Hey Universe

Hey Universe,

I've been like an old white wall for the last six months. Blank but marred, scuffed up, getting by on the appearance of having once been shiny and new. Not one word to put in here or out there with you has crossed my brain.

I've been a good listener. I've always been a good listener, a good observer, a creepy starer, looking for details -- with my public relations clients, it's key differentiators. How are you different. How are you special. How do you matter.

The trajectory of my life, the whole shmegegge, is like the bastard lovechild of William Faulkner and Jackie Collins with a bit of Goodbye Columbus thrown in there for flavor. How on earth could I have nothing to write about? My own life has stunned me still. No dad, tragic and troubled family with enough heart warmth to restart a failed sun but tape and string where there should be bones.

I'm afraid one wrong word could kill them all, wipe out my tribe, so I say something crazy, then shut up, say something offensive, then shut up. Sit very still, say the crazy things to the other family I've assembled on the side who thank God thinks the great majority of what comes out of my mouth is alright.

I am very grateful, Universe, for all the good and I'm grateful for all the bad. I'm grateful for my addled brain and I'm grateful for the people I loved who died. I'm grateful to live in this incredible country where everything can go ragged and putrid and you have the opportunity to open your mouth and fight for it. I'm disgusted, today, watching the teabaggers (but thank you so much for the nom de stupide) who see an iota of their entitlement slip away and suddenly think secession is patriotic.

And here's where that crazy trajectory comes in. One of the people leading the teabag movement assaulted me years ago. Seriously, who is writing this stuff?

What I'm grateful for right at this moment:

I am grateful for the husband who is smarter than anyone else I've met yet and has the same dank humor and righteous indignation that I do, who hates hypocrisy and somehow loves sloppy strange me.

I'm grateful for my American best friend, in many ways the love of my life, the stranger whose eyes met mine across a room, who by God gets it gets it gets it.

I'm grateful for the British best friend, the keeper of our history, the earth mama philosopher, who I don't give enough to and I expect it to bite me in the ass one day.

I'm grateful for the beautiful child put in my care and I'll just say it here and spit between my fingers as I type- he is the smartest, the tallest, the wackiest, the brightest, the most incredible by far, and his mama -- your mama, Buddha -- would reach across time for him.

So hey Universe. Let the synchronicities continue. Let the nonsense pour out me. Let seekers sift through it until they find something to hang on to. Or not. Let me talk and talk and talk and not hold back for fear of what it will do to them, or me, or you, what anyone will analyze or refute or pass along.

Universe, open up, I want back in.

Guest Post: What We Put In The Ground

Today’s post is excerpted from a recent email I received from my friend E, a fantastic writer and a fantastic person. It was inspired in part by a recent entry here. While I am like a puppy faced with a truckload of bones when it comes to praise (more please, no, really, more), I am posting this with her permission mainly because I find it so touching and beautifully written. Identifying and other details have been removed. Thank you, E.

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Yesterday while stretching after a particularly strenuous run I realized that my neck, which had not been troubling me during the run, was totally aching. It came when I tried to lower my head to the ground, bending forwards, to place my hands there and ease open the muscles in the backs of my legs.

The fact is that earlier this year, I learned that the bones in my neck were not stacking up in the way that they should. Like some kind of nearly-toppling tower, they were too unsteady to do their job. To help, my neck muscles were in a state of spasm, trying to keep things upright. Good intentions, bad results. So when the pain started while I was bending over, I at least knew what it was: my neck muscles, trying, as usual, to keep my head on.

When I first got the diagnosis, I called my husband. “I can’t hold my head up,” I said. “You couldn’t invent a better condition for me at this moment.” His mother died a year ago while we sat beside her in the house that she raised him in, the house that we now live in. We lost her at the end of a period during which we watched and heard lung cancer make its way up to her neck. For the entirety of her illness and the period that followed, when I watched my husband’s heart break, I did not feel I could hold my head up at all.

Yesterday, when I tried to lower myself towards the floor of this room, in this apartment where a woman I loved very much raised two children that I love very much, one of whom I married, I realized that my neck was working too hard, working against me as I tried to place my hands on the ground.

I thought of the entry you had done about this, about why we place our hands on the ground and what it means. I thought that it is terribly important how we get to the ground. I was bending over but my neck was craning out, like a not very intelligent ostrich. I could not let it hang.

I stood up again, and did the kind of thing that I have a body memory of from being in first grade, kindergarten, having kind teachers and a rubbery little self. I rolled my spine one vertebrae at a time down and when my head wanted to turtle its way out I thought no, just let it go.

