Preparing for my Great Escape

Back to reality, said this morning's DJ with a sigh, after talking about attending a Pearl Jam concert.

I was standing up in the kitchen eating my b'fast and gazing out the window at the white fence and the autumn leaves, all of which will shake themselves loose and carpet the ground.

Everything moves!

The back-to-reality comment made me think. How mankind loves escapes. Since time began. Just sitting around the fire in the Caves recounting our adventures hunting the wooly mammoth was an escape into the past. Our brains had to grow to accommodate our love of story. Yes, let's mate w/people with storytelling gifts and raise them up on the scale of evolution. And, hey, those chicks that can fix us a quick wooly stew, let's preserve those traits too.

I held an Open House yesterday to show off my new windows. Mom and Ellen came. Neither my mother or sister had been to my house in a couple years. They live 10 minutes away. My living room was in disarray from the installation of 3 new windows in the living room so I had to rearrange it. I cleaned off the beautiful filthy window sill with a solution I got off the Internet and which I highly recommend: two parts ammonia, one part water.

I left the door open while I cleaned so the powerful ammonia wouldn't burn my lungs. This is how they killed Jews at concentration camps.

A quick aside. Actually, I'll leave it till the end of the blog.

I ran outside and cut some hydrangeas that still contained color and filled up two gift vases with these puffy verdant fleurs. I can actually notice the slight difference in the happiness portion of my brain when I look at my b'ful windowsill with these flowers and also when I look outside at the colorful autumn leaves. The brain begins to sing.

Sitting with mom at the kitchen table I looked at this remarkable 87-yo woman and felt so happy she'd come to visit. Later I said to Scott this was the best visit ever with my mom.

How come? he asked.

She didn't criticize me, I said.

Mom held onto my railing as she ascended the stairs to look at the upstairs windows. The house is virtually draft-free now. I keep the heat at a ridiculous 72 degrees b/c I like to be warm. I sip hot water when I type to warm my bones.

Walked mom out to the car. She held onto my hand. I never held hands with her before. She has tiny soft hands. I saw her into the car that Ellen drives and kissed her on her cheek. Again, very very soft. For me, it's a big deal to kiss my mother.

She said while she was growing up in Cleveland her family were known as "the cold Greenwalds." (She married a man named GreenWOLD.)

No more. The matriarch of this 'cold family' birthed children who birthed more children and warmth, hugs and kisses now reign supreme.

Okay, back to Hitler. I was having a fantasy that Hitler met the Almighty God. Hitler is standing there with his cap in his hand. He is bathed in light. You can't actually see God as he is total energy and comes across as a glistening beam of light. He wants to make Hitler understand the enormity of Hitler's evil. So he causes a great shock wave thru Hitler's body, but just for a second, b/c God is merciful. Then he allows Hitler to experience Life thru the eyes of an innocent, but just for a second.

Hitler is aghast and begins to grasp what he has done.

God speaks: All life is spirit. It's matter that cannot be created nor destroyed. Since your spirit is so black you must be pulverized into an infinitude of pieces. These pieces of darkness shall reign on the earth and in the heavens, scattered like noxious gas throughout Creation.

And so it was accomplished. Where there is evil - and look around you, listen to the news - there is your Hitler.

But then there are always people like Raoul Wallenberg.

This all reminds me of Milton's Paradise Lost.