Driving to San Diego as the sun rose, I was admiring the clouds and the colors they reflected. I had started out in the dark, but I had to stop to try to get the podcast I was listening to loaded onto the pod that had lost signal.

I lost valuable time, but I was back on the road with my entertainment restored.

Then I saw a patch of cloud separate from the other spotty curtain of colorful cloud. This patch was directly over the sun. The cloud and the sun behind it were in front of a gorgeous green hill with rocks dotting it. The freeway wove into these huge hills straight ahead.

But the cloud, covering the sun, had 5 distinct rays of sunlight as a corona above it. It was so beautiful! I stared at it and thought

“I should stop and take a picture.”

but there was no good place to pull over.

And my camera was the one in my phone, which is also not so good.

I felt like I should do something about this gorgeous sight though.

What would I do if I stopped and took a picture? Well, I could share it on facebook. I could store it in dropbox and then hold it in Flickr. I do that all the time, and in fact have several thousand photos on Flickr.

But those are with my good camera, not this crappy one on my phone.

What was I supposed to do about it?

I thought.

I should look at it. I should admire it.

Perhaps I had forgotten that is what one does with a beautiful sun.

I was getting some help, or to be more precise, getting the runaround from somebody at work. I’ve been working on this runaround for a while.

Early on, a particular woman had helped me. Today, she saw me again and said “You STILL haven’t got that thing you needed yet?”

No. No I haven’t.

And then it became clear that I would need some rubber stamping from some other somebody. An important sombody.

She said to me, “You shouldnt’ have to do that. You don’t really belong here.”

WHAT?!

‘You know where I see you? You should be in hollywood”

I do not know where this is comign from.

But then it seemd to make sense. She was saying that I was a creative person. She could jsut tell, from the handful of times we had spoken, that I was an artist.

I think there are people who respond to that, and understand that is who and what I am.

And to be honest. I think pretty much everybody can tell that I don’t belong here.

Here being almost anywhere. THe artist does not belong.

The artist, the creative type, is apart from thing.

Some people admire that.

Some people fear it.

That explains a lot.

It takes time to take a journey. It takes time and effort.

We don’t transition immediately.

I was worrying last night. I do not like to worry. So I walked the dog. If I can’t do anything about my problems, I can at least move.

So me and the dog were walking, and I was considering. There are a lot of things I could be worried and unhappy about. There are also a lot of things I could be very happy and pleased about.

I can pick.

But right then I didn’t feel pleased. I was worried and unhappy. Because anybody at any moment can pick. It is not amazing, or special to be able to pick being happy. phooey on seeing the glass half full. If anybody can do it, why bother?

It felt good to walk though. And I thought about the hard things. And I got a little mad. And I had some conversations with people I couldn’t see.

And I thought some more about the big picture.

In this big world there are places between places. And the between places are places too.

I am in a between. Neither here nor there. Part of the transition to there is under my control. But some is not. And in either case it takes time.

The edge is it’s own place.

Someone said I should make sure to capture the Veronica cuteness on my blog.

This era, right now – maybe the last week of July and all of August 2012 so far is really the ascendancy of cuteness. I like that she is telling me things.

One night, in the middle of the night, while she would NOT let me leave because I was Mommy and she was awake, she mused “Where does the sun go?”

I LOVE that question. I was leaning back in the dark on the chair in her room trying to think of a way of explaining the horizon of a sphere and orbiting. I didn’t answer because it was time to sleep. I look forward to answering.

But beyond her new curiousity, she is also bossing me. I should probably not encourage this, in the same way you should not let a puppy jump on your legs…because the 5 pound puppy *will* one day be 50 pounds, and that is a lot more meaningful jumping against one’slegs.

But she is bossy. “Be quiet!” she says .

We were at the store yesterday. I had walked away to select some produce…melon? Banana…? No, I think the walnuts were on sale.

But when I returned to the cart where she perched, she took my face in her dimpled hands and said “Mommy! You are not listening to me!”

I like your style, kid. “What do you want to tell me?”

And then she looked around and said a few things in Veronish. It appeared that the issuewas not what she had to say, the main point was that I should listen to whatever it was.

So we are dialoguing. And I like that a lot. Took a while to get here. I think it will last quite a while.

I had a lot of trouble getting Veronica to sleep tonight.

She did not want me to go. SHe wanted me to hold her hand until she fell asleep. Well, she would prefer that I hold her hand and not stop. But she didn’t know what happened after she fell asleep, so I knew when the getting was good.

Anyway, I don’t like to indulge this preference of hers. I was trying to leave. I picked her up, before the meltdown, and took her to daddy in teh living room.

“She’s having a hard time. She could use help.

She said “Very hard”

It’s hard sometimes.

She did not accept the daddy substitute. I had to hold her hand til she slept.

It happens.

So I can’t make mint juleps like in the Great Gatsby. But, that brings up another point:

What is so great about Gatsby?

I dont’ get it.

But I am pretty sure I need some ice

I had reason to be afraid. There was a meeting with someone I did not want to talk to. I had spoken with him times before, and so many of the times had been painful.
I had been accused, judged, misunderstood, harassed and rejected. More than once! It was a reliable thing with this fellow.
And I had to talk with him again.
I was afraid. Trying very hard not to be afraid. Shaking, bravely quaking.

And I found this:

The mechanisms were always exactly the same, whether political, religious, psychological, philosophic. Dragons guarded the entrances and exits of each layer in the spectrum of belief, or opinion; and the dragons were always the same dragon, no matter what names they went under. The dragon was fear

I had a dragon to face. And I was not the only one. Dragons–fear dragons–guard treasure.
I had to face this dragon-conquer this dragon-to achieve my heart’s treasure.

If fear saps passion, then passion trumps fear. I want what the dragon is guarding! And I might not even know for sure what that monster is keeping, but if I’m scared of something as silly as talking to someone…there must be something there.

my life after the greenworld is alright, I suppose. I have given myself some tasks to do.

I am tired of being tired of my life. So I have set up a plan to turn myself nearly completely inside out.

And I will work on this every day.

And I will not finish it. Every day, I will make progress on partially turning myself inside out, and being satisfied and comfortable with the process and progress every day.

no wonder I threw my back out.

My dental hygienist gave me a lecture today after cleaning my teeth.

I felt bad for a while, but then I thought, Hey, take a chill pill. I brush and floss 99% of the time. What more do you want from me? And since I do those things, the rest is pretty much luck.

So get off my back.

The thing is, no one is perfect. These dentist people know that which is why they get to be on their high and mighty.

I am not buying it. Yes, I could get all guilty about that 1% that I don’t floss. OR I could get all worried about how maybe I didn’t brush long enough.

BUT I DON”T BUY IT.

Dentists are in a great position. I cannot look and judge for myself how my teeth are doing. I don’t know how to gauge the health of my gums.

So I don’t know how dire the situation is. I may need to have all my teeth pulled out by the end of the year.

Or I may be guilted into getting my teeth cleaned 3 times a year instead of the perfectly adequate 2.

But because I have no way of knowing, I am powerless. I don’t like that. And I don’t like that I am being taken advantage of, in ways I don’t know.

That is a basic human trait, you know. Knowing whether something is right. My toddler knows whether it is right or not.

“No Mommy! I need a FORK for mac&cheese”

She knows it is meant to be eaten with a fork. That’s the right way.

All of us know, inside ourselves, at a very early age, what is right and what is not.

That must be honored in all human interaction.

Sometimes you have to make your own green world. maybe make a fort out of a blanket and the couch cushions.

But the changed perspective is required.