Remember the other night when I was all hateful towards my country and denounced it which would have been very difficult for me and my family if this was 1952?

Yeah, nothing’s changed since then because that was last night at roughly 2:30 am.

I am a woman of no country and I pledge no allegiance except to non-violence and to the education of the mind to seek an ever greater understanding of just why humans suck so much.

One of the important things to do when recalibrating oneself to a place of greater balance is to answer dark with light.   When I heard about the attacks on Libya yesterday and looked up as many news reports as I dared to read and was blowing angry steam out my ears and shouting the walls down, I stopped and asked myself how productive it was for me to sit around blowing smoke out my ass and pounding the walls.  It’s not very productive as it turns out but it proves I’m alive and thinking and have a conscience.

After Max said:

“You know that Germany and Japan are just waiting for us to use up all of our money and weapons and when we have nothing left they’re going to get revenge on us.”

I decided to take a fierce walk.  This was slightly hampered by my old lady fat calves that are still trying not to eject themselves from my legs after I pulled them well over a month ago.  I didn’t allow this to stop me.  I stopped to stretch my calves about every ten feet and may have been walking with a slight limp but I was out there breathing the fresh crisp air and I’m not going to lie, it didn’t save the world.

While I was walking I was feeling impotent.  Yes, even people without penises may feel limp and useless.  I noticed so much trash strewn around and was reminded that I missed my Kung Fu school’s trash pick-up event.  I’m not sorry.  I don’t need to be around lots of people right now.  That’s kind of the whole point of my direction at this moment in time.  Still, it made me look sharp at those soggy dirty flattened Kool-aid boxes, candy wrappers, plastic bottles slightly crushed (which always makes me feel a little weepy right after feeling angry at the eejits who dropped them) and suddenly I was picking them up.  With my bare hands.  I’m not going to tell you I enjoyed touching such disgusting trash.  I will say that picking trash up on my fierce angry walk was therapeutic.

It might not bring peace to the world but it reaffirms that I give a shit and I can get my hands dirty to make this world a better place.

I took another walk today and the calves felt a little less jumpy and twingy.  It felt so good.  I really love walking.  I love jogging too but walking is my favorite form of exercise of all time.  It takes me outside myself and exorcises demons.  When I got home I practiced double sticks and hubud with Philip.

So here we are.  Into the morning hours again.  I am sad about the world and don’t revoke anything I said yesterday.  Still, I think I have shifted the anger a little and come right back to this place where I understand that this is just a part of being alive.

I’m going to make a very long list:

• I’m not Theda Bara which may surprise a few dimwitted people.

• Chapter 18 is a pox on my soul.

• I will never understand what induced rational human beings to explore civet glands as a source of delight for odorizing themselves.

• I miss my friend Lisa E very much and wish she’d move back to Oregon.

• My mother tried to kill me today with a curry full of giant chunks of fresh ginger.

• I miss Chelsea and Sid and Sharon too.  They’ll all be asking why the hell I don’t call them if this is true.  I’ll just pull a blanket over my head instead.

• I love Craig Ferguson except for his obsession with puppets.  I have to wonder if it’s his unholy love for puppetry that is responsible for his many marriages.

• Max got into the charter school we were hoping to get him into and I’m so excited about it.  He’s excited.  Well, he’s excited to leave his current school.  He’s mostly excited that it’s spring break.

• I read that the highest temperature ever reached in Vancouver BC was 93 point something-or-other.  Why was I not born and raised there?  I would never get a heat rash there or kill an innocent bystander just because the unbearable heat made me do it.

• I still don’t believe in Armageddon or the Apocalypse.  But I’m starting to worry about the fact that I don’t believe in these things.

• I watched the Golden Compass with Max last night and Philip told me it is an atheist fable and while I don’t quite see the atheism in the movie plot I have to admit that it thrilled me to finally have the atheists represented in fables.

• Charlie Sheen has been developing creepy hair and I’m very sorry to see it.

• I think the country I formerly belonged to is a lot like Charlie Sheen.  WINNER.  (aka: asshole)  (aka: unhinged) (aka: always a john, never a man) (aka: snorting the big delusion)

• I have been wondering lately how come I have heard so many people speak of the missionary position as being boring.  Why is it that with sex you’re either boring or you’re exciting?  I like to think of the missionary position as being classic.  It never goes out of style.

• Speaking of sex, I wrote something in Cricket and Grey that I can never say out loud without my skin crawling off my bones and I marvel at how I’ve left it in because it’s a phrase others use liberally and happily: “making love”.  One of my characters uses this expression and it caused me a lot of pain but for the sake of authenticity I left it in because I know it’s what this character would say.  Unlike me.

• When you read my books you must remember that while I may have writ them in my own blood, they are not me.

• The word “unguent” is repulsive and attractive at the same time.  It’s greasy and healing.  It reminds me of incense and also anointing.  Which reminds me of devils I don’t believe in.

• I have actually literally written in my own blood.  It’s a queer thing.  It’s distressing.  When people talk of signing their name in blood I always remember what it feels like to actually do this.

• I still have some very disturbing evidence of my open armed youth.  I have a playing card covered with blood and ripped to pieces, a page in an old sketchbook splattered with it, and somewhere (because I know I haven’t gotten rid of it) is a picture I drew with my own blood.  Do I destroy these so that my son never sees them?  I have not been able to let them go because I think my soul is trapped in these bits of blood saturated paper.

• I grapple with revealing the truth.  I grapple with my desire to protect my son from painful truths and my belief that hiding truths is more damaging than revealing them.  I couldn’t bare it if my son looked at me with fear the way so many others have.

• Or looked at me with horror, which is even worse.

• What kind of horse am I?

• I found a piece of paper with a grocery list, the times of Max’s last therapy session, and a drop of blood splattered and dried darkly on it.  I have no idea where the blood came from but seeing it felt portentous.

• Max has only gotten a couple of mild bloody noses in the last six months.  We don’t talk about it out loud for fear of the evil eye.

• Yes, we don’t  believe in God yet we’re superstitious as hell and are forever knocking on wood and not saying things that might then become untrue for having been noticed.

• My cat Pippa has a slightly crooked chin that is so adorable I can never take her seriously.

• I miss my chickens but I’m glad not to have that one extra responsibility right now.

• Sweet salad dressing offends me deeply.

• I have known my whole life that I would be responsible for my mother one day if she didn’t die young.  She’s here now.  I want her with us.  We love her here.  She’s scared for her health and her future.  I’m scared too but it isn’t for any dreary sense of obligation that I will care for her no matter what happens.  It’s just because I’ve always loved her so much it hurts and she’s always been so much more vulnerable and vibrant than me.

• Pippa loves beer.

• I love uniforms even when I don’t love what they represent.

• If I get cancer I will have to simply let it do it’s thing because I can’t afford to be treated.

• I have a beautiful signature.  I don’t say that because I’m an insufferable proud bitch.  It apparently gives lots of pleasure to clerks everywhere.  They tell me so.

• Please be kind to yourself tonight.  Tomorrow.  Now.