightly unbalanced butterflies is good.  One butterfly breast ribbon and the other with numerous butterflies, uh oh.

And there I existed. Sitting in a big chair across from a big machine being instructed by a woman in a comforting pink shirt.

She jokes, “A woman said to me once, ‘So does that mean I have butterflies in my breasts?'”

This world is pink.

And why shouldn’t it be?  Women represent pink. Sweetness and sugar and dainty and gentle.  The charts for something that could take our lives are shown sweetly.

Like a sugar cookie.

But the sweetness can be overpowering.  Even the robe I wore was pink.

The stickers on my body, to tell the radiologist these were moles and not something else, were, you guessed it, pink.

And the pressure wasn’t so bad.  As usual the rumors of your breasts being squeezed were exaggerated.

And the tough yet flexible grandmother-like woman explained things to me in realistic terms.  Matter of fact.  A comfort that cut through all the sweetness.

“If I make an ugly face, it is not you, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong,  I have arthritis in my shoulder.”

4 pictures and I was done.  She made me laugh actually.  An understandable stress release.

And I walked back into the changing room and saw other women in pink robes.  Looking small like children, and just as vulnerable.

Currently listening to: When were you happy by Laura Marling

Ellis Island.

Those two words, they mean so much to so many.  That journey to this place of survival.  Many came from war torn countries, from persecution, coming to find a new life, and to venture to new opportunities.

I walked through these halls over a century later.  Over a century since it was first built.  To walk these halls and look through these rooms is to bend time.  Where spirits are everywhere and remnants of them are all over.  The scratchings on the walls, the cracked tiles, the fingerprint smudges. Millions of people.

And you think, my God what these people went through.  Examined, detained, sent back, hours and hours on end of waiting.  Some days and days.  That holding area from one world to the next. The new life.

And it seemed almost fitting that the literacy tests  were Biblical.  Bible verses.  The hell that they left and the hopes of an earth-made heaven that awaited.

This was a spiritual quest for so many.  And the building remained through time.  For years after closure in the 1950’s it fell into disrepair.  Neglected by people but not by nature, whose goal was to take all of it back to herself.  To mold over its walls, crack its floors and chip its paint.

But humans returned and through love and time restored it.  People took it back and gained control of it, when it once seemed to control so many.  The building once a decider of so many fates. This beast of a building.  One that could hold people captive, spit them out, or benignly let them pass.  Where people could judge people based on disability, on religion, on race, and on intelligence.

Now it sits quietly in the world, for people to walk through and learn, a reminder of a time when our mistakes were many and different.  When those unchangeable factors about you made all the difference in the world.

May we never become like that again.

Currently listening to: What he wrote by Laura Marling

A couple of weeks back I went to a local author faire.  I didn’t go to buy books, which I felt a little guilty about.  There are “should’s” involved in authorship.  There are “should’s” involved in an event like this.

Support the self published author, support the artist, support the little guy or gal that goes it alone. That determined figure who paves their own way without any help.

And then when the product is done, the money spent, the marketing begins.  Up go the posters, and out goes the reclusive author.  “Stand up” the articles advise.  Sell the product. However, when your audience is also reclusive authors that quickly becomes difficult.

So for those quiet types out comes the food.  The candy bars, the fortune cookies, and the mints.  To lure that quiet mouse of that timid customer, to wiggle his or her whiskers and approach.

The artists faire is next door, strange that authors and other artists are separated.  The artist faire is lively and full and warm with the scents of good food and homemade soap.  Their booths seems like an actual house, a little hut.  One with walls and a counter and a space that one can enter like a home.

The authors are given long tables covered in black cloth.  Posters and books and treats have to make up for the homey feel.  The books have to speak for themselves (pun intended). However, books are not art pieces.  All their gifts remain hidden inside.

And the art of selling the book becomes cheap.  There is a humility in authorship.  So many are written, so many are published, and almost all are meant for the used bookstore to be sold for 1 or 2 dollars.

But the work, the process, should somehow be compensated.

However, I come into this place.  Figuring out my advertising angle for my one book when others have 10 or 15.  Posters, stickers, something.  I too am lured in for my place in this.  All the while knowing that compensation should not be the goal. That the goal was in the journey and the birth.  That is all.  The creation.

This is a room I never thought I would be sitting in again, much less a room that moved.  The last time I sat in a room like this, one that rotated from one scene to the next, I was about 8 or 9  years old.  Around the same age as my youngest. 

But this was not America Sings, the Disneyland attraction I grew up in. The one with the singing animals and glittering stars. No, this was Disney’s own work,  Carousel of Progress.  

Carousel of Progress, Disneyland version existed before I was born.  It was removed to make way for the bicentennial.  So yes, seeing this and being in this room, was not just experiencing childhood but what was really meant to be seen originally.

I loved it.  Everything about it. The way it smelled.  It smelled like age and old carpet and old gears.  But it was also filled with love. This attraction, now a bit dated, is the exact opposite of what its title suggests.  Rather it seems to be.  Well, if you look at the technology introduced in the last scene.  However, in terms of progress, of gentle reminders that life moves in a circle, it is sound. That history matters and should be honored, then it is becomes progress in wisdom.

Sitting in that room, and yes to me it was like a holy place, was just awe inspiring.  You can see it all over my face.  I am so happy I could share this experience with my babies.

The other day I received cookies from a dear friend.  I have been thoughtfully placed on her VIP list, and as a recipient, my reward is her baked goods.

