This is BF, hijacking this journal one final time. It is with heavy heart that I report Anna has passed away. We lost her to cancer early Tuesday morning, Oct 26, 2010. Her end was easy and that is a small comfort. As you might have expected, her spirits had remained so strong and positive right to the last.
In lieu of flowers, tributes can be made in Anna’s memory to: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center 8700 Beverly Blvd., Suite 2416, Los Angeles, CA 90048
Phone number: 323-866-7763 or 877-427-2443 (Toll Free)
Fill your heart with love today Don't play the game of time Things that happened in the past Only happened in your Mind Only in your Mind-Forget your Mind And you'll be free-yea' The writing's on the wall Free-yea'. And you can know it all If you choose. Just remember Lovers never lose 'Cause they are Free of thoughts unpure [sic] And of thoughts unkind Gentleness clears the soul Love cleans the mind And makes it Free.
Happiness is happening The dragons have been bled Gentleness is everywhere Fear's just in your Head Only in your Head Fear is in your Head Only in your Head So Forget your Head And you'll be free The writing's on the wall Free-yea'. And you can know it all If you choose. Just remember Lovers never lose 'Cause they are free of thoughts unpure And of thoughts unkind Gentleness clears the soul Love cleans the mind And makes it Free!!
ANSWERED IN A HEARTBEAT - AND THAT IS THE SECOND SONG:
You're a voice on the street You're the faces that I meet All day my life is keeping time time with your heartbeat time with your heartbeat every day.
It's no use to run and hide You'll be running running running By my side All day my life Is keeping time Time with your heartbeat Time with your heartbeat every day.
Like children we have laughed and played the game you and me But have you seen me cry? Once I believe I saw you dying yet you still remain To me the same mystery Only closer Much closer To my heart And so you see I couldn't let you Leave me be All day my life is keeping time Time with your heartbeat Time with your heartbeat every day
All day my life...ahhh... is keeping time time with your heartbeat time with your heartbeat every day.
my earliest memory is of being on a baby blanket on the floor. My grand mother is sitting on the sofa watching me, terrified that I will cry when my mother leaves. I don't know what the big deal is because I knew she was going out since my parents had been talking about it since last night. I watch her back out of the room saying bye bye to me encouragingly, also terrified that I am going to cry. What is wrong with these people? After she is gone, I decide to turn myself over, which is a big operation, and a clue to how small I must really have been - if turning myself over is a big deal. When I turned myself over, I landed crunching my face, so I start to fuss and conveniently, grandmother comes over and straightens me out.
Impossible to name one singer for all time... tastes change as styles change - Caruso? Fanny Brice? Eddie Cantor? Sinatra? Elvis? Dylan? Streisand? Celine Dion? Jello Biafra? Michel Buble? The more I list the more a choice seems short sighted. Sorry. No such thing.
BOTH please! I am a total shoe-aholic and have more than sixty pairs of boots and shoes. I don't like boots more than shoes or vice versa. I LOVE both. I do not care for flip flops, that's my only preference or peeve. They don't have enough support for me to walk in them, I find the bit btw the toes annoying, and I don't have cute little shapely feet that suit the wearing of bare sandals. Other than that, shoes, boots, YES.
Another LJ Post So, yet another of my friends "moved" his blog to a different interface. He is cross-posting to LJ, but it's no longer the same. This is the upshot of a comment I just left for him, scrolling back to find the last actual LJ post he made...
I wanted to express to you that I'm loath to comment when I see a pile of instructions telling me to log in somewhere else and comment using an open ID...
So, the new plan may mean no more comments from little ole me...
I wonder if anyone else is similarly disaffected or if everyone else is happily flexible to adapt.
I also wanted to comment on travel coincidences. They've definitely always happened to me... like one time finding some long-lost and favourite best friends on the same flight with me and we actually smoked a joint together in the back of the plane and got the whole cabin stoned. This was back when people could still smoke on planes. One of the stews gave us a big lecture but at the same time thought what we'd done was really ballsy and funny. I think even the pilots benefited with a contact high.
Anyhow, I RSS several people's blogs - people that started out with an LJ but are no longer making actual LJ posts. The thing I've found consistent is that this makes them into something else, and invariably this transforms their status from being 'people I knew on LJ' into simply becoming blogs I read, rather than people I am in touch with. A subtle but important difference. There's less intimacy, less camaraderie, less interaction possible. It's not the same to me.
