tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51007525377498270572024-02-19T00:25:12.290-08:00Pryor-E's Wander SpacePryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-66471715550965453572017-01-01T22:21:00.000-08:002017-01-01T22:21:13.894-08:00An Entry ...January 1, 2017<br />
It's been so long since I visited my own blog pages. I did not remember writing here during our vacation in June. How strange.<br />
Maybe I'll be back?Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-90304653129430428622016-06-06T09:50:00.002-07:002016-06-06T09:54:46.952-07:00June 5, 2016 • Anaconda, MT<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I could say that I am doing here what I want to be doing—writing. But there is something wrong with that. If I wanted to be writing, that is, if I loved writing, I’d do more of it. Instead I experience a kind of painful resistance to sitting down to the blank screen. Now, fingers on keyboard watching black characters dance onto the electronic white page, I feel negative. Hateful even. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I raise my eyes to the surrounding scene, green in the extreme, capped by a powder-blue sky, and acknowledge the urge or inclination to go out and do something. Two blocks away the hot springs pools await us, the tennis court calls us to action. Action, action. Activity. Counter-balance to sitting, contemplating, creating. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Can I call my writing “creating?” It seems long since I produced a stream of words with meaning beyond the blah, blah, blah of a daily routine. Drivel about the mundane and ordinary, the stuff of contentment. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I decided to marry again, I wondered often if I was “settling for” something, in exchange for something else. Okay, what are those “somethings?” Settling for security, in exchange for passion. That’s more honest. Those words—security and passion—put a solid framework around the idea. Indeed it seems this is what I’ve done. My life is lukewarm, a shallow stream meandering through valleys, rather than a fierce, icy river racing down mountainsides. There is no pain in this, only a dull ache and an awareness of age and death. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If we knew in our youth that the march of life was toward a slow, meaningless death, would we leap from the tops of buildings or cliffs to fly toward immediate and dramatic ends? Likely not. None of us wants to end so long as life looms large before us. </span></div>
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-79548398082698318722016-06-04T09:03:00.001-07:002016-06-04T09:12:18.768-07:00Today I realize three years of silence...<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="color: purple;"><b>Mammoth, CA • 2011</b></span></div>
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The sinking sunlight glazed the red brick of the plaza where I sat in contemplation. I wanted silence. Instead, a repetitive whap, whap, whap fractured the stillness as the wind whipped the strands of slack and empty flag lines on a pole embedded in the concrete. Where are the flags, I wondered? A skateboarder rolled in front of me from one edge of the plaza to the other, wheels clacking like a miniature rail car.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Despite the bright sun, the cold nibbled at the sleeves of the old wool sweater I wore, a scratchy shield against the elements. It was as if the afternoon could not decide its own nature. I felt akin to that afternoon with its diminishing light, inconsistent breezes, rising and falling temperatures. Here am I, I thought. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At sixty, I found myself more devoid of passion than I’d ever been, lifeless as the shadowed buildings looming around the plaza. Vacant. I was an empty storefront after visiting hours. Two rugged young men coasted past me on mountain bikes; the spokes of the wheels sliced and separated the dying sunlight. I raised the paper cup to my lips to sip the tepid coffee, missed and dribbled brown liquid down the front of my sweater, creating a caramel-colored tear drop in the center of my chest. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The sun dropped suddenly behind the rooftops. The cold instantly claimed me and I could sit no longer to ponder my age, or dilemma, or lifelessness. I had to move on.</div>
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<span style="color: purple;"><b>May 27, 2016</b></span></div>
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And so I did. To here and now. Another five years and still the deadness persists. Is this aging and dying in its most natural form? I don’t cry, I don’t thrill, I don’t crave, I don’t feel anything in the extreme. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And now it is late…that is, I have all the time and no time simultaneously. John will arrive home soon, and I am still in my nightgown, sitting on the porch sipping tea. Jasmine, the dog, sleeps down the way, shaded by the flower that is her namesake, breathing in the heavy fragrance of the tiny white star blooms. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am stuck in absolute contentment.</div>
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-35849117513926962542013-10-27T19:51:00.000-07:002013-10-27T19:51:57.685-07:00Musings from Mazatlán<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It feels like returning <i>home</i>. Though I’ve never before stayed in this particular location. Never been to this resort. Still, it is Mazatlán and it is like home to me. I know my way around, though there have been changes, and I am not afraid to wander around by myself here. It feels natural. I feel like I belong.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The man who took over my check-in selected a very nice room for me, at a corner of the resort, overlooking the ocean. It’s lovely, isolated and quiet. Exactly what I prefer. Walking back to the little <i>super-mercado</i> on site, I passed by buildings and rooms directly across a walkway from large swimming pools with bars and cafes. Sitting on the <i>balcón</i> there would be like people watching along the Venice boardwalk.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Or, maybe you can’t ever go home again, just as they say. Things have changed. Buildings I frequented––condominiums and restaurants––have closed and fallen into ruin. Friends of friends have moved away, or died. Family members have died.