Well, a Good Gracious Good Day and a belated but heartfelt Happy New Year to you all… Jan 18th and my 1st Blog of the year. Seems I have been hiding out from this entire “Social Networking Hullabaloo”! Living a low key Holiday profile in Palm Springs Ca. Just a “Ho Ho Ho Homebody-Nobody” in contrast to my usual normal stance of Out-Loud-Uber-Overachieving-Pollyanna-on-Prozac! Comparatively I have been positively indulgent to whimsy for a brief respite.
Yet, instinctively, when I get on a plane I begin chatting to “The Universe” ( It looks better to do this on my lap-top than out-loud to myself), Especially on this “little” jaunt across the pond- a mere 17 undisturbed HOURS on ONE Frickin’ PLANE with ZERO connections from Los Angeles to Bangkok- Yeah… 17 (are you serious?) Hours?!! This is pushing the limits of fathom ability, this airship will be sucking nothing but vapors of fumes when it lands in Thailand. It is probably prudent if I don’t look like I have been doing the same talking to the Universe out-loud!
An outright assault (Our World Outside) while encased in a familiar frame it’s displaying a unnatural Ghastly picture. The only other pictures I’ve seen in my past weeks are made for my Latest Mistress & Muse and Adolescent Obsession (just seeing if your reading the words, not just moving your lips!) My Art- it has been an entire year now, I still feel like I have been locked inside Willy Wonka’s Wondrous Warehouse overnight without a chaperone…nothing is off limits or out of reach, I have complete run of the Mill.
Settling into window seat 14-A seeing the newspapers headlines that drain color from reality gently being wheeled down the aisle on a tidy silver trolley with festive splashes of purple Orchids which only enhances the garish grim shades of grief and gray that have cleaved Haiti’s heart in two… o m g what the?? The pictures and prose paint an abomination of numbers that strike me right across my chocolate stained face…7.0 (I am a California native, I know the gravity of that number 7).
60,000 + lives LOST… that is a “low ball figure”. Take an entire Olympic Stadium, fill it to the rafters with living vibrant people and now take them out of the Game in an instant, just gone faster than I can type this sentence.
I sit here after take-off trying to calculate just the sheer scale of that number. If I wanted to be respectful and give just one second of time to every individual soul lost to the quake, only one second to personally acknowledge every Man, Woman, Child, Mother, Father, Son and Daughter who each was a unique individual before they became a rising death toll figure left on the side of the road to be a sound bite for international news. but…
One second of time for each person from our planes graceful take-off in LA… ‘tick (1) ‘tick (2) ‘tick (3) during our 3 hot meals served…tick- countless hot hand towels…tick-Holly & Bollywood features…tick- mind numbing silence…’tick-to our gentle landing… 17 non-stop counting HOURS later, nearly halfway around the globe…’tick- as wheels touch down…’tick -I am at
61,200 individuals-
just one brief second to honor a person and people I will never know or recognize, people making their way in the world like we are doing today… -‘tick… -‘tick…-‘tick this is not a trick of Apocalyptic movie magic or of Pure Imagination, -‘tick wow…no frame could ever contain such a vision.
Legendary Composer Leonard Bernstein- quoted for having said (not about this event mind you, but)…
“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan and not quiet enough time.”
I think this expressive man, in his one lifetime left us an aural image of time and place, an eternal voice of humanity. I know he would agree he was 100% Correct. Great things were not achieved, as there was not quiet enough time and certainly not a plan… that could explain this…‘tick…’tick.
Haiti believe we cannot understand, believe we cannot expect you to, believe that we believe in you. Go Gently Haiti… Go Gently…
Namaste.