When I got to place my hands on the ground, all of me was there. My head had come along for the ride, too. I was alone in the house that we’d been fighting to bring back to life after this impossible year, and had my hands on the ground giving something back. It was quite beautiful and it was a moment that you helped to create with your writing, which was with me as I leaned over and let go.

The Email I Sent This Morning

to everyone I know. This signifies my official coming out as a God-is-Love-la-la-la-hippie to some people in my life -- I'm sure they suspected anyhow. What's written below applies to you all, too. I'm getting on the bullhorn and asking for requests.

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Hey Folks,

As you may know, I started a blog back in August 2007, called Are You There God, It's Me, Blogging (http://areyoutheregoditsmeblogging.blogspot.com/). And yes, I do have plans to get in touch with Judy Blume. You can get a good idea of what it's about from the opening entry: http://areyoutheregoditsmeblogging.blogspot.com/2007/08/question-1-universe-please-help-me.html .

The basic idea is that every day (that's in Jen time, so it's more like every so often) I ask the Universe for something, and blog the results. It's been a really interesting tool for getting me to write every day, and to consider those pesky little questions like The Meaning of Life.

I'm writing you now because frankly, I need material, and I'm also very interested in having this blog go beyond me and whether I need need the line at the bank to be short on a given day. I'd like you, or your friends, or your friends of friends, and eventually total strangers, to write in their requests for me to query the Universe on their behalf. I will repost this email as today's entry, and requests can be made to the comments section.

I don't believe I have any kind of super powers. I do have some hippie leanings toward the power of collective thought and prayer. At minimum, it will be interesting to see what happens, which is what this blog has been about from the beginning.

Thanks for your help!

Love,

Jen

Universe, make everything a Cure song.

On my way to the local diner to pick up my morning tea, I had Sarah Silverman's "The Porn Song" stuck in my head. I'm not including the link here, because I have a modicum of respect for the people who raised me, and they read this blog. I can't explain my feelings on Silverman -- she lives in a realm that metaphors fear to enter.

When I went into the diner, the Cure's "Pictures of You" was playing and it blissfully swept The Silverman out with little happy guitar brooms of melancholy.

So, Universe, can you make everything like the good song that gets the stuck song out of your head. Can we just push the crap out by something as simple as changing the channel, or walking into the place where the right one is already on?

When There Seem To Be No Answers

Universe, I humbly beg you today to please bring a peaceful and quick resolution to the violence in Kenya. It is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It is falling prey to political rivalry and ethnic hatred. In another sense, it is falling victim to blame and anger over difficult circumstances.

My dad found his soul there when he travelled through Africa in the late 70s. He worked as an assitant engineer on a research steamship. Sometimes when he docked in various places and could take leave, the ship's captain would warn him that this or that little town was a good place to go if you wanted to die. I hate to think that Kenya is now a good place to go if you want to die. I hate to think that my dad and I will not make it there together in his lifetime.

It is very frustrating to think there is nothing I can do. I wonder sometimes if this is part of the real reason environmentalism is becoming the biggest issue of our time -- the individual can actually or seemingly affect change through every day choices. It's much easier to focus on what kind of lightbulb I use than how to keep people from killing eachother.

When The Answers Do and Don't Come

I had an appointment today to talk to a specialist who works with people with intuitive abilities. (RR -- pick yourself up off the mental floor. You knew it was heading in this direction. We do not have to speak of this day again). When it was time to make the call, my phone stopped working, flashed on and off for an hour and a half and didn't power up until the appointment had been rescheduled by email.

So I guess the answer is, no answer for you, at least not yet.

When The Answers Do Come

I've been thinking today about the impossibility, often, of changing or healing the past. We do things or things are done to us that are such a rupture to our psyches that they can seemingly never be healed.

I told my friend heretofore known as the Goddess Devi (she is the daughter of a Hindu priest) about a friendship that went terribly bad. The friend and I had a screaming fight on the phone one night when he said he was certain we'd known each other in a past life. I asked what he thought had happened. He said "You killed me and I killed you. Probably with knives."

When this friendship drifted away, I felt awful I'd never been able to have closure on it. Never really been able to say I'm sorry I hurt you and I'd like to hear that you're sorry you hurt me. Instead there was gaping, endless me -- the reality is I could have, and wanted to, hear I'm sorry a thousand times and it never would have been enough. Then there was the friend, who more or less avoided all eye contact with me for the next ten years, including when he was in my house.