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">10/26/2013</span></b></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I went to the beach, walking barefoot in the sand and sea, and my head began to fill with words that seemed worth writing. I had ideas of constructing a new opening for an old story, but when I return to the hotel, shower and sit down to a blank page, I stare at the screen. Yes, words come. But they are not the <i>inspired</i> words I recall from the beach walk. They don’t seem to connect to anything that could be launched into the world for others to read. This is my great dilemma. I believe I’ll make some salsa and have a snack.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is a hard thing to learn and a sad age at which to learn it. The truth of the axiom that one can never go home again. But so it is. I return to Mazatlán, hoping for what? To recapture the terrible romanticism of younger years? I won’t say “of my youth” because I was past forty when I immersed myself here, choosing this place to study, practice and learn a language I loved from my high school years.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know you are asking, “Why Mazatlán?” (I can imagine raised eyebrows and “Really?” spoken with the dubious, questioning inflection of the day.) But yes, I chose Mazatlán because I’d come here year after year to vacation. One particular year, a year that altered the course of my life, I decided to accompany my parents and stay for two weeks. If I was to be in Mexico for two weeks, it seemed reasonable to spend part of my time going to language classes. So I enrolled in half-day sessions at a now defunct language center near the old center of the city. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Today many things that were alive and vibrant in nineteen-ninety-two are defunct, long gone, like time-lapse photography, buildings have risen and fallen, businesses opened and closed, popular establishments have come and gone. Meanwhile, the people of this city continue to work and play and raise their families amid the waxing and waning tourism that supports the area, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is painful for me to see the changes in the city. And then there are the changes in myself and in my friend and ex-lover, Blas. We are both older and maybe wiser, though that remains to be seen. Our fathers are gone now. His sister has died. We both lost our mothers this summer past. He has a child and is divorced from the child’s mother. I was married, and then divorced, and now I am married again.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>“</i></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>I held you close to me, once in a distant dream, far from the shores of my fears. I sailed on this ocean where all I imagined could happen and now you are here." Beth Chapman...</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">10/27/13</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We floated on the sea beneath a wave of pale yellow butterflies floating on the wind overhead. The buoyancy of the salt water made our swimming as effortless as the migration of the butterflies above us. It felt magical, and for a few moments I was happy again with Blas, like when we were together here and we’d go to the ocean late in the evening to swim in the incredible warmth of the summer ocean off the beach at Olas Altas. </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But it isn’t that time and my happiness faded when we said goodbye and I stepped off the bus onto the Malecón where I went for my daily run. It was hot; and later, my sweat mixed with the moisture of tears as I stared out at the vast seascape allowing myself to indulge in the feelings of loss that have swept over me time and again, like the incessant recurrence of a tide, since I was a young woman. Always, always, my sadness traces back to that time. All of my stories run like tributaries of the same river, separating and then reconnecting back at the original source.</span></span><br />
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-88176482593570184442013-02-16T09:49:00.002-08:002013-02-16T09:56:37.163-08:00Lenten Musings<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Saturday, February 16, 2013 • 9:21 AM • Winthrop (Bluff Street House)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve gotten out of my habit of daily journaling. So disrupted, I don’t even think to do it some mornings. How odd. After all these years of starting virtually every day with some scrawling and dawdling over pages / screens, I forget to write. Puzzling and disturbing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I considered Lent, I thought that maybe rather than give something up, I should include a commitment to write. We are three days down on Lent and during that period, no writing at all. Are those three days like the three between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection? I might think of it so. In that way, I could consider this a new day, a newly risen opportunity to renew an investment in the creativity of my soul. Better this, I think, than to lie under the murk and mildew of beleaguered drudgery, bemoaning reality. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Reality. My mother restless and calling out when she wakes to find the room devoid of other humans. She seems always to need someone there. The sun breaking out of the cloud cover, lighting the snow into a bright, white coverlet besmirched with rock and evergreen. Incessant, left brain challenges, posed in the wings, waiting for entrance onto the stage of my day. Homework and studying for school. Why am I doing this? A question always riding the coattails of my nagging conscience.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thoughts of home, distant like home itself. Life here and in this situation very moment to moment. </span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-3017649625212733482013-02-16T09:44:00.003-08:002017-01-01T22:14:17.717-08:00Life Goes On...<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It's February. I am feeling an urgency to write. After all, we don’t know how long we will be here; how much time we have. Once you reach sixty, believe me, it begins to feel like people are dropping all around you. Some are peers. Some are younger. Some older. Oddly, it is the loss of those who are older that most calls me to attention. How much older? Ten years? Twenty years? The years fly by in a blink. A simple snap of the fingers and the pages on the calendars flip, month into new month and then another year is down. There you are, writing the same old New Year’s resolutions once again, depressed to see the same unmet goals. Or worse, you find you have no goals. Nothing at all. Life is just a series of repeated days. The days may be good ones. They may be full of contentment and even a kind of joy. But the days are passing, passing, nevertheless, and the road ahead is narrowing as you weave your way toward old age and death. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If there is a story to be told, then I’d better be about telling it. And no time to waste. Not like in the days of our youth when time seemed limitless and only rare and random tragedy ripped life away. We were all about love in those days and committed to creating a brave new world. And perhaps we would have done that, but in our naivety and yes, "in our youth," we were easily ambushed. Youth––the very essence that spurred us onward and upward––also derailed us, leaving us sidetracked, scattered and lost in wild places.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>“Love is but a song we sing. Fears the way we die…. Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.” </i></span></div>
