Shine

Time changes us.

I'm reading another gorgeous book by Mary Karr: Lit-her latest memoir. She is a prose stylist nonpareil. I'm also wrapping up Traveling with Pomegranates at home. I will read Lit on the train. Next up I want to read Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult. Yes: I judge books by their covers and the copy on the book flap and then the words within. Picture Perfect has a yellow cover that beckons one to read the book.

You need to give time time.

I could not tell you about this. I feel what I do is just something I do. It is not miraculous. I do it to be well. Health is one of my core values thus I'm committed to a positive lifestyle. I would tell anyone who does not value their health not to make themselves miserable aspiring to be a gym rat. It might seem incredulous that someone would not want to eat healthful foods or exercise however this is how I see it: it's an individual choice.

I would give others a wide latitude in how they live their life even if it's not how I would act. As a young woman I learned what I would and would not do by seeing how other people acted. Their behavior was a litmus test: the shoe polish-haired men whose breath smelled of reefer on the Ferry. The morning women in mini skirts exiting the boat to go to some kind of job [in a mini skirt? that I did not understand]. The woman on the 3 a.m. Alice Austen telling us our fortunes. The young mother cutting into her daughter with cruel words. The father telling his son to get off the floor because your dad's not a washing machine. The folk singer strumming her guitar and singing on the boat every weekend for 15 years rising up every year like a new moon to greet the passengers. The shoe shine guys yelling out "Shine!" though no one ever took them up on the offer. You could learn a lot about people by commuting on a ferry every day.

Time changes us.

I'm sure glad the pages turned on that nomad's life: traveling from Saturday to Saturday with lipstick and a $20 bill. Your version of the world could fit into your purse when you are young. The Coerrs song about being so young resonated with me and I would play their Live In Dublin CD often when I moved to my first apartment.

Now: I will scan my CDs and see which ones I can donate to the Salvation Army along with the clothes and the housewares.

Do not be afraid to leave your old life behind: the new one is an empty bucket you can fill with hope and a thousand dazzling memories to carry yourself through.

Always dream big. I dream a world without stigma which I know is an impossible goal. A friend told me once: "So maybe your purpose here in this lifetime is to fight stigma."

Bono in a song on the U2 album The Dream Come True proclaims that all it takes is "three chords and the truth." I wrote about this in a blog entry here a couple of years ago.

You could log onto http://www.schizoaffectiveartist.com/ to read the blog of a woman who posted comments to JM. BlogSpot used to have a feature where it would stream the URLs of its blogs at the moment they were updated so that you could click on them and read whatever tickled your fancy. Where has that feature gone?

Alas: I bought the table top easel and received no confirmation yet so I'm not sure the order went through. Last night I was twitchy from boredom and told myself: "Do it-order the easel- or you'll just procrastinate again." So the purchase is in some kind of cyber limbo.

My article "The Dating Game" appears in the Fall 2009 New York City Voices advocacy journal that I only received in my mailbox today. It lists my Top 10 Tips for a First Date.

Will write an article about turning 45 for the winter 2010 issue. Most people write about turning 40 or 50 yet 45 is significant in its own way.

The time when I was so young is gone.

All I have is today. That is all any of us have.

Enjoy.