Working out the Words, June/July 2007

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Monday, July 23

Late one night, before we left for the Midwest, I went outside to watch the onset of the thunderstorm. The sky opened up and my street ran with rivers down each side, transporting a light cargo of garbage from up the block: a water bottle, a takeout cup. The cool air was a welcome change from inside, and I stood with my arm outstretched to catch some of the drops, or sat with my back against the house, looking through the fronds of the cat palm into the silver lines of rain, backlit by streetlamps. Spanish rang from a few houses up; I wasn't the only witness to the long-needed rain.

It reminded me that I sit very little. We returned from Michigan late last night, each of us with a long list of things to get done in the week remaining before we leave for England. I hope I remember to be still sometimes, too. Breathe. Who knew there would yet be so much to accomplish? Somehow problems will be smoothed out, luggage will be packed. We’ll be there, in belief or disbelief.

The Midwest was good. Nice crowds, and between weekends we practiced our Cropredy set, and ran and hiked. Our hostess in Michigan had rescued a hummingbird from their cat, and we fed it by hand with an eyedropper. I gave it a lot of Reiki and prayers. It was light as a moth, feisty in spite of some broken feathers. She knew someone who did wildlife rehab; I hope she’s called by now.

Well, so much to do now; I may not post much here before we go.

                                                
                                                                      Grace

Tuesday, July 10

  This is what I did in the heat of this week.   I'm learning how to hand-bind books, and this is the journal I'll take to England next month.   

    The stitching on the spine isn't very visible here, but it's in a very pretty amber waxed thread.  The threads wind around the front button and stay there because of the wax.  I made it soft cover so it would adapt to whatever space I put it in, either in suitcase or backpack.  I hope it holds up!  It's my first effort at binding.

********

I've noticed lately that people in America are using fewer and fewer compound words.  I always thought a website was a website, until I started seeing everyone spelling it "web site."  I'm in favor of compound words, myself.  Of course, a back yard is just a back yard, unless it's turned into an adjective like backyard, as in backyard barbeque.  So why is website more a noun than web site?   Has anyone ever had a website barbeque?  Why don't we have one here, hosted by me, on my Adrienne Jones web site.  Please let me know what virtual dishes you'll be bringing.  I'll bring the potatosalad.

I always enjoy corresponding with European friends, especially German and Nordic folks, whose languages commonly compound everything.  From my emails with a friend from Norway:  Footstonetherapy.  Studioartist.  Writingprossess.   Morningcoffee.   Fascinatingsounding.  I'm guessing these are just translations of terms that, in Norwegian, are single words.

Another thing that puzzles me is everyday. Where I grew up, "everyday" was an adjective.  It's an everyday occurrence.   Everyday language.  So what does it mean when a store is "open everyday?" Substitute another adjective for everyday and see if it works.  How about common?  We're open common!  Mm-m.  Even if it's an everyday occurrence, I think you're just open every day.

Also:  Similar to; different from (not than).   Believe it or not. 

Lest I wax schoolmarmish, here is a site that may give you a chuckle.  I particularly enjoyed this picture.  This is why it's fun to have lots of languages on our planet.  And if we think English is hard for us, consider those for whom it's a second language.  What a relief that there's help like this.


Tuesday, July 3

I've been reading The Sun magazine again this morning. If you're not familiar with it, I will tell you that it's a monthly publication of essays and poetry, utterly untroubled by advertisements. I have not subscribed to a magazine for probably thirty years, but it's hard to imagine my life without this one now. Writer and reader friendly. Thinker friendly. They actually encourage submissions, solicited or no. I would encourage anyone to try an issue. Take a look at www.thesunmagazine.org.

My passport arrived yesterday! The new ones have electronics embedded in the covers. The brochure says it's for more efficient processing at customs, but I ponder the more profound implications of being scanned. I feel at once safer and more uneasy at this development. At any rate, Senator Dodd's office is getting a huge thank-you from us. Without their intercession we'd have had a big problem. I know some have not been so lucky.

