[Morning freewrite] This is the start of a beautiful friendship. Between me and whom? I'm not sure. Between me and my keyboard? My computer? The few and far between who read my web pages? The fewer and farther between who respond to my website? I have no idea. Not anymore. Not anytime. This is a freewrite whicch doesn't go anywwhere more than usual. A phrase. That wasn't punctuated correctly. It doesn't have everything I express everything I meant it too. Why is this so random today? Why, I'm not sure. I think because I'm just trying to find out what. Or perhaps. I'm tired. What am I going to do today? Well, I have the choice of working on programs, my web page, sewing, or writing letters. I think I want most to do the latter two. Why? because I'm not interested in anything else but getting ready for hiking right now? Because I'm too tiredto think? I'm not certain. Because this is a day that being too close to a computer screen would suck I think. Suck you in and drown your eyes. In electron garbage. It is time to do physical things, work with physical objects for a while. How long? I'm not sure... I need to find other people to release libungif, I think. I'm getting very unresponsive when it comes to fixing it. Bother. It's the weather? It's my direction in life. I'm trying to pull away from programming and I'm partially succeeding. I like to start projects, don't like to work maintenence on them as much. So my succeses are that I'm not as wholeheartedly into continuing to fix libungif as I am to plow ahead into new writing, new reading (Emerson started.), new paths.... Unfortunately, I'm discovering new computer things to try as well. I want ot take a look at FLICK and ORBit and see if they could work together, for instance. I want to work on my stellar magnate program some more (But first I have to decide whether to go ahead with incorporating ORBit or if I should go for something drastically reduced in functionality first... Or if I should hope that the bug in libstdc++ will be fixed.) I don't know what I really want with computers anymore. I want to soar with the eagles, feel the wind strum through my feathered face. I want to dive off cliffs into the sparkling water far below. I want to feel the wind. I want to eat and drink and laugh again. I don't know what I want, but I want to enjoy the unspoiled world. There is something about my desires that I wish I could reconcile with my sense of duty. Being carefree and being bound to do something useful. A job in the outdoors could be so much good... But where do I find one? A job as a sherpa? But are there sherpa's in north america? Ah so.... I do not know. [End morning freewrite] Thanks to Mayfair&Trout Caught between birth and death, hoping to decipher a bit more of the unknowable violet, understand a bit more of the red that shadows me. Trying above all to live in ecstatic yellow ... while it lasts. Tableau When I was very young [Let's call it three. Everything happened when I was three. I went to Pennsylvania for the first time. I got lost in San Francisco. Three is a formative year without peers.] I sat on the floor hugging the doorframe. My youngest sister called me yesterday and we talked for quite a while. At one point she asked, How many people do you think really know me? I don't know.... Three? I replied. She pondered for a moment and then replied, I was going to say two, but I suppose you're right. Papa probably knows me too. In high school I participated in peer counseling, a program where students were trained to listen. We met with some professional counselors who taught us some of the basics of being a good counselor: learning not to make judgements, not to relate our stories when we should be listening to others, learning ways to help people feel secure talking. Much of our training involved working through exercises with our fellow counselors. Role-playing, trust-walks.... It surprised me. I've never felt close to my father. Not cold, but removed. We share a bond of family. There is a support and closeness and a willingness to let me find my own way and be there if I need him. But I feel that he doesn't listen when I talk. He makes judgements prematurely. He attempts to make connections between my stories and his own. Essentially, he doesn't make a good counselor when I need someone to talk to. I had a chair. A wooden seat about booster seat size. I remember it was smooth. Lumber worn by touch. Marks where I had crayoned upon it. It was in the kitchen, on the linoleum floor where I could push it around and sit on it. Or stand on it to reach a drawer. We were living statues once. We could volunteer to set a stage. Use other people to form a scene -- a literal or representative landscape from our lives. The idea was to put people into a scene and then ask them to relate how it felt to be that particular person. And after that, have the ability to reshape the scene if we wanted. To change what that time of our lives was actually like to what we wanted it to be. When I went home for Christmas I didn't feel connected to the place. Or to the people. I couldn't remember it, think of it, as the place I had grown up. As I sit here, I remember pushing toy cars down the lines on the kitchen's yellow linoleum floor, pretending the lines were highways. I remember tracing the patterns on the family room rug, seeking the points of symmetry in the design. I remember running down the hallway to dinner, jumping to see if I could touch the top of the kitchen doorframe. I wonder why I didn't to do any of these things when I was home. A chair upended. A man, foot placed on it, one hand raised. Glaring. Power, impotence. A woman. Afraid, defiant. Mouth open, yelling in the shadow of the man. A woman off to the side. Relaxed. She plays with something on the floor. Oblivious. A woman. Standing straight, standing tall. I crouch at her feet, wrap my arms around her legs, and look in on the scene I've created. Our house was robbed and my father made 2x4 bars and nailed them in the windows. He removed all the doorknobs on the interior doors and installed deadbolts. Before we left the house every day we locked all the doors and then locked the keys in the closet. A robber would have a hard time entering. My gaze had a hard time leaving. It seems I never smelled sun-warmed blankets after that. I never examined the pattern a sunbeam made on the floor. I never watched the squirrels running on the telephone wires. I never opened a window. I don't want to change my scene, I said. It's a part of me. It's shaped me. It's made me who I am. It was horrible. But I wouldn't be me if it didn't happen.... I'd like a hug, though. Yes, mother, father, sister! And... Where's my door? I am three. I walk down the darkened hallway. There are loud voices from behind the kitchen door. Shouting. Yellow kitchen light floods over me as I slide the door open. I slide the door open and my parents are fighting. Yelling. My father's foot comes down on my chair and breaks it. I crouch down small and squeeze the doorframe. Tears. I was not ready to let go of my past then, but I am now. I want to let it go. I want to walk down the darkened hallway, hear voices from behind the door. I want the door to slide open and morning sunlight to spill out. I want to hear laughter (I don't remember when my parents last laughed. Controlled, always.) I want to see my parents sitting at the kitchen table talking, drinking coffee. I want to sit on my chair and hold the hand of my doorway friend.