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-6354887858507107102013-01-21T08:02:00.002-08:002013-01-21T08:02:15.578-08:00Moving along...<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sunday, January 20, 2013 • Jackson Compound • 8:41 AM</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I wake in such reluctance, such depression, these icy cold mornings, then languish in bed behind mumbled prayers and rem sleep dreams. When the sun reaches the windows, casting its warm, golden light, I remember the words, “I arise, Oh God, to do thy will.” And on those words I extract myself from cat and soft flannel-encased down, put bare feet on nubby carpet, and sleepily straighten the bedclothes, fluff pillows, arrange quilt and throws. Satisfied with the look of our lovely bedroom, I pull my faded chenille bathrobe around me and slip feet into fuzzy, blue slippers. I once gave these slippers to my mother for her old, knobby feet. (She gave them back when it was no longer safe for her to navigate in them.) I raise the pale honeycomb shades and let full light burst into the room. Now I’m ready to stumble into the kitchen where I boil water for tea and take care of my morning start-up chores.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I can waste an amazing amount of time on this ritual, which I follow with other forms of dawdling: writing this journal, reading meditations, playing Words with Friends on my iPhone, feeding treats to Punkin the cat. It’s lovely. Sun in my eyes, unfiltered orb in a cerulean blue sky, bright rays reaching through bare oak branches. When I allow myself the laziness, it is a delicious way to spend an hour or more. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The longer I sit, the more the details and tasks of life encroach on my mind, like unwelcome visitors knocking on the door, ringing the telephone, or pinging electronic reminders. I’ll answer these demands, calls and prompts soon enough. For now, sweet Keith Jarret jazz tunes stream from the Bose radio behind me and I count my blessings. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hold on. If I <i>really</i> counted my blessings, I’d be here all day.</span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-66251136983237485922013-01-14T09:26:00.003-08:002013-01-14T09:26:34.901-08:00Everyday life resumes...<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What glory is there in mundane living? Day-to-day toil, or relaxation, or any endeavor in between? Lilies of the field we are not. What then? We are not free like the birds of the air; we traded our wings for security. Gravity holds us, feet on terra firma. But are we too weighed down? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maybe this is what my impulse to clear out, clean up, lighten my attachments, and lean down the possessions is all about. Stripped of heavy encumbrances we may fly more freely. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>“If I had wings, no one would ask me ‘should I fly.’ The bird sings; no one asks why.” Paul Stookey</i></span></div>
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-36408324168544180032013-01-13T09:38:00.000-08:002013-01-13T09:38:01.000-08:00What Day is This? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeChojaQ-aBTjP1lXUKP2hJlex74pbnsxfGejLrPAIVBwbJ5my3f31Ayc2IKUY8ALs5uWDfiuYmoOV_JE_gD3SvWaiDpO9c9wVQu9pnc8aJ_k_NEOWzYUMRbNMZ3rtjWlxSerb1sd4c1E/s1600/IMG_1463.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeChojaQ-aBTjP1lXUKP2hJlex74pbnsxfGejLrPAIVBwbJ5my3f31Ayc2IKUY8ALs5uWDfiuYmoOV_JE_gD3SvWaiDpO9c9wVQu9pnc8aJ_k_NEOWzYUMRbNMZ3rtjWlxSerb1sd4c1E/s200/IMG_1463.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The World I left Behind</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sunday, January 13, 2013 • Jackson Compound • 9:00 AM</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Classical music from the Bose behind me; silver cold morning sun through a web of oak branches in front of me. Ice melting into tiny ponds and rivulets around pool and deck outside the window. Human noises behind me, causing me to think about the silence I left behind in Winthrop; and wonder that I complained about too much solitude. What a fickle creature am I.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Home for almost 24 hours, soaking it in, nearly all good. I came home to a “frat house” yesterday and set to work cleaning, straightening and transforming it back into a home. I have one week to do some significant clearing out and organizing, making ready for another semester of school and a launch into this new year. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve not written; not worked on my novel for several days, or added to the blog. I got a sweet note from Blas Nayar, Mexican artist, encouraging me in my writing. It was late (for me) when I read it last night, so I did not try to write back. My Spanish does not flow easily anymore. I miss him, and Mazatlán and hope I can go back this year. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m enjoying my tea for the first time in two weeks. I’d switched to coffee while in Winthrop. It just seemed the more appropriate way to start the day. I remember being in my cabin at Lost River and feeling that tea was not quite the same. Something about the temperature at which water boils up there, I think. Is that possible?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I do not know if my writing will resume. Maybe I wrote because of the forced solitude, the exile to a place not my home? We’ll see. Like Dorothy of Kansas cum Oz, I am immersed in the milky pleasure of being home again. That is enough for today.</span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-48625989436218485112013-01-08T09:41:00.004-08:002013-01-08T09:41:50.706-08:00Lost Track of the Days in the Frozen North<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sunday, January 6, 2013 • 8:47 PM • Winthrop, WA (Bluff Street House)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve had the interruption of a visit from my sister, blessings and bonding, clashes and conflicts, and relief from solitude. Surprise. Me seeking relief from solitude. Sigh. At the same time, wishing for silence and contemplative aloneness. Paradox.