I've kept my last two passports, and I line them all up and look at the pictures for a quick review of my life for the last 23 years. How my face has changed. How the world has changed. How smiling for the photo is now discouraged, because they said it's harder to identify someone's eyes if they're crinkled up smiling. You won't know me if I smile? I tried to look pleasant instead. I think of the boyfriend I had back in 1984, when I first went to England, and wonder if he still resents my breaking up with him. I couldn't articulate the reasons why, then, and it may be simply self-indulgent to suppose he ever gives me a thought. With all the myriad reasons why any two people shouldn't be together, it's amazing to me that there are any couples at all. Nevertheless, part of me wouldn't mind a chance to talk it all out again with him.

Stamps from that year, and 1986:  Gatwick twice, Dover, Kobenhavn, Nederland, Oostende (Belgium), Redby Havn (Denmark again), Heathrow twice, JFK.

There is one other stamp -- from the Bahamas. That was a quickly planned and underresearched venture. I went with a couple of friends, in the rainy season. The streets flooded one day and we waded knee-deep back to the hotel. Everything was soaked or damp and we were not allowed to use the dryers.  Live and learn.

My passport from 1996 has no stamps at all.

This one will eventually tell a richer story. It seems like such a short time now til we go.


Monday, July 2

Had the dream of snakes early this morning. First just one huge one in the road (which I ran over unavoidably), then two; then so many, they were coming after me, and the sides of my car like an open jeep, leaving my feet and legs exposed. Such big, yellow fangs.

Are the snakes desire, I wonder? Or just the bowl of cereal I had before bed?

********

I think about the words we choose to say, and then the filters we decide to put them through to get our meaning across. How politely do we modulate our voices? Do we gently say exactly what we mean, or do we dance around it, inserting the words "like" and "sort of" everywhere, interrupting ourselves with, "I don't know..." or, "You know?" And what does that say about us? I feel more confident when I'm direct. It's simple and I'm not apologizing. People know what I'm about and they can feel safe responding in kind. I have to be calm to do this.

When I finally made my way, slowly, or sometimes backing up very fast to escape the snakes, back to where the traffic was stopped, I and the front driver smiled at each other and I gave a little rueful laugh, as if to say, "Man, that's some stretch of road!" It wasn't the scary disaster it had been moments before, when I was praying for help and truly thinking my life might be over soon. The smaller snakes were nearby, but now that I was in the company of my fellows I knew I would be all right. Now we would be deciding together when it was safe to go forward.


Monday, June 25

A Well-Placed Word.

No one knows this up to now, but my passport hasn't arrived yet.  It's been 14 weeks since I applied.

Mark started hearing programs on NPR about passport processing delays, and a couple of weeks ago called me and said maybe we should start worrying about it.  We're not leaving until August 1, but our agent needs three to four weeks to process the work visa for our tour, or else we're not going.  She can't do that until she has my passport number. 

I called the National Passport Office last week and was told that they wouldn't have any information about its status until two weeks prior to our departure date.   That's too late to get the visa.

I told Mark not to worry, and we hung up and commenced worrying individually, in our favorite ways.  I started taking medicine for acid stomach, and Mark stopped sleeping.

So now we're about down to the wire -- we need it within about a week or ten days, or else it begins to be a disaster.  Everything we've worked for, all the money we've raised... all our future hopes.  This pivotal trip, hanging in the balance.

I have tried very hard not to panic, and we've all become quite prayerful.   Meanwhile a lawyer friend of Mark's gave him an interesting idea.

I came in to rehearsal this morning and Mark said, "I talked with a woman in Senator Dodd's office this morning.  Here's her number; she said to call her today.   She wants to speak with you directly."

!!

I called her, she took the pertinent information, and within one hour she called me back and said, "Your passport has been upgraded, and will arrive next Tuesday, July 3rd.  I have it on my calendar to call them again this Thursday to make sure things are still on track, and I'll call you then with an update."

