9th Janvier 2010, 20:00. Breakfast. Blog. Replace broken GFCI circuit in garage, eat lunch at the Scene Restaurant&Lounge, see Avatar 3D at Monaco Theatre (I've got to remember to check out website, sceneatmonaco.com).
Ate open-faced turkey sandwich with Rebecca De Mornay sauce, the large saucer-eyed tomatoes glazed over, covering the war paint stripes of bacon on top of "cheese gravy," [i.e., mornay sauce] holding courteously over slices of turkey breast meat. Chef (Paul?) stopped by to hold court and make sure we knew of the restaurant's goal to make simple but mainly meals of freshly-prepared ingredients.
In a moment afterward, we encountered Monsieur Cameron's vision of a "Last of the Mohicans" meets "Wall-E" in the short story "The Children" by Chester S. Geier on the Comcast space western cable channel. We waited for the Death Star to arrive, deus ex machina, and save the corporation's well-trained [i.e., expensive] specialised employees but remembered movies are written for the 4th class passengers of the Titanic, not the White Star Line owners or captain (not even written for Captain Sully? Well, maybe for him.).
The older I get, the more I know I'll learn less. This day, when people die from uncategorised, uninsurable diseases, I feel my stomach muscles tighten, the world of my species full of idle folks - the unemployed, the middle class, the disposable incomers - and pause. Am I awake or dreaming? Do I create when I react to the environment? What's next?
What's next for Merkel, Oprah, Wendi Deng, Wendi Nix, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Fredirique Darragon, my nieces, and all the women who can rule the world if they want and show a firm grip on the throne is just as effective as a firm grip on a weapon? Where is our species headed? What's next? What of Jennifer Goodman, Jennifer Wheelock, Lynne Reynolds, Joyce Battle or Antonia Ax:son Johnson? Brenda or Monica? Ivory Gail Hoilman? Dr. Charline Nixon or my former students Angela Walker and Jennifer Reagan? They are my/your/our future, along with Denise, Susie, Rhonda, Quinna, Lynda and all my other facebook friends. And my new blogging friends like Mia, Katie, "daisychain," Babli and of course Julia and Shannon Eileen. What of Mrs. Obama, Elizabeth Dole, Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton? Cynthia Lin or Naomi Flanagan? Where is their leadership leading this ship toward? What of Simone Kempmann or Peggy Sammon, or my pediatrician's wife who ruled as mayor of my hometown for a while?
I'm interested in real reform, not another form of the same ol' chopped potato hash. I back the leaders of my country but I keep doubt and criticism handy to wipe away the fog of confusion caused by the many cooks hanging over too many pots of broth on the fires of desire to look busy making change. I see the pain of lost hope. What I want I cannot have because the bipolar system of the gov't in this country has become stagnant, no longer the "greatest generation ever" but the government of oxygenarians, sucking the breath out of our patience.
Needless to say (but said anyway), every moment is chaos, truly with no past or future, waiting on the next moment to establish the fact that the previous moment felt preordained, stupendous, a momentum changer. So are we in that moment?
Meanwhile, my wife shops at Coldwater Creek, where the associates compete with each other to find the absolutely best clothes/accessories combinations for their customers.
Some days I feel overwhelmed by the people who go all out to help others. I sit here and wait for my wife while she participates in the commercial exchange of goods and services, my only contribution this use of a pocket Moleskine, a pen from Montreat Conference Center, the leatherbound chair I sit on, the clothes I wear, the electrical lights overhead to shine on this page, and this blog entry to be.
So who am I? I'm not the character portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr., seduced by his adversary while sorting through his boxing maneuvers in "Sherlock Holmes." I'm not the players who can claim victory in the BCS national championship game for the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. I'm not the teenage girls trying to convince their father, who sits on chair near me, to buy them some new clothes here. I am the man, the writer who sits here and holds his wife's cape from David Green's store in Anchorage, Alaska, bought when we enjoyed a midsummer's eve or two with a midnight hot air balloon ride over moose and sled dogs, a train excursion from Anchorage to Fairbanks, stopping for a few nights to shack up in a cabin at Mt. Denali, watching whales from a boat near Seward, and a salmon bake where a local theatre production company sang "Alaska is her name," finally stopping to listen to tales of Alaska before it became part of the United States, our companions Dwight and Joyce Foster, former ad executive for the Fairbanks newspaper and a retired school teacher, respectively, both beset with memory loss, their stories lost in the Alaskaland log cabins.
Today, I am not. Today, I observe and let others be, their lives more interesting, their shoes more varied than my days.
We teach our daughters and nieces to be heroes/heroines, letting them find out how to save the day and save the species from itself. To them I dedicate the year of this blog, starting with my grandmothers and my mother in-law. Their wisdom lives on in my cousins, nieces, mother, sister and wife. Without them, I will not be. With them, the world of my people is worth saving. For them, we will solve breast cancer causes and process the backlog of rape kits, stopping my gender's tendency to be my gender at its hormonal burst. Then we'll see that today's world leaders exist to prepare the way for the next wave, the next and so on.
Can you see the future? I can. It shows why this this moment's not as chaotic as you think.
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