Alas, insomnia strikes.
I suppose I should be glad, as this will give me the opportunity to work on my website.
Today I was thinking about weblogs and personal web pages, and why we have
choose to have them. I'm sure everyone goes through this line of questioning
when they start up a web site. Especially someone like me, whose website may never be read
by a large number of people. If a tree falls in the wood, does it make any sound? If the purpose
of my creating a web page is to express myself, does it matter that no one may ever read what
is written? In some ways, yes, it does. What purpose does self expression serve if there are no
observers to communicate with? On the other hand, do I need any validation for my existence?
Does writing it down make it any more real?
Perhaps more interesting to me is not so much why we do it, but how we do it. Of the thousands
of events, thoughts, emotions that we experience in any given day, why do we choose the ones
that we do? I wonder if having a web site will change my behavior, if I will begin to deliberately seek
out certain experiences or pursue certain thoughts just so that I have something interesting to write about.
Saturday June 13, 2002
It's been a long time since I've had Saturdays off. This morning I decided
to go for a run in one of our beautiful regional parks.
How can I describe to you my experience?
The fresh morning air, the fog making me shiver, the sound of my footsteps and breathing
echoing in my body.
And suddenly I am aware as I have never been before, I am awake, alive. I feel the strength
surging through me.
Forget the fact that it's been a long time since I've run steadily.
Forget the fact that my ankle screams in pain and I probably won't be able
to walk effectively later.
I absorb the birds singing, the hawk swooping over the grassland, the rabbits poised at the edge
of the trail.
A world of scents greets me: the grass, the horse shit, the dirt. There is no judgment. There is
no sense of a bad smell or a good smell, simply that it is.
I am overcome, moved beyond the ability to comprehend.
I want to laugh, I want to cry, I want to throw myself to the ground and beg for mercy.
To me, this is faith, this is spirituality.
It is moments like these that keep me alive.
Friday July 12, 2002 (Really, I promise.*)
This is my first venture into formatting and colour coding. It's really quite time consuming; a lot of trial
and error and viewing the source (how awesome that you can do that!)for pretty much all the web sites
that strike my eye. Thank you Jane for all your help. And for letting me freely cut and paste.
Next week I will work on putting pictures up. Unfortunately, I've had trouble getting my computer to
recognize my digital camera. Perhaps it's time I upgraded from Windows 98.
Now its time for a little gratuitous introspection.
Recently I've been thinking about getting my hair cut. It's
not an easy decision to make. For me, there is a history of bad haircuts. When I was about seven,
my dad cut my hair. I vaguely remember my dad snipping away, humming merrily, while my mother
stood by and watched nervously interjecting, "Don't you think that's enough, dear?"
I didn't think anything of it until I was in ballet class standing at the bar while the girls behind me pointed
and snickered.
I was eleven when I went to a professional hair stylist for the first time. It one summer in Japan,
somewhere in suburban Tokyo. My mother told the stylist to cut it short, and I had great hair. That is until
I stepped on the plane home, and the stewardess, placing a delicate hand on my head, said "Oh, what a
cute boy you are!" (Didn't she notice I was wearing a skirt?) Imagine what that did to my fragile,
prepubescent ego.
Flash forward some seven years later when I agreed to let my sister cut my hair.
It turned out quite nicely, a unique assymetrical look that Vidal Sasoon(how 80's: am I dating myself?)
would have been proud of.
Unfortunately, as with all good haircuts, as soon as it started to grow out it started looking rather crappy.
"Please," I begged, "you have to cut it again!"
She agreed, and the cutting began. It went well. Feeling her creativity surge, she broke into song.
Happy and trusting, I joined her. Presently, there was an ominous snip of the scissors, and then dead
silence.
"What's wrong?" I asked, instinct tellimng me that this was not good.
"Nothing," was the nonchalant answer. The cutting continued, but this time in silence. Abruptly she stopped.
"Okay, I'm done"
"Cool! Can I have the mirror?" She handed the mirror to me and then left. Need I tell you what happened then?
After that incident I grew out my hair, not cutting it except for the occasional trim. At it's longest I think it was
over 3 feet. Recently I indulged the urge to cut it off, a task which my sister performed
(the hair was donated to locks of love, for those of you who may consider cutting their hair).
After that, I went on something of a hair cutting binge, every morning taking a snip here, a snip there. I
developed a technique that worked quite well, trying to go for a Willow look (3rd season, of course).
Unfortunately, it was difficult to do the back, and so I ended up with a nice wispy, messy look in the front
which stops abruptly right behind the ear. So now I look in the mirror, throw my hands up in the air, and
wonder what I can do to salvage it. Because I want nice hair, damn it. So that's why I need to go to a hair salon.
*My plan to take over the world by confounding its sense of linear time was thwarted by a certain person.