So I told the Goddess Devi all of this and how I felt like a failure, like I'd have to go through another lifetime or ten, or at least this one, having failed this friendship, not having ever made it whole or functional or healed enough to walk away and feel like I could throw my hands up over my head like my son so often does, yell "I did it!" and never look back. The Goddess looked at me with incredulity and a small lilt of a smile. "Of course you succeeded! Look at it this way -- you didn't kill eachother! That's enough progress for one lifetime!"

I got an answer today to a question posed in my last post from someone I never thought I'd hear from again. Someone who hurt me badly enough that I didn't want the ending to be good for him, or for me. All I can say right now, other than the ever-popular "BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR" (I asked for an answer from anyone, and boy did I get an answer from Anyone), is that I can forgive myself for not having super-human powers of healing for myself or any of the other broken animals. It's not my job to become perfect in the face of awful, or to work for anyone else to do the same.

I ask that the Universe remove my guilt. I ask that the Universe remove my shame. I ask that anyone -- and Anyone -- who was harmed, abandoned or in any way had their psyche ruptured by the person or people who loved them most -- I ask that we are all held one way or another in the palm of love, and that all of our guilt and shame be removed.

I ask that we pass that love and all the gifts we receive forward into the future. I ask that we are liberated from feeling hatred and anger about people in our pasts, the dead and thoughtless and stupid and young and uncaring, the things that can never be rectified. I ask for forgiveness from anyone I harmed. I forgive everyone who harmed me. Everyone. And Anyone.

When The Answers Don't Come

There are two problems in my life right now that I am so frustrated with I feel like I'm going insane. I've been to insane. Liked the hours, didn't care for the people. I'd rather not go back if I don't have to.

The first is that my son is having great difficulty sleeping through the night. I truly don't know what the reason is. It's probably a combination of factors as suggested by his doctor, teachers, and strangers whose childcare books sit on our bookshelves, their book jacket photos grinning at me as if the bastards actually get some sleep.

Possible reasons include: It's never been easy for him to get his bearings back after we stay overnight somewhere else; post nasal drip; nightmares (not certain of this, just a guess); very cold room; noisy heaters that attempt to heat very cold room; lack of limits-setting on our part (one more book, one more milk, one more dear friends into the breach); and who knows what else, although I'm sure I'll know very soon because everybody has an opinion, usually unwanted and often seemingly crack-addled.

The second problem is simply a difficult relationship that I would like to see improve. Enough said there.

In both cases I've been asking. And asking and asking and meditating and asking actual people and asking for guided dreams and praying and hoping and asking. And the solutions have not come. What do you do? Keep asking? Change the question? Accept defeat? Squint at the horizon so hard to try to see the tiny changes that have come that you give yourself floaters on your retenas for the rest of time?

Anyone?

Universe, Help Us Help Eachother

Two things.

One.

In the last post I mentioned being the change you want to see in the world. A friend of mine is on the verge of falling in love, and the lucky gentleman is coming to visit her. Her apartment is in an interesting state of flux. She has new sheets, but they're still in the box. Framed paintings, but they're sitting on the floor. I felt with great certainty that her home should be beautiful and finished, now. It was hard to tell her that, because I felt like it was none of my business. I offered to paint, then to put together a party where all her friends got together and finished her apartment in one day. She said it was the nicest thing ever. I said, no, it's not. It's friendship. And she said, no, it's love. So of course I'll do it. People have done these things for me, and of course I'll do these things for them. It will be wonderful. It will be unusual. It will be joyful. It will be people painting a house and putting up shelves so our friend can open the door, perhaps, to the love of her life, and be ready. And who knows what will come next as a result. It is worth mentioning that this is the same friend who has given me free office space, and put me in touch with the company that gave me my new and fabulous job. So of course I'll do it, and so happily.

Two.

I get very frustrated by Hollywood and the media (and sometimes by blogs) because it can feel like I have no control over whose personality I have to deal with every day, even though I don't know these people. If Britney Spears had keys to my apartment, I'd have my locks changed and call the cops. I'd also call her mother and delicately suggest rehab and a psych consult, because to my relatively uniformed eye, she looks like a drug addict self-medicating for any number of psychological conditions.

So now Heath Ledger is dead. Talented, young, and apparently a drug addict. That really sucks. What sucks more, and sucks every time I hear about a young and talented person injecting themselves into the hereafter, is that they died before they got the help they needed. And what sucks when I hear about musicians in their 50s who did drugs for 30 years suddenly dying of cancer or heart failure or what have you, nobody actually says, hmmm, maybe the drugs wore out your body and your ability to fight off disease.

