roaming's Journal

Roam Gloam over on Facebook (because it tells me roaminginthegloaming is already taken, which I highly doubt but ya can't fight FB Hall). I haven't even tried Dreamwidth, and probably won't, because TWO social media sites are more than I can handle checking.

As the LJ bio I stole this from -- so long ago I can't even retrace where -- because it's SO perfect says: "Look, just because I don't wish you a happy birthday or respond with sympathy to how godawful your cow-orkers are or cheer you on when you get a job opportunity or whatever doesn't mean I don't care." But "If you are the sort of person who can be victimized with a word, oppressed with a glance, traumatized by a T-shirt, or in any other way revel in your own pain/misfortune/helplessness, stay outta this journal. It'll probably hurt." I reserve the right to cry "bullshit" in my own virtual living room, say up front if I think you're being an ass rather than mince words. (And you can call me an ass in reply -- it happens -- I won't boot you for that. :-) )

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I write for/to my once and future self. If other voices flung into the void mingle with mine, who am I to blow against the wind?

I often go for more than a few days without checking LJ or e-mail. Imagine.

I close my eyes . . . only for a moment . . . and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
(Dust in the Wind, Kansas)

This glancing life is like a morning star
A setting sun, or rolling waves at sea
A gentle breeze or lightning in a storm
A dancing dream of all eternity
(Loreena McKennitt, "Caravanserai" from An Ancient Muse cd)

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Random personal factoids, in no particular order of importance:

Urban bred, native New Yorker, recently escaped New England Academia after far too many uninspired years of administrative paper pushing. My current "job" is reconnecting to my a.w.o.l. Inner Muse.

I live with my easy-going, ever-punning husband Tom lensman, herein originally nicknamed "Thor" in honor of his awesome "thunder" thighs. (Did I mention my thigh fixation?). He gives great "nook." He makes me laugh every day, which is better than the best sex. He also seems to find my myriad neuroses amusing, which makes me the luckiest, most grateful person in the universe.

I've got CRS and nominal asphasia. Names, dates, salient details drop out of my sentences like loose change in a washing machine. I lose things. I won't remember which LJ friend posted which crisis or celebration after reading through 25 entries. It's nothing personal. I never forget an image, though. I think in shapes and colors, not facts and numbers.

Usually you'll find me roaming-in-the-gloaming -- dusk, twilight, l'heure bleu -- that magical suspension 'twixt day and night when the veil between the realms is thinnest. Transformation is the prize if you let yourself fall through.

I rescue critters from urban encroachment. I've always been owned by cats -- currently two (Merry and Pippin, I know, groan) (down from six) indoors, and outside assorted neighborhood cats (owned and feral), uncountable squirrels, 8 raccoons, three skunks, and a possum in a pear tree.

My idea of a perfect fun time is cutting loose at a Celtic concert with friends. I sing in minor keys, in the shower, in the car, usually in mangled Gaelic. I play "air bodhran." I yearn for a castle in Scotland. Dunkeld is my fav Scottish town. (If you go, wave to Dougie Maclean and stay at the Taybank Hotel, which he used to own: a sessiun will break out if you're lucky.) Meanwhile, failing a life in Scotland, I help friends organize a highland games.

Anything medievalish or fae turns my head, especially the costuming.

I try to be more courageous and outrageous. Dum Vivimus, VIVAMUS! While we live, let us LIVE! Suck life dry, toss away the husk. (Hey, I didn't claim I succeed!)

If I could flip a switch, I'd be bi, poly, pagan. Until my switch is installed. . . generous friends keep me in the loop.

Agnostic slouching towards Atheism (my fav non-prophet organization).

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Re: LJ-friending. I mostly friend people I know personally. I know that means I'm missing out on getting to know a lot of really great people -- but I'm too A.D.D.'d to keep up with everyone. If you friend me and I don't friend you back, it's not that I'm not interested, it's that I'm physiologically capable of only so much attention span lest I overwhelm myself. I feel guilty if someone is on my friends' list and I don't respond to their latest post because I've already got too much going on in my life or in my brain -- or in other friends' lives or LJs. That doesn't mean I won't drop in now and again and read, nod, or even comment: I just don't want to feel badly when I can't. Yep, it's all about ME.

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It will be no surprise that "I quote others only in order the better to express myself." (Michel De Montaigne). Here I go. I believe:

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." (Anais Nin)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." (Dr. Seuss)

"It's better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not." (Andre Gide)

"We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves strong: the amount of work is the same." (Carlos Casteneda)

"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries." (Mark Twain)

"I used to think that life was unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." (Marcus Cole/Babylon5)

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." (Mohandas Ghandi)

"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think." (Gregory Bateson)

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals… We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves… therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time…” (Henry Beston, The Outermost House)


“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.” (Alice Walker, Preface to The Dreaded Comparison)

"The question is not 'can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'can they suffer?'" (Jeremy Bentham)

"There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you." (The Koran)

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different." (Hippocrates)

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. . . I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by [people] from the cruelty of [human kind].” (Mahatma Gandhi)

"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." (Abraham Lincoln)

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. And we understand only what we are taught." (Baba Dioum, Sengalese Conservationist)

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince)