Welcome to Sweden Gussy!

Here he is... in Sweden.. happy as can be :) Gussy got off the truck last night suprisingly alert and happy. His feet weren't looking so great, but other then that, he was fantastic. I was very glad that I'd bought him a new extra warm blanket and fleece.. because it was around -20 Celcius.. a tad colder than Florida!

Blogger Thrown In Jail

This is absolutly astounding. In the western world we take so many things utterly for granted. Yet all over the world, millions of people have their every move scrutinized. I feel as if my blog is a totally private thing. Perhaps my friends and family read it once in a while, but really who has the time or cares? Not many people. For Abdel Kareen Soliman, posting a blog entery was equivalent to waving a flag in the face of a tyrannical governemnt saying "Throw me in jail... for 4 years!"

Below is the link to the article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6385849.stm

Everyday, no big deal, moments...

My dear friend Beth gave me a valentines day card about 5 years ago... to this day it still defines what friendship and love mean to me. I don't remember exactly how it went, but the punch line was that our wonderful friendship was made up of a whole bunch of "everyday, not big deal moments."

One such moment was when she and I were sitting in the grass in front of the barn where Gus was living while Beth and I were attending Randolph-Macon Woman's College. We were painting her "bookshelves" (planks and cement blocks) a rich royal blue. I remember laughing, getting covered in paint, Beth taking pictures of Gus giving me a kiss while he was covertly looking into the camera... it was a great day.

One random Tuesday (dollar movie night at the cheap theater in Lynchburg) Beth and our crew (Anurupa, Sarah.. and I think there were a few other's along) dragged me off to the first Harry Potter movie.. I was a professed non-potter fan at the time. Basically I was morally opposed to anything that everyone else liked. I laughed so hard when Hagrid put a pigs tail on Dudly that my stomach hurt for a week. A solid week. The tears streamed down my face and I fell in love. Today I revel in the pungency and sincerity of the Harry Potter series.

One day Beth and I had been auguring about something.. She was feeling down, I was feeling annoyed and a bit hurt. We were in my little putzy pickup truck on the way home from the barn and the windows were down because it was a warm Virginia spring day. We'd been driving in silence for a few minutes when Beth looked over at me behind the wheel and said, "why do you like me?". I knew this was a moment to swallow my frustration. "Because when you smile, you make everyone around you smile too. It lights up the room and is utterly infectious. Because you are the least judgmental and most positive person I know. Because I can be totally goofy with you and never feel self conscious."

Beth lives in South America right now. She's been with the peace corpse for thee and a half years now. She'll be heading home to the States later this year, but I no longer live there.. I'm in Sweden, hundreds of miles from anywhere that she'll be. But we still chat online several days a week, talk about nearly everything that is going on in our lives (though hers is much more exciting than mine!) and we still have "every day, no big deal moments" which make up our friendship.

I've noticed with my husband as well that it is the unnoticeable moments that stick with me as time strolls slowly by. I remember one summer day several years ago when we hiked up to the top of a hill and ate pasta salad and hard boiled eggs. It was near the end of the summer and I'd been wanting to go hike like that for ages. The view was fantastic.. we took goofy pictures. It was great. Later that night we snuggled into our tent (me with a harry potter book) and read and talked. At about 4:ooam I woke up cold and feeling like I was coming down with a sickness.. and it looked like rain.. so I woke Peter up and asked him to take me home (we were only ten minutes away from our tiny apartment). Just as we finished packing up our tent the heavens opened and the rain came down in buckets. I've never seen it rain so intensely in Sweden either before or since.. but that night/ morning was spectacular. We laughed on the way home feeling very lucky that we were safely in our car rather than out in our tent in the rain. When we got home we had hot chocolate then went to bed and slept until 11:00am. Every day, no big deal moments.

