Sometimes you just have to go in your room.

Close your door.

And dance.

Sway in the gentle light from a lamp in the corner.

And in the motion try and find something nice to grab hold of when maybe your night hasn't had the best of endings.

It doesn't matter if there's music playing or not, just keep dancing.

One foot to another and now a turn, then a step.

And now lift your arms till you can grab hold of peaceful dreams.

At the beginning of a long day.

Here I sit, at the top of the hill, in my little cart, waiting for the push over the top and the careening journey down the other side.

Rollercoasters have safety devices -- I'm not sure that this day does.

Here's to the unknown. The unexpected. The untried.

Here's to going over the top.

Hoping for snow and old people.

It is snowing -- that is most assuredly not the answer.

I would give my eye teeth for a fried green tomato.

I'm a completely hopeless romantic in case you didn't know. Mmm, how I love the drawing rooms of Moscow and St. Petersburg, circa mid 19th century. Which is exactly where I've spent most of today. I'm completely head over heals for Leo Tolstoy.

And so back again, to swishing silk skirts, and aristocratic notions. I've left my friends, the Rostov's, in the midst of a name day party, and it would be rude to stay away so long.

Au revoir

Sweet Friday, I could kiss you. You make me so boundlessly happy, Friday.

A brief respite in this moment. And then one more hour apart from you, my cutesy-wootsie Friday-day, as I bustle busily in the crazy Adelante newsroom.

But after, Friday, then you and I can be together dabbling our toes in the weekend.

Until of course, 6:00 p.m. tomorrow -- which is apparently the only time that a certain subject of a story can make tortillas.

Don't journalists get weekends too?

Think not of that, dear Friday, let us only be in this moment held in sweet embrace.

Words to think on...
Tonight someone told me, "Tomorrow, when you wake up, the people who love you will still be loving you."

And it's true. So for those of you who read this, know that it's very much the case.

Tomorrow, when I wake up, I will still be loving you.

The best thing I saw today...
Professor Strathman on the end of a leash, walking his dog.

The best thing I said today...
"Julio..." in high pitched voice when I needed someone to speak Spanish to the person I had called.

The best thing I heard today...
"So if they say they don't want an accuracy check do we still have to do an accuracy check?" from the same kid who asked in our orientation, "So if we know that we got their quotes exactly right, and we've got it on our recorder, do we still have to do an accuracy check?"

Hmm, do we see a Stephen Glass in the making?

What a day
Today, people treated me like a real person, with an actual job.

I pitched two stories and sold them both.

I don't have a professor. I've got an editor.

Weird.

Thankful...
Yes, I am. Very thankful indeed.

What I learned...
Today I was reminded of two things:
1. There are some pretty ridiculous people out there. People who have skewed priorities, and perceptions. People unwilling to do the right thing unless it is specifically written out for them in their handbook of how-to-be-a-ridiculous-person. People unwiling to choose what is better over what is obvious or immediate.

2. There are also some pretty amazing people out there. People who will do the right thing regardless of personal consequences. People of integrity and character. People with enough vision to discard the immediate or the obvious or the apparent for what is better.

To the folks in number 1: Develop a concept of how to be decent human beings.

To the folks in number 2: Thanks.

Tomorrow I'm going back to Missouri. Leaving this place so familiar to me, so comfortable to me. And there's always a bit of melancholy in that.

You've been to those houses where every color is coordinated to match, right down to the color of the dog and cat? A house perhaps where there was a theme in the decoration?

Yeah, my family's home is not like that. Never has been.

We have a kerosene lamp sitting next to a painted coconut on our mantle. Mardi Gras beads hanging off the edge of a quilt rack that my Great-Grandmother’s quilt hangs on. The figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza hanging on our kitchen wall. A cigar store Indian in one of the corners.

I like to think that it’s a special place. And I love every crazy thing in this house, and I love that there is no uniting theme, and that nothing matches, and that when a person comes to the house for the first time there is a usually something that makes them say, “Oh, how interesting.”

But what I really love is what makes all of those things so special. The fact that some bit of my family is wrapped up in the painted coconut, and the cigar store Indian, and all the other quirky things in our house.

My folks are pretty good people when you come right down to it.

When I leave I take these things with me…

Waking up and hearing my parents reading the news-paper over coffee. Being under the covers and hearing them laugh in the kitchen.

Reading aloud. There was the year we read Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” – “By the shores of Gitchee-Goomi, by the big sea shining waters…” And then the year when Dad went on a “Henry V” kick – “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today who fights with me shall be my brother…”
And the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Stuart Little, and Edgar Allan Poe. My passion for literature begins with sitting in my parent’s lap and hearing them read all these things, and so many more. Milne, and Beatrix Potter, and Silverstein.

Beating the pots and pans. Walk this way. Woof-woof. Cold biscuits. Argentine art museums.