I have great sympathy for anyone with a drug or alcohol problem, whether they are able to help themselves or not. I have deep problems with the media for publicizing the 'wacky' or 'car-wreck' behavior of people who are clearly addicts and need help. And I have deep problems with partiers and sychophants who create and maintain a sick environment, who don't do everything they can to help a known addict.

May you all be surrounded by friends who want the best for you and will do what they can to make your life the best. May you all be those kind of friends. May you help me, and may I help you.

The (Overwrought, Overdiscussed) Butterfly Effect

Since we're nearing the end of the year I thought I'd go back over these posts and see how things have transpired since I picked up the megaphone of this blog and started shouting into the dark heavens.

I took another look at post#1, Universe Please Help Me Find A Name for This Blog (with apologies to RG who made it very clear he never again wants to read about just what Judy Blume helped me find. I owe him a nice, calming post about baseball.)

What struck me most is that I had totally forgotten the incident in the bar that had led me to start blogging in the first place. Some strangers told me a couple of small stories and nudged me in another direction, one I wanted to go in but just didn't have the map to. And if it hadn't been recorded here, I'd have forgotten all about it.

A good friend of mine recently went through a bad breakup. She said a story I'd told her ten years ago about my breakup with my first love helped her, as did other stories she'd heard about breakups. This was her first real breakup with a longtime love. She said having no experience at this, all these stories prepared her, and she leaned on them, thinking about how her friends had felt and how they'd gotten though it, and it helped her follow a path that others had already walked.

I guess what I'm learning is that life is not a series of big dramatic moments. It's a constant weaving of thousands of threads. You're weaving other people's lives without even knowing it.

The love I have for Owen, my friend who died years ago, still reverberates even though he's not here to tease me about it. After a very bad recent day, when I only saw my badness and all the reasons why the couple of people I know are angry with me right now absolutely should be, and I said "I don't think I can handle this pain anymore," well, there he was. I came home from my evening class and sitting in the lobby of my building were a few true-crime novels. (One of the things I've come to love about my building is the neighbors leave books and magazines for eachother). At the top was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Owen's favorite contemporary book and one I've never read. I'm reading it. And all the things I loved about him -- his humor, his warmth, his sense of the absurd and of the good -- are still right here in the world and even in this book with its strange blend of lurid and lovable. And of course I can take any pain there is to be doled out.

Last Minute Save

At this very moment, as I was about to say I had nothing to write about, our friend who has been waiting for her green card for 6 YEARS just called to say it was in the mail as of yesterday. She is now legal.

We've been asking the universe for this for a good long time now, so many thanks to the universe for helping a very deserving person take the next steps toward a productive and wonderful life.

Strangely, my husband just called her yesterday, and there has been a long-standing tradition of her getting some news on the progress of her green card within minutes or hours of speaking to us. She says we're her good luck charm. I'm very happy to be that for someone.

The Mind Boggles, I blog (gle)

Boy, that was bad. You can tell how close I am to my English teacher roots on any given day by how bad the puns are.

Coming back to this blog after a holiday always seems to be difficult due to work pileup. We also weaned my son off the bottle this weekend, which was kind of like being snowed in during a blizzard -- you stick close to home and create fun with whatever is at hand, but really, it just kinda sucks. The countdown to this event -- stockpiling treats, tense strategy meetings over grain alcohol -- was as close to planning the survival of a war as I ever want to get. End result, however, is that the kid is bottle-free.

My mind is boggling over how much my life has changed in the last few months and particularly in relation to this blog. Some of it I can't write about quite yet and some of it is still in the planning stages. I still have to write about one of my vacation adventures but want to get a sign-off first from other people involved (attention ridiculously beautiful and wonderful newly married couple -- I mean you). In the next week I'd like to go back over what I've discussed here to date and what has come of it so far. And, once again, not like I have any pipeline to the universe that you don't, but if you think a snarky girl in Brooklyn writing your hoped-fors on her blog might help you out, I do take requests.

Til later.

The URL for God

Apparently quite a few people stumble across this site by typing "God, please help me" into a search engine. I work in the tech industry, so I can't help but wonder if this is one area where vertical search of domain names owned and operated by actual gods might be helpful. Google just sends these poor people to a snarky woman from Brooklyn, that being me.

