Well, I got a real wake-up call this week! Received a message from a childhood classmate and when she looked at this blog she still wasn't sure if I was the person she'd been seeking. I know I've been evolving, but I didn't realize I'd become such a stranger to my past. But then as I look over the blog I realize that I mention next to nothing about the historical markers in the rear view mirror. Mmmmm....

Well, I was born in San Francisco, went to convent school and then to U.C. Berkeley. Then I went to Asia for a couple of years (Peace Corps, Korea), worked in Hawaii for awhile, moved to New York, taught English in East Harlem and the Lower East Side, and then went to graduate school. After a long career in mental health I ended up becoming the associate director of an outpatient mental health service and living in the historical landmark district of brownstone Brooklyn. Along the way I became progressively leftist, feminist, iconoclastic and anti-authority of any kind. I read voraciously and often became tediously obsessed, in the eyes of my many long-suffering friends, with such arcane subject matter as Celtic mythology, Jewish history, and maps of any kind. For a few years I skied every chance I got. I've traveled a lot but not enough. I devoted some years to the club scene in New York and then switched to opera at the Met and lots of museum going and fine dining. I suppose you wouldn't know from that list that I continue to spend inordinate amounts of time just lying around, but I do, and as long as I have a good book nearby, that's what I all too frequently love to do.

So now I'm going to stop working and try living off accumulated modest assets. I'll live in Italy and work on my medieval house and on my garden. I'll keep studying Italian and try to revive some long neglected skills, like drawing and painting, and to develop some new ones like computer graphics, and- getting really grandiose here- trying my hand at something like fresco? Anyway, I've left out a lot here, like the men and the cats in my life, but maybe this is a portrait of sorts, or perhaps a bit of a caricature.

I'm pretty convinced that Monotheism kills! and that the only reliable indicator of sanity is the capacity to laugh at oneself.

And speaking of humor, here's a quote from one of my favorite people in the whole world:

Europe has a new constitution with no mention of GOD or Christianity. How fucking wonderful! And now Spain is onto the gay marriage thing. The guy in the Big House in Roma is peeing in his dress, but luckily he is wearing depends.

posted by Joanna @ 6/25/2004 04:52:00 AM