All these things mean something very dear to me.

And I think of them when I am far away from home.

Just enough

“Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.”
“What?”
“He lived happily ever after.” ~ Willy Wonka to Charlie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

It’s a great scene. Having broken through the great glass ceiling, they find themselves in a place completely new, with an unexpected perspective. Wonka essentially hands Charlie the world. Wonka, the unpredictable, sometimes volatile, but always generous candy maker gives Charlie the opportunity to realize not only his conscious dreams, but those that he’s too scared to admit he has, even to himself.

Langston Hughes asked about the fate of dreams deferred. My initial encounter with his poem, with its vivid and rather unpleasant imagery, left me with my nose upturned.

It was not until my senior year of high-school, when life altering decisions seemed to loom and change and mock every other week, that I saw myself in Hughes’ words.

I lay awake nights. Reciting the poem. Straining my body to hear an answer, any answer. At 17 years old, I had several dreams and sensed that I would choose to defer them all. And in the dark I would begin to sweat. Because no matter what answer I imagined they were all the same. These refused dreams issued a hot and sickeningly sweet smell that clung cloyingly to any image of life I conjured for myself. How they laughed, these dreams, a shrill, wildly mocking cry. A cry without words, only a whistling. A derisive whistling past my ears. For dreams do not give way quietly, they burn themselves upon your heart and mind; they lurk always in shadow and in light, and they are relentless in their demands. Dreams die neither peacefully nor heroically, and above all, they are never put away willingly.

As a freshman in college, I grew resigned. I tried to embrace what I felt was expected for me. I sought stability and found it in resignation to what I felt was the status quo.

And in 2003, at 19 years old, I told the status quo to shove off.

It came quietly, without fanfare or promise. At its beginning, 2003 seemed only the next step in time’s progression. And I had no expectations of it when it began, for I had not yet learned how to expect great things.

I will remember 2003 as the year in which I came into my own. The year I learned how to stand, took the first faltering steps at living abundantly. The year in which I, to quote C.S. Lewis, “became myself, only more so.”

In 2003 I walked near dreams that I had been too scared to speak of even within my heart.

I walked near presses, great beasts of machines that demand attention when they begin to place words upon paper. And I laughed, because for the first time I thought that perhaps, someday, those words would be mine.

In 2003 I tried out for a jazz band. And I won a chair in a group of musicians that are keen to play. Hot to play. A band of brothers bound together in musical freedom and expression. And I laughed, because here was a dream, whose voice had grown weak, come back to live with me.

In 2003 I found the friends whom I have sought all my life. What more can I say about them? They are the blessings that cause my cup to run over. Every day.

Last year I found myself faced once more with a choice to pursue dreams, or to put them aside, to ignore them, and live a life where always present would be the question, “what if?” What if I had chosen otherwise? What then?

2003 was not a year without challenges.

In fact it was the most challenging year I’ve ever had. There were times when it all seemed so desperately tenuous, when it seemed that no sooner was one battle faced, than another presented itself.

There were tears, and hurts. There was weariness. There were moments when I felt like I was boxing at air and shadows. But there were friends, strong and tender, who reached out patient hands and caught my tears.

I remember one conversation I had last year, when a friend looked me in the eyes, and said, “Sara, your friends want to help you in this, but we can’t help you unless you want to take that first step.” And having no other choice really, I decided to take a small, tentative stride. True to their word, my friends came to my aid. It was I who moved forward, but it was they who kept me from stepping back.

What happens to dreams deferred?

Sometimes, particularly when your friends lend a bit of their courageous spirit, and when you take a step, however small, when there is just enough hope, and just enough starlight, and just enough laughter, when there is just the right amount of love…

When all of those things are there, then sometimes, if you are fortunate, you find the dreams you tried to lose, the dreams you thought were lost.

It’s a great scene, really. When, having broken through great barriers, you find yourself in a glass elevator with a completely new perspective and a candy factory in your hands.

What happened to the person who suddenly got everything they’d always wanted?

She started to live happily ever after.

Good life choices...
I feel like I need to start making better life choices, one of them being to not be a chronic insomniac. Seriously people, it's 3:04 a.m. and I am awake. What's the deal?

Speaking of what's the deal?
I had a friend in high-school, named Philip, who was one of the funniest people I've ever met. And because of him, "what's the deal?" became a big catch phrase for our group of friends, and I dare say much of the Chapel orchestra (which incidentally, was mostly our group of friends.)
Philip would stand up and say, sounding rather like Bulwinkle the moose, "Grape-nuts. You open the box, no grapes, no nuts. What's the deal?"

Why did we find this so immensely funny?

Really, I don't want an answer to this question. This same group of people could be reduced to hysterical giggles simply by saying "Smints" in a rather obnoxious British accent.

