Willa's Journal - Smoke alarms, hang-gliding, and past life regression

~~Smoke alarms, hang-gliding, and past life regression~~

Sunday, February 23, 1997, 10:00 p.m.

Hangglider I woke up fairly early this morning, around 7:30 I guess, and got up and fed Doña, checked my email, and had some juice. While I was still downstairs, the smoke alarm started going off. I raced upstairs to try to stop it before it woke Bob up, but it did, of course. We couldn't figure out what had set it off; I wasn't cooking anything (ha ha), and there wasn't any smoke in the house, or outside that we could see. He got up on a chair and looked at it, took it off and blew some compressed air around inside it in case there was dust in it, and put it back up.

ducks With that excitement over, we went back to bed and Bob put on the headphones and listened to music on the portable CD player. I didn't think I would go back to sleep because I kept hearing the tinny music from his headphones (The Cranberries), and the clicking of the buttons when he'd change tracks. But I fell deeply asleep and didn't wake up until 11:30, waking from this dream about living in a big house with servants, obviously the direct result of a conversation I had the other day with someone about big houses (pros and cons) and bosses (having them and being them).

I had awakened in the night last night realizing that I needed a brown stamp pad to use with the Winnie-the-Pooh stamps. Black ink was too harsh and brown would soften the images just enough. Not an earth-shaking realization, I suppose, but I decided that it would be a great idea to take a road trip today to the other stamp store in the area, which is about 45 minutes away "North of the (Missouri) River," as they say. So I loaded up the CD player (David Knopfler retrospective--Lips Against the Steel/Lifelines/The Giver/small mercies) and headed for Parkville.

Once there, I found a brown stamp pad, and then spent some time looking at everything else, picking out some companion stamps for the park ranger--a trio of backpackers, a hangglider, some ducks, a camel and a trio of palm trees. All (except for the camel) from Stampscapes.

I stopped by the library on the way home to return some books and couldn't resist looking at the new book shelves, of course ending up with an armload of books, including, again, Terri Windling's "The Wood Wife." I absolutely love that book, and I've been trying to decide whether to buy a copy or not. I hate to buy hardback fiction because I seldom re-read books and it seems like a waste of money, although in general I feel like books are never a waste of money. Extravagant, perhaps. But we got a mailing from the Science Fiction Bookclub over the weekend and they are offering it, so I think I'll order a copy from them. I checked it out from the library again, though, because I remembered this quote from Katherine Paterson who, I gather from a quick web search, is an award-winning children's book author:

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

While I try not to comment on other online journals here (it's sort of like winking at the camera), several others have been rehashing the old "why do this?" question lately. I don't really think that a reason is necessary. People have been writing autobiographies for centuries, and I personally find the life stories of ordinary people just as interesting, sometimes more so, than those of famous or celebrated people. I don't think it's egotistical to want to leave something of oneself behind, or to give something of yourself to others. As long as you're not forcing it on them, what's the harm? I am so often amazed when I hear other people's stories. So much understanding could be gained if we would just listen to them.

I also did a quick run through Borders at the end of the day, picking up a few magazines and a copy of Brian Weiss's "Only Love is Real." Weiss has written two previous books, "Many Lives, Many Masters," and "Through Time into Healing." He's a psychiatrist who does past-life regression and his books are extremely interesting. I don't know if I believe in reincarnation or not, but I think I'd like to. It seems like it would explain a lot of things. Maybe it would explain why we form such quick and deep bonds with some people, and why we dislike others on sight for no apparent reason. I find it intriguing that I can meet someone and feel immediately comfortable with them, and yet there are people I've known for years that I never feel like I know. Personality enters into it of course, and maybe there's something chemical there, too, I don't know. But I sometimes think that so many things could be explained if we knew, for example, that the co-worker that we've never been able to warm up to was actually a bitter enemy of ours in another century, or that the complete stranger we find ourselves exchanging knowing glances with was a lover in another lifetime.

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