![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatMother told me all about what my niece is up to. Apparently she has a new boyfriend - a California Forest Ranger, who she met last year. (She's also living with a guy, but he's not her boyfriend, and he's apparently writing a book for his thesis - it's not clear if it is fiction or non-fiction. I'm guessing non-fiction?) And she's come up with an idea for an investigative journalism piece on the political corruption surround fire retardation use and how forest fires are put out or not as the case may be. Her advisor is excited about it - he wants her to pursue journalism and writing. (She's an excellent writer). Statistics is causing her difficulty though - apparently no one in our immediate family has the math gene? She finds calculus and statistics boring, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. (I can relate.)
Feeling rather bored and apathetic with my own life at the moment, not helped by the bad knee, which refuses to get better and makes it difficult to do much of anything but get to and from work, and the occasional errand (including physical therapy). It still hurts. Although my physical therapist, Vishanti, appears to think it is getting stronger and better, so there's that at least. Also, it's warming up - a little outside?
It reached a rather balmy 41 degrees F today, and a low of 29 F.
After some negotiation - I finally managed to convince the Super to turn off the sparkling brand new radiator that they installed in my kitchen. It's black. It takes up more space than I'd like? But I think I can fit a small cabinet in front of it. And since it's turned off - I cancelled my purchase of the window fan. Also it's not quite as warm in the apartment at the moment as it was last night, which made it difficult to sleep. Although the radiators are blasting now - so that could always change?
Every day on my commute, I run across old homeless folks. Today, it was an old white woman, who looked a bit like a gnome. She was wearing a reddish pink hoodie, under a reddish pink jacket, faded blue slacks, and white and blue socks in faded red sneakers. She had a little bag with her. And feathers and pieces of fuzz here and there sticking to her jacket. I was desperate to sit - bad knee yada yada yada - so nudged her awake and into a sitting position, so I could sit. But after five stations, I got up and stood, because she was making me anxious - she kept scratching herself, until I started to itch. She didn't smell, nor did I see any bugs, nor were any bugs present post subway. Also someone else sat next to her after I arose. Found out later, another woman was found wandering the tracks at 3:30 am in the morning.
Whenever I see them - I think the same thing. There but for the grace of god, go I. [It's a phrase I learned in law school from a law professor who ran the Kansas Defender Project. He played the violin or the fiddle, fought against the Death Penalty, and for prisoner's rights, and was a half balding. And he drilled that phrase into me, and I've never forgotten it. Each session of our Criminal Procedure Class - he'd start with that phrase.]
And I worry, when I see them, the homeless of NYC (so many of them, 18 dead so far this winter from the cold) - will I become this person down the road? It's definitely possible. Anything is. One twist or turn in the road, and there we are.
I've no one or so it sometimes seems. I'm admittedly having my George Baily moment - I do every once and a while. (If you don't know who George Bailey is a reference to? Look it up.) I've mother, co-workers, extended family, lots of acquaintances, my brother, my niece, my cousins...but none live near by, well the guy across the aisle from me at work actually lives down the street - so no one may be stretching it. And it is our connections to others however thin that hold us to this world, without them, we wander homeless falling through the gaps, unseen and often ignored. The old tend to disappear in our society - too much focus on the young, and yet, I've found them to be more interesting and distinctive? The young seem to blur into each other, with little to distinguish them, while the old have craters of experience in their faces and streaks of time in their hairlines. I'm trying to see them, the old, the stumbling, the impaired, and the homeless? Maybe stumbling about myself has made them more visible. Or maybe its winter, where it is harder to race about with so many heaps of snow in my path?
I'm drawing and painting them now from memory and I write about them. This woman's face, with it's deep craters and lines, had seen so much. Gnarled and lined - it was filled to the brim with character. And she was quiet. Curled into herself. Blond fluffy hair peeking out from under her hoodie. At first, she seemed normal enough, then I realized, no she was a homeless person or someone down on their luck.
It's odd? Some people live well their entire lives, with wealth and surrounded by family (who more often than not tolerates them out of obligation), while others lives abandoned on the streets, homeless, and tired, and uncertain. Now I've talked myself into donating to Coalition for the Homeless - you can also volunteer apparently.
Sometimes I think - if I can just help one person in this world. Then maybe the rest won't matter? See? George Bailey moment. [If you don't get it? Look it up. We have the internet - it's easy. Hint: it's a cultural reference from a 1940s Christmas Movie starring Jimmy Stewart. ;-)].
***
Question a Day Meme
8. How often do you read fiction?
95% of the time. I also write it. And tell it in my head. And listen to it on audio-book, and read graphic novels or comics that are fictional.
I read non-fiction for work. Fiction for pleasure.
9. This year is the 40th anniversary of the release of the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – have you ever seen it? Bueller…. Bueller…. Bueller…..
Yes. I saw it in the movie theater when it first came out - admittedly with the wrong person (my mother - which ahem, not a movie to see with one's mother). And numerous times on television.
40 years? Damn. I feel old. It was, I think, a 1980s John Hughes film. John Hughes was the King of teen flicks in the 1980s, he, Francis Ford Coppola and a few others - kind of redefined teen cinema.
It grated though - because I identified a bit too much with Ferris' sister.
That said? Required back to back viewing is Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Election - where Broderick is the stumbling adult, to Reese Witherspoon's ambitious and annoying teen.
10. Have you ever owned a Tamagotchi?
I had to look it up - because I had no clue what it was. So clearly no.
