Lessons Learned From the Night

What I learned (was forcefully reminded of) last night:

Cats are nocturnal.

Ernie is amazingly playful for a 20+ lb teenage cat.

Ernie is *very* talkative when he's awake. And when you are the only audience in the house (all other humans and animals are presently elsewhere), he has A LOT to tell you--especially if you forgot to give him fresh water and stir his food around before bed.

Mojitos, while full of minty vitamin C goodness, do not actually contribute to restful sleep.

It's much lighter at 5:44 am in Boston than it is here in Atlanta, (as evidenced by what was on the HenCam at that time--and what does it say about me that I was looking at someone's live webcam feed of their chicken/bunny play yard at 5:44 am?!? Even the animals have the sense not to be up yet!)

Now I'm going back bed to try for a little more sleep (and leaving Ernie safely DOWNSTAIRS).

Let There Be a Post

Let there be a post. It's been a long time since I posted here, but life is in a Great Shift and I feel like waxing if not poetic at least philosophical. And I already posted on Glass Incarnate today. (Oh, and for those of you waiting for Ernie to post again, I have wrested the laptop away from him--maybe permanently.)

Cynthia had a profound affect upon me during my short week in Portland with her. A bit of it was surely the newly post-50 shift (really), and another bit was BECon (which always has a profound impact on the way I think and be), but most of it was Cynthia. Since I visited Portland, I find myself hyper-aware of every Story that passes by me. Well, let's be honest, I miss most of the stories that stream past my body on a daily basis--everyone does as there are as many stories as there are bits of pollen in the Atlanta spring air at any given moment around each of us.

Is the story I am thinking about now the man with the lovely Jamaican lilt is his voice getting up to board the plane while talking into the bluetooth Borg thing coming out of his ear, or is it the middle-aged woman (age determined by voice and circumstance alone--I never peeked) with the stern voice telling her children to "Stop it, stop it right now" as they get on the plane. Or is it the tanned, streaky blond-haired woman in the polka-dot dress who earnestly explains to the gate attendant that she and the kids (she needs a stroller check) are traveling with her husband who booked at a different time and they would like to be seated together. Maybe the story is the 23 year-old law student I talked to over Cesare salads who is from Southern California, and who lives in Birmingham now and was just home visiting his mother (his father died of a very rare cancer five months ago). No. The story is life. The life that streams by, the life that my 87 year-old step grandmother Marion would like to see tomorrow and is not sure she will. She told me today that she didn't really think about living til 90 until recently when the doctors told her to enjoy this summer as it is her last. Now every day that she wakes up is a welcome surprise...

I am one of the last ones on the plane. I sat at the departure gate and typed as fast as my spastic fingers would go, and then I got up, ran onto the plane, got out my laptop and am writing some more. I find myself bursting with a connectedness to the other Stories all around me and a desire to record, validate, revere them.

Thank you, Cynthia, for reminding me of this part of my humanity. It is too easy to retreat to the studio cave and forget that other (pesky) humans exist. But if one takes the time to notice them, they turn out to be not so pesky after all.