In at least two cases, these people are active on facebook so I interact with them on FB and read their blogs but don't participate with the blogs any more, and in another case I still have the friendship on FB, but the person changed the server of their blog I was RSSing on LJ and I didn't even know, and only vaguely noticed they were no longer (from my POV) making blog posts. Turned out they were, but from a new vantage, which I have not bothered to RSS, her FB postings proving adequate.
I think what stops me is the act of having to log into some other interface some different way to make comments. It's not the same as reading a bunch of comments on a post and getting into the middle of a discussion (as often happened with your posts) and now, even if I read your posts, I don't have visibility on the comments, which takes away a valuable and tangible element.
This is important to me.
I liked reading his posts and seeing that there were say, 6 comments and clicking to read the comments before weighing in with my own. I can still read his posts, the the LJ interactivity with his other mates no longer applies, so an element of what made his journal interesting is diminished.
Another friend still posts on LJ, but became much more active posting on another blog. Since this is someone whose writings and POV are important to me, I RSSed his new blog... for a while. I deleted the feed soon after subscribing to it, because i soon discovered that while I still valued my friend's writings, I could only RSS the whole blog, which included the rantings and ramblings of the rest of their gang, some of whom I found myself profoundly disinterested in. Worse still, they all post and then post comments back and forth to one another, which meant that I was having to wade through a whole load of rubbish I found worse than uninteresting. It was easiest just to drop the feed. I'll live without my friend's writings, so be it.
Meanwhile, LJ activity continues to wane. There are still some active souls, and I've added a few new people recently, but it's a ghost town compared to the old days, and I think in the comment I block-quoted here, I've articulated what is different (and for me better) about LJ compared to 'blogs'.
A long time ago LJ wasn't connected to Russia. It is totally fine that we are now, but there's some stuff I am not sure if anyone explained to you.
Over the years LJ users developed a sort of unwritten code of behavior. One issue was that LJ was, and is kind of a primitive social interface in that there's no protection against people adding you to their friend stream out of the blue. It's complicated.
We have the ability to add journals that interest us. They call it 'friending' but what we're doing is bookmarking the journal as one we want to read on our friends list because it is interesting.
But, LJ was a community that was more about journaling than blogging, a mild yet significant difference. Some of our journals ARE very personal. Yes, we have the choice to friend-lock our posts, but some of us choose to post fairly personal stuff in public posts. It's a very individual decision.
Since journals are sensitive space, protocol developed that became the way people operated here. One thing, was that if you find a journal you found interesting, etiquette was to either a) message in advance to ask "Do you mind if I add you?" or else add the person and then leave them a message saying something like "I just added you, hope that is OK, I found you through the vintage photos community (or etc)"
Some people feel an immediate pressure to add everyone back who adds them, other people are much more selective and only add in people who they want to invite to read their personal and friend-locked much more private postings.
So, now LJ has its Russian connection and there are a ton of new faces here, and what some of us older LJ users are finding, is that we're getting added by random Russian LJ users without comment, and then these people never comment on our posts, there's no interaction, so you have to wonder what the point is?
I am beginning to believe that the Russian users probably don't realize that the US LJ users find it 'rude' to get added without comment like this. I am further suspecting that the Russian LJ users have no idea that they're breaching this protocol... they might even think they're being friendly by adding us.
I like feedback. I want to know where you found me and why you added me. I like dialogue. I want to know who you are and what you think. Unfortunately, if your journal and profile are entirely Cyrillic and you never comment and you just added me out of the blue, there's not much for me to go on... so I don't add you guys back.... which means you're not reading very much beyond the rare random unlocked post I make (like this one) and the answers I leave unlocked for Writer's Block (which I am an avid supporter of....)
So if that's all you want, fine... but it feels a little weird and lopsided and I'd much rather know a little more about you and especially what it was about me that you found interesting.
FWIW it almost always feels very impersonal that you added me because I notice you guys are almost always following 995 people or more... so I really just don't get it.
