Reflections

01/26/07 Friday 1447

In other words, Scott will be home soon and then I have to do some things I don’t particularly want to have to do: go get his glasses, go to the library, pick up Connor from basketball, then go to the winter carnival at school that I’m not really enthusiastic about. Gary left for Utah today and isn’t getting home til Sunday pm, so I’m not looking forward to an easy weekend either.

Anyway, when I turn to this page and see myself chewing over the questions of how to respond to Darlene, I realize I haven’t come any closer. From looking at my old diaries I see sometimes that ‘answers’ take years to unfold. That answers are coming over a time frame that’s slow enough that it’s easy to mistake a small piece of the answer as THE answer. I think that I’ve been inclined to let anxiety spur me to premature action—kind of jumping the gun.

Anyway, Scott will be here soon.

01/29/07

I went and visited Mary this morning and that means I lost a lot of alone time I’d have otherwise had. It was good to see her, though, but I’m still a little raw after a weekend with them and no Gary, plus facing them having a day off on Wed.

A dream from the night before last. We’re adding on to our Skyline house. Then some people come down our driveway and it has to do with something ‘spiritual’. It seems in the dream I hear the word a lot, whether it’s in my own head, or is being spoken I can’t remember. Then my friend Kathy has moved to a little community a bit north on the Columbia River, sort of like Linnton. She describes it and so I go to look, and it seems like they’re living in a sort of hotel/apt row, one level, while waiting for a home to be built. It’s rather ugly, but a beautiful setting. I think then Gary and I start questioning if we want to build on to our house, or maybe move further downriver to one of these little river communities and build a house there.

So what was last night’s dream…seems it had to do with Connor.

Dad sent me a piece from their paper…I imagine an editorial. The writer is a fellow at the Hoover Institute, which is a very conservative thinktank, so he’s doing what he does when blaming not only the Clinton administration, but also the Carter, for 9/11. Actually, he’s blaming ‘liberals’, sort of by extension. There wasn’t a note or anything, it was just inside an envelope that had a letter for Gary&me that Gary had inadvertently packaged along with their other late Christmas presents. Mom was sending it back, and dad enclosed it. There’s something about receiving that that challenges me to think, on a couple of accounts. One is, does this guy have any merit to what he’s saying, and sometimes what’s telling is what he’s NOT saying. Or how he conflates ideas to support the point he’s getting across. Another is, is it true? And it seems it IS true that a former CIA station chief who analyzed the material and the early stuff about Osama bin Laden, that he said that there were at least 10 instances where the Clinton administration could have gotten him and had a failure of will to do so. And, he said that Clinton and Richard Clarke lied when they said they’d done all they could. This guy, Scheuer, is no friend of the Bush administration, so this is interesting to read.

Before I shut this thing down to load up my new ‘security features’, I had to write a piece of good news. Dave called last night and said that Tim, his friend, had gotten ALL OF THE INFORMATION off my old hard drive! I don’t know what shape it’s in, but this is the happiest news I’ve had in a long time. To think I can reunite my diaries, and especially to get the stuff back from my 50th year. That’s been a real buoy to think of. OK, back to my book.

01/30/07 Tuesday, 1413

Beautiful golden light in here. The day goes by so quickly, and then the kids are home. I spent most of today listening to some news programs I’ve been wanting to hear; and I’m still behind. I’m already counting down that it’s only an hour til Scott gets here.

Then I spent some more time trying to puzzle out if I can recover the document I’d saved into Appleworks, and then it reverted to an earlier version and cancelled all my subsequent writing. I keep trying to go back and see if there’s some solution I haven’t checked yet to find it. Still, I have a suspicion that I’m doing the same thing over and over, but then I’m not sure.

Big winds outside.

