Last Monday I didn't celebrate the Unniversary of my first marriage.
I know I didn't make the same mistakes as last time, but that didn't keep me from making different ones. How many mistakes can a person make?
I hope that Edison was right about mistakes just letting you know the wrong direction.
Life isn't ever going to be perfect, I know that.
But maybe I can learn to avoid some of the stupid shit, you know?
I'm sure trying.

Here in the narrow mind of the Army (not so narrow for some people, just for the majority, as usual) we are subjected to Rush Limbaugh, with criminal guests such as Tom Delay featured, for your enjoyment. I suggest, as an antidote, to check out Penn Jillette. http://www.pennradio.com/ . I have suggested this to AFN, but, as usual, they have ignored me, because they are IDIOTS.
Fine. Lose all of your business to the internet. I can get everything I need on the Net. I have a functioning brain. I can escape the propaganda, and decipher the code, and make my own decisions.

In other news, did you know that the tampons of different countries come in different sizes?
A Greek Super Plus Tampon (by OB) is a good quarter inch larger in diameter than an American one. A German Super Plus is in between the two.
Now, what does that say about the cultures involved? Are American women really that "uptight" or Greeks really that, um, relaxed? There is certainly far more support in Greek, and especially German, culture for having children. The Germans say that one child makes you healthy, two makes you beautiful, and three makes you strong, etc. I haven't a clue what the Greeks say. They love kids to death, though. My Danish friend who married a Greek around age 20 has four beautiful kids, every one treated as a valuable investment.
Anyway, what's up with the international tampon size anyway?
More research to come, possibly with pictures.

They say you can't go home again. I'm pretty sure that's true, because the you that left, is never the same you that comes back. This me is, now, almost seven years from the me that left Austin Texas in January 2001.
How can anyone leave Austin, Texas, those who get there and stay, wanna know.
I got too tangled up. I started chewing off my limbs. I still have cracks in my teeth from the frustration. I was literally losing my mind.
I didn't care to start losing anything else.
Like a caught animal, I just started lashing out. Then I realized it, and tried to isolate myself, to save anyone from harm. It went on for a short while, but I cannot thrive in isolation, especially with another person too close for comfort. That relationship was never exactly on solid footing, but neither of us knew the difference. Too dumb, too young, thought we were so damn smart.
My personality has difficulty with intimacy, and especially trust, in the best of situations.
No one who is uncomfortable with themselves, can truly let another in. Think of being ashamed of your house when you let someone in. You keep them in the rooms you feel comfortable with.
I had a couple of very nice guest rooms, and most of my friends thought that was me.
There's a whole house here.. I've thrown a lot of antiques out the windows, but am sure there are ever more relics and dust bunnies to discover and either redecorate or simply let go.
Let go, my teacher used to say. Just Let Go. I had one of the most beautiful and honest budo teachers out there. He said he was teaching aikido, but I'm not so sure any more. He was the hammer, and the mat was the anvil. I was the faulty steel.. folded a thousand times and still needing honing. My teacher now, does that well.
I've been through multiple processes now, and this steel is, now, simply naked.
I've found a place where I don't have to hide any more. I have a partner who delights in drawing every aspect of me out. He is fearless in that direction, and excels at being fearless, for others.
I have a profession where wierdness is celebrated, I live in a culture where I am an outsider, and therefore not expected to fit in. Like many other outliers, I am more comfortable in a foreign land. I'm already strange, therefore, to be a stranger in a strange land is actually an ease, for me. At least until memories have faded, and I have changed enough to be almost a foreigner, where I was once at home.
But for now, I go home in a few months, and I am feeling terribly, terribly naked. I dreamed, back when I began bodywork, that I had stepped out of a full medieval suit of armor and walked into the woods, and when I looked back at the armor and where my feet had fallen, flowers grew. They grew out of the armor.
Part of the concrete psychophysical process of Rolfing is to find a way out of the defenses we all put between our soft selves and the terrible world, if we perceive it that way, growing up. I certainly did. And now, headed back to the world I grew up in, I am honestly feeling a trifle nervous. At the same time, I am also thrilled.. that I will see it all, perhaps, with these new eyes.