Didn't Know How it Would Feel

I didn't know how it would feel to have a book that I wrote in my hands. Reading and re-reading my favorite (and not so favorite) sections. It was a lot of work, I think it's pretty good.

It's interesting that I received it on Obama's first full day as President. This book about community organizing; a community organizer as President.

Somehow this clear, compassionate, smart self of mine overcame my little self with her self-doubts, anxiety, anger, full of foibles. And that's the message of the book too.

I only hope some people will actually read it; it could actually educate and inspire.

I'm thinking of my father today, gone many years now. I think he would have been really proud. I read a book about Cesar Chavez that was on his book shelf for a junior high book report; he had a picture of Kennedy in the living room. My father, who grew up poor in the South, who wanted something different from life. Wish I could call him on the phone today.

One never knows what the mysterious field of emotions will yield. Amazing.

Food=Life

I step into the taxi at Louis Armstrong airport on a Thursday afternoon. It's a big, old, smelly vehicle, but actually quite clean by New Orleans standards. I tell the cab driver to go uptown. His phone rings which means I am free of the burdens of conversations about New Orleans that would inevitably have taken place had he not been on the phone the entire trip. "Ever been to New Orleans?" "Yeah, I used to live here." "Oh really, how'd you do in the storm?" And so forth.

So, I was able to enjoy the 50 degrees of fresh air that was blowing through the open windows and free to take in the familiar sites, remembering. When we finally got off the interstate and the roar of high speed air blowing subsided, the substance of his phone conversation re-appeared. "And there were these big ribs that were so good. Woowee." Yes, back in New Orleans, where conversations about food may be more commonplace than conversations about the weather. (And there's a lot of very interesting weather to talk about.)

New Orleans is the place that awakened something in me when it comes to the appreciation and pleasures of food. Not that I'm in love with the traditional New Orleans foods per se; but, food culture, culinary heritage, food worship, food as religion, food=sex, food for food's sake. Get the picture? This is in contrast to a sign I saw in the Chicago airport advertising all the food on the go that is so readily available at airports (why do I feel so compelled to eat that crap?) The sign said something like: "Eat so you can get on with your life."

In New Orleans, eating is life.

And now, I go in search of the perfect cup of coffee, which will not be hard to find...

Living Without TV

It's now been 8 months since I have been without television access in my home, a conscious choice my husband and I made when we moved to our new environs. That means no food network or travel channel or bravo(these are all supposed to be "enriching") or sporting events and all the other commercial business that used to fill, as my husband says, our "poor little brains."

There have been brief periods in my life where I haven't had television, but this is the longest in my recent adult life. It's amazing to me just what a radical act it has been. It seems to me to be one of the best things a person can do to help this planet, to change human/social consciousness. It means not having to be inundated with: advertising; shameless capitalist product placement; racist and sexist narratives; images of a hyperactive, over-caffeinated society; violence; cynicism; and the social construction of unnecessary needs and desires that harm this world in infinite ways.

Living without tv means reading, writing, listening to music, walking in the woods, cooking soulful meals, creating things, enagaging in conversations about philosophy, religion, literature, and politics with my husband, playing a game of cards, meditating, and just daydreaming or staring out the window.

I am not completely puritanical; I still listen to the radio, rent movies, and consume my share of internet time. But, I am free of the psychic burden that television, invented to manipulate my desires, perpetuates.