I tried it last night myself to see what other snarky people came up, and lo and behold, God has a website. And one of the many faces of God, as I've suspected ALL ALONG, is former Smiths frontman and the godfather of shoegazing pop, if not the patent holder of teenage angst, Morrissey. You can also pray to Oprah, as most of America already does.

http://www.deargodpleasehelpme.com/

You can click on a web interface button to pray for these people. God has disabled comments. That's SO like him.

Be That Kid

I saw my twenty year old cousin at a family party this weekend. The Kid is one of the few people in my life who I would step in front of a bus for without hesitation. I know this because he is the only person I ever rode the Cyclone with at Coney Island, when he was twelve and I was alot older than twelve and I saw how disappointed he would be if he didn't get to ride in what is basically a cigar box on rails that holds you in with a piece of baker's twine. This is what passed for a roller coaster when it was first built in 1927. Six Flags be damned, there is nothing so scary as a ride that is showing every possible sign of crumbling to bits underneath you while you are in it. I'm calling him the Kid here to protect his privacy but also because he is my kid, and in my heart he will always be my kid. In reality he is a wonderful young man.

So I see the Kid at this party and he comes over to me and the first thing out of his mouth is "Jennifer, I want to be a computer animator." I nearly sing I'm so happy -- he says it with total conviction and he is studying graphic arts. After really searching searching searching for what it is he wants to do he seems to have found it. We talk for a few minutes about it and I say, "You know I don't have any friends who work in animation but I do have some friends who draw comics. In fact, my friend Jamal Igle, who draws Green Lantern or something--" and at this point the Kid's eyes have shot out of his head and are rolling around in the lawn. I forget how cool this is because I've known Jamal forever and six days. But I've just been reminded of how cool that is.

He asks how Jamal worked his way to being Green Lantern or something man (what a bad friend am I that I don't know what the man is drawing right now), and I say "You know, when he was ten years old--" and the rest of the story is Jamal wanted to draw Superman and set out to do it. He had good jobs and crappy jobs and no jobs, he spent some time drawing storyboards for the movies, he kept working and working and now here he is.

But before I could say any of this, the Kid said "That was me! I was that kid! I was that kid."

So today's request is for our childhood dreams to come rolling back into our lives and propel us into the sky, down rickety wooden rails or into zero gravity. For a wonderful lecture on how to achieve your childhood dreams (and go into zero gravity), go here (with thanks, as so often my thanks are, to R). The lecturer is Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pauch giving his last lecture, on this topic. It is quite literally his last lecture, as he is dying from pancreatic cancer. It is rather phenomenal. Take a look if you have the time.

Until later.

#26 -- More dancing and singing please

This blew my mind. Since I'm doing nothing but blowing my nose (the exhaustion has morphed into an actual cold), here's a fantastic story from the life of one of our modern masters of creating his very own reality, Peretz Bernstein --er-- Perry Farrell. From his Wikipedia entry:

"In December 2001, Farrell risked his life by flying into politically troubled Sudan with other members of Christian Solidarity International to negotiate the release of Sudanese slaves. Jane's Addiction donated their earning from one concert for the redemption of over 2300 people, who had been enslaved under terrible conditions. Once the redemption agreement was signed, Farrell started up freedom parties at various redemption sites "armed only with a boom box and his legendary voice."

"He began dancing and singing," said an associate; "I wasn't sure what would happen, but then everyone joined in. Everyone was dancing. Even the Arab retrievers joined in. It was Christians, Muslims, and Jews all dancing together. Arabs, Africans, Americans, and Europeans — all."

This says a little about why, as I get older and more decrepit and creaky, I see less and less personal value in finding the subculture that accepts you (maybe because I've done that already and admittedly, it's a good place to start because then, a, you have a community and, b, you have some empirical evidence that maybe you are not insane) and more value in this -- showing up and dancing and singing in a crowd of people who are nothing, at all, like you.

Until next time.

#25: Let Everyone Find Their Bliss

I know there's only about 20 of you reading this regularly -- and to those 20 of you, I say hail the tastemakers! I've been too tired to write anything substantive -- and by tired, for a change, I don't mean lazy. I'm literally exhausted and working to find out if there is a root cause.

Having spent nearly a week going through periods where I can't really move, I've gotten a little desperate, and a little whacked out, so I started asking the universe point blank for what I need the most last night as I lay in bed.

Please let me have my energy back so I can accomplish the things I need to.

Please let my son feel better (he has a cold)

Please let my friend K find the love of his life, cause I'm pretty sure he needs outside assistance.

Where the hell did that come from?

Next thing I know I'm asking for everything, for everyone I can think of.