Thank you, Senator Dodd and your wonderful staff, for being so nice and so very on top of things.  We sat around dumbfounded, only realizing how grave things had been now that everything was fine.  Then we talked about all the ramifications of not going to England at this point.  Then we went and recorded a demo of a song for an upcoming children's CD project, and every time we disagreed about a take, we'd say, "Uh-oh, the trip is off again."  Then we'd come to a compromise.   "Okay, now we're going!"

The right word from the right source... what a miraculous thing.  I said, "We had a brush with power.  I think I like it."


Wednesday, June 20

I had a moment of acute clarity yesterday while running, and it started with the movie Happy Feet.  Listening to something very happy and powerful on my iPod, I thought about dance as communication, and how miraculously gesture and movement can connect us even if we don't have words to pick apart and nuance all the facets of what's being communicated.  Movement is communication.  Actions connect us; it's the way intention gets broadcast into the world of form.  First the intention, then the action.  This is the foundation of all ritual; it is what makes it effective.   Repeated actions intensify intention.  And something as silly as a bunch of scientists in the Arctic, dressed up like orange Michelin-tire men, goggling down at thousands of penguins doing a Gregory Hines impersonation, saying, "Do you think they're trying to tell us something??" is magnificently profound.  Couldn't we be more aware of what the world is "trying to tell us?"  Because I think what happens then, when we start paying attention to the movement in the world, where the animals are going, how the elephants rebel, what the water looks like... that is when we start to develop a keener intuition about what we're doing here and how we can become less harmful.  Intention... action... intuition.  Because there aren't enough words, or it takes too long to make up the words, to describe the larger meaning behind an albatross with a belly full of plastic bottle caps and tampon tubes, or the number of oil slicks we never hear about.  A guy in a car, yelling at a woman in a car because she made him slow down a little, is not one small incident.  It's where a little carbuncle (CARbuncle, ha) of our disease pops out and manifests its moment of destruction.   But the disease is much bigger; the anger and imbalance we struggle with, the ignorance and unmindful cruelties with which we are constantly contending, are more numerous than all the penguins in the Arctic.  Time to learn dancing!

But, like dieting, being harmless is a choice one has to make many times a day.   That's the hard part.


Saturday, June 23

Here I am up at 6am at Kripalu, the yoga retreat in Lenox, to record a dream.

I was grocery shopping somewhere because a portion of the money (or maybe all of it) was going toward a cause, something havaing the word Amnesty in it.  There were a guy and a woman at checkout.  Someone paid before me; then I came up to the counter with a couple of things -- why does it seem like it was an English cucumber and a can of coffee? -- and the young man was very impressed that my donation came to $27.  He was asking me what had brought me there?  I laughed and said, waving the items -- "The food is incidental today!"  Eventually I decided I was going with him and the woman to some relevant event, and to that end I was looking through a rack of (my?) clothes and choosing bright colors, soft textures (very hippie, very Kripalu).

I awoke about then and replayed the dream.  What I came to was that it's the cause that is important, and the means one uses to further it is incidental.  The intention behind what I do is what I should focus on -- when I make music, when I write, when I buy groceries.  And what about Amnesty, why was that resonant?


7:45am

But at breakfast the food was anything but incidental.  They have such a spread here now, and the food keeps coming out after one sits down and commences eating.  I nearly missed the tomato and cheese fritatta that way.  Oddly, I was in a rather snitty mood by the time I went to breakfast. Someone with an infant was behind me -- people rarely bring babies here and I can't imagine going through a program with one -- and the child was fussy for a while.  I kept thinking, "Don't you know this is a silent meal?  Stop making those wordless, fretty noises!"  Mostly I sit and observe myself being judgmental of everyone.  "She's so yoga-skinny -- for heaven's sake, give that girl a sandwich."   "Why would someone wear a shirt like that? And why is he eating salad for breakfast?  Take a piece of toast!"  It's like static, background chatter I've gotten used to whether I believe in it or not.  I know very well that, given five minutes with any person here, I could probably find common ground and reasons to like them.  But there are so many judgments in my head.  They sound like every voice I've ever heard.  It's hard not to hear them all scrolling by at times when I'm otherwise quiet.  Why is it mostly the negative ones, though?  I really don't think I'm that hard-hearted.   Am I really so judgmental of myself?