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Today I ran a shuffling glide through the snowy streets forgetting the freezing temperatures, stepping to the tempo and tunes of Juan Luis Guerra, Gypsy Kings, and others streaming from my iPod. When I reached the bridge over the icy Methow River, I stopped to enjoy the contrast of that frigid water to the lively latin song I was listening to. A song about water, both <i>frío</i> and <i>caliente;</i> it filled me with a strange kind of joy.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Contentment has settled (somewhat); perhaps knowing I’ve got fewer days remaining before I go home than since I got here. It’s not that I don’t want to be here with Mother, but rather that I miss my own life. It’s not that I don’t love Mother, but rather that Mother––as I’ve known her––has gone <i>chilipinte</i>––gone missing. This woman here is not a <i>total</i> stranger, but she is <i>not</i> the woman she was. No more excitement over her sports’ teams, conscientiousness over seeing friends and family, interest in cooking, reading, conversation. All of those things are gone. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yet, I feel a kind of peacefulness, or comparatively so. And a willingness to relax and wile away a few hours in the company of my sister. Tomorrow I can go back to working on my novel. Life is what it is, whatever it is, and there is something different about this year. I can feel it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Monday, January 7, 2013 • Winthrop, WA (Bluff Street House) • 4:15 PM</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="letter-spacing: 0px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’m dry, dead, empty. It’s a terrible thing to say and an even worse feeling, but so it is. My sister has gone home and my patience and calm must have packed themselves into the trunk of her car. I make a decision––I will not be productive. I will not be creative. I will simply wait it out (how I </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">hate</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> wasting life!), watch TV, eat, make it through the hours. Somehow. I’m just spent. Can’t help myself. Just can’t. Nothing literary here worth posting, but here it is, just the same. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Tuesday, January 8, 2013 • Winthrop, WA (Bluff Street House) • 8:25 AM</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My unhappiness is linked to non-acceptance; railing against things as they are. Why is Mother so childlike and incapable, requiring care, demanding what she wants when she wants it? The thought that she is less than thirty years ahead of me (in age) makes my eyes flutter wide open in fear. My own time feels so short. And it could be shorter. We never know when death will come.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Like circus ponies, my anger and frustration pull a wagon full of remorse behind them; where the ponies go, the carriage follows. Then I think of death––hers. What if the last thing I said to her was said in desperate impatience? What a memory that would be.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We have a cold, snow-covered landscape outside of this warm, old house. I can choose to appreciate its silent beauty or sink like a heavy stone into a soft drift of powder, losing myself in depression and self-pity. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know an antidote to this self-pity. It is to open my eyes to the suffering of others. Imagine living under a freeway overpass in Spokane, Seattle, San Francisco, or anywhere, routed out periodically by police. Move along. Pack up your cardboard and shopping cart and go somewhere the tourists won’t be bothered. This is just one image that hangs a life-line in front of me, if I will reach out and take hold. Hand over hand, pay attention, pull myself up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is a claw foot bathtub here. I am going to fill it with hot water and bubble bath. Time for me.</span></div>
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-38548962841345954882013-01-05T10:58:00.002-08:002013-01-05T11:01:24.403-08:00Day Five -- Lucky 13<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Saturday, January 5, 2013 • Winthrop, WA (Bluff Street House) • 10:10 AM</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I check the weather forecast––the 10 day outlook––and see predictions of chance of snow, some sun, some cold, maybe rain in Wenatchee, but no big storms through next weekend (when I return to California). Meant to be? There is snow everywhere. Deep snow. Lots of snow. Picture postcard, winter-wonderland, awesomely fluffy, blue-white-gold-silver snow. Yet, for my entire two-week trip to Washington, to care for Mother, no arctic storms or polar marine depressions dumping wet whiteness, paralyzing ground movement, trapping me in or out of here.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Meant to be? There it is again. That indomitable faith in an underlying current, a something that runs beneath our rational life, a river flowing in the right direction, carrying us from destiny to destiny. When we let go and ride the river, we travel the path of least resistance, avoiding obstacles and entanglements. When we try to direct and control, to alter our course, we can miss the main channel, sometimes with grave consequences. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is something else about this. Maybe the things that appear to our human eyes as “bad,” from a higher (or deeper) perspective, are a natural part of the river. A turn, a dam, a narrow passage, a fall? Our intended course, our movement, without which, we’d sit stagnant and lifeless.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Fanciful? Ridiculous? Yes, it might be. But, nevertheless, I would like to live as if all things work together for good. Maybe all things <i>want</i> to work together for good, but we humans are the muck in the machine, the gum in the works? If so, then I need to commit to running freely, a part of the flow, not a fallen log, blocking the way for someone (anyone) else. One of God’s life-rafts in this dimension? Do I have a New Year’s resolution here?