And here's the thing. I've come to believe that we can all achieve what we need to in this lifetime. Joseph Campbell, Mr. Find Your Bliss himself, believed that reincarnation was a metaphor for continuing to die and be reborn in this lifetime until you achieve enlightenment.

I worry sometimes that this blog is just so much navel gazing. But I also think that as a society we have a responsibility to get ourselves in order. To be positive, to treat others with kindness, to be conscious of why we do the things we do.

So, here's what I want. For you to find your bliss, and for me to find mine. Let me know what I can do to help.

Tomorrow, I'll start to go beyond that.

Three Little Words

Still to tired to post, but if you'd like to be uplifted, amused and turned on to the commonality among us, by ABC TV of all things, take a look at this:

http://ugv.abcnews.go.com/player.aspx?id=694149

Sorry I couldn't embed it as a video.

Thanks to Ryan for the tip, and I shall now steal his description:

"ABC has a weekly summer fill in show called iCaught. It’s basically a show that tells the back story behind some of the most popular viral videos on the web. Well one of the things they do every week is something called Y3W. It stands for “Your Three Words”. They ask their viewers to record themselves showing three words that describe what they’re doing or feeling or thinking this week. They then put it together to music. It’s hard to explain but very cool to watch. Very moving."

Hope to have more to say soon.

#24: Jump into life

My darling friend RR, she who I owe the apology to for the John Donne quote (short version -- the man wasn't a feminist), has created this interesting stepladder of inspiration for me. I once gave her a card with a photograph of a girl in a pinafore jumping in the air, I think the title was Alice in Wonderland. She framed it, kept it, and eventually decided to dedicate the year of her thirtieth birthday to leaping into life. She proceeded to jump out of an airplane. And now the thing I kind of inadvertently inspired her to do continues to inspire me, as I think about ways to push myself into living more, being more, and leaping.

Or, as Laurie Anderson said, walking is just falling and then catching yourself from falling.

I love this:

www.thejumpproject.com

but the artist says in her notes that the online store included home appliances, and when I took a look it seemed like that meant coasters and clocks. Disappointing, because I would totally buy a dishwasher with a photograph of a man in Marrakech jumping so high he can touch his toes.

I've decided to spend my upcoming birthday with my husband playing hooky and museum hopping in Manhattan, then I go to my second jewelry class where I will hopefully take a blowtorch to some gold. Sounds like a perfect day. I'm excited to look at some art and grow some more ideas that I never might have had otherwise.

Until tomorrow.

#23: Let me dissipate rage

I was on the playground with my son the other day when we saw one kid jump from a great height on top of a younger kid, intentionally. When the younger kid started to wail, the older kid got right in his face and yelled "Well, it's your fault for getting in my way! It's your fault!" and ran off.

I helped the younger kid get up while a couple of other moms tried to locate his mom. The kid hurt his arm and hit his head and just wanted his mom and was wailing. The older kid came back, saw me standing next to the hurt kid, and ran off again. The mom came over and carried the little kid off. I didn't see the older kid again.

Over the course of the day, I felt angrier and angrier at this kid. One, I felt bad for my own kid, who was confused and upset by the whole thing and asked me to explain what happened about five times and acted the whole thing out a couple of times. But I was angrier about the kid telling the younger kid that his getting hurt was his own fault. The reality of that situation was the younger kid was "at fault" for being anywhere near this enraged, angry, out-of-control kid.

And I became completely infected by his anger. I became obsessed with what had happened. My own anger got wrapped around this kid and this incident, and it paralyzed me for the rest of the day.

As I was falling asleep I envisioned speaking with the kid. The first few times, I wound up screaming at him. The last couple of exchanges went kind of like this.

"So what happened out there on the playground?"

"He was in my way! It was his fault!"

"I think you were angry before that. I noticed when I walked in that you were mad someone else had teased you. But you were really really angry about that, and that was a pretty small thing. I think you've just always been angry, and I don't know why. I'm sorry I can't help you."

Annie Dillard wrote in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" a passage about how when you chop wood, you need to look at the chopping block and not at the wood you're cutting. I think people are sort of the same. When their behavior is insane, you have to look right past what you see and what they tell you, to what makes sense underneath. That's usually a wounded animal who doesn't even know where the wound came from anymore or how to fix it, so they attack you.

I'm not going to let other wounded animals turn me into a wounded animal anymore.

On another note, I'm listening right now to the podcast interview of the director of the National Institute for Play on the value of play and how it positively shapes our human character and socialization. Very interesting stuff.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/index.shtml

See you later.

Rufus Wainwright - 11:11 at UofP

11:11