P.S. I just re-read an old post from 2007, "Breathe, Pull, Kick" or something, and no -- I still haven't gotten that birthday present I was waiting for. Still waiting.

Still

waiting.

And now it's a loooong time since my last post. I really just don't get blogging. Can't I say anything I'm thinking into my paper journal? And then anything public I need to say can go on fb? Of course, I do have a little more creative freedom with the look of this page, but not much. What I really need to do (have needed to do for the past few years now) is make a new website. My last one was gorgeous, but I lost it when the ISP I made it on went under and I never redid it. Time to start over. Seriously. I keep putting it off for some reason, but I had so much fun when I first did it, I bet it would be even better now. Back then I wrote the whole thing in html, every line and tag and href -- there weren't all those programs like they have now to do it for you. And I have so much more stuff I could put into it. Time for my favorite quote:

"Man was born to live, and not to prepare to live." --Boris Pasternak

Where It Always Smells Like Saturday Morning

I just can't stand not to put this last picture in, but what words to go with it? Perhaps to explain the picture? That's funny, because I don't have an explanation yet. Maybe this is it: Flying, blue as air, twirling like the tail of the wind, spinning like the color or a wooden top, stripes point me in the direction of my own north star, my own north is not anyone else's because my compass points are my tall, tall ears. Below is navigating a round lemon cucumber of a submarine, bobbing up and down with the waves, dipping below the surface to search intermittently for angel fish unseen from above. And land is never far away, but always as close as the near tree branches, the dewy green leaves and cinnamon bark as familiar and safe as the family dog, whose smile will be as dependable as the compass of my ears for always and forever in my memories. And that explains that.

Swimming and Breathing: Pull, Kick, Breathe.

Reading and editing, sketching and coloring in the middle of the night, I'm immersed in nonstop words and pictures. Trying to stay healthy too, eat well, keep track of everything, take vitamins, do enough yoga, etc. I know it's all good, but sometimes I feel like I'm swimming underwater for miles without stopping. I have frog flippers and a special breathing apparatus so I can go for long distances without coming up for air. So determinedly I work, first in one area, then another, always trying not to forget anything for very long, hoping that one day soon all this vigilance will be rewarded with the gift I've been waiting so long to receive. Sometimes prayers are answered, sometimes it is not supposed to be. I can only ask and work and wait. And wait. And wait...

Justifying the Means

Ok, in order to have a picture, I must post a picture. (I'm learning as I go, obviously.) There. Now I've uploaded a picture. Very exciting, that was. And now that I have posted a picture, I may use it for my profile. This combination of picture + words means that I am now officially a "blogger". I blog, therefore I am? I have read that there are now millions of blogs on the web, but I think that many of them are hardly read by anyone besides the person who writes them. You can see that this is true by looking at some peoples' blogs and seeing that nobody much has commented on the posts. Maybe once in a while there will be a comment or two, but not often. And some blogs have comments on every post, sometimes dozens of comments. These are often famous people, who may be famous for their blogs, or for something else that they have done before they started their blog. Often the people who get the most comments get them because they say something worth discussing. I am not really discussing anything, so there will be no comments about this post. I am only posting so that I can practice putting a picture in, then adding words around it, and seeing what it looks like all together. Other than that, this tiny rectangle on the web only exists because I got really dejected today while reading extremely ignorant conservative blogs. So to clear my head, there is now a nice neutral space here. This is the Switzerland of blog posts. Here, it is neutral. There is no judge. ..........................................Blog just IS.