It's worse when I'm feeling irritable.  It could be GVMI (Garden Variety Monthly Irritability), but then again it might be GVAI (Garden Variety Adrienne Irritability).   These can be hard to tell apart.  In any case, about eight minutes of my Reverie of Judgment was interrupted by one of the best oat chocolate chip scones I've ever had in my life.  All malicious thoughts held their breath, turned faint and died as I rediscovered the beauty of chocolate, oats and oil.  I have been pretty faithful to a healthy habit in this pre-England stage, as I want to have energy and stamina for the trip, fit into my coolest clothes, etc.  This scone had the potential to do me in.   After I finished, I sat for a few minutes waiting for common sense to return, so that I wouldn't take another one for later.  When I had my land legs back under me I hightailed it out of there.

Sunday evening, very late

I slept back in my own bed last night.  In the early hours I awoke from a dream and wrote two words in my dream journal, to expand upon later -- "Digitation (Tal)."  Tal is Talbot, a friend in Texas.  But somebody tell me what digitation means?  Something about my hands?  I have no recollection of this dream at all.  The only one I remember is the later one about the black man who had gotten me flowers and kept them in the back door pocket of his car.    


Monday, June 18

  The jasmine has started to pop. Tiers of Edelweiss-like blossoms climb my kitchen window. The pink phalaenopsis is in full bloom now -- only three flowers this year, but they seem happy. The aralia is going through an unprecedentedly healthy stage. The begonia cutting and the cat palm with persistent spider mite visitors are on the balcony, I hope for the duration of summer.

I watch the clock orbit into official midmorning, knowing I should try to get up early some days to run before it's hot, knowing how hard it is to get body and mind functioning then. It's not too hot yet, but I've had breakfast. Can't run for a while now.

I had a guest over for lunch yesterday, someone I haven't seen in ten years, other than in passing once or twice. She was there during the hardest period of my life, when I lived with someone who went south and became emotionally abusive. He committed suicide ten years ago last April. We hardly talked about him, except once when we spoke of the importance of holding one's own in a relationship -- knowing the difference between who you are as yourself, and who you are when you're just reacting to someone else's behavior. So much of my relationship with ex was based on trying not to be the victim of his bad day. It's something I have learned well, and it occurred to me that this is something I was dealing with when I was the age my friend is now. Maybe it's a thirties thing.

Oddly, too, someone approached me in the grocery store last week that I also haven't seen since those days. I wasn't exactly friends with him but he did some photography and I ended up using one of his shots on the cover of my first album when it came out on CD. It was his girlfriend at the time who was responsible for the ex and I even meeting. I have heard that serendipity in threes should be given attention. This is two; I wonder if someone else will surface.

This morning I feel good; I like where my life has come and, even more, am excited about where it will go. I am forming plans for the future that might be very beautiful indeed.

There is a wind chime at our next door neighbor's house, hanging from the back corner, which I can see from my kitchen window. It's correctly tuned, as the best ones are, and I want to take it with me when I eventually leave here. I wonder if they'd sell it to me. Maybe I could trade something beautiful for it. I have a few years to think about what that could be. It chimes unexpectedly, over the distant sounds of lawnmowers and Main Street traffic, and the many birds that sing in our huge maple trees.

I dislodged a pair of starlings from somewhere near (or in) my balcony yesterday. When I first lived here in the 90s, I had two plastic patio chairs out there, and would sit sometimes and enjoy the summer air and the nasturtiums and sweet peas I'd planted. This time around I haven't put anything out to sit on, so I have not spent any time on the balcony at all. My plant boxes, still filled with dry, rooty soil from two summers ago, are piled against the house wall. Yesterday I got a hankering to sit out on a pillow anyway, and the starlings fluttered right away up to the power line. Mama squawked at me for several minutes -- a light, hoarse sound, as though she'd halfway lost her voice berating other people -- and they eventually flew off into a tree.

