What if, in premonitions, biblical people could not put into words something like Netflix’s Original Series, The Purge?  What if, instead of children turning upon their parents with murder, it was a brief vision into the middle of the 12-hour free-for-all?  Like how are they going to differentiate between a television series and reality as people harkening from somewhere between AD 80-140? 
 
All of this judging the validity of prophecies to be true, that is.
 
The piercing sound of the siren signaling Game On?  Or, Matthew Chapter 10 verse 21 merely detailing a glimpse into the depths to which humankind has stooped to date?
 
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death,
and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
 
I haven’t seen any of the Purge movies, mainly because to watch any horror movie is to subject myself to many sleepless nights, and I already have many sleepless nights – no need to pile on.  Being largely immune to safe-terror found in situations like rock climbing or haunted houses (or rollercoasters for that matter) I went to Halloween Horror Nights and did The Purge haunted house and while standing in the line thought to myself: I bet this is a classic case of prophetic wire-crossing.  Christians will suffer great persecution at the hands of…Attention, this is not a test…
 
Just something to keep in mind as you go about your daily business.  Points of reference are important when assessing anything, including prophecies.
 
Let’s talk Malcom Gladwell.  Yes, Outliers, old news.  (still well written)
 
I happened upon Gladwell’s David and Goliath Monday morning at the airport in Chicago while my coworker wrestled in an unwinning manner with a woman at the cash register of a coffee bar to sell her a cup of coffee, which was not in the cards as the woman was in no mood to be facing people at such an early hour, let alone execute the timeless task of punching the small black coffee = $3.49 button.
 
I flipped through the first chapter and then added it to the My Shelves section of the Public Library app, along with the other 164 books I intend to read – including The Lake House, 6 Armistead Maupin Tales books, The Diaries of Nella Last, The Great Alone, Accordion Crimes, Kitchen Confidential, and 153 historical books about the city of my birth.  Long live the confluence and its three petals on a red field!
 
Nothing makes me literally run to the library faster than an email explaining my recently requested book is now available for pick up.  And that is what I intend to do when David and Goliath comes a-calling.
 
“Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants,” the sub-line reads.  See, it’s not what you think at all, there is way more not only to the fable of David and his Goliath, but to what it means to be the underdog, or to go up against some force far greater than yourself.
 
I’ve always wondered about those seriously buttoned up guys I work with, or what it would be like to own the goddamned arm rests on an airplane, walk in a park, down the street on a dark night, or go to sleep in my house like a freakin’ boss.  What is it like to be a man?
 
Is that why I’m gay, because I want to be a dude?  Absolutely not interested in pursuing that conversation, or contemplating my position on the sexual orientation continuum with you, distant reader.  I know for a fact I have no idea what it is to be a man, but I know from listening to women who have transitioned to men what it is to learn about the secret lives of men. 
 
They’re not alone, either.  Women have secret lives too, but we learn young how few females we can rely upon, which is quite dissimilar to males who form into a protective pack early on.  My son used the phrase “bro-code” at age 9, to my resounding disagreement, but it was already out there, whether he told me about it or not from then on. 
 
This issue with singular women pans out much the same at work, more so if you’re in a workplace where to be a woman is kind of an anomaly and it is better to try to get along with everyone and smile pretty for things to keep working out well.
 
As we know by now, I neither excel at smiling pretty and playing either by the rules or at being nice to the nice boys. 
 
With gratefulness, I acknowledge the exceptions to plodding gradually uphill amongst these people – the bright spots in the road – my own team mates, seriously cool-guy coworkers, and the women I work with, at least those who will be warm and be personable are also wonderful.  Solid brainiac folks who by proximity make me a little bit smarter every day. 
 
I cannot help but reflect upon how catty some women are to each other – having been out of high school for several decades makes no difference to the approach, either.  Even those women I pass in the park to whom I say hello, greetingly, if they are with their man, and that man dares to cross the proverbial line in the sand by responding cordially, she will without question stare me down with what my cousin used to call her mom’s Bumpy Eyes.  The evil eye.  The same eye I am sometimes faced with in the elevator at work, when I say hello.  I generally say hello to everyone, too, so I have a broad array of data to pull from. 
 
It’s the environment, I tell myself.  Is it?  Like the entire world’s environment?
 
