Fun With Words

Make your own random word art. Truly a step along the path to the making of the art button. Yeah! Right! Have fun!

6 Years Later

Well, I was going to write a morose posting about how the worst thing about breaking up is waking up in the middle of the night six years later to have a conversation with the missing guest. Then I fired up Blogger and fell into "Blogs Of Note" and read "It's lovely - I'll take it" and nearly fell off the chair laughing. What a great cure. And then I took a look at My Little Multiverse and noticed that three of them were updated within the last couple of hours. Either I'm not the only one up at this hour or they're all on the left coast.

like a bird

They let me out on the weekends. They have to or I would tear this cell up. Which is all bravado and lifted movie lines. I'm not Darkman or dark anything. I'm a drifter and a butterfly skimming the surface, coming into being for breath or two and then moving on to the next attraction. Where nothing attracts, I skim the currents like a bird. Maybe I'm a transformer?
Current Fads
Listening. Be Cool and Lite 98; windchimes
Watching. Darkman (1990)
Activity. working
Gadget. none
News Source. the news feeds in Safari
Reading. Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett; Sunday comics and store ad sheets in The Virginian Pilot.

you're gone

you went there without me
leaving behind an invitation
which i've just read

i'm the one up at 2 am
lost
confused
apologetic
planning to go there and there all at the same time

at the crux of the dream and sanity
waiting
wondering
connected to something like you
something that drifts in on the wind
like windchimes
into my soul

would I be here if you didn't invite me?
too late to find out

Between Here and There

I started a photo-moblog (try looking that up in the last century’s dictionary!) while I was still working at SunTrust to capture what I found during my daily walk to the office. Since I parked in a free section, it was a 10-12 minute walk each day. So, altogether about a 20 minute commute. I still have a 20 minute commute, only now it’s all highway driving without the leisure of stopping for photographs. The best moments of the drive for the past two weeks have been

1. The hazy hill of blue on my left created by an invasion of bachelor buttons (or chicory, although I’m not fussy about what you call them).


2. The hazy sunlit strip of blue and white on my right as I exit from one highway to another. There the bachelor buttons are friendly with Queen Anne’s lace.

The universe just knows I need cheering up.

heartwind.com missing in action

It's my own fault. I went dabbling in things I know nothing about, like CNAME. I've read the help sections at me.com, Yahoo! and Network Solutions and am none the wiser. In the meantime, I have disabled my domain and probably lost about 36 hours of email. This is the only place I am still okay. Sorry! Please try again around Tuesday. All should be okay by then. In the meantime, try my temporary Mobile Me page(s). And you can email me at elainegreywalker@mac.com.

I'm such a ditz. Kinda reminds me of that time I punched all six doorbells in a three story building because I wanted to know if they worked or not. They did. You can't really blame me though, none of them had names listed and some of them had busted name holders. What I learned is to never do that when my Dad is around. ha ha

You're SHORT!

There are those critical moments in life when some one thing wakes you up to everything else. One of those moments was me shouting "YOU'RE SHORT!"

I was a freshman in college doing my duty to froshes everywhere by supporting my fair share of celebratory events. That night I was celebrating with two friends. One, Marianne, was tall, willowy, moved like a fairy, and had long feathery hair. The other, Cary*, was short, solid, moved like an aerobic dancer and had long molasses hair. They stood side-by-side in front of the room-wide bathroom mirror which reached from the top of the sink to the ceiling. They were dressing for the night's event. Attempting to look somewhat similar, they murmured and adjusted their clothing looking intently in the mirror. Cary was copying Marianne. Marianne was offering soothing suggestions. Cary was getting red faced and lumpy. She pulled and twisted and huffed and puffed.

"Why can't I get this right?" she said. "Why can't I get this to look like yours? I’ve got it just like yours but it doesn’t look like yours."

"Maybe if you ..." Marianne offered some sort of suggestion, gently twisting something with her long delicate fingers. Her reflection glanced over at me, a tiny smile on its face.

I stood behind them in the doorway, watching.

