HERMAN'S HEAD . . .

Remember that show, "Herman's Head"? I have only vague, fuzzy memories of it ... but I recall that it was about depicting the happenings inside the main character's head. It was a terrible, terrible, wretched show, and it's a wonder it lasted as long as it did ... but the concept is brilliant. Often I wonder what my thoughts would look like on celluloid, if I could paint or draw or sketch, or even accurately describe with words, the things I thought, the imaginations I conjured, the images that flitted through my brain. There wouldn't be enough colours in the world from which I could build my palette ...

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SUFFICIENT . . .

Day three of my "break." I think I'm enjoying it, but I'm not sure yet. I've been too "busy" -- busy with busy-ness. Running errands, cooking dinners, hosting meetings, grocery shopping, cleaning, doing laundry, conducting NHF business, helping out the Omma and Appa, planning events. Now I sit calmly for the first time in three days and wonder why I have been so non-busy busy, and why I am not utterly satisfied with this gift of a vacation.

I have discovered that it is my inherent character that prevents me from enjoying my break and my freedom. First of all, it's just too much. I am a woman of structure, and gladly so. I like doing and accomplishing and checking items off my list of to-do's. I thrive on achievement and satisfaction of responsibilities. I enjoy routine and trying to fit bonus perks into the routine to add a bit of spice to each day. I enjoy working and producing. With all this freedom and lack of scheduling and structure, I'm utterly lost. I don't mean that in a pathetic "oh poor her, she never gets out" sort of way. I get out a lot and I always did. But with the hours looming before me, I am always conscious of not wasting a moment ... and thinking about not wasting a moment wastes moments. What's a girl to do?

Second, it's hard to not be working. One of my biggest fears is being forgotten, being insignificant, not doing something worthwhile in people's lives, in my life. Thus, whenever I was working, I was never forgotten, always significant to one degree or another, and consistently doing -- or trying to do -- worthwhile things. And I have always been working; there was a never a time in my life when I wasn't. I was a mother's helper in high school; I interned or volunteered or did urban missions projects every summer in college; I worked my tail off for two years as a paralegal before I hit law school; I worked every summer during law school; and I've been working ever since. Producing work product, bringing good to people's lives, enacting justice, teaming up with colleagues, paying my taxes -- this is all I've ever known. And now ... I feel so incompetent. I feel like a leech upon society. I feel like a lady of leisure. I feel lazy and unimportant and useless. I wish I was doing something "important," I wish I had papers to push around, briefs to read, clients to represent, arguments to make.

It's not just that I'm a Martha, always working and never listening. That IS me, true, but it's more than that. This me that I am now ... this is simply not me. That's the hard part, being the anti-me.

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DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT . . .

The difference between men and women, in general, is this: men think everything is red. Women know that there's red, and then there's pink, coral, light coral, salmon, hot pink, and fuschia.

Hee, hee.

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N'AWLINS . . .

It's hard to enjoy my vacation when people are suffering. I mean, there's always someone, somewhere, suffering. But with the images of the South smacking me in the face every moment of every day, it's really hard to lift the weight of guilt and flit about my day with abandon. Oprah said something the other day, at the end of her show, expressing fear that we will soon forget. And she was right to express this fear. I fear it too, in myself, because I know that I am prone to forget. The tsunami last December? Oh yeah ... I nearly forgot ...

I don't want to forget, but it's hard to strike the right balance, isn't it? I know that as a believer, I am not called to live a morbid life. Nor am I to turn away from suffering and pretend everything's alright just because it is for me. No believer stands alone, and it is a command to each of us to love Creation as Christ loves it ... how am I to do this?

Speaking of N'awlins ... resolved: instead of complaining about the partisanship and blame-gaming in which the politicians participate, I'm going to cease my own participation in such silliness. Who cares what went wrong, who cares whose fault it is, who cares what motivated this or that or the lack of this or that? These are all debates and arguments and rages that will battle on for years and even generations to come, and answers will be slow in coming if they come at all.

No, all I care about, and I think all we should care about, is saving and restoring souls. Figuring out whose fault "it" is isn't going to feed babies, or build houses, or provide clean water, or prevent disease, or bury rotting bodies, or pump out the putrid water, or heal wounds, or reunite families. THOSE are the priorities right now. It is unthinkable that "we," "they," "whoever" would allow this situation to continue to exist in America today (and lest you think I'm totally naive, I know that even in the absence of natural disasters, there are countless unseen Americans suffering daily from poverty, homelessness, hunger, discrimination, mental illness and neglect), and something must be done. That's all I care about. Everything else is secondary ... or utterly unimportant altogether.

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Wanna see: "Proof"
Reading: Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Listening to: "The Cookbook," by Missy Elliott