Science fiction

I should be ashamed I love these things. But I’m not.

Not really. I suppose I should be because they’re not the usual suspects like spring in Paris, babies and puppies but hey, how boring would that be? We all love those things.

No, these are specific to my twisted brain. What I feel the least bit of a tinge of shame over is the ferocity with which I love these things. It’s the way I love them. The love is mad and runs deep. So, even though I know you weren’t wondering, without further ado, here they are:

1. Grilled cheese sandwiches. And not just any grilled cheese sandwich. It has to be just so. The trick is to use nice, thick bread and then butter and grill both sides. If that much butter bothers you order a salad instead and by-the-way, I don’t think we can be friends.
2. Words. Well, certain words like, pomplemousse, inert, tiddlywinks and hippopotamuses. I like the way they make my mouth feel when I say them.
3. Homemade croutons. Made from stale sourdough or better yet, brioche bread.
4. False eyelashes. (No secret there.)
5. The very rare natural redhead with brown eyes. My niece is one and people literally fall all over themselves staring at her hair. I had blue eyes (still do) when my hair was dyed red—so yeah, I was batting zero for two.
6. Pink champagne. Does this need an explanation? It shouldn’t. It’s magic.
7. Straws in my drinks. No umbrellas and please, no plastic monkeys (okay, just one).
8. Hikes with trees. Like a forest hike, not those dirt trails where there’s no shade and the terrain resembles Death Valley.
9. Science Fiction ANYTHING. Movie, book, TV show, it doesn’t matter.  I repeatedly tell my husband that in my next life I’m coming back as an astronaut/archeologist/deep space explorer. I’m pretty sure that won’t be for a while since I don’t want anything to do with our current space program. I want to be on a ship with gravity. Where I can run around, not need money and replicate whatever my little space exploring heart desires. So, see ya in 3033.
10. The chinese chicken salad at Joan’s on Third. There is only one that is better. My mom’s. Hi mom.
11. Jeans. Don’t you love jeans? I just love that I live in a day and age where pantyhose are no longer required and if they’re not faded and you wear them with a black jacket and nice shoes, you can get away with jeans almost anywhere. Except maybe a funeral. Wear a black dress or real pants to a funeral. Show some respect.
12. The chocolate pie my friend Ginger made for my birthday. ( Are you sensing my love affair with food?) She made two and we had a least one piece a day for my entire stay. I didn’t ask for the recipe because I’d like to fit in one airline seat the next time I fly.
13. Flashmobs. I will scream and cry if I ever see one in person. They make me crazy! You can surprise me with one anytime.
14. Nora Ephron movies. My favorite is You’ve Got Mail, but I also adore Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Michael, Silkwood, Julie And Julia and…

So…what do you love with a fiery intensity that you might never admit except here, as an anonymous reader in front of tens of  my other readers?

Carry on,
xox

“What an astonishing thing a book is.

It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

If only Carl had been around for computers, lap tops, the internet, and AMAZON; now that really is magic.

The other day I was trolling the internet for quotes.
Like you do — you guys know I love me some quotes, I have a whole page devoted to the brilliant musings of others.

Anyway, I came across this one by a hero of mine, Carl Sagan, and it stopped my little scrolling hand, and made me think.

I love him and I so admire his big…brain, his expansive, (and ahead-of-his-time) thinking, and his book Contact is still up there as one of my all time favs.

You see, if you know me (which you do) you know that eclipsing my love of writing, and even my love of singing, may be my love of Science fiction. (I’ve actually started writing some.)

I always say: In my next life I’m going to be a singing, Egyptologist – in space — who writes a blog on some crazy, futuristic device, about her adventures.

You know where I developed all these interests? In books.
And that’s why that quote really got to me.

Books are Magic.

Carl is gone, but when I read all his ideas about space and the Universe; his thoughts are suddenly in. my. head.

The Egyptians, with their hieroglyphics, are able to catapult us back to their time, and into their lives.

Napoleon’s letters to Josephine talk of passion and love.

Poetry written over one hundred years ago can move us to tears.

The words of Shakespeare can make us laugh or break our hearts.

The one thing all these works — these WORDS — have in common is the theme of the week — our commonality, the fact that even through the millennia, we are more alike than we are different.

Think about it. Books and words are like a time machine, they can carry us into the future, explain the past in the participants own voice, give us an intimate glimpse into a person’s heart — or let me speak to you from my lap top in LA.

That’s fucking magic you guys.

Carry on,
xox

I had a unique experience the other morning, kind of a spiritual Ah Ha, and it was prompted by the movie Interstellar.

Don’t get your panties in a bunch, no spoilers here, unless you count that fact that it takes place in space and the theory of relativity gets bandied around once or twice.

This being the week of confessions, I have another one to lay on ya.

I am a science fiction FANATIC. Die hard, always have, always will be, lover of all things SPACE.
It geeks me out, it fucks with my head and it makes me happy.

So…one of the principals of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity goes something like this:
Spacetime: space and time should be considered together and in relation to each other. (Thank you Wikipedia).

Don’t fall asleep, that’s interesting as shit and here’s why; we think time happens in a straight line, past is behind you, you’re standing in the NOW and your future has yet to happen, right? Wrong.
Everything happens at the same time! What?! And time is malleable, it changes with the speed of light and…perception.

One of the principals the movie uses is the speeding up of time.
They, (the crew of the ship) are traveling SO fast and are SO far away, that when they make a pit stop on a planet, (I’ll call it THE DOG PLANET), one hour equals seven years on earth.

So the crew’s NOW – is Earth’s future. Get it?

Now stay with me here, all that being said, could your own future come and inform your present?

That’s what my little epiphany upon waking made abundantly clear to me. The answer is YES. It is always doing that. It uses déjà vu, serendipity, synchronicity, inspiration and the feeling of being called to something.

How it was explained to me, in that place between awake and asleep, was this way: Let’s say you feel like you want to change jobs, or find a new lover. You feel inspired to do so. It lights you up, it just feels “right”.

That’s your future calling you. It’s already happened.
All you need to do is pay attention and follow the breadcrumbs, so to speak.

Whew!
I felt such a sense of relief when that came through.
Why worry? Why get caught up in doubt? If you KNEW it was already accomplished wouldn’t that make the journey to get there so much more fun?
And haven’t we gotten it all twisted up and turned around? Life’s supposed to be fun.

It was a perspective I’ve read about, but with the help of the movie and whatever crazy, mind expanding thing I must have smoked while I was asleep, I REALLY got it.

What you want has already happened and it’s calling you forward.

Now, finish your coffee and GO!
Xox