This is not a rant, I just wanted to express my thoughts and possibly begin a dialogue with some of you. It's gotten to where the minute I get a notice that I've been added, I click on the user profile and say to myself "probably another Russian...." before your profiles even load. And I'm usually right because the English speakers almost always send a note.
Thanks for reading. Thanks even MORE if you respond. Cheers.
It's impossible for me to answer this question because it's phrased in a manner which pre-supposes that people cannot read minds.
I, however, believe that people CAN read minds.
The deal is that we're not taught that we can read minds, and like any other communication art, there are some people who are more adept at 'mind-reading' than others. Some of us are better at this naturally than others, but I believe that all of us can develop more skill in this department.
There's actually an astrological marker to indicate predisposition toward telepathy, toward the ability to be in telepathic contact, that will show up in the comparison between two birth charts.
I shared this marker with one guy, one guy who was amazing and complex and in so many ways asleep at the wheel... a guy who was insanely important to my life and also intensely frustrating for a period of several years to the point where i had to go out of my way to change my life to get myself out of being wrapped up in his life because it was so unhealthy toward mine.
We were insanely in tune with one another, and we totally had the ability to talk to each other inside our minds... and instead of reveling in this connection, he didn't understand it and it freaked him out.
There was this one night toward the end of 'our run' when my dearest friend Vanessa was visiting Montreal from Vancouver and HER very important consort was visiting her in Montreal while she was in Montreal, so Vanessa and her Rob/Bob came out to see a big concert with me and this star-crossed associate of mine. My house was a great staging area for friends to gather at before big concerts at Montreal's forum, because I lived exactly two blocks from the forum, it was an easy walk.
This time it was The Eurythmics show, and we all met up at my place before walking over to the Forum. As an aside, I remember a silly exchange I had with the baby sitter before the show. She was upstairs with me while I was getting ready and I think that guy arrived while she was with me. I think she went down and let him in at the front door. He spent a ton of time at my place (he lived very close to me as it were) so he had no problem making himself at home while I put the finishing touches on my warpaint and finery.
The baby sitter was a cute young underground maven who had somehow or another been introduced to me by a mutual friend - Darrel - as a potential baby sitter candidate.... she was from someplace like Winnipeg, she was bright, a little innocent, and perceived some sense of 'sisterhood' between us since we were both a little heavy - as in not a size two. I was about a size 14 at the time, I wasn't a tank, I was shapely as hell. I look back on pictures of me from the time and I can't believe I thought I was overweight at all. Little baby sitter was a cute little punk, still dumpy with baby fat, not morbidly obsese either, but she says to me "oh yeah, girls like us shouldn't go after guys like that, we'll only get our hearts broken"... and when pressed for a meaning, it appears she was thinking that he was too cute to date a fat chick.
Um, excuse me. No, that wasn't it, it was a lot more complex.
Anyhow, we weren't exactly dating, but we had become very involved in each other's lives for a period of more than two years that was a very hard time in my life, probably the worst for my sense of security and self-esteem ever, and in the end I had to make a dramatic break from being trapped in the relationship with him, because it was killing me. We went to all parties together, shows, movies, events, and so forth, we ate dinner together, shopped together, hung out and watched TV together, and took care of one another if one or the other of us got sick. People thought of us as a couple and invitations were always extended to both of us, we went everywhere together - but officially, we were not dating.
And he was such an idiot, because besides our being such an incredibly good match for one another, we had this amazing gift of almost perfect telepathy between us.
On the night of that Eurythmics show, Vanessa and Rob arrived and we socialized for a bit before wafting out into the balmy summer night together and walking over to the Forum. James (OK dammit it's just too hard to tell the story without using his name) was in host-mode and being affable and courteous and very charming with my friends. He and I appeared to be the close couple we always appeared to be in front of others (it used to really confuse people... everyone thought we were a couple, everyone thought we were "going out"... whatever that means... but officially we weren't...) and the four of us wandered over to the show like nothing was amiss.
The forum was a hockey arena, at that time still home ice for the Montreal Canadiens, so seating was steep. We had good seats, but the rows were steep and once we were ensconsed in our seats, attention was front and forward to the stage. Annie Lennox came out and opened the show, and the four of us were sitting up there grooving on the band.... but during this same time period, our telephathic channel opened up and James and I were 'talking' in our minds.
