Together

My friend Krista and I spent a little time together today....and the hours seemed like minutes.

Krista reminded me we met ten years ago.....this fall.....in an introductory rhetoric class at our local university.

The essay I wrote for that class was the first piece of my writing that was ever published....
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I remembered writing that essay on graph paper with a scratchy old pencil while I sat in the middle of my bedroom closet....trying to find peace and quiet in a house full of three busy kids........Krista was starting her journey towards a master's and then a doctorate degree....and like a lot of people and events in my life.....ended up in New York.

Although I knew there was an age difference between us....it never mattered...she was and is a wise woman with a great deal of interests and smarts and I immediately found her fascinating.

Krista is now teaching at Syracuse University.....and I'm already contemplating travel ideas on how to get from here to there.....right now I'm intrigued by the thought of snuggling up for a couple of days on a train with an armload of books....or maybe I should bring along some graph paper and a scratchy old pencil....and see if there's any magic left.......

Girls gone geek........

Terrible.

Just terrible.....there we are in a restaurant....huddled over my iPhone......the soft white glow of the screen reflected up onto our faces. We are trolling the net, googling, and emailing pictures to ourselves......with cranberry martinis at our side.

The vodka made me confess.

Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night....and can't fall back asleep.....I grab my iPhone, check my email, read my MSN home page and even scan the New York Times.

Krista (extraordinary girlfriend now living in Minnesota) expressed her sympathies.

She won't allow herself to get an iPhone....because she...wonder woman and supreme wizardess of technology and the net......would also wake up in the night....and surf the net from bed.

Surfing the net from your bed.

That's bad.

What happened to me?.....I was a nice girl once, a respectable woman who would go to her office, sit in an ergonomically correct chair....and check her computer.

Now...I'm at a red light....texting.....I'm taking a walk and sending an email.....I doodle with Safari in the dentist chair trying to figure out how to unload and load the pages correctly.

And I want to go to the Apple store in Manhattan....to buy more stuff for my phone so I can do even more.

Krista reminded me of something real scary.

When we took a writing class together, about 6 years ago, my research paper was on: internet addiction.

Oh my god, she was right. I said, not me ....never. I'm not one of those geeks. What's sooo great about the internet if you not into porn?

To make ourselves feel better....we started talking about a potential trip to take this summer.....

hmmmm....why not take the train from Winnipeg ( Yeah Diana .....Winnipeg) to the Artic....to the last town on the line....Churchill.... a bleak bleak town....on the edge of Hudson Bay known mostly for its Polar Bear population.

Wow...that's something to think about....let me make a note on my iPhone to send you that information.....or do you want to Google that now .....before we get our Tiramasu?

Damn...I think it's too late.
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Ah....turn the camera around Gina

Yeah...the camera hole is one the back of the phone....duh....

Finally......

Hey I think we got it right.........

A Double New Year..........

My friend Krista and I have been celebrating New Year's Eve/Day for (we think) 6 years. Each year we write our hopes and dreams as well as the emotions we want to get rid of.......on balloons. We take them to a clearing....and let them go....so the gods and the universe are crystal clear about our intentions in the coming year.

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One surprising consequence of this tradition.... is how much we have learned about helium balloons ....they're affected by temperature ( cold temps decreasing soaring considerably)...and they can be very attractive to tree spirits who are quite playful and nosey and not only like to hold onto balloons but read and contemplate the messages for a while before they let them go.

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Trouble is.....Krista, smart wonderful woman that she is, has moved to Minnesota ( to work on her PHD) in the last few years.... and sometimes we're not together on the traditional start of the New Year. So we decided a New Year should begin whenever we get together.

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A couple years ago our Year began in the middle of January when the temperature in Minnesota was below zero. We skipped the balloons ( knowing a lift off was impossible) and wrote our hopes and negatives on small white pieces of paper.... which we threw up into the air and onto a frozen lake. The gods immediately gathered them....white onto white.....and they disappeared.

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Some years when we've had a lot of shit happen to us....we not only release our balloons but actually write our negatives down....and set them on fire. Last year....we used a little propane lighter to ignite them and then tossed them over the bridge onto a stream.....they burned for a long time......which looked spooky....these little fires burning on top of the water. It seemed the negatives had so much energy in them.....they weren't easily eliminated.

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Which is another wonderful part of the tradition. Divination. What does it mean when the tree spirits holds on to your balloon...is that good or bad or indifferent? What if your negatives take a long long time to burn....does that mean you are still holding on to them mentally even though on the surface you have released them??? So much to ponder....and wonder....about what we dream and release into the universe. It's not only the sending...but how they are received which seems important.

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This year....Krista came home a couple days ago.....it was warm.....which means good soaring weather...so we kept our tradition......and since Krista and I haven't seen each other for a whole year....and....the 28th is my birthday..... it was a double double beginning to a New Year.

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We let our balloons go......and to our surprise ...they did not lift off....they hovered together at ground level....and actually stopped...side-by-side...by a tree....as if they were having a conversation with the tree spirit....then they lifted off into the sky....not quickly....but slow and steady....till they were up up and finally out of sight.

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We wondered what this new twist meant? Why did our balloons stay so close together? Why did they visit the tree? Why did they take off so slowly despite the heat??? Hmmmmm....we both felt our negatives weren't big enough for a seperate burning so our balloons carried our positives and the things we want to let go off in one package to the gods...perhaps the double duty weighed them down a bit.

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So here are are dreams and hopes and the things we want to eliminate in our lifes/selves ....going off into the universe.....

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Our balloons seems eager to get going.

Here they go off...side by side.....hovering near the earth....and stopping in front of a tree.

Finally they decide to head upwards.

And there they are....still together.....going off to do their business with the Gods.

Happy New Year.

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