Well, hello again. Where have I been all my life?
Here and there, but mostly here. Thinkin', workin', wakin' in the middle of the night. It's been awhile since I've felt compelled to put things in words. Some things that I've been thinking and feeling lately just don't seem to fit into the letters I know. Somethings refuse to be molded into any shapes, and somethings I refuse to let inhabit any form on a page; even dots on a computer screen. There are strong things in this world, I know. Power and meaning. And sometimes those things swoop down and catch you up and you can't help but fly with them for awhile. Then sometimes - abandoned - you only catch darting, vibrating shapes out of the corners of your eyes, while you're choosing what kind of fruit juice to buy, or waiting in traffic on the way to the library. Then does your life seem far away, viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. And you wonder where the meat of the thing really is. Connection.
Music, motion, open space.
All this means for you, gentle readers, is a brief pause in the narration. I hope you've enjoyed the glossy picture insert in the middle of the novel-based-on-the-movie. If you'd had the choice, had the object in your hand, I'm sure you'd have flipped right to the middle first. To see the hero facing a sea of snakes, looking so rakish. The villain glaring and chortling before his plans go so spectacularly awry. The moment when the hero and the heroine first meet, and everyone is smiling easy, polite, only subtly distrustful smiles at one another.
With 14 pages of full-color photos!
But back to business. In the interim (April) since I last wrote, life has indeed kept on ticking past. I now work full-time at OMSI as an educator in the Featured Hall, and am slipping into it like a pair of pants warm from the dryer. It's a very good fit for me; a challenge in some ways, but nothing I'm pulling my hair out over. I'm slowly learning OMSI as an institution and all the foibles that accompany any company. I'm meeting people and being amicably led through the process of staging a new exhibition. All in all, a good way to spend eight hours a day.
In the past month, I've had friends come to visit and friends move away. I vastly prefer the former to the latter, and have been working ever since to find ways to make that vacation feeling last. My heels are itchy to be in the sand and sea again; my hips will even agree to being belted into a lumpy, narrow airplane seat if it means getting to find tight hugs and laughter and endless conversation at the other end of the flight. One thing I dearly miss about being in a classroom is the school calendar. Oh, how I yearn for a spring break.
A joke:
Once there was a man who had all sorts of misfortune heaped upon him. Family woes, unlucky in love, cheated in finances. This man was good, and held out optimism and faith that things could get better. Every week he prayed, "God, please turn my life around. If I could win the lottery, things would get better." But every week his prayers went unanswered and his debt continued to mount. "God, please," he begged. "I deserve to win the lottery, you know I do. Please let me win!" But still nothing. Finally, he was at the bottom of his coffers and the end of his rope. The man fell on his knees and cried, "God! All I want is to win one jackpot! What else can I do??"
And the voice came, "Meet me halfway! Buy a ticket!"
Oh Lord. I have been. During my most recent trip to the grocery store Oregon Lottery kiosk, a friend asked, "How does this work?" And it's quite simple. You put in a dollar and choose what game you want to play. It picks numbers, prints your ticket and then you come back in two or three days to scan the barcode and wait for the screen to say, "Sorry, not a winner." Then repeat! Yes, it may be a tax on people who choose to ignore probability. But I'm nothing if not an optimist. And if a biodiesel-powered Eurovan and a checklist of all the National Parks and science museums in the country could ever be in some version of my future, why shouldn't I do all I can to reach out in that direction?
I know, I know. I'm reaching.