We were sitting side by side. We weren't making eye contact, we weren't SPEAKING, but during the course of this event, we fell into a disagreement with one another entirely on a telepathic level. It became an argument, and the whole argument erupted wordlessly, with nary a glance between us, even as we grooved together on the show.
At the time what was going on between us was that James had to deal or not deal with the connection that existed between us. He had to shit or get off the pot, as the rather crass saying so aptly defines the waterloo he had to resolve. It was close to the point where I had to draw a line in the sand, but I haed not yet the courage to put my foot down. Things were coming to a head between us and this night was perhaps an important turning point.
During the show, when the telephathic connection between us was wide open, as was often the case, we became consciously aware of our presence on that special level. On a mundane level it was nice. For instance if he was thirsty I'd bring him a drink when I was on my way back from the kitchen - I wouldn't need to call out "You want anything?", I'd just know. Or when I'd been on a business trip, the minute I'd shut my front door and put down my bags the phone would ring and it'd be James saying "Hey, you're home, how'd it go?" and this ease of connection was normal between us and it felt easy, natural and appropriate to me.
However, James didn't get it, and it freaked him out. That night at the show, were sitting there rockin' to the groove, and I was feeling happily connected with him, but when he felt me in his head, he felt like it was something unnatural and intrusive - invasive and intentional on my part. The argument we got into there in the forum during that Eurythmics show was us arguing this point. My belief that this open connection between us was a special gift to be cherished between us, vs. his feeling like this was some insane invasive intrusion on my part.
I was saying dude, this is just the way it is between us, it's a gift, I'm not "DOING" anything, we're just here together... and he was aggravated by this, and annoyed about it. He didn't appreciate this as a gift, and he was 'blaming' me for it in a way that just made me laugh. So, we were dealing, this was the big showdown in a sense, but it was happening without any visual cue anyone else could see.
After the show the four of us stood up to exit the forum and James was visibly edgy and snippy with me. Vanessa fell in with me, the two of us walking together, and she asked me "What happened, did you guys have a fight?" and all I could say was "yeah, kinda."
James excused himself and took off after the show instead of coming back up to my place with my friends, and it was confusing to Vanessa and Rob because no one had SEEN us fall into a state of disagreement, but it was clear to everyone present that something had happened. Shortly after I did break off my friendship with James, because it was realy not good for me to remain in it. I broke it off but we've stayed in touch and are friends to this very day. He's never had a successful serious long-term relationship with any other girl. There have been some affairs yes - even one with a friend of mine, yes - but as of this date he is going through life alone, as a bachelor.
Not too long ago he went through a really tough time while his father went through a long and painful final illness, and James often called me to languish on the phone with me and talk through what he was going through. It was an intense time for him and while I'm sure he talked to others as well, I felt like I was 'the one' he needed more than anyone else.
I got over it, I moved on and I'm content to let it go and say 'his loss' in regard to the relationship we actually never had, and I'm certainly happy this left me free to eventually meet honeybee as things turned out, but this story begged repeating today based on the writers block being about how relationships woould be if people had telephathic connection... because it does exist and it's pretty fricken awesome when it does.
I feel VERY amused because you mean CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, not "corporeal" (I would presume) so clearly you didn't do any research on this topic before posting the question.
Can we get some QC on Writer's Block please? Spell check?
Sorry. To be serious though, I wholly do not approve. What I have learned is that there are better ways to reprimand or drive home a point and that pain is not the right way to go... I once spoke up to address a mother who was spanking her children in a department store ladies room and she gave me back an aggressive earful, but I do not regret my stepping in because I felt that she was wrong, it's EVERYONE's business if we see a child being abused.
I unfriended a young woman here on LJ because she would notate casually in her journal about how the grandmother had 'tanned the hide' of her child etc... and I just couldn't stand reading about it. The difference here is that while I had a right to speak up when a woman was beating a child in my presence in that public washroom, I do not feel that anyone has the same right IRT what is written in a journal, so it was best that i just unfriended her.
Every lesson I ever learned was through observation, logic, principles of deductive reasoning, life experience... and so forth. There isn't a single thing I ever learned because someone smacked my butt. IT JUST DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.
I learned because people showed me through words and actions. I never learned because someone caused me pain. There's never been a lesson at the end of a paddle.