</span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-31622023944857851342013-01-04T20:57:00.002-08:002013-01-04T20:57:50.356-08:00Day Four -- Lucky 13<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Friday, January 4, 2013 • Winthrop, WA (Bluff Street House) • 8:25 PM</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Last night I sat here in the rather eerie, frozen-northwest silence pondering my writing past, writing my present, venturing into my writing future. After writing my journal entry, I tried through heavy-lidded eyes to work at my writing, but the result was about two hundred wooden words that wandered off track and amounted to nothing. Nevertheless, I experience a sense of satisfaction, that even while stifled by exhaustion and depleted by doing for Mother, I managed to find the discipline to try.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The words I clicked out on the keyboard and saved for review have served a purpose. As I reflected on them today I decided that this “book” must be written in first person. I’ve experimented with this from a variety of perspectives and voice, and today it seems clear to me. When I “think this story” it is always told in the first person. At times, writing short stories, I hear them in my head in third person, or even in a second person style. But this “book” comes to me in first person. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, here I sit, before the fireplace again, stillness closing in, the old house creaking from the brittle cold outside, once again considering the blank screen waiting for my work. I’ll get to it. I hope to get to it…. </span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-43247878391292387692013-01-04T20:45:00.002-08:002013-01-04T20:45:25.531-08:00Day Three -- Lucky 13<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For two days I’ve written journal entries and blog posts, plus scenes for my novel. For most of my life I’ve been looking for the perfect place, situation, and setting to live like a writer. Like a real writer. I’ve gone on solitary retreats and attended writers’ workshops. I’ve spent weeks alone in my cabin at the edge of a Cascade wilderness, days and nights in rented rooms in the Sierra, at the ocean, and in Mexico. Yes, I’ve written. I have volumes of journals on closet shelves and desktops. My desk drawers hold reams of paper and notebooks; electronic documents and folders nest on computer hard-drives, CDs and flash drives. I have so much draft material and so many literary fragments, I don't know how to go back and find something useable there. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And now, here, in this oh-so-less-than-perfect situation, I am writing. Actually moving forward on a semi-cohesive draft, creating a story. Pulling from fragments, yes, but moving in a forward direction. My time is limited, I am exhausted and often frustrated, I feel caged, and yet I am writing. Maybe this entrapment is finally forcing me to sit still long enough. Here, with the absence of liberty, I succumb to the incessant nagging to write some kind of truthful story. I’m not sure if commitment to write each day or fatigue will win out this time, but as the ornithological clock on the wall sounds the 7:00 PM hour with a bird call unrecognizable to me, I feel ready to open a new document and at least describe the next scene of the story.</span></div>
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Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-68298440312326543902013-01-02T16:23:00.003-08:002013-01-02T16:23:09.922-08:00Day Two of Lucky Thirteen<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Wednesday, January 2, 2013 • 3:55 PM • Winthrop –– Bluff Street House</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I slept too late to enjoy my quiet time this morning. By the time I’d showered, mom was ready to get up. Care-taking is work. So much so, that much earlier than 4:00 PM I was feeling my scant amount of patience running out like sands in an hour-glass. My solution was to stop over-protecting and start allowing more self-determination. I think it surprised both of us. She is capable of getting up and down, walking around (with walker) and (eventually) amusing herself with some television. I am capable of keeping an eye on her as she gets up and down (without hovering), letting her walk around (without following her) and amusing myself with various computer generated tasks and entertainment.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The puzzling thing is what happens to us as we age. What turns us from the person we were (or seemed to be) into someone else, less caring, polite, loving and kind? Or in the case of Mother, from an independent but caring person into someone self-indulgent and rather thoughtless? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It frightens me. In the middle of the night, when I hear the old house creaking from the cold, I hold my breath and lie very still, afraid it will be Mother, waking up, banging on the bed-railing, and calling out my name. The fear goes beyond not wanting to get up and attend to her needs. It is a more like a bone-chilling, desperate type of fright of the unknown and <i>nearly</i> inevitable. <i>Aging</i>. I say “nearly inevitable” because I know from experience that sometimes the very good die young, and even the not so very good. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The changes in Mother make me fear potential changes in myself as I age. No one will ensure my care in later years, the way we have tried to ensure her care. I long to retreat to Mazatlán or places nearby, to end my days there. Let me lie on warm sand under a <i>palapa</i> while the Pacific surf rolls up. I hope I leave this earth a kindly woman, (tanned, what the heck) with my mind and heart on others.</span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-45344732968374540862013-01-01T08:36:00.003-08:002013-01-01T08:36:49.334-08:00For the New Year 2013<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Tuesday, January 1, 2013 • 8:15 AM • Winthrop, WA -- Bluff Street House</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Happy New Year. I sit in solitude and silence looking out on a picture postcard landscape. Frozen, lacy tree branches arched over snow covered rooftops. Mounds of white lining a stillness. A scene that belies civilization and community. I am surrounded by a quiet, punctuated by sounds of clocks ticking and old house creaking. I wait here, as if on the edge of a precipice, knowing my ninety-year old mother will wake soon enough and call out to me from her bed. Then the demands on my attention will be off and running for the day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But right now, all is as settled as a winter pond frozen dark with deep ice, glazed with flurried frosting. I feel as a blank slate, not only the day, or the year ahead, but also my soul, waiting for <i>the hand</i> to write something. To write the word. The Word? What is “the word made flesh?” I’ve gone separate again from a warm faith, stumbled off path, into thick forest. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I do not feel lost on a side-road, only muddled and without compass or direction. GPS not working in my currently unwired wilderness. “Will I ever get home?” Peter Yarrow sang in the seventies. Home is not Kansas. Nor angst, nor free-floating fear, nor depression, nor manic activity. Home: A place or a feeling? I am without answer as the sun colors the uppermost tree branches a pale gold in the frozen scene out my window. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Wander on….</span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-11139982673021623382012-12-22T16:14:00.001-08:002012-12-22T16:19:05.535-08:002012 UpdateIs it shyness or distraction or that "what the hell?" sense that prevents me from stream of consciousness blogging? I journal virtually every day of my life, yet my blog entries are a year apart. What the h---?!<br />
The<span style="color: blue;"> don't buy goods made in China</span> challenge stays with me. I purchased a few on-sale Christmas gift bags today, pleased to see they were made in Oklahoma and Tennessee. I had picked up a different selection when I noticed the "made in China" imprint. I put it back. I'm not against the Chinese. I simply want to vote for American jobs with my cash.<br />
This makes me wonder about a vitriolic young woman who thought participating in a campaign to impeach President Obama was worthy of her time and energy in Union Square the other day. I wonder if she checks her labels before buying? Or maybe I over-reacted when I shouted at her, "I love President Obama!" before crossing the street to browse the three levels of cooking goodies at Williams-Sonoma.<br />
I have purchased goods made in China during the year. Two pair of K-Swiss tennis shoes (who would have thought the shoes could have been made anywhere but Switzerland? Call me naive.) I probably would have gotten them anyway. My feet are pretty important to me––like critical to my mental health––so I buy the footwear I need to continue playing through life.<br />
There have been a few other inadvertent purchases, but there have also been numerous times I put things back on the shelf in a retail outlet after reading the label. Those were the feel-good moments of the year.<br />
To anyone who stumbles on this unedited version of my thoughts I send wishes for a bright and love-filled Christmas and a New Year worthy of blogging about. Onward and upward...<br />
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<br />Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-55822783147811568522012-01-10T09:14:00.000-08:002012-01-10T09:14:46.831-08:002012 Challenge: Game On!<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">January 10, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Don’t buy anything MADE IN CHINA</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This resolution topped my list for 2012, mostly out of concern for human rights in Tibet. As of the tenth of January (2012) three Tibetan monks have self-immolated (since the 1</span><span style="font: 8.0px 'Arial Hebrew'; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> of the year) to protest increasing Chinese oppression. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the end of 2011, as I was meditating about the coming year, I thought, “I have to stop buying things from China until they Free Tibet.” Then I said it aloud to myself. Later I wrote it down at the top of my New Year’s Resolutions list. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Later I told my husband. He remembered the brightly colored bumper sticker on my little white convertible––</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1d41de;"><b>FREE TIBET</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">. That sticker stayed on the car for years, fading in the sun. Meanwhile, China stayed in Tibet and continued to systematically oppress and overtake Tibetan culture. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What difference could we make if we stopped buying products made in China? When I talk about this idea with friends and acquaintances, responses range from “good idea” to “good luck.” Most people jump from the human rights issue to the issue of our very own, U.S. economy, shifting the focus to how few products are made in the US. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s true. Finding products “Made in the USA” is tough. Even more challenging is finding necessities NOT made in China. I recently went to buy tennis balls. Not one tennis ball is made in the US. Of the four brands carried by the retailer, three were made in China. Dunlop tennis balls are made in the Philippines. That’s okay. We aren’t an island and it seems fair that we engage in world-wide trade, as long as we are reasonable about it, consider the consumption of fossil fuels for transport and watch out for human rights issues. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m finding it interesting to read the labels and challenging to avoid some purchases. But I’m committed. It couldn’t hurt us to move toward a greater consumer independence of China. If enough people supported this movement, we just might make a noise to be heard around the world. Something other than the boom-boom of guns and artillery. Something even greater than the “ca-ching, ca-ching” of the cash register. How about when it comes to our economic dealings with China––We the People––exercise the Sounds of Silence. If we stop buying these products, we just might benefit the peaceful Tibetans, the exploited Chinese people and ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now that sounds like a New Year’s Resolution worthy of adoption. Will you consider it? Why not spread the word on your very own social network platform? Maybe your Facebook friends will like you for it?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-3740805505338626522011-11-07T08:50:00.000-08:002011-11-07T08:50:40.141-08:00Today's MeditationFor the times in our lives when we think ourselves "expert"... This struck me.<br />