I unwittingly brought up 3,000 years of patriarchy to my brother, who was not amused in the least as he’s feeling especially persecuted for being a white male right about now.  I was trying to make a point that women both at work and around-about, seem to be suffering from isolationism – as though disassociation from other women is a safer bet.  Even in light of the throttling up of Women Power overtaking the universe at this very moment I think it is evident that we are in many ways still weaker than our mirrored males from whom a rib was taken so that we might be given life. (If you’re given to that particular philosophy, you go right ahead and be forever grateful to Adam’s rib)
 
We are weaker and I do not dispute it. 
 
All the self-defense lessons in the world are not going to help me match someone with 3x the muscle mass and the force of testosterone to back it. 
 
I think that bothers women enough to express that insecurity outwardly to other women in particular because it is in women they can find commonality or at least get a rise.  In men, they have little effect, in some cases, other than to exist as an object, or as a part of a statistical dimension in the workplace. 
 
Or is that even true?  Have you ever played devil’s advocate to your own arguments?  It’s maddening. 
 
I don’t know, I refer back to the primer on David and Goliath and consider it very important to tackle the shit out of these stereotypical responses from either gender in the workplace because I actually believe this generation will contribute positively to unity not just in the workplace but within the reaches of their entire world.
 
Six or seven years ago I was given a guest appearance spot during the Women’s Employee Resource Group meeting.  Total disaster.  I am not a natural public speaker as I tend to inhale almost continually until my diaphragm is ready to explode, rendering me totally unable to exhale while still speaking.
 
More on the speech in a moment.  I am reminded of when I defended my dissertation to the American Academy of Religions – somehow this happens to undergrads from time to time.  I went through my paper, watching the sea of nodding heads and expressionless gazes.  I know I ballsed it up hard.  Read too fast, opened it up for Q&A and ended up sounding like I was on laughing gas.  A pastor who had allowed me to do an 8-week internship with her gay bereavement group informed me as I exited the stage (this being the one moment most optimal to deliver this news) that I ought to invest in public speaking lessons.
 
And she wasn’t wrong, because look at me, a decade and a half on, and I’m standing in front of 65 professional women, at the height of my company’s thrill over ERG’s, inhaling the shit out of the air desperately waterboarding myself into a fury as I explained the concept of the gay ERG I had been nurturing for 6 years with 15 other people, organizing pride parades and god knows what else.  The looks on their faces…
 
Be relatable, I told myself as I stepped to the front of the room.  Yes, let’s discuss gay employee groups with totally conservative women who need their own group just to figure out how the hell to fit in on the job.  Yes, let’s.
 
This is what I am saying, go figure out how to slay all of the Goliaths, if that is what it takes.  Because Goliath is bring-downable.  Goliath as an analogy or legitimate historical story is not what it seems.  If you’re going to bring something down, at least interpret the circumstances correctly to make efforts effective.  The reality of life is resting on the tip of our nose.
 
I’m going to read the entire book not just the free sample on iBooks.  But, I’ll leave you with 1) the table of contents so you can see what’s in store, and 2) a brief quote, and wish you well on your way as you fling yourself headlong into tackling something big in your life, something that is trying to overcome you, or overcome someone or something you care about.  

Mid-week, vacation approaches in the south.  A little something for late night rum-and-cokes.  

Cup of tea.  Lady Gaga Joanne record playing. Windows down.  Fall wind has appeared, and it is a howler!

Let me tell you about Cyanotypes, because today, I learned all about it. 

We have an art co-op in town with a host of classes available to the adventurous.  I was lucky enough to get a Dabble gift certificate and our teacher really put down the magic today.  Even on an overcast day (it was raining most of the time) we were able to get enough UV rays with the help of a grow-light to produce some decent results.
​
Cyanotype art creates a mixture that, when applied to a porous surface and exposed to the sun then washed with water, will produce a blue-print look.  There are much better put explanations than that on the interwebs, including a few good videos on YouTube.  The fun part is applying bits and pieces to the surface to hold back the light, the remnants being the shadowed surface.

I have captioned the pictures below, for your greater education (and mine as I will forget a lot of it and likely be unable to decipher my own notes in 24 hours!!).

You can use all kinds of other media, whatever your heart desires.  

Create a negative, lay it on top of the fabric or paper to be exposed.

Cut out shapes from pictures as stencils.

I have enclosed my mad scientist notes in my serial killer handwriting below for your perusal.  It’s all very stream of consciousness.  I am going to finish this out with some pastels or bright color for the string of the balloon as the metal did not make enough surface contact to leave an impression.