They have sometimes made nests right inside the side walls of the balcony, where there is a little alcove. I wondered if that's where they were living. Surely it isn't baby starling time, and I heard no cheeping. (They do nest in the chimney of my gas heater every year; I'll hear sudden eruptions of excited chirping every spring, as the parents return with food.) Once, years ago (after the ex died, but before I moved to New Hampshire), one of the chicks died in the little alcove and the parents moved away. I only found out about it because, as I was sitting outside on the plastic patio chair one day, I felt tickles on my legs. I looked, and there were hundreds of tiny red mites crawling all over the chair, and all over the balcony floor. I traced them to the hidden bird's nest and could just barely see the pinfeathered carcass tucked inside the boards. Mites had moved in, in that way Nature has of composting everything, recycling it all into building blocks for something else. I cleaned it all up with rubber gloves, said a little prayer for the bird-spirit, and continued to sit out on the balcony for the rest of the summer.

That was the year I also got to hold a little bat in my hand. It was rescued off a house by my friend who was an animal relocator, and we took it out to the woods and I got to put it on a tree. It didn't look very well. We used very thick rubber gloves, the same ones he would use to relocate beavers and raccoons from people's ponds and backyards. This was a man who could not do a crossword puzzle, but had a natural affinity with animals the like of which I'd never seen. He wouldn't kill anything if he could help it, just put it somewhere else or keep it from getting into a house. When we parted ways he was studying falconry.

He also had a beautiful black lab named Bloom, and a white rat who would ride on Bloom's back. I remember how proud and excited she'd get when Ratty would perch just behind her collar.

Ah, dogs.

This has gotten too long and rambly; it's not my intention for it to be thus, a sort of stream of consciousness memoir, but these are the things that come up today, and perhaps will inform something that I will write soon.

                                            

June 10, 2007

I've been sick this week. Friday, the day before our New Salem gig, something viral visited me in a most unwelcome way. I spent a long night not sleeping, but dozing uncomfortably in short increments. By noon Saturday I decided I could drag myself to the gig, and somehow got through it.

A young man was there from a local cable tv station, and asked, while we were setting up, if he could video the performance for later broadcast. I remembered that they did this last year, but as I wasn't feeling well and didn't even know whether I'd be able to remain onstage the whole time, I apologized and asked him not to tape the show. He seemed put out. We thanked him for asking (they don't always, though it's appropriate). Usually there is a contract with something about this in it, so that we can make a decision beforehand. This time there was no contract and the issue wasn't raised until an hour before we played. Anyway I believe he left then, and later we discovered that one each of our three CDs, and one of our DVDs, was missing from the sales table.

Pondering the obvious though unprovable possibility that he took them, I wonder if there was another way I could have responded to him in that moment, that would have eased his pique. I might have asked him if he had already set up equipment (I had no idea, but Mark said afterwards he thought so) and shown compassion for the trouble he'd taken. If I had somehow treated him more like a person, engaged him more, gotten to know him in a few sentences? At least made him understand that I hadn't been able to eat for thirty hours and I didn't want to be on tv? It was our prerogative to tape or not tape. Still I try to put myself in his shoes. There has to be a better way, prerogative or no, to come to understand one another. I don't know that he took the CDs but it's never happened before, and since I was witness to his displeasure, I consider it possible.

Today in the grocery store I saw another such moment. It was between a very young checkout girl (not a checkout girl really, but a young person who happens to have that job right now) and an elderly lady who checked out before me. Perhaps the lady didn't have her store card, and asked the clerk to look her up by phone number so the card could be virtually scanned for her purchases. But her phone number wasn't in the system. As I came up and put my few things on the conveyor (post-sickness cravings: chicken sausage, corn on the cob, soup), the lady was saying, "Why don't you have me, when I've come here for so many years?" The girl's response, "I'm not sure," as she moved the lady's items toward the bag boy (not a bag boy, but a young person who has that job at the moment), said all there was to say about her boredom with her job, her frustration at this slow old lady who didn't have her stuff together, and all the unanswerable questions that are not part of her job description, or her life description. The lady made a few other remarks about how puzzling it was that she was not recognized by Big Y's computer system, as she helped the bag boy load up her bags, the girl meanwhile asking her three times to sign the charge slip. I tried to be nice and smile at them both; paid cash, and held my floppy cloth bag open so the kid could bag my things. He wished me a nice day.