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<a href="http://forwardmovement.org/forward-day-by-day#.TrgLXChSxkU.blogger">Today's Meditation</a>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-63277351187063051642011-09-16T09:30:00.001-07:002011-09-16T09:30:14.991-07:00Birthday Reflections<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another Year Down</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At this rate I’ll be dead before you know it! I’m not being morose. Just stating the facts. At the pace time flies, even with great longevity, I have at best forty years left on me. Four decades. They won’t be my best years physically, either. Not to mention that memory loss thing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A day passes in a blink. A year flies by in a mere heartbeat. A decade slips away like liquid mercury. One life is a blip on the radar. But <i>this</i> life is the only blip I have, so I’m watching pretty closely.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On the other hand, forty years is two-thirds of what I’ve lived so far. From that perspective, it sounds like a fair credit in the time bank. I should be able to accomplish something in that liberal amount of time. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Looking back, it’s been action packed and full of experiences. Not as many or necessarily the experiences I would choose if I could rewind and take some of those years back again. But life has not been without merit or richness. I’ve lived sixty ‘one year’ segments. Now that feels short again. Think how quickly you can count to sixty! Now cut that down to forty. Okay, I’m back to thinking life is too short.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Throw in the monkey wrench of unexpected disease, disability or death, and the picture looks even more bleak. I’ve been blessed with relatively few health hurdles and pitfalls on my path. And I’m grateful. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know from experience that <i>the good</i> can be the ones to die young, as well as the not-so-good. I know some wonderful old ones, too. So some of the good ones stumble on the longer trails to destiny. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Truth: Angels come (and go) in all shapes, sizes and ages. A good reminder to entertain––welcome the stranger at your door. You never know who might be standing on the doorsill.</span></div>
Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-36213143701599718562011-06-25T09:07:00.000-07:002011-06-25T09:07:41.626-07:00Starting Again<div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One time my mother asked, “how’s that novel coming along?” and I felt angry. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“If I could ever find some time for myself,” I said, “it would come along just fine.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You can’t find any time to write? I’m waiting for those royalties to start rolling in.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My mood shifted. My mother was the only one who believed I’d ever write anything of value. “I’m writing. It’s just not going anywhere,” I told her. “Guess you need to hang around a little longer if you want to share in the payday.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That was ten years ago and now, time is running out for my mother. As if to honor that incessantly ticking clock, I stopped writing altogether. This past year, moving her from her own home into first one assisted living arrangement, and then to another, the most I’ve managed is a daily scribbled page in a pen and ink journal. Mundane and trivial. No substance. Like my life these days, my writing feels like pencil stokes on cardboard. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have not a thing to complain about and this makes it even harder. Not a reason in the world for depression or upset, yet I manage to schlep around in it. Depression mostly. That glue-like muck that makes every step, every action feel monumental. I see the image of a tar-baby cartoon, each foot and hand stuck and pulling against the resistance of some black, sticky substance. I move through my days, trying to get free of the gunk, paradoxically <i>efforting</i> to move more lightly in this world. It is grim and senseless.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Century Gothic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And so in honor of my mother, sweet soul, who faces the swagger of advanced age with a wry humor I do not think I could muster, I dust off the MacBook, fire it up, face a blank screen, and write a minimum three hundred words. It is a start. Don’t die yet, Mother.</span></div>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-27129763993041322782011-02-07T09:15:00.000-08:002011-02-07T09:19:45.536-08:00January Wrap Up<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One Month Down</span></b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">At this rate I’ll be dead before you know it! I’m not being morose. Just stating the facts. At the pace time flies, even with great longevity, I have at best forty years left on me. Four decades. They won’t be my best years physically, either. Not to mention that memory loss thing.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A day passes in a blink. A year flies by in a mere heartbeat. A decade slips away like liquid mercury. One life is a blip on the radar. But </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">this</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> life is the only blip I have, so I’m watching pretty closely.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">On the other hand, forty years is two-thirds of what I’ve lived so far. From that perspective, it sounds like a fair credit in the time bank. I should be able to accomplish something in that liberal amount of time. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Looking back, it’s been action packed and full of experiences. Not as many or necessarily the experiences I would choose if I could rewind and take some of those years back again. But life has not been without merit or richness. I’ve lived sixty one year segments. Now that again feels short. Think how quickly you can count to sixty! Now cut that down to forty. Okay, I’m back to thinking life is too short.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Throw in the monkey wrench of unexpected disease, disability or death, and the picture looks even more bleak. I’ve been blessed with relatively few of these pitfalls on my path. And I’m grateful. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I know from experience that the good can be the ones to die young, as well as the not-so-good. But I know some wonderful old ones, too. So some of the good ones stumble on the long trails to destiny. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Century Gothic"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Truth: Angels come (and go) in all shapes, sizes and ages. A good reminder to entertain––welcome the stranger at your door. You never know who might be standing on the doorsill.</span></span></p>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-68157596566527661212011-01-25T18:52:00.000-08:002011-02-11T08:34:43.892-08:00If a tree falls...