Ghosts

I have this idea about ghosts... not ghosts as in kasper the friendly ghosts.. ghosts as in memories and impressions that follow us through our daily activities and affect the way we experience everything. Words are like this too. Peter and I had an interesting conversation the other day about the word bizzar. When I hear that word a song with the lyrics "How bizzar, how bizzar," pops into my head. Peter, on the otherhand things about Pulp Fiction. Wow. My theory about words is that each and every one is a carries with it a shadow, ghost words, feelings, memories, connotations. The difference of one word can change the whole meaning. And literature.. it is litered with ghosts... other books that have inspired ideas and thoughts, discourse between fiction both contemporary and not, private and public. Then when one deals with the idea of haunting as a specific theme in a book.. the idea of shuddering, intangible undertones can be followed from the smallest microcosm to the largest macrocosm.. just as the levels of life begin with a cell and extend to a galexy... or perhaps life begins with a mitochondria and ends with some infinitly large entity.

So many ghosts go unnoticed... we are attracted to a certain kind of man, but have no idea why. We love the colour green, but don't realize until our late teens that the foundation of our delight in this colour is vanity... it brings out the luscious tones of our eyes. We follow specific behaviour patters without realizeing that they are simply the result of thousands of years of behavioural evolution. So often, we are haunted and we don't even know it. I know many people that like to think they are operating freely, with their eyes open and their minds engaged. I seriously doubt if there is a single person alive who is actually able to do this. What colours do you like? How do you view your body? Even someone who has attempted to mentally expunge sociatial expecations of body and body image is most likely still very attached to the human image.

There was a G.I. Joe comercial on television when I was little... it would give some message to the kids, then declare, "Now you know.. and knowing is half the battle." Knowing really is half the battle. How often weakensses plague us unaware. Simply realizing it is there and seeing it. Ah. You. Weakness. Ghost. Be Gone. And it is done. Of course it is not always that easy, but sometimes sunlight is needed to display the dust that covers us all.

I sat down to write about Sun Lit Dust and my computer screen happened to be covered in this magical mythical substance. I remember the first time I ever noticed dust in the air. I was small, I'm not sure how small, and I was soaking up the warmth of the sun as it shone through a large window at our family cottage. It was penetrating my body and my breath was slowing. I lazily opened my eyes and noticed that the air was chaulked full of stuff. What was it? I reached up with my hand and tried to catch some, but there was nothing there. All this dust in the air. It must be there all the time, moving in and out of our lungs and blood, but never visable. It is a substance that makes up a large part of our environment, yet we rarely see it. After that glimps though, I know it's there. Just as it litters the screen of my computer this very moment.

Somone said once that, "We live each day in a virtual reality of our own creating." I like to think of this dust as mine. My embodiment of the ghosts that haunt me. My dust has a bit of a sparkle to it.. almost like miniscule snow particals glittering in the winter light.

In the very last scene of my book, Melanie takes Emily by the hand and lead her out of the shadows and into the sun.. where the sun shines clear through the waif. All that remains is a cloud of sun lit dust, which drifts aimlessly away in the languid summer air. The ghost, when recognized, is nothing.

Perhaps it isn't really that seeing or knowing is half the battle, but that the battle is truely seeing or knowing. I think there is a huge lag time between seeing some proof with our eyes, and understaning it in our hearts. It is the sight of the heart that really counts.

No matter how many times I wipe the dust of my screen.. it will still be there, altering my view of the words I write and the way I feel about them... but at least I can see it. I know that I see the world through a cloud of particals... my skin and the skin of those I love, fluff from the sweaters I wear, hair from my dog and cat, pollen form the plants near my home, salt and water from the sea and lakes that are near where I live.. all of these things fill the air between me and everything I think I see.

My Imaginary Book

I am writing an imaginary book... namely a book that is composed primarily in my imagination. My book has a title, I am very familiar with my characters, I know the plot, am intimately familiar with many of the scenes, and have thought extensivly about themes and ideas in my book. Sun Lit Dust. That's my title. Everyday I think things that are related to my book and blog about ideas that are pertinent to my book.. so instead of actually writing it.. I'm going to blog about it.... for a while. Who knows what the result will be.

About a week ago I started writing in my my space blog. I found that each time I did, I was flooded with inspiration and the desire to continue writing.. so here it goes. A real blog. Devoted to ideas about Emaline and Melanie and sunlight.