How vast the distance between that girl's life experience and the older woman's. They didn't even have a common emotional vocabulary to talk about the present moment. And here am I somewhere in the middle, wondering how the two ends can be pulled just a little bit closer together.

I ate tonight, the first whole meal. So far so good. My appetite is awake and dancing, celebrating.


June 6, 2007

Issa (formerly Jane Siberry) sold her house last year, and most of her possessions. She's been travelling with nothing more than a backpack since last Fall. Living in hotels, recording a new album in Canada and Australia. Writing in Brussels. She must have money; no one could stay in hotels all the time without it. Maybe she made money on the house sale. Maybe she has royalties coming in. Maybe she knows people in the hotel business! But, aside from ten cardboard boxes (of family bibles, special photos, books and the like that she didn't want to part with), she has ONE BACKPACK of stuff and a cell phone. "I kept all my most elegant clothes," she said, though now everything has to roll up. This explains why she cut off all her hair, which we noted when we saw her in February. She got tired of running her business. Now she's just in the here and now, with her two pairs of shoes, her pre-recorded backup music (for gigs) and a P.O. box in Vancouver. When she gigs, she rents a guitar. How does she practice in between?

What is it that is so romantic and attractive about that lifestyle? Do we all really desire to be disencumbered by all this stuff that we love so dearly? I look around my kitchen. The artwork that speaks to me: my Pre-Columbian Goddess of humanity, with her huge thighs and wide, crowned head; my Carmen Miranda paper doll; the silver Kwan Yin face on the wall. They're just images. But it's so hard to think of parting with them. All my plants. The little secretary desk that belonged to my father's mother, whom I never knew. Even the tablecloth; I've had this Indian bedspread for years. I'm quite attached to it. And yet, if something happened beyond my control tomorrow, and I lost all these things, would I really mourn? Or would I feel more free?

My guess is the latter. When it's not our choice I think it's easier. I have no need or reason to divest myself of worldly things; I have a place to put them, a use for them, I derive pleasure from looking around in my home and seeing them. Nevertheless, something in me is fascinated and intensely curious about Issa's life at present. She has always the music with her; it's inside her head, it consumes and drives her. Last night as I fell asleep I thought, "I will always have the Reiki with me." Reiki, and music, and words. Is that enough, on some level? Is there some value in thinning out some of these other things so that the Reiki, the music, and the words share a more prominent place in my consciousness?

(Speaking of words, as is my job here, Issa has pointed out that "Presbyterian" is an anagram for "Britney Spears.")

********

My friends have more or less talked me out of getting a veggie car, for now. One that runs on WVO - recycled vegetable oil. I'm very keen on it but the kind of car I'd have to get that's fitted for it (without having to deal with two gas tanks and a flip switch, etc.) would be so old that it might not be reliable enough on the road. Besides that I'd need a bank loan to get the Mercedes parts if it broke down. Rex said that in a couple of years, new veggie cars will probably be available. But by then my car won't be worth a backpack and two pairs of shoes in a trade-in or a private sale. I think I have to let it go, though, much as I want to stop being part of the pollution problem right now. Anybody have a used Prias?

********

There is something about an itinerant person that makes people want to take her in. As though she must have very interesting stories to tell. I want to invite that person over, and at the same time I want to be the one invited.


June 3, 2007

Back from a long weekend, the first thing I do is water the plants.  The orchids are pretty happy; one phalaenopsis has been in bloom for weeks, one is just extending a long finger that will bloom possibly some time this month, and one is still resting.  The dendrobium's flowers are just about finished.   There was a little tag on this plant that encouraged the buyer to discard the dendrobium when the flowers were all done.  That's ridiculous, isn't it?  It's a perfectly healthy plant that will, given time, bloom again. I think I'll write to the company and tell them off.  Whoops, though; I threw away the tag.  In disgust, may I say.

