April 21, 1997
past & present
I've been trying to find the founder of Alpha Logics for years. Yesterday I did an on-line search and found him. I called. He remembered me! After 15 years! Alpha Logics was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was a center where you could learn a lot of things. tarot, psychic healing, astral projection, astrology......you could even become a minister. There was a book and gift shop and Sunday services which always included a healing. We all actively participated. But the part of it that meant the most to me was the community spirit. I felt close to those people. It was a place of warmth, of peace, of love.
I've missed that place since we left Connecticut 10 years ago. But lately, I have recindled a need for that kind of experience. Can't find anything like it here. Maybe it exists & I just don't know where to look. Or maybe I have changed. I don't go out as much as I used to. It seems more of an effort. Maybe if I found it, I wouldn't go. It is hard to imagine not going, but hardly anything motivates me these days.
Anyway, we had a good talk. He doesn't do that any more but he invited us to visit him and his wife and stay in their guest house. Forrest wants to go soon. I am too shy, I think. And if we do go, I want to get our own motel room. I don't want to impose. I just want to be in his energy again. His place is in the mountains. In the western part of the country. A part of the country I am attracted to. I love the majesty of the mountains. The wide sky. The earthiness. The nearness of Native American culture. If I weren't so old and two of my sons living on the east coast, I would move there in a flash.
April 19, 1997
life ain't too bad
This past week I read a book I got at the book sale. "It's Always Something" by Gilda Radner. About her fight with Cancer. And, of course, we all know,in her case, Cancer won. I think about John, my brave son who won. But now he fights the side effects of his therapy. This winter he has had two bouts of pneumonia (hospitalized with one) and now has bronchitis. The lung doctor told him he has scar tissue in his lungs from the radiation he had about 14 years ago. His lungs are inflamed and that is why he keeps getting sick. He is now on Prednisone for the inflammation. And I think about how short life really is and how we are so busy racing towards tomorrow that we don't enjoy today.
And I ask myself, do I want to spend the rest of my days on earth worrying about when I will die? Yes, I will die. We all will. When is not as important to me now as it used to be. Today can be forever if I am truly mindful of the many moments that make up the day. And I tell myself, don't think of your life in terms of days and weeks and months or years. Just in terms of now. It is light and it is dark. Forget day or night. It rains. The sun shines. The trees lose their leaves. They grow new ones. Notice now! Pay attention! Hear that bird scolding another. See the pair of robins. The new butterflies flitting across the garden. Enjoy the antics of your puppy. Now SHE knows how to live! Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her!
Yes. Life is good. Bad things happen. But there is beauty all around. Enjoy! Yes! Enjoy!
April 12, 1997
ghosts
One thing I am real good at is being depressed. Today, more than usual. I force myself to sit here and put some words on these pages. I have been away a lot lately. It has been too long. Too much of the thread of my life lost in the silence.
I agreed to go with Forrest to the library's annual book sale today. First, we had a meal at Perkins. Both in mother's neighborhood. I felt very sad sitting in the booth, eating my egg-beaters and pancakes and looking out the window at the things mother saw so much of when she lived. How many things did my eyes touch that had been touched by her? How can someone be dead when the things their eyes have seen are still here? I so much feel her energy when I am in that part of town....still!
My cousin, Patt, donated her eyes to the eye bank when she died. At the wake I noticed how bruised the skin around her eyes was. But it was the only part of her that still functioned well and she wanted to leave a piece of herself behind. I can't bring myself to do that. I wish I could. First, I am not sure when the spirit leaves the body after what we call death. Secondly, I don't trust the people in charge of deciding if I am dead yet or not.
Then I think about the eyes. The eyes that one person saw through all their lives suddenly being the vehicles for someone else. Are eyes just objects? In someone else, they are that person? Exactly which body parts are not really you? Or, only you while they are attached to you? If you lose an arm, say, in an accident, isn't that arm still a part of you? How about your teeth? Fingernails?
Oh, geez, I gotta' stop. I'm freaking myself out.
Anyway, I came home and started going through old diaries. VERY old diaries. Ones I kept when the children were very young. For a project really. To help jog memories I can write about for my memoir book for my sons. I started working on it recently and am eager to get it finished. But going through the diaries will surely bring on more depression. I don't care. I need to do it.
I don't know why, but reading my diaries reminds me of Nicole Simpson. Reading my diaries, one would never know of the abuse that was going on in our house. Why? I ask myself. And I think I know. I wanted everything to be alright. Wanted to live the dream I had dreamed for so many years about being a happy family. Hoping each time it happened that it was the last. Because he was always sorry. Always said it would never happen again. How many years did it take for me to realize the pattern? And, then too late. At least I thought so.
But that's another entry. It just made me sad that I was reading the writing of an abused wife whose children were also being abused and her diary was mostly accounts of the happenings of the day, leaving out the hard stuff and the feelings in her heart and her soul. It just isn't real!
But all is not lost. When I read what I wrote so many years ago, the writing still takes me into that place of fear and sadness and I remember how it was for me. What I regret is that I don't remembera lot of how it was for my sons.
Fear can swallow your life. And I realize that is what I am still doing. Being afraid. Of one thing or another. About health, money, relationships, on and on. I get this from my mother. More and more I see her in myself. I want to change that part of me. I have tried different things, even self-hypnosis. Nothing works for very long. Do I have a worry gene that just won't let me enjoy my life?
Whatever, I'll leave this page for now and get back to my reading. Get back to that young wife and mother who still had hope and faith. And love.
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