A Reprise

I am completely transported by Sarah Brightman's voice. I have been thinking there is not enough of her to go around, that the world will not be able to turn without the beauty that she gives. When she sings I can hear all things in her voice, like I can in a work of great literature or see in a work of art. I can hear beauty and love, pain and darkness, but above all I hear love and compassion. I feel like I would be totally different if I had not had her music for these twelve years. I think about the concert I last saw of hers. It isn't hard to remember. The beauty, darkness and drama hurt me so deeply, almost like it broke my heart. The woman next to me started crying helplessly during the wordless interim piece with soughing violins and Japanese parasols. (?) It's hard to describe anything of what I saw. It was like a dream that created feelings but was difficult to describe. It still stays lodged in my heart. I wish my art could reach out to others with that kind of l

I liked my Bible lesson this morning, but it must have been yesterday's. I went back to the site, and the verse has changed. Dear God, please help me be nice to the right people at the right time in just the right way. I really don't know anything. Thank you for all the love I get at home and in my inbox.

Lately I am reverting to journals again. For the past year I have written very little in journals, but now I find I need to reflect again, catch my breath more regularly and consciously. On the way home this weekend I was looking over my Treo journal entries from two years ago. I could remember each detail as I read it. I remembered those days. I have begun to feel like my really good days are passing me by and are lost to forgetfulness, so I decided to start doing a Treo journal again. It's more awkward with the updated software, but I can manage it. I also finally remembered the password to my freeware journal, so I have been able to look over entries I did write in the past year. In Winter Light too I can see how the pendulum swings. I have put little original content here lately. I miss the days when I would post so many photos and even voice posts. I know I did it out of boredom, but right now, I miss being bored. My written journal has been devoted to recipes lately. I confes

Sometimes when I'm driving along the freeway I want to pull off and get out of the car and start running through the fields of flowers, and lay down in the flowers and not go back to work. Today I felt it so strongly. I always thought I would do that one day. What if I live my life all the way through and never do? This is one of those days I feel like I belong to home, to the outdoors, to my writing and inner world, not work. I have a same mood that I had a few years ago in Product Safety, when I just wanted to run away. Back then I wanted to move to Austin, buy prairie dresses and work in a coffee shop. Actually I am wearing a vintage prairie dress today, so the inspiration partially came through.

You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.

Aunt Olivia told Peggy and me about him on the afternoon we went over to help her gather her late roses for pot-pourri. We found her strangely quiet and preoccupied. As a rule she was fond of mild fun, alert to hear East Grafton gossip, and given to sudden little trills of almost girlish laughter, which for the time being dispelled the atmosphere of gentle old- maidishness which seemed to hang about her as a garment. At such moments we did not find it hard to believe--as we did at other times--that Aunt Olivia had once been a girl herself. This day she picked the roses absently, and shook the fairy petals into her little sweet-grass basket with the air of a woman whose thoughts were far away. We said nothing, knowing that Aunt Olivia's secrets always came our way in time. When the rose-leaves were picked, we carried them in and upstairs in single file, Aunt Olivia bringing up the rear to pick up any stray rose-leaf we might drop. In the south-west room, where there was no carpet

"He had decided to save fifty centavos to fulfill a dream he had cherished ever since he was a child: to have a cup of Viennese coffee. Through the windows of the Hotel Frances he had seen the waiters pass with trays held high above their heads on which lay these treasures: tall glass goblets crowned with towers of whipped cream and adorned with beautiful glazed maraschino cherries. The day of his first paycheck, he had crossed back and forth outside the establishment before getting up the courage to go through the door. Finally, beret in hand, he had stepped timidly across the threshold and entered the luxurious dining room, with its teardrop chandeliers and stylish furniture, convinced that everyone was staring at him, that their thousand eyes found his suit too tight and his shoes old. He sat down on the edge of the chair, his ears burning, and gave his order to the waiter with a mere thread of a voice. He waited impatiently, watching people come and go in the tall mirro

Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions. I am only a foreigner in the land. Don't hide your commands from me! I am always overwhelmed with a desire for your regulations.

Yesterday I picked up a couple things again I had stopped reading: The Cenci, The Tale of Terror and The House of the Spirits. Sunday I revised several pages of my book and have felt inspired since to remain in a literary state. I still don't have a title for it, but I am not going to rush that. I have realized with every book I've written that I will put things down that don't make sense to me, but fall into place later. There was something that Hildegarde (now Germaine) said in the very first draft that I have kept through all of these drafts, and only yesterday I realized what she meant. I felt like that sentence remained because I did respect her enough not to obliterate what she said because I didn't understand. I have found too a difference between imperfections I put in my work, and what the characters do, that doesn't make sense but needs further thought and clarification. Sunday night I started to believe in them again in the old way, and I have believed