The aralia is huge, suddenly.  It was given to me by someone in Maryland, or Virginia, and as it's a more southern plant, it doesn't like the chill in my kitchen in the winter.  It tends to die off as quickly as it grows new fronds.  Right now it's happy.

And the merry pink petunias I bought are blooming in their little pot, though it might be rootbound by now.  The very tall angel wing begonia, which was cut from a plant 70 years old, has bloomed near the ceiling.  It, too, drops a lot of leaves and I can't figure out why.

The aloes, as usual, are spiking out all over the place, and may one day take over.

Miss Jasmine is leggy and exotic, climbing the window for another round of her intoxicating white jewels.

After watering the plants this time, the second thing I did on my return was install the air conditioner in the bedroom, against the next hot day.  Fans went on, windows went up and now the place is lovely and cool.

********

Now that I've given the Plant Report, it's time for thoughts about words.  Sometimes I sit and just think about the Click languages of southeast Africa (hear a 1930 recording here).  My friend and I were making up Click gibberish this weekend and cracking each other up.   Suddenly I wondered what it would sound like, a native Click speaker imitating one of us.  American English gibberish.  What is that like?  We hung out with some English musician friends recently and one of them was "doing" an American accent -- lots of hard Rs, which I suppose is one of the most striking things about American vs. British English -- and I was amused because those Rs were surrounded by English inflections -- nyoo for new, pahhhst for past.  I told him he'd never convince anyone he was from New Jersey.  But the proprietor of the restaurant we were in thought we were all from Australia, and no one bothered to divest him of this belief.

My apartment was hot when I got home.  I'd left the window fan facing in, on a timer, and only when I was an hour away from home did I think that, if it rained, this might not be a good idea.  After a phone call, my downstairs neighbor kindly turned it off at my request.  I found myself saying self-deprecating things to her on the phone, so she wouldn't feel put out that I made her go down into the scary basement and search for my hidden keys, which she had trouble finding.  Then I wondered why I'd put myself down.  It wasn't such a big deal, and I'd have done it for a neighbor, too.   Note to myself: be real.  I could have just expressed my gratitude and left it at that.  Sometime after I arrived home, her boyfriend knocked, having brought up the last bag that I left on the back porch when I loaded in.  I wondered if, by now, they thought I was just a space case.  "She's nice, but... jeez, what an airhead!"  I was conscious that my words on the phone reinforced not only the potential for that opinion, but also my fear that they'd feel that way in the first place.   What is it about her, or my impression of her, that makes me act this way?   Because I don't, with other people.  But I've always been a little bit on eggshells around her.  I get the impression that she's easily pissed off, and since she's the landlord's daughter (and might be the landlady, soon) I really want her to like me.  There must have been someone in my childhood like this who scared me.   I ought to just relax and get over it.  She's a nice person.

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At today's service (at which Mad Agnes performed a few songs) I was listening to the daily readings, from quite diverse sources, and pondering on why we choose to include readings of words in worship services.  Just thinking about the power of words made them more powerful in that moment.  Words are keys.  Words are part of how wiccans create form out of thought.  Words and intention, of course.  I invoke the Reiki symbols by saying their names three times and drawing them like heiroglyphs in the air.   I thought about the repercussions that all our angry words have as they ripple out into the Universe.  Effects we don't necessarily see, but which may be harmful to someone somewhere.  Then I thought about all the unexpected blessings I've gotten, and how those might be ripples from someone praying for peace or abundance for the world.   Read Masaru Emoto's Hidden Messages in Water.  Your body is mostly water, and it responds to the vibrations around you and in you.  That is why you get sick when you hold on to anger.

So the words fell out from the readers' mouths, as they do all over the world, words by Thich Naht Han, the Dalai Lama, Einstein, Galileo, Jesus, Kipling, Whitman.  (Whitman had a LOT of words.)  Issued by idle minds they're chatter; but from compassionate and intentional persons they are power, change, a force for rebuilding.  Let us make our words a conscious choice.  Let us decide what we will do with them: let them be click gibberish or something transformative and real.