The box came and I ripped into it.  I knew what was waiting for me and frankly, I was eager to stuff my face.  I needed that sweetness, to actually taste it.  The butter, sugar, chocolate chips. The cheerful Snowman and Santa faces.  I gobbled it down.  My brother in law came in and I gladly shared.  My kids came in and my husband too.  I wanted everyone to share.

And she wrote me the sweetest note. A note celebrating our 11 year friendship.  And an extra message, that I had never received baked goods from her, and that was now going to change.

Wow.

What a precious gift it is, the gift of sweetness.  I read about so many women and men who, for the holidays, take to the kitchens.  They get up early and mix and stir. Following family recipes. Then when finished, they bag it all up, put in boxes and bags, and send it all to parts known and unknown. Whether that be their next door neighbor, the soup kitchen down the street, a pen pal across the world, a teen idol they adored and now know, off it all goes. The very best of them. Their dedication and their love and their art.  To spread that sweetness and love to others.

And I get to be on that VIP list now. How lucky am I?

The last cookie left received the honors it so well deserved.  The letter advised to eat with coffee or another favorite beverage. So that morning, I pulled out a china plate, filled up my Thomas Jefferson mug, and solemnly but happily munched away.

Thank you ever so much, my Mylanta sis!

This house is designed for release. To succumb, to acquiesce.  All the words that are opposite of “resistance.”

And the woman who lives here designed it that way.  While outside this home her fists remain clenched and punching towards the sky.  Carrying signs and sitting in and pushing back against the huge forces, although she is but one person.

This house allows her to escape this constant force.  At her doorstep the force ceases and waits patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) until morning.  When she can get in her car and head right back to it.

Her home is filled with green plants, and shoji doors.  Stone and cold rock tiles.  Bird feeders and bird fountains placed through the outside.  This is the home designed to decompress.  To let it all out.  To recharge. To fill up for the next day.

Her living is communal for although she owns the building others rent from her.  However, neighbors freely walk up to her open door.  Her kitchen warm, painted a soothing red, her rooms filled with books and couches, paintings, and one or two protest photographs.

Currently listening to:  Laura Marling (the words come easier when she sings to me)

Currently reading: Golda Meir, Democracy in America, Philosophy, yada yada yada

When I thought of this title, “The Thinking House,” my mind recalled that children’s book, The Napping House and its famous line, “The Napping House, where everyone is sleeping.”

This is a house where everyone is thinking.  This is a home of writers and discussers and debaters.  Hot coffee in the morning and discussions over the Washington Post. Food organized and everything thing in its proper place.  An active library with intriguing books and many many places to sit and read.  Many places to look out the window and watch the birds. The little cardinals who munch from the bird feeder.  The proud and happy bluejay splashing in the bird bath and making quite the mess.

It is a place to sit with your mug of coffee, with big breakfasts. The woman who owns this space always splurges on breakfast. Big breakfasts.  Matzah and eggs, a whole box of wonderful pastries to share.  It is a gift to her day.  As she putters through.  She is a writer of articles and forthcoming in her statements.  She is active in the country and has taken her stand through her words and her concerns.  A book that she supervised on Civil Unrest sits quietly on her shelf.  I leaf through it and am fascinated by the discussions that took place back in those turbulent 60’s.  When the country lost its way and everyone was trying so desperately to find themselves, to change, to hold fast, to move in a hundred different directions.

The last day I was at this house,   I took so many pictures. Not of people but of this house.  So many parts of it that in its own way, made me feel so comfortable.  I could sit at this window all day. Listening to the bird clock chime its voice on the hour, drink my coffee, eat the sweetest muffin ever, and watch the birds.

Funny, for an “unplugged” post I include a picture of a lamp.  However, this one spoke to me tonight.

I am taking a bit of a break from social media.  Admittedly it is long overdue.  Actually since I joined social media back in 2008 I don’t think I ever took a self imposed break. Granted, I went on trips were I couldn’t post, but never where access is readily available.

I guess you could say it is a sabbatical from chatting with my fingers.

So I will reside here on my blog for awhile.  A self imposed seclusion to this little corner of the internet.

Listening to: More than this by Roxy Music

I can’t decide.

Am I the tree or am I the house

Am I the house with walls and roof so fragile

Or I am the tree ready to fall from floods and bad weather

You fall on me

I fall on you

We are done

Clear the mess

And start again

Currently reading:  Democracy in America by Alexis de Toqueville, The Martian by Andy Weir, and Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans against the War by Richard Stacewicz

Currently listening to: Setting the World on Fire by Kenny Chesney featuring Pink

It has been over 10 years with these guys.  10 years. 2017 New Monkees 30th reunion engaged in heavy discussion.  From left to right: Me, Larry, Marty, Jared, and Dino.  This was the first time I interviewed them as a group.  That is my book proposal in front of me.  Dino is holding my digital recorder. John was the photographer, lol! 

The family and I arrived home last week from our 51 day trip of the east coast.  So last week was filled with laundry and cleaning and schooling the boys.  Appointments were made, assessments scheduled, and basically just settling in.

Monday comes again and the muses began to rattle in their cages.  Time to get back to schedule. Time to transcribe and time to settle in to the voices of Marty, Dino, Larry, and Jared again.

Well truthfully, their voices are never silent in my head and their actual lives are not silent either.  They are men in constant motion and again I find myself running after them continuing to capture each momentous moment they are going through.

These guys are consummate dream chasers and dream chasers are rarely satisfied with the day to day activities. Their minds, in many ways like mine, are running for the possibilities, the chances, and the opportunities.

New interviews to transcribe, new events to chronicle, and new emotions and conclusions to carefully jot down.

So off we go again.