I guess I could write about a schism, sort of a grand one in this country, of liberals and conservatives. And then in the grander scheme, Christianity and Islam (although I suppose an argument could be made about Christianity and Judaism, or Christianity and Buddhism), and then larger, into ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Perhaps that is truly the nature of yin and yang, a sort of root inside of us of constructive vs destructive. Perhaps it finds its outlet in the progression of humanity’s wars, as they’ve become ever more violent and horribly destructive. It would seem that we are moving along a continuum of ever-escalating violence throughout our history. It seems there have been many points of choice along the way where we should have been sickened and turned away from this path. It seems that point should have been reached long ago. Yet as a race we seem to only be accelerating toward our own destruction instead of sharing resources. It seems to be easier to spend such enormous wealth on doing terrible things to each other than to come up with a way to manage our aggressive instincts and find a way to share the world’s resources so that everyone can live decently.`

2/1/07 Thurs 1442

I’ve been transcribing a diary from late 1977 to Jan of 1978. I’ve found this one harder going, with some intimations that it’ll be even more difficult ahead.

I can see from what I’m reading that I really was raised to be a girl who’d go straight from being a girl to being married. The college thing was kind of incompatible with that, I guess. But basically I was prepared to be married young. I sense this in the bewilderment I had about my choices, about the bases for my choices, in my fear that I’d somehow against my own will fall in love with someone I didn’t really want to. I really think I bought into ‘happily ever after’, and in the times I grew up that became very complicated. “Happily ever after” was not a cakewalk. And as a person who’d been raised with that cultural mindset, it made things very complicated for me. I can see reading all this that I should have gotten married right out of high school. I wasn’t prepared for all the stuff that young adulthood in the late 70’s would bring. I approached every man I met as if he were “The One” or potentially so, and that made it confusing when I tried to evaluate my feelings about him and if they were valid. I couldn’t answer hard questions. If I felt an aversion to someone, but parts of him I liked, I was very confused. And I felt self-conscious about feeling aversion, because I feared it came from some kind of snobbishness inside me. So I couldn’t trust the information I was getting. All of these experiences were complicated by me being raised for ‘happily ever after’ in a world where that was no longer realistic.

02/04/07

I woke up with a headache this morning, and haven’t quite gotten rid of it. Then I discovered Connor had spilled root beer on the floor I’d just vacuumed, and did about as good a job as I’d expect cleaning it up. The floor’s sticky and I can see the sticky drops leading down the hallway—probably where he’d spilled it on Scott and Scott walked into the bathroom to take his shorts off. I should be doing the newsletter, but I’ve been at the laundry and stuff and so think while they’re gone I’m going to take a break.
It’s a very pretty day out and maybe I should be doing this out on our wonderful deck.

I had a strongly impressionable dream last night; woke this morning and lay thinking about it and fell asleep again. Now I can’t think of it; I remember thinking something to myself IN the dream about something important about the dream.

02/05/07

Less than 2 hours left before the boys get here. How did the day disappear like this? I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by some things I have yet to do, and people I’ve kept waiting for a response. Call Helena, secure a book, call Dean T about our hot tub cover, Write Kathy. Write the mom’s group. Call Donna. Then I think of projects like sanding and painting the wall in the boys’ room, getting the data off the old desk mac, pictures, writing people like Teri T, who I keep wanting to write but then get sidetracked. And I still want to read, write, transcribe. I feel badly about keeping Helena waiting, because she may tend toward anxiety over the worst. But neither do I feel like I want a long conversation today, and they usually are with her and I often feel awkward terminating them. I was called last night and asked if I’d be willing to help in Scott’s classroom tomorrow because the classroom assistant’s mother died and she can’t be there. I refused, said today wouldn’t work. And, the truth was that it didn’t work for me. I wanted a full week, obligation-free. I just feel like I haven’t gotten back on my feet since the school closures from Christmas on. I would have experienced helping today as another week where I didn’t get enough. Like I’ve noticed before, anything that has a faint chores, or obligation resemblance to it I experience as decreasing my well of serenity. Home unobligated is my well of serenity. And I still don’t feel that I’ve drunk fully enough from it to have had my fill. And the things that are obligated seem to draw from my well of serenity. Which is why I’ve cut obligations down to bare minimum. And even calling friends sometimes seems like an obligation. I do feel anxious that I should be helping more, particularly Scott’s huge class—doing more for the school. Now Connor mentioned something that Gary had not said anything about to me. Something about me going back to work. That has gotten my attention. Especially since it had been my aim to volunteer at the school and contribute after resting this year.

