"Moonglow"

How come 'Moonglow' is one word but 'Star Dust' is two? Questions like this haunt me. Maybe. I forgot to mention that the first section in this book is titled 'Sweet and Swing Hits of the Thirties'. Should be nice, and this one is that, besides being good practice for my 'oh' and 'oo' sounds, which I'm not doing in the most efficient and natural way. It's difficult when I have trouble associating the way things sound from the inside of my head, with the way they feel to perform, at least the best forms of each of these. Yet another learning. This song is quite fun to sing.

Today I'm thinking about history. I'm always reviewing in my head, for whatever reason, where things came from. I can tell you where the clothes I'm wearing came from at any moment: if they were on sale, or gifts, or from a thrift store, or hand-me-overs, how long I've had them, other assorted facts of where I wore them. This shirt was a hand-me-over, the pyjamas were an impulse buy at Target, but darn useful, since I don't have many pjs that I really like. I have one skirt that I'll always associate with a shop at Fells Point in Baltimore, because I bought it the week after I was held up at gun point in Silver Springs. I could show you the necklace I bought after Father Jim died. I paid $55 dollars, or my parents did, for a flute at a yard sale when I was about twelve. My sister-in-law bought me these magnets on my filing cabinet, and they have a lot of stick for how small they are. She got them at Target, too. My friend, Sean, gave me this soapstone candle holder. He also called tonight to say hello, and I missed his call, so I'm thinking of him. My friend Steve got me this framed poster hanging beside me, and the artist, Paul Palnik, drew me into it.

Everything is connected all across my life, and I feel very aware of those connections. I play them in my head backwards and forwards to remind me of how it all fits together, how I fit inside of the web of it all. It's comforting.

Once upon a time, in college, I picked up a flyer for Free University courses. I decided to try one, 'Women's Spirituality', taught by a woman named Marisa. I ended up being the only person to show up, and Marisa and I became friends. Through her, I ended up going to an alternative gathering of sorts at a beautiful site in New York State called Brushwood. There I met an amazing man wearing a skirt. We got somewhat involved, and he invited me to another gathering, called Lumensgate, where I met another fabulous person, Diana. We corresponded (ah! those zany pre-ubiquitous-emails days!), and the next year we decided to travel to this gathering again, together. I brought my twelve-year-old sister (exposing her to adult male nakedness, and scarring her for life, she tells me now). On the way there, we stayed in Pittsburgh at Diana's house, and I met her housemate, this dark haired hippy-ish guy who liked me mostly because I didn't want to share his dessert, he said. And much later, I married him, had my daughter. It's even cooler that I still know all the people along that path. But it all started when I took the free course. Life is fun.