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><i>If a mighty oak topples on Hill Street and doesn’t land on anyone, is it a miracle?</i><br /><br />An old oak toppled on the street below us last week, taking off part of the roof of the main house and knocking a few things about on the neighboring property. The change in the landscape is odd. The loss of the tree creates a vacancy, opening our view to Main Street.<br /><br />The tree, ancient and elephantine, was apparently vulnerable because of its size. Heavy rains soaked the wood, making the mighty oak so top-heavy that a vigorous wind pulled it out by the roots. Upturned and lying on its side, the root knot stood taller than the men who worked for a week cutting the herbaceous carcass up into useable chunks. Hewn oak for fireplaces and wood stoves, providing yet another benefit. That oak has already served the causes of beauty, fragrance and shade for many years.<br /><br />Its falling causes me to survey our neighborhood for other Brobdingnagian features, assessing the threat to our own home. Certainly that tree might have fallen when a neighbor was out working in the yard. It might have crashed on a child at play. It might have landed squarely on the house itself, crashing through to a bedroom where an innocent lay sleeping, rather than just catching a corner of the roof and landing in the open yard between two houses. Slight property damage. No injury.<br /><br />So,<i> if a mighty oak topples on Hill Street and doesn’t land on anyone, is it a miracle? </i><br />It is as least very good fortune.</span>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-13390625873767512632011-01-12T13:23:00.000-08:002011-01-12T13:29:44.323-08:00A Time for Poetry, A Time for FictionTime to work at writing, whether it be method, technique, reading good fiction, crafting a poem. I've indulged myself in time off and time in waiting. Time now to march on, letting time unwind. I posted a poem on the Poetry page that I drafted on January 3rd, 2011. It was inspired by one of my morning readings and my own feelings of separateness. Thanks to a fellowship of other wounded, wicked, wild, and weird souls, healed and mended or healing and mending, my separateness suffering is fleeting. A little sunshine today helps, too.<div><br /></div><div>If you read my poem, please comment. Human contact is good, even with two or three degrees of separation.</div>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-20839994621961104822011-01-11T17:45:00.000-08:002011-01-11T17:47:40.861-08:00Reflections on Grey Days in January<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Am I anything? I am a speck, a mote, a mere molecule, tinier and more oblique than a drop of fog. Fog. Each drop nothing, but bound together with other molecules, the invisible becomes opaque and fierce. A pall cold and dominating.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Why can’t we have fog that is warm? Steaming mists would be so much more comfort to the body than this seeping chill. Oh, God, I suppose it would not take me long to complain about the heat, but from this morning’s vantage point it sounds so good.<br /> My heart’s desire is buried in heavy mist. The only delight available to me is tucking my head under a blanket, warming myself before a fireplace, dozing with a cat. How do you define lack of ambition, depression, lazy?<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Every hack and cough I overhear from another room grates on my nerves and tightens my stomach muscles. Each conversation or television broadcast intrudes. Hide me away from others. Hide me away from the world. Hide me from myself. Wrap me in something warm and let me sip tea from a china cup. These are simple enough requests; simple pleasures, available, and I am not even taking pleasure in them.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’m waiting God. Where is your voice? Knocking at the steely fortress surrounding me? Sigh. Can I get my soul to tiptoe out to open that door? Okay. What? Peering out I see only more wispy whiteness. Is the God spirit just another swirling mist?<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><i>“Rest. Release. Breathe in. Breathe out. Here am I in everything.<br /></i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><i> </i></span><i>And everything is just as is it supposed to be.<br /></i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><i> </i></span><i>Accept it and be at peace.<br /></i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><i> </i></span><i>Also, stop whining.”</i>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5100752537749827057.post-80470813091549218332011-01-05T09:09:00.000-08:002011-01-05T09:12:00.323-08:00Is it God Whispering?<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Am I listening for that Whisper or just thinking about listening? I’m still trying to get used to leisure time.Where is that line between easy does it and sloth? I am moving slowly, enjoying every minute, content. Is contentment okay with God? No pressure is the only pressure.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’m baking cookies. While the sheets of dough are turning deliciously crispy, I crochet and listen to Christmas music. Traditional Christmas is over but In Amador County we recognize the Serbian Orthodox Christmas. There are three days of Christmas in the Serbian tradition. Serbian Christmas is based on the Gregorian calendar which places the first day of Christmas on January 7</span><span style="font: 8.7px Cochin; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’ll undo my holiday decorations on the first day of the Serbian Christmas. I confess, I’m somewhat ready now, but out of respect and procrastination I wait until January 7</span><span style="font: 8.7px Cochin; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"> to take down the wreaths, lights and Christmas cards. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tonight the music is fine. The harmony and peace are delightful. The smell of cookies baking is filling my head with memories of Christmas past. I try to quiet my mind. Be still. Listen. Is God whispering? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>What? What? Sshhh. I can’t quite make out that subdued, dulcet voice. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><b><i>“We are all one.”</i></b><i> </i></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></i>What? Is that it? Is this <i>God’s whisper</i> or is it Kenny Loggins singing “<i>Christmas Time is Here?</i>” </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Cochin"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have time to sort it out. The year is still young.</span></p>Pryor-Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06925615312333093788noreply@blogger.com0