A whale's memoir

i found some drafts of posts i never posted.  this one for some reason i was thinking that if a whale wrote a memoir it wouldn't be all that different from mine, even though at first i thought whales didn't do much but swim around and eat, but then that's what we do isn't it then?

A whales memoir would be the same as ours.  Where i was born, my early years, friends, parents, aunts, innocence and feeling safe until one day everything changed.  As an adult, new friends, finding a mate, starting a family or not, why i decided to try for a leadership role in the pod, or decided not to, and how that went.  The joy of my body, of movement, of the group, the beauty of the world, how i loved to  sing.  Great meals i had, interesting places we visited, strange sights we saw. Terrible danger i was in and how i survived, battles of  various kinds and what i learned from them and how i was hurt.  Would there be regrets and longings?  Sorrow at loss of mother, friends, siblings? Fear of death?

LETTING GO OF HOLDING ON

many many years ago i spent happy hours in Second Life and started this blog as my Second Life blog.  gradually SL changed and people more and more used their SL as an extension of their first life, instead of a way to play with personalities, bodies, worlds totally different.  my blog too became a blog of my first life, mostly because my FL became more interesting and i spent less time in SL.  the last couple of years i've spent almost no time in SL, but kept my land, my houseboat, my stuff, because i loved it.  but yesterday i finally did it.  in the interest of not spending money on something i don't even use, i gave up my houseboat, abandoned my land, and reduced my avatars down from premium to freebie accounts. 
this was soooo sad!  especially taking all my stuff out of my cozy houseboat... my plants, my bed, my tea set, my woodstove. 
but now i feel liberated!  i can go into SL and wander homelessly as i did when i was a noob, sleeping in parks, changing clothes in libraries, wandering into people's weddings.  i don't even know if there are still libraries in SL.
now that i pay nothing for SL, we'll see if i use it more!

Mom and Dad Clocks Ticking Along at New House

I have two clocks that tick, one treasured by my mother, one made by my father.
My mother bought hers in an antiques shop near Annapolis when my brother was a baby. It was moved at least three times in Maryland, then to Florida and three more moves there, then mailed to me in Vermont, where I have moved it once now.  I had it in for repairs before the move, it had stopped, but it was nothing serious. Some of the wood decoration needed regluing, too. Now it works perfectly, except for two tiny missing wood bits, and one mysterious left over wood bit, oh and I haven't been able to calibrate the time, so it keeps relative time, But it ticks beautifuly and tocks too as the pendulum swings, and it bongs with a very lovely tone. Clocks like this are musical instruments, as much as is a violin's casing or a guitar's wood box.
The other clock Dad made from a computer circuit board, which he thought was beautiful, which  indeed it is, altho possibly toxic. He got a clock mechanism, a brushed aluminum display box frame, and made nice looking clocks for all us kids plus some for the church bazaar.  Mine has survived a number of moves, too, and then hung for years on my wall as art after it stopped working.  At this new house, I stuck in a battery just for the heck of it, and lo and behold, it started right up.  It ticks to count the seconds as electric clocks do.  Keeps good time, too!

photo

a friend needs this photo online so that it has a URL

Amazing Gadget!

use it to hold harmonica around my neck while i play guitar and sing.
use it to hold up a book or manuscript while i type.
and -- used to hold ipad while i read ebook or do facetime!

it's a description, no it's a brand!

people love the tiny pictures i take with my instax mini camera .  when they see the tiny picture coming out of the camera, they say "oh it's a polaroid!"
and i say "no it's a fuji" and they look confused.
so after a year or more it dawned on me, they don't know polaroid as a brand, they know it as a process.  so it's kind of like if they said "hand me a kleenex please" and i said "sorry i only have Puffs"

wigs and perception

i went to see a friend who is in the midst of a series of chemo treatments.
she had a cute new wig.
it was grey like her hair, or almost like her hair.
just for fun i tried it on, and to our surprise it matched my hair perfectly.
she said she'd give it to me when she's done with it.

i came home and told john about it, told him it was the same exact color grey as my hair.
he said with surprise "your hair isn't grey"
curious, i said "what color do you think my hair is?"
he said "it's blonde, of course!"

hahahahahahaha 
i wonder if when he looks at me i'm also 25 and don't have wrinkles!

inside a dog

my brain when i am ignoring it, keeps busy and entertains itself in many ways. 
often with a song.
often the song it hums to itself is an attempt to send a message.
sometimes i notice and it's fun to figure out the message.

the past few days it's been telling me a joke, whenever i bother to listen to the brain-chatter.
here's the joke:
"Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend because inside of a dog it’s too dark to read."
usually attributed to Groucho.

like the brain-song messages, it turns out to be a koan for me. i'd been filling out my application for Sacred World Assembly and got stuck on the question about the Sakyong Mipham as my vajra master.

i will for sure then be inside the dog. 

i've been inside the dog before, as a christian in my teens, and yes it was too dark to read. once inside the dog it's so natural to twist everything and make a religion out of it, heehee.  to twist everything to glorify and justify that inside this dog is true and perfect. 

so the question for me is how to be inside the dog and still be able to read. or is it to have the courage to be inside the dog and give up reading?

washing dishes by hand

when i was a child and we moved to a house with a dishwasher, it seemed like a luxury.
i don't have one, now, and neither do, wow, quite a few of my friends if i think about it.
most of them say they enjoy washing dishes by hand.
so now that is the luxury, isn't it?
having the time to wash your dishes by hand while your mind roams free for awhile and your hands play in warm soapy water.
it's twice as nice when someone joins you and dries.