Happy Thanksgiving.

If you have been reading these entries, you know I love to whine, and I love to play with HTML code, and I love (too much) the presentation of the page.  One of the best graphics apps is Paint Shop Pro®--if you're poor (or cheap) and your company is not buying it for you.  My problem is that I avoid the meat of this practice--journal writing--by playing with images; finding them, cropping, tweaking, lightening, sharpening, filtering... and on, ad infinitum.  I have sat here a whole day and not written a word while I prepare an image to go with some long forgotten wisp of inspiration that came to me just as I sat to start writing.  

Anyplace but here.

I am obsessed.  I have my computer on all the time, and online most of that time.  It lulls me to sleep with the voice of Garrison Keillor, and at exactly 8:00 AM every day it wakes me up with Alanis Morissette's Thank U.  It is my personal companion, my PC.  I sleep with it, eat with it, play with it, and yes, I even cry with it.

I am on Hazelden's e-mail list, and one day on it, an author was quoted saying something like, people are lonely because they build walls, not bridges.  The drill hit a nerve.  That's me.  But I want to explain to you my reasons for the wall building, justify it with details of all the tragedies in my past, and wallow in my fear on and on, ad infinitum again.  But the reasons don't matter much.  It may help to look back once in a while, but even that is not necessary.  That was then, this is now.  The fact remains, "I got these here walls..."

All is now.  Nothing exists elsewhere.  All opportunities and tragedies are within this moment.  None behind me matter, though I manage to drag most of them with me.  (And I always thought I liked to travel light.) I have maintained isolation since childhood better than most monks maintain celibacy.  I like to think it has been a worthwhile practice, and that is what holds me back.

I remember panicking once; I don't recall the cause or the circumstances, but I remember the fear and I remember running away in sheer terror until I noticed I was safe.  The people around me were calm, the place was quiet, I think it was sunny, and it was familiar--part of my neighborhood, maybe.  It was humbling to realize how very far from reality my perceptions had strayed.  

Together, let's stay here, now.  Focus on this moment.  Not the last moment, and not the next, but this moment.  Be you, now.  I will be me, now.  We will notice lots of people being things they are not; happy, sad, hungry, sober, etc.  And it's all OK.

Be blessed, and thank u.