Tamagotchi can be found here. Hint? It kind of reminds me of the electronic version of what they were trying to give out in the Buffy Episode Bad Eggs. If it had been electronic - Bad Eggs would have gone VERY differently.
11. Would you consider yourself superstitious?
Not really. I might flirt with it - but I am a born skeptic. I question everything. So no, not superstitious.
Feeling rather bored and apathetic with my own life at the moment, not helped by the bad knee, which refuses to get better and makes it difficult to do much of anything but get to and from work, and the occasional errand (including physical therapy). It still hurts. Although my physical therapist, Vishanti, appears to think it is getting stronger and better, so there's that at least. Also, it's warming up - a little outside?
It reached a rather balmy 41 degrees F today, and a low of 29 F.
After some negotiation - I finally managed to convince the Super to turn off the sparkling brand new radiator that they installed in my kitchen. It's black. It takes up more space than I'd like? But I think I can fit a small cabinet in front of it. And since it's turned off - I cancelled my purchase of the window fan. Also it's not quite as warm in the apartment at the moment as it was last night, which made it difficult to sleep. Although the radiators are blasting now - so that could always change?
Every day on my commute, I run across old homeless folks. Today, it was an old white woman, who looked a bit like a gnome. She was wearing a reddish pink hoodie, under a reddish pink jacket, faded blue slacks, and white and blue socks in faded red sneakers. She had a little bag with her. And feathers and pieces of fuzz here and there sticking to her jacket. I was desperate to sit - bad knee yada yada yada - so nudged her awake and into a sitting position, so I could sit. But after five stations, I got up and stood, because she was making me anxious - she kept scratching herself, until I started to itch. She didn't smell, nor did I see any bugs, nor were any bugs present post subway. Also someone else sat next to her after I arose. Found out later, another woman was found wandering the tracks at 3:30 am in the morning.
Whenever I see them - I think the same thing. There but for the grace of god, go I. [It's a phrase I learned in law school from a law professor who ran the Kansas Defender Project. He played the violin or the fiddle, fought against the Death Penalty, and for prisoner's rights, and was a half balding. And he drilled that phrase into me, and I've never forgotten it. Each session of our Criminal Procedure Class - he'd start with that phrase.]
And I worry, when I see them, the homeless of NYC (so many of them, 18 dead so far this winter from the cold) - will I become this person down the road? It's definitely possible. Anything is. One twist or turn in the road, and there we are.
I've no one or so it sometimes seems. I'm admittedly having my George Baily moment - I do every once and a while. (If you don't know who George Bailey is a reference to? Look it up.) I've mother, co-workers, extended family, lots of acquaintances, my brother, my niece, my cousins...but none live near by, well the guy across the aisle from me at work actually lives down the street - so no one may be stretching it. And it is our connections to others however thin that hold us to this world, without them, we wander homeless falling through the gaps, unseen and often ignored. The old tend to disappear in our society - too much focus on the young, and yet, I've found them to be more interesting and distinctive? The young seem to blur into each other, with little to distinguish them, while the old have craters of experience in their faces and streaks of time in their hairlines. I'm trying to see them, the old, the stumbling, the impaired, and the homeless? Maybe stumbling about myself has made them more visible. Or maybe its winter, where it is harder to race about with so many heaps of snow in my path?
I'm drawing and painting them now from memory and I write about them. This woman's face, with it's deep craters and lines, had seen so much. Gnarled and lined - it was filled to the brim with character. And she was quiet. Curled into herself. Blond fluffy hair peeking out from under her hoodie. At first, she seemed normal enough, then I realized, no she was a homeless person or someone down on their luck.
It's odd? Some people live well their entire lives, with wealth and surrounded by family (who more often than not tolerates them out of obligation), while others lives abandoned on the streets, homeless, and tired, and uncertain. Now I've talked myself into donating to Coalition for the Homeless - you can also volunteer apparently.
Sometimes I think - if I can just help one person in this world. Then maybe the rest won't matter? See? George Bailey moment. [If you don't get it? Look it up. We have the internet - it's easy. Hint: it's a cultural reference from a 1940s Christmas Movie starring Jimmy Stewart. ;-)].
***
Question a Day Meme
8. How often do you read fiction?
95% of the time. I also write it. And tell it in my head. And listen to it on audio-book, and read graphic novels or comics that are fictional.
I read non-fiction for work. Fiction for pleasure.
9. This year is the 40th anniversary of the release of the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – have you ever seen it? Bueller…. Bueller…. Bueller…..
Yes. I saw it in the movie theater when it first came out - admittedly with the wrong person (my mother - which ahem, not a movie to see with one's mother). And numerous times on television.
40 years? Damn. I feel old. It was, I think, a 1980s John Hughes film. John Hughes was the King of teen flicks in the 1980s, he, Francis Ford Coppola and a few others - kind of redefined teen cinema.
It grated though - because I identified a bit too much with Ferris' sister.
That said? Required back to back viewing is Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Election - where Broderick is the stumbling adult, to Reese Witherspoon's ambitious and annoying teen.
10. Have you ever owned a Tamagotchi?
I had to look it up - because I had no clue what it was. So clearly no.
Tamagotchi can be found here. Hint? It kind of reminds me of the electronic version of what they were trying to give out in the Buffy Episode Bad Eggs. If it had been electronic - Bad Eggs would have gone VERY differently.
11. Would you consider yourself superstitious?
Not really. I might flirt with it - but I am a born skeptic. I question everything. So no, not superstitious.