At one time I thought that the equation was supposed to be something like "I don't want to get hit, so I won't do X, because whenever I do, I get hit." But children don't naturally use preventative logic, and there's no logic in do right, no hit... vs. do the bad thing and get hit.
I don't have just one single favorite childhood memory because I remember so very many things...
-- I remember the day we went to the school for an interview for them to meet me. I was only three but my parents felt certain I was ready for kindergarten. In the kindergarten room was a sectioned off play area that included a small pretend stove and fridge, and small kitchen stuff like pots and pans, a whisk, and so on. I was delighted and grabbed a pot and whisk. The teacher (who wound up being my teacher for Kindergarten and grade one and then again in grade four) asked me what I was doing and I said I was making her an omelet.
-- Later on when I went to the school, by the time I was in first or second grade we had lunch in a dining room. Decorum was maintained with an iron fist, and one time I was sent out of the dining room for excessive talking. Everyone was seated at formal dining tables with white tablecloths, and I thought if I wriggled out of the dining room by slithering out on the floor lying on my belly, that perhaps people would not see me.
Regret to say I never lived that down.
-- Another time in Sunday School I had to blow my nose terribly and had no tissues with me. The girl sitting next to me was wearing a Sunday School frock with poofy organza puffed sleeves and big ruffles... so I leaned over and blew my nose on ner shoulder. I did do this.
-- We had a finished semi-basement that had windows up high on the basement floor walls. I was sleeping in a big girl bed then, but my crib was dismantled down there. I used to love to take the crib bar side sections and lay them up against the wall and use them as a ladder to crawl out those windows into the back garden, pretending I was a groundhog. I was SO not allowed to do that for some reason. But it was a favorite game.
-- In general I was afraid of the basement, I believed a furnace monster lived down there.
-- Before I was in school, my mother used to take me to the park every day. The park nearest our house had no playground area with swings etc, but it was still fun to hang out there. One time there was a bat clinging to a tree and a bunch of adults were trying to push it with a stick. They let me get in close to look at him, and he looked sleepy and afraid.
-- Another time, I had to 'go' and it was urgent so my mother suggested I go discreetly in a remote corner of the park. She really regretted this suggestion because after that I ALWAYS wanted to go in the park, just becuase it had been an option that one other time.
At the bottom of the park were steps down into a wild ravine that was like a jungle and I LOVED exploring down there, I wanted to LIVE down there.
-- OK probably one of my favorite bits about childhood was time spent at our summer cottage on a small Ontario lake about 50 miles from the city. It was an easy drive to get out there and once there, we were in another world. Whenever we arrived we would celebrate getting to the cottage by having what my father called a bullrush parade. He would bring some rushes and saturate them with BBQ starter fluid. They would be lit and we would parade around up on the street walking around with our torches.
It would usually be late when we got out to the cottage and we'd probably have been listening to a late night radio play on CBC radio (as far as I know CBC keeps the radio play tradition alive to this very day!) and if the story wasn't finished by the time we drove up to the cottage, we'd sit in the car in the dark with the map light on and thousands of moths crawling on our windshield to listen to the end of the plays... which were usually mysteries.
I remember us being on the edge of our seats listening to an adaptation of 'The Two Bottles of Relish' one summer night. I just googled it:
At the cottage, my favorite thing to do was run to the water's edge at dawn and watch all the frogs doing their thing. There were green and brown leopard frogs, great big bullfrogs, and others. They fascinated me, I obsessed over those frogs. At night, we would watch fireflies and listen for owls and the plaintive cries of the whippoorwill. I have posted about the cottage before; not too long ago I found a picture of our lake online - and that really got me going about it.
My aunt worked in the costume department of CBC television and I LOVED going to work with her, it was one of my favorite things EVER. There was a great costume storage room that was full of every kind of crazy costume you could imagine, and they would always let me raid the scrap boxes for nifty scraps of glamorous materials 'to make doll clothes from' - I might still have some CBC scraps!
I also totally loved my yearly trip to the CNE. I would save mad money all year round for that yearly trip to the 'Ex' - I loved everything about it, the exhibits, the food, and of course the midway. OK that's all I can think of right now :)
I'd declare a national day of party, wear multi-colored clothing, have a giant rave tent erected in front of the white house and give everyone free money.