"You're short," I said to Cary. Her head was down as she made adjustments. She didn't hear me. With Marianne’s help she went on tweaking and adjusting, making unhappy noises and getting thoroughly frustrated.

I tried telling her again. Still no response. Finally, I held onto the door frame, leaned into the room and shouted with all my being, "YOU'RE SHORT!" Echoes reverberated off the mirror and around the stalls.

All activity stopped. I froze, thinking I had ended yet another friendship. Cary looked at the mirror and then at me.

"You know, I am short, aren't I?" Looking back at the mirror she continued with all kinds of positive comments like, "No wonder this doesn't fit me like it fits you. No wonder I can’t get this to hang like yours." And so on. Friendship saved.

The semester ended. We all went home for the summer. Next fall I had new roommates. I ran into Cary who looked amazingly different. Her hair was short and curly (naturally, apparently, when not dragged down by the weight of length). Her perpetual sour expression was replaced with a sunny smile. She wore granny glasses and carried a pile of papers.

"Come see my place," she said with a bounce. I promised to stop by. A group of us turned up for a tour. Cary had redone her room entirely in modern fussy Victorian. The walls were a deep, somber purple. Curlicues on the radiator were picked out in gold. Elaborate crown molding was also picked out in gold. The furnishings were custom painted to match the walls. Ancient eyeglasses and writing materials were placed strategically as if the owner had just walked away. The whole thing was like an elaborate set for a modern Victorian adventure movie. I was amazed.

Cary had found her calling in life - to run her own decorating business - all because I had yelled at her. She had stopped trying to be like everyone else and became herself in full.

Some days I wish someone would shout at me. I say things and do things and see reactions and wonder, “What am I doing really? Why can’t someone tell me what it is I’m doing?” I could use an epiphany right about now.


Current Fads
Listening. Memory Almost Full, Paul McCartney and Deep Sleep Every Night, Glenn Harrold; air conditioner
Watching. High Fidelity (2000)
Activity. making a career move
Gadget. cell phone
News Source. Google News
Reading. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett; Voices of Recovery: A Daily Reader; Style Weekly; Mensa Bulletin

*This is not her real name. Not because she needs protection. Because I can’t remember her name. Sorry, “Cary.” If you read this, please comment!

Picture of the Perfect Relationship

This is how I want my (future) long term relationship to feel. You go Marc!

What can a person of high intelligence do?

What can a person of high intelligence do? Just about anything they feel like doing. Unhindered by social norms or conventions these people train as nurses, work for 15 years and then become successful auto sellers in a matter of months. They live frugal hermitic lives at the bottom of the social ladder one step above homelessness and they live at the top, with a highly developed network that nets them more than they need with little effort. They create dynamic personal partnerships that rely only on commitment instead of a legal promise and proximity. They create optimal conventional partnerships and become society leaders. They live in island paradises and inner cities. They write poetry and develop complex mathematic algorithms. They set their own hours, rising at 2 a.m. to run an international electronics repair service with 3,000 domain names or live off the proceeds of stock investments based on their own esoteric systems. Enchanted by the unknown, they easily forge ahead by teaching themselves necessary skills. They quietly innovate and make huge public splashes on Jeopardy.

Whatever they do, they do fully, completely and devotedly, becoming priests, pastors, nuns, and CEOs. A people of extremes, they end up in jails and sit as district court judges. With highly-focused persistent attention spans, they often pursue an interest exclusively and far beyond ordinary limits. It is not uncommon for a person of high intelligence to have deep knowledge about a rare, complex subculture and little about local issues.

Quickly absorbing, analyzing and mastering whatever comes their way, their biggest problems are boredom and vocational boundaries. Their unifying passions are learning and sharing what they have learned. As a people, they are far ahead of the curve, often leading the rest of society into new, uncharted modes of adaptation purely by example.

shrimp

sorry sad shrimping feelings skitter through my heart
whispering
too scared to sing

Build Your Own Creature

Meet Lugburz! I created Lugburz in just minutes after downloading and installing the free trial. Over a million creatures have been uploaded to the Spore site. Gosh! What a giggling good time.