Tonight was "stupid movie" night at my house with my sisters. Every now and then we are just in the mood for a stupid movie, and tonight was such a night. Stupid movie indeed. The choice for this nights stupidity was "The Bulletproof Monk". I think the title speaks for itself. Actually it started out with the makings of a "good, stupid movie", but went downhill from there and descended to the level of "so stupid we can't hardly stand to watch it but we have to know how it ends even if it ends stupidly"! Phew, well, stupid or not, it did give me some food for musing, so it wasn't worthless. I have always been fascinated with the concept of reality, and what truly is reality. I guess it is why I love "Matrix" so very much, as it has all those mind boggling "what if" concepts going on.

The major theme of this was very "Matrix" oriented in the line of, if you truly "believe" and know that, for example, water is no different in substance than earth or water, then you could walk on it like stepping on a stone, or swim through it like swimming through water. So it is our belief that defines reality, or at least allows us to play with it a bit. If I could choose what to believe and make it so, what would I believe? I would believe in reincarnation because it makes the most logical sense to me. It makes good sense to me that a person cannot get it right the first go around, and would need more than a few to make good on life. If I could choose to believe, I would look at a butterfly and see what I've been seeing all along but didn't see because I had been taught not to see it--that it is really a fairy. That's a start anyway, certainly I'd like to do something about world peace and harmony, but I think the believing only works on yourself. I can't believe a person into believing they can change reality. I guess that is the sad part. Still, its movies like the Matrix, myths of our culture, that at least are saying to people...you do have choices, even though it doesn't always seem like it, you do have choices--choose wisely, the red pill, or the blue pill?

Today I turned 35 years old. I suppose I should be writing about how it feels, but it really feels a lot like turning 20 or 25. Life is good--really good. I think if you can go into the next year of your life still being able to say that, then the number of candles on the cake doesn't really seem to matter. That's all I really have to say about turning 35.

I was listening to an interesting interview on NPR this evening. It was with an author, teacher, philospher named Azar Nafisi. Something she said struck me, because it dealt with the issue of "betweens" or edges. She was talking about a painter who embodied something about America that wasn't often portrayed--not only in our culture and media, but in how other countries portray us. We aren't a society full of heroic adventurers, or even a society full of loud-mouthed egotistical louts. It was inbetween those, in the forgotten places where people lived in isolation...in loneliness despite the "loudness" of our society. From those places came works of art (be it painting or writing) that had something important to say. Now, I'm paraphrasing in the extreme, this isn't a quote, but the gist of what I heard.

It reminded me of something I used to think about a lot. People seem to live for high moments in their lives...the peaks. But the truth of the matter is that most of life isn't in the peaks, its on the way down from the peaks, or on the way up from its lowest lull. Its much like the medieval notion of the wheel of fortune. If you were on top, you'd best hang on because with one flick of Fate's wrist, you were apt to be on the bottom. If you were on the bottom, just hang on because there was no where to go but up--the only way off was when life was over. Life isn't on the peaks, it isn't even in the lowest points, most of life is spent inbetween the two. So what does all that mean to me? Enjoy the peaks when you reach them but don't get comfortable, don't stress over the lows because it has to get better, but most importantly, find the real joys in the inbetweens.

Here it is after 1am again and I seek to settle some thoughts in place so perhaps I can lay down and go to sleep quickly tonight. I am taking a Women's Studies class online this semester. The class is challenging, both in work load and in forcing us to use our minds. Given the nature of the class, it invariably stirs up lots of memories, and high emotions in my class mates and for myself. We are discussing patriarchy, right now, and that is one step quickly taken to religion. Religion, politics, women's issues, all thrown into the pot and stirred around! It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I have issues with organized religion of all sorts. I feel that anytime human beings get their fingers into the mix, a mess is more likely to come out than a delicious cake. I feel like I am getting to the point where I don't react with negative feelings towards religion, I have a deep respect for people with strong religious beliefs, it is just not a path I can take. I guess that leads me once again to an inbetween state. I am not an atheist, because I feel there is something "more". I don't believe that life is cut and dry, black and white, explained away by science. I live with the eternal hope that there is something just beyond my vision that I haven't quite seen yet. However, I cannot embrace any religion I have looked into. The closest I get to a religion, is more a philosophy, that of Taoism. But even that is not in the traditional Taoist path, but of the path of Winnie the Pooh. ;) People who want to put me in a neatly labeled box seem to find it frustrating, because when they ask just what do I believe...I can only shrug and say I know more about what I do not believe than what I do believe. So I strive for balance in my life, for not fighting the flow, but moving with it. For not asking why, but focusing on how I react. For accepting that life is made of stages and I cannot live in all the stages at one time. To live open to possibilities...to walk the wall, to live at the edge the abyss. I've already looked in and seen the monster Nietzsche warned of...it was only me, and not so scary for all that.

Carrying the theme of edges and inbetweens, which is apt sitting here in a quiet house in the very edge of a new day, why a fascination with inbetweens? Magic. I think it all comes down to magic. The inbetween times are times when the veil between this world and fairy are supposed to be thinner and you are more likely to stumble into something inexplicable by the normal vision of reality. I have always had a difficult time sleeping. Since I can remember, I have done all sorts of things to fill up the time between laying down and actually going to sleep. Counting as high as a third grader can count, which seemed at the time to be in the millions, but probably was in the hundreds, was always high on the list. But most of the time I filled with telling myself stories. Stories I had heard, stories I had dreamt, books I had read and rewrote to my satisfaction in those times. My daughter loves to write, loves stories, loves to read. She too is "blessed" with that difficulty of sleep. I have tried to show her that to write, you need time to be quiet, to dream and tell yourself stories. In today's society our lives are filled with noises and busy-ness with no time for our stories. She has been given quiet time between laying down and sleeping to tell herself the stories that she will wake up and write. Use it, I tell her. And she does, she writes wonderful stories and while I could wish for her the ability to simply lay down and sleep that some days I dream for...in the end I am glad that she has taken up my love for stories and the time in which to dream them.

I have newly become fascinated with the online phenomenon of blogging or weblogging, sortof an online diary of sorts. I named my blog The Edge because it is a book title I hope to write some day of short stories dealing with things from the edges of reality. Here's a fun little poem I wrote about edges:

Dragon's Song
1/31/99

By the shore of a lake,
at the base of a cliff
that fell from the edge of trees,
on the side of a field,
at the outskirts of town,
heard right at the break of dawn--
came singing that was wild,
and music that was free,
and a song not of this world.
The town's people, they slept,
and the animals stirred,
but all of the children danced
by the shore of a lake,
at the base of a cliff
that fell from the edge of trees.