assortment

Is it any wonder why we all leave home?
People say, "I knew you when you were six years old"
And you say, "But I've changed, I've changed, I've changed, I've changed."

---

On the side of a train passing me in Eugene while I waited next to the tracks three or four years ago I saw graffiti-ed: "Everyone I know who I love is dead or loves someone else." And I tried to identify. Probably I was silly enough and lonely enough to think I could connect myself to such a sad, silent sentence. What I want to write next is: "That I know better now." Well, maybe.

T. told me on the phone last Saturday about a friend he has who will deny all sadness, telling himself (when he is sad) that someone out there has it worse. Therefore, this friend concludes, his sadness is invalid, something to be thrown out. T. hates when people do things like this. "Own your own pain," he said, before adding (for the shock value), "It's okay to feel like it's the worst thing since the Holocaust."

One thing covering the courts beat has taught me is that you shouldn't own other people's sadness, although there is a time to be sympathetic and, for me, a time to absorb it into my own body so I can write about it and ask the right questions. But, bottom line, if you start stealing sadness you'll run the risk of being really obnoxious and/or going crazy. Also, it's not yours.

It almost feels like aging is about figuring out what is yours and what is not yours. I stack what is mine into piles I can decipher and I am more tribalistic than some people I know, relying heavily on the group for interpretation, raised as I was in a village sort of church.

---

It's too cold in this old apartment and the bread won't rise. So I've put the dough in loaf pans and tucked the pans into my electric blanket. See what comes with the morning. Hope for giant breads.

---

PS. After I posted this entry, Blogger shot up an ad on my page that read: "Is Despair Your Daily Bread?" Which proves just how creepy the internet is.

209: stalinist oranges

I'd been at the fire an hour and had talked my way across the police and fire "do not cross" tape and everyone was worried about the power lines that swooped from the apartment complex, threatened by flames and smoke, to the pole across the street. One sergeant had already descended like the wrath of God upon two pushy people who had hopped the yellow tape and set up camp in a front yard to get a better view and were, incidentally, directly under the power lines.

Meanwhile smoke billowed and flames leaped. Or so I was told. The fire engine was in my way so I have most of this on faith. Neighbors and residents were clustered together on the sidewalk, cell phones strapped to their cheeks, holding babies, yelling at their wayward children. A firefighter revved up a chainsaw.

Then the mail lady, wearing her Pacific Theater-style silly white hat and blue shorts, a mailbag strapped across her chest, walked down the sidewalk. Her stride did not slacken as she approached the do not cross lines. It was as if she didn't even notice how her legs lifted to carry her over the tape. It was as though the tape did not exist. Bah! What is tape when you work for the federal government? When local police can't even enter your building to kill a murderer who still has the bloody knife clenched between his teeth unless they have been deputized by the U.S. Marshall? Again I say "Bah!"

She delivered mail to the first house. She delivered mail to the second house. She continued around the orange cones, over more police tape, past baffled policemen, firefighters and volunteer emergency responders and -- lo -- delivered mail to the third house. Then, she turned to the fiery apartment complex and would have (as heaven is my witness) delivered mail there too if everyone around her hadn't suddenly come to their senses and ordered her away.

Nothing -- not rain or sleet or snow or apparently electrical fires -- can stop the U.S. post.

---

Hope any of you who are still out there reading this are well. It's been nice to be gone, but now it's nice to be back. I deleted my Facebook account recently and that feels grand although it would feel even more grand if I could actually delete it. Because when I say delete, I really mean "deactivate" since Facebook doesn't let you get rid of anything. If I want it back (as if I'd never left) all I have to do is type in my e-mail address and password. So long as the e-mail is still up and working, Facebook comes back. Facebook may be the devil. By which I mean Satan.

Maybe Facebook has horocruxes. I just need to find them all and destroy them. It's one plan anyway.