(photo by Shelley Powers) Burningbird: Borders, Boundaries, and Birds
I love this photo and what Shelley wrote about taking it.

Over on Wealth Bondage, The Happy Tutor picks up on some things I said in my previous post and starts what I would love to see become a lively discussion over there. So, go on over and stick it to someone. Or at least stick in some good sense with your two cents.

Like just about everyone else, at the end of each old year I make resolutions that, of course, I don’t keep. This year I ended the old year a step ahead of the game and began keeping my most important resolution: to go out and get a life. (Note, for those who don’t know: being responsible for the health and well-being of my 87-year old mother and living across the hall from her has been more of a drain on my energies than I expected.)
So, on the afternoon of the last day of the old year I accepted an invitation from the publisher to gather with his staff of the NY Dance Scene magazine, for which I was the editor and primary feature writer when I was still ballroom dancing. The magazine is almost finished moving from print to web format, and I think it looks great online. My name is still listed in the “About Us” section (although misspelled; I’ve got to remind them to correct that) because I condense and provide the condensed chapters of a mystery novel set at a ballroom dance weekend in the Catskills that a former SO of mine wrote (and I edited — and inspired, btw!) It’s a good story, I think, and the magazine intends to eventually get the entire (condensed version) novel online.
The point is that I got my sorry self dressed and coiffed and out of the house and thoroughly enjoyed the company of these interesting people. (I even got to explain to them about weblogging, since, although net-literate, most are not blog-literate.) I might even join some of them in a Quick Step dance class that recently started. I’m not bad at basic Quick Step, and maybe I’ll give it a shot and see how my herniated disc problem (much relieved because of Core Physical Therapy) stands up to the challenge.
After that, I made dinner for my mom and two long-time (also divorced) women friends and the three of us set out to see a movie. I should have remembered how packed the movie theaters are on New Year’s Eve. The only movie we wanted to see that wasn’t sold out was Cold Mountain, and I’m glad we were forced into that option. While I wanted to see a comedy so that I could laugh through the end of the old, battered year, instead I found myself wrapped in a stunning reminder that human life, indeed, is often more tragedy than comedy BUT — and that’s a very big BUT — it’s also what we make of it despite the pain and longing and frequent unfairness of it all. A reminder that families are both blood and brotherhood (and sisterhood, of course, but that didn’t alliterate or assonate).
Nicole Kidman’s character makes a statement that I wished I had thought to write down (one of my friends has the book and is going to try to find it for me). It has something to do with weather and rain and men making it and then complaining about it.
When I got back from the movies, I got online and discovered that The Happy Tutor had gone and really ended my year on the best note I could have hoped for. Please do go read the really neat stuff he said about me. When the great glittering Times Square ball slid down into a new year, I felt on top of the world.
Feeling a little bad about the trouncing I gave Rage Boy, I emailed him a carefully composed collage/image wishing him a Happy New Year to “the revered resident dickhead of Blogdom.”
Despite the fact that much of what Chris Locke posts leaves me completely disinterested, the fact also is that usually, somewhere in all the crap, are ideas that get me thinking. As he continues to weave himself (and his readers) into the Gordian knot of psychobabble R&D, he currently is attaching himself to some theories of “Attachment” — something I’m interested in because my daughter has read all the stuff on Attachment Parenting and is following that child-rearing approach. I wish I could make some sense of Locke’s post on the Attachment theory because I’m not sure I understand if the research shows that it’s good or bad in the long run. I suppose I could track down and read a copy of the book he recommends, The Handbook of Attachment, but I’m really not in the mood to wade through that kind of academic tome. I wish that Chris’ efforts to make sense of it all were written in a way that makes sense to less brilliant (but equally eager) minds like mine.
It’s the first day of the New Year, and I’m following through on my second resolution: to write. (Remember, the first was to go out and get a life; I suppose they’re related.) My third is not to spend any money on new clothes but to re-make the ones I have to better suit my mood and lifestyle. (I LOVE clothes — colors, textures, lines; to me they’re wearable art.)
That’s what I’m off to start doing now, after I remove all the odds and ends of clothes that are piled on top of my dusty sewing machine.
Happy New Year, everyone of my blood and brotherhood (and sisterhood, but that doesn’t alliterate or assonate. Heh.)