Alex Horvath, 1979 - journalist; blogger ("Sleep Deprived")
Shop for it:
(added from 1 site)
Description:
We used to sit on the porch, my mother and I, and stare at the clouds in the sky facing North. I would take copious notes on a pad of paper from her observations: "Solid Line. Solid Line. Broken Line. Broken Line. Solid Line....
See more »
We used to sit on the porch, my mother and I, and stare at the clouds in the sky facing North. I would take copious notes on a pad of paper from her observations: "Solid Line. Solid Line. Broken Line. Broken Line. Solid Line. Broken Line." We would count six and then start over. It was a lot of fun and after an hour or so we would head back to the house and open her book on the I-Ching, and painstakingly go through the book to find sets of lines that correlated with the clouds in the sky. The stratus clouds appearing in the form of I-Ching lines, Mom would say, were a way of staying on top of what was going to happen in the world, or at the very least, in Bolinas. This way of thinking was new for our mother, who had moved her entire family from suburban New Jersey to Bolinas a year-and-a-half earlier. In New Jersey, mother was spiritually a catholic, held meetings of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society in our living room, and listened to Roger Miller and Johnny Cash music on the record player. But 1969 was a long way from 1966 - even further in some ways than 2008 is from 1969, given the cross-country cultural differential. We had moved to a different world, one where creativity and spirituality had at least a thousand different meanings, and where she was, for the first time in her 29-year-old life, able to just be herself - without being judged or told what to do - and to stretch her own spiritual beliefs with things like I-Ching, tarot cards, Toltec wisdom, astrology - and more. She still listened to Johnny Cash, but added to her record collection were Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and Procul Harum. Ultimately, however, Catholicism, the religion that she was brought up with, was what gave her strength through terminal cancer, and before that, through years of abusive relationships, through her own personal demons that she never shared with her children. In the end, she was not afraid to die. Yet the morning after she died, when I went to strip her bed and organize her belongings, under her mattress were print portraits of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, bits of scripture, a crucifix, a rosary, and other types of religious material that gave her strength in her final days. She had hidden all of this from us. At her funeral, I put each of the pictures and religious items in her coffin with her to keep her safe, along with photos of each of her children. If she were still alive, Mom would have been 69 last week. I haven't seen her since she was 42. Still, I look up to the sky almost daily in search of I-Ching clouds. They are more difficult to find than when I was seven, or eight. But it is in that memory from forty years ago - that funny, quirky cloud-transcribing that I did with my mom - where I sometimes go to find my own strength.
See less »
Highlights:
http://sleepdeprived.typepad.com/sleep_deprived/tamalpais_high_school/index.html -
May 23, 2008 -
Telling The Truth About A Pedophile Teacher
It's not the kind of thing one talks about in every day conversation, but sometime...
Buy itsleepdeprived.typepa...
Added by 1 people