Projects, projects, projects.... If I'm to get out of here by April, I have to get the bathroom renovated, paint the whole apartment, and get it rented. I also have to decide on what I want to have sent over by container and get my residency visa. I have to get my pension, health insurance and financial accounts functioning smoothly. Five months to go. I wish I could pop over and get the house ready for the guys to come in and knock down a few walls, do the sandblasting inside and maybe even get the shutters and windows replaced this winter. Maybe.... mmmm....

posted by Joanna @ 11/12/2004 01:19:00 AM 0 comments  

My wonderful friend of thirty-five years, Maggie, who was the first friend I made when I came to NYC, died last weekend of a years long battle with cancer. She was in remission for a long time following the most MAJOR surgery I've ever known anyone to undergo- along with long courses of chemo, too. I am so grateful that she and I stayed very close friends even after she relocated to Atlanta. During the remission years, she came to visit me in Italy the first time I took a house there and it was a glorious time. She loved to travel and did it every chance she got. She once said, "Well, I better die! No way I can pay off all these Amex bills!"

She was so funny and smart and good! Really good!

I last saw her in May when I went down for a long weekend and I tried to get down there on her last weekend if just to hold her hand, but she slipped away and I had to cancel my flight. There were lots of people there who loved her so that was OK because we spoke three nights earlier: "I love you, Maggie." "I love you, too." Not a bad way to say farewell.

Her husband and son sent me this picture and poem. Her husband David wrote the poem! Perfect.

Get over it; you’re just an ordinary tree
With the customary set of woody parts.
By what uniqueness do you claim to be
A singularity of trunk and leaf and bark?

What’s that you say? Your branches lately bore
Her substantiated soul, she who
Cherished and embraced us more the more
That to ourselves we labored to be true?

Is this enough to crown you forest-king
Or our lady of all vegetation?
That once she climbed your ancient branching
And lastly looked at us with her triumphant grin?

You’re right, of course. You held her safe and sound
Rejoicing in her new commanding height.
We’ll see her always high above the ground
Forever paused before her final flight.

But too soon must she, grinning, gaily wave
And turn back to her interrupted climb
And from branch to branch with quickening pace
Rise through the leaves to leave the world behind.




I guess I can take comfort in her not having to have seen the election results. So I'll just express a little outrage in both our names:

Moral values, indeed! Like torture and disappearing people and no social justice, etc.
The only three reasons to vote for those nuts were 1) greed 2) paralyzing fear of terrorism and 3)the inability to accept the concept of separation of church and state.
I'll have to stop whirling around in a rage like the Tasmanian devil before I'm fit company.
Notice that those of us who were actually in the vicinity of the WTC on September 11, 2001, did not go right wing.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind... And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." --- William Shakespeare

posted by Joanna @ 11/04/2004 01:10:00 AM 2 comments