Next up, screen printing, so I can post a few t-shirts for sale.  I do not intend to retire off of the profits, just have a little fun being creative.  I am looking for the right kinds of t-shirts, for all of us short-waisted individuals (lacking a torso is a small price to pay for having long legs).  I have written down a lot of cyanotype ideas, too.  Let's see what happens next.

I'm driving a couple of hours tomorrow to pick up a military desk from a friend.  It is that turquoise blue from the 1950's and I am so thrilled about it, I can barely contain myself.  I'm dragging the boy-man along with me for his muscle power and when it's all set up, I'll post a picture so you can roll your eyes and think this girl has got to get a life.

Until next time...

9-11 is unforgettable. Anyone not yet alive or living within the vicinity of television news reporting escaped the impact of that day and the 24/7 churn of the aftermath with the replaying of the crashes over, until, at least for me, it became, and is still lodged in the freshest of my memories.

Was it like Pearl Harbor to the residents of Hawaii and the other United States in 1941?

9-11 was a day full of individual stories. A day where so many people came together.

The people who ran into danger, the first responders, gave the public their lives in service that day, and others, much later, from the effects of being at ground zero. All citizens pitching in.

The days after, the faces of missing people were plastered on the fences in NYC.

Families started providing DNA samples of their loved ones when all hope was lost.

We began to hear the unfolding story of the hijackers.

A lot of people joined the military.

America went to war.

I have read a lot about 9-11. There are many archives, transcripts. It’s all a google away. I read as many survivor recollections as I could find, all of which were heartbreaking and riveting. I did not feel as though I became numb to any of it; it was thoroughly painful. The stories of people climbing down a raging inferno were harrowing. The desperation of the collapse, the disorientation of awakening amidst all of it, the human instinct to survive, and to take others with them to survive too.

Freaking amazing.

The problem of evil persists. It is not a simple concept. What makes us both dark and light inside? The very usage of those two metaphors drives so much negativity (or positivity, depending on the color of your skin). The problem of evil has been a complex, ongoing human development. Is there a demonic influencer/overlord pushing the agenda? Or it is the alleged God, who is both good and evil? I continue to search for the answer.

It’s important to remember. Even if it hurts. Every family affected by 9-11 still remembers. So why not the rest of us? I watched Patriot’s Day last week. That is worth knowing about and remembering. I remember the magnitude 9.1 earthquake in the Indian Ocean just after Christmas in 2004. I remember Columbine (every time I am in Littleton).

I found a book at the M museum in Leuven last year that personified this problem of evil in a new way.

They had an entire section of books midway through the paintings, a hidden library. None for sale, just for reading. I read Thomas More’s Triptych with the End of Time, Heaven and Hell (of the 16th Century) for an hour or so; it is really dark. Also a surreal dreamscape.

What if these depictions await us in the afterlife? What if evil is the Divine with its splintered, multiple personalities?

Here’s a sample.

Too much of this can make the world feel very dark. If your internal leveler is not good, if it’s like mine, where the volume gets stuck on high, and the nob controlling the volume breaks off and rolls under the sofa and into the air duct vent never to be seen again, it is important to pay attention to your feelings as they are happening and know when you have had enough for now.

I haven’t made it to the 9-11 memorial in NYC yet. There are many 9-11 memorials scattered across the country – if you are close enough to one, it is your duty as an American citizen to visit, to remember.

[Opinionated? YES.]

I’m living just left of center and I think it’s on us as stewards of our citizenship to own the history, to pass it along. I’m a big Howard Zinn fan, though, I don’t like the traditional textbook version of the United States. We have to own alllll of it.

A college professor once enlisted a technique upon us called I Remember patterned after a book by Joe Brainard. It’s a brilliant book. It’s Brainard’s memoir. On 9-11-01 I was a sophomore or thereabouts. I have the book on my shelf. It will not disappoint you and it is $10 on amazon (or free at the public library --- get a library card for god’s sake!)

I found this from January in my notes.

2018 I Remember
I remember when the vet put my first cat to sleep
I remember saying goodbye to the second
I remember running and running and running.
I remember flying TWA to New York
I remember eating a butter stick from the fridge when I was four
I remember rock climbing and being afraid of heights
I remember watching Imagine Me & You for the first time
I remember my mom’s cream puffs
I remember my grandparent’s love
I remember reading high up in the tree in the backyard
I remember breaking my ankle and my arm
I remember swimming in the Atlantic Ocean
I remember Irn Bru on the beach
I remember Guy Fawkes night and treacle toffee
I remember kissing a boy at the swimming baths
I remember smoking a cigarette with a friend at school
I remember art, endless paintings and sculptures at the museum
I remember castles and countryside
I remember when my girlfriend died
I remember having a baby, having a marriage, having two.

Now you try it.

Get a pen and some paper, or open a fresh Word or Page and start every sentence with I Remember and don’t stop. Don’t stop to think or judge your previous or future thought. Just write it all down. Go until you’re done.

​The pop rocks are rattling around inside my head as I type.  There’s a candy store down the road from my house.  She does a brisk business in excellent sweet penny items priced much higher than a penny.  We have come to know each other since her shop opened.  Today, a news crew came to visit.  She is hoping to get herself on the top things to do while in the city kind of list.  I hope she gets all she wants.  Tonight, we voted on chalk drawings on the sidewalk.  I went with the Vespa, but the pirate ship was a close 2nd and the black Wonder Woman was 3rd.  I left with a clutch of candy necklaces.  I have a problem and it rhymes with Randy Recklessness.
 
I have a hot date with the laundry (having already taken out the trash and tidied up).
 
Consider this your guide to the bike races.
 
Seriously, do not tune out.  I can tell you’re reaching for the remote. 
 
It’s really a guide to everything that was going on inside my head during the bike races, as I was up there today, sitting beneath the whispering pines for a long time.
 
This week marked another moment in life when I thought:  I think I just accidentally caused my own death.  Besides riding my bike as fast as possible, traffic be damned, I’ve done some stupid shit.  I went repelling down the side of a Victorian-era viaduct when I was 12, some ragtag outfit was standing around one summer day and I was wandering aimlessly around the countryside with nothing better to do than to jump off the viaduct.  The rope may not have been very well secured.  I fell down the first 20 feet in a free fall.  My knees broke the fall for my face, which was good because I was going at quite a clip and being super-hot was not my given talent.  “She has a face only a mother could love…” my mother used to say.
 
That was then. 
 
On Thursday, the day after the upper GI, the 4 biopsied areas were so painful as to keep me up and upright all night.  I called the exchange around 730 the next morning, the doc prescribed a viscous lidocaine gel solution.  With a Mylanta chaser. 
 
The pharmacist pulled me aside when I got to Target.
 
“We’ve never mixed this before, so….”
 
“So, you did it and you’re really pleased with the results?”
 
“Yeah, I guess…”
 
He handed me a 24 oz bottle of the stuff.  And a syringe.
 
“What am I supposed to do with all this?”
 
He turned the label towards him.  “Swallow 15 milliliters 3 times a day for pain.”
 
When I got home, I noticed the syringe only went up to 10ml.  I cautiously measured out 10ml and read all of the precautions.
 
Has been proven to cause death in children under the age of 3.  I proceeded to edge the syringe down to where my tonsils used to reside.  The pharmacist insisted I would know when I reached the spot when I gagged.  ???
 
I decided I would only squeeze a quarter of the syringe’s contents – as a test, and in case it would later be proven to cause death in people much older than 3 years old.
 
The instant I pressed the plunger I realized I was going to panic at the numbness in my throat.  Good thing I didn’t have to wait that long to go from calm to completely freaked the fuck out.
 
Sensing I could pass out if I were able to panic myself into a frenzy, I found my way to the sofa where I reclined, slightly, my head back, breathing slowly and deeply.
 
People who survive stuff do not panic, I thought.  I stayed in zen breath of the wild state while I googled “how long does it take Lidocaine to wear off.”  About an hour.  I turned on Grey’s Anatomy.  Everyone needs a medical drama at a time like that.  Meredith Grey both drowned and was revived in the episode.  (can we call it a spoiler 10 years after the first showing?)
 
It was a good distraction.  The hour passed, the feeling returned, I did not die, dramatically or otherwise.  Life is good.
 
I was thinking about memories as I stared up at the pines and the sky.  After everything else leaves, only the memory remains.  It is what we carry like a stone, buried.
 
Every one of the bike races was thrilling. 6 hours in, I went for a long bike ride of my own and then returned to watch the women’s pro races.  The sight of the pack pacing up the hill, gears threaded and cranking, clicks and rattles of chains and air blowing as they whizzed by.  It has been humid and thick since sunrise.  On my 300-somethingth fastest 3-5mile run today, I snapped a nice pic of the first hill.