Compelling Television
No, I don't think there is any. Although if anyone happened to see the clip of the Crocodile Hunter trying to feed his baby to a croc, that was pretty entertaining.

Serious
Does sprinkling sugar heavily on your bowl of Cheerios negate the healthy effects of said cheerios?

No Phat Here
My birth place carries, for the second year in a row, the crown of fatty-Mcfatfat-fattest city.

Let's also note that there is not one Southern city in the top-ten fittest cities (I don't count Virginia Beach as Southern). But the South does come in with four cities in the fat top-ten. Why?

I propose that this is due to the fact that one of the secrets of Southern cooking is to:
a) wrap whatever you're cooking in bacon
b) cook whatever you're cooking in bacon grease
c) wrap whatever you're cooking in bacon and then fry it in bacon grease

Sneaky
I'm currently sleeping in the guest bedroom which is next to the kitchen. This also happens to be where I'm typing this blog-entry from. My dad has just gotten up to forage for snack items and if he figures out that it's 4:00 a.m. and I'm awake, then I'm in trouble. I'm typing with my inside voice, and if he starts to come towards my room, I'm so throwing the laptop and myself under the covers -- this totally used to work with books I was reading while I was supposed to be asleep.

Never mind
I win, he's gone back to bed, and my covert blogging continues.

Good life choices
Well, I reckon I'll quit while I'm ahead -- you know, there's a funny joke about that...

I should make more good life choices, not just about sleeping, but just in general. It's a move I would support. Or at least more informed choices -- that might work too.

And finally
In reference to my life choices of late, I've mostly heard my friends telling me to
a) not be crazy
b) not be crazy
c) not be crazy

Slightly perplexing -- I beginning to be concerned that they are secretly planning an intervention in which they commit me to an asylum.

I appreciate the sentiments, but really, what's wrong with crazy? Please -- don't let them cart me away to Bedlam.

Looking for Eileen
Last night I found myself awake at 3:00 a.m. I resisted the urge to blog mindlessly and instead turned on the radio.

KRLD News 1080.

I tuned into the some show called, "All Across Texas," or something like that. The host presented trivia questions, and then people called in to answer them, and present other trivia questions in what amounted to a rather dreary cycle of prattle.

The most intriguing person was a gal named Eileen. She was clearly an older woman, probably in her 60's or early 70's and the sense that she just wanted someone to listen to her was almost tangible. She kept the host on the line, deftly avoiding several moves on his part to get on with his show. She talked about how her father was a civilian survivor of Pearl Harbor, how her family had lived in San Diego during WWII -- how you had to keep dark sheets over the windows during a blackout. She talked about how a teacher she had brought a turbine engine to school for the kids to take apart.
She shared that a 12 year old kiddo had recently told her that H.O.M.E.S. was an easy way to remember all of the Great Lakes.

Her voice crackled with age. It quavered at times, it shook, not with depression or a sense of desperation, just a sense of several years gone by. She laughed quickly and easily, she had opinions on several different subjects.
And the host didn't seem to realize that he had a pretty interesting woman on the line. He pandered to her, his responses peppered with, "Well, all right," and "I'll be." His voice growing shorter and quicker. I could imagine his finger hovering anxiously over buttons that would move the show forward.

Eileen said good-night, and we moved on to callers in Farmer's Branch, and Euless, and Lubbock. None quite so interesting, or at ease as Eileen sounded. The host continued to fumble, and be generally uninteresting. Just as with Eileen, he failed to engage any of the subsequent callers in a conversation.

The host had a chance. A chance to talk to the kind of people who call a radio program in early morning hours to answer questions like, who played the wolfman in the classic movie, "The Wolfman?" (It's Lon Chaney Jr., in case you were wondering, and yes, I knew this before the lounge singer from Lubbock called in with the answer.) The host missed a chance to engage these people in a dialogue, to find out what made them tick, what made them unique. To find out what experiences they had, or wanted, or dreamed about.

Eileen wouldn't have. She would've talked to Don in Euless and the Paul in Farmer's Branch as though they were sitting on her front porch. On her front porch, over a cup of coffee, they would have talked and listened and laughed with one another. Eileen wouldn't have rushed on to the next caller, and the next inane bit of trivia.
Eileen knew it wasn’t about the trivia or the answers. It was about people who at 3:00 in the morning, on a warm Texas night, found themselves listening to an AM radio station out of Dallas.

Eileen realized that the urge to be known and heard is a fundamental aspect of humanity. It’s in our nature, the desire to connect with one another. To find other people who have grieved, and reveled, and wept, and lived. Somehow connecting with others reminds us that life really does happen. That life really isn’t some fantastic dream that will rush away and leave us questioning our existence.

It’s rather reassuring, at 3:00 in the morning, when it is dark and quiet and still., and you are unsure of where reality ends and fantasy begins to hear someone like Eileen. Talking and laughing. Simply being.