02/06/07

1328; Tuesday

I’m not sure I really want to write right now; I have some music on and it’s kind of distracting. This might be time better spent transcribing. But that’s kind of what I want to write about here. I’m having a hard time with this particular diary, the late 77 to early 78. It’s hard to relive how difficult that was during the time I was getting it for sure that the hopes I’d had about Keith were going nowhere. There was an aimlessness to me that’s hard to see, plus relive the sort of interior boredom I felt. It’s embarrassing to see back then that I just didn’t have better options for myself when I felt bored and restless inside. I CAN see that it was a kind of ante-life, that time finishing up schooling on my career, so it wasn’t unreasonable that I’d feel bored and restless on the threshold of living my life as an adult. I imagine all of us had a feeling of being on the verge, but still not quite moving on during that last year of school. Still, during times of boredom I feel badly that I didn’t have better and more options for positive ways to fill it. I’ll bet as I get to my diaries once college was finished that I complain less about boredom. Still, another thing that’s driven home to me is that I needed other people to come up with ideas of things for me to do; that I didn’t really have that much curiosity and interest to find things that would absorb me. I’m embarrassed that I couldn’t come up with things for myself. In some ways I think that’s what made me feel dependent on others. And sometimes in the void of boredom I behaved in ways to try to fill it that weren’t affirming for me. I needed other people, and men in particular that left me vulnerable…I guess I feel deep shame about the way I just don’t come up with ideas so that we as a family are never bored. That I’m not interested sufficiently in stuff outside our home that I feel enthusiastic about going and seeking it out. I’m more inclined to be put off by perceived hassle that might be awaiting me in an unfamiliar situation. That embarrasses me. And I suppose reading this section of my diary underscores this.

Interesting that what I’m reading right now in the waning days of 1977, at my parent’s home and my siblings there, has a bearing on something I started talking about with Sharon last night.

[First, my dream last night. I dreamt we were down in St. John. Ann, our next door neighbor from before, and I were talking and I was really enjoying her company. Somewhere in here I’m looking at the yard we once owned, and looking at the front garden bed. The people who bought our house had pulled most of the stuff out we’d put in, and were laying foundations for ponds and waterways. I felt a certain kind of entitlement to be on their property, having once owned it myself, and I remember in the dream feeling a little disturbed by that, that there was something wrong with that feeling of entitlement, but not quite being able to put my finger on what it was. Though I felt a little sadness about the stuff I’d put in that they’d taken out, I did think it was really neat what they were putting in, and I guess presumed they’d be putting all kinds of water plants in and that it would look really beautiful. Then we’ve walked in through the garage with Ann and have just come into their house. They’re sitting in the front room, and it’s very sparsely furnished. They’re sitting on the floor, and I get the feeling are uncomfortable at my being there in their home. I complimented them on the work they were doing on their garden. I leave because I was walking over to the university. Just to take a walk, I think, and I can’t remember if Ann was with me, or our kids, or both. I remember I wasn’t alone—I had a distinct feeling of not being alone. In the Auditorium there was an event going on—some sort of major evangelical Christian convention or music concert—it may have even been a sort of revival style meeting with the idea of an alter call at the end—a rally. Billy Graham-ish. Then I’m in the company of Latino people, men mainly. And I can’t quite remember what happened, but it seems one of them had been shot dead by one of the fundamentalist Christians? It seems this was after the fact and someone I was with was the dead person’s brother. He was walking with me, openheartedly, seeking someone showing remorse for what had been done. I think the idea was that he wanted to be able to forgive, but needed a heartfelt expression of true sorrow in order to be able to do this. I felt a need for justice, and so was with him in that capacity, moral support. But there was no sense of that, it seemed the people instead hardened their hearts and the implication was that God had wanted them to do what they did. He had sorrow, I had anger, as we left the center.

~ by kaleidoscoperefractions on February 18, 2009.