Letters from the Inside, Sarah Pender, #40

Good Morning Kelly,

It's ridiculously early in the morning. After 6am. Well, it's not so much that its early because I always get up before 7am, but rarely am I ever functioning productively. I am at an impasse with writing and legal stuff, so only letters, books and artsy stuff remains to be done. Really what it boils down to is that I have to make a choice to do something that is outside of my comfort zone. The payoff is that I avoid the possibility of failure. The cost is that I give up great rewards for a success. You know what I am talking about. It's something you are going through, too. We all do---a hundred, a thousand times in our lives. But I think that by not choosing to raise the bar in my life and do it, that leaves me with feelings of low grade anxiety and fear around that choice. Like it's always sitting out there on window ledge, staring at me. I don't want to avoid and be scared of it. I want to open the window and invite it in. Will it try to eat me? Maybe. But I'm big enough to kick its ass. Will I tame it and train it and ride it like a broom in this on moonlit night? Isn't the possibility of that power and purpose worth making the choice in the first place? That's what I'm noodling out.

I got this bright flourescent pink card from you and I'm left wondering where you picked 19 year old stationary? I am also curious if the Hunger Project is still around and if it has re-aimed their their goal of ending world hunger by 2000. A noble cause. I applaud anyone or organization willing to choose such a problem worthy of their lives.

I am still crying and sleeping more than I'd like to. I do stretches and breathing and acupressure. I drink lots of water, talk a multivitamin. Eat whole foods, avoid junk food 3 out of 4 weeks (I pig out on my period.) And work on writing, read new books, and try drawing new stuff. Like the focus. But I still feel. UGH. I guess I am missing an essential part of the puzzle.

I think I am a nest for alien hatching. I have intestinal cramps so bad that I am sure a cane-weilding, top-hat wearing alien is going to rip itself from my abdomen and do a Broadway dance. Any moment now.

How do they show movies in the park? Is there a big screen like at a drive-in? Or do they project it onto a building?

I laughed at your suggestion of a 28-day detox program from Amir, particularly that you need "basketweaving, trust exercises, psychologists, and self-analysis-driven groups. People would call it "coddling prisoners." I'd call it "healing Americans."

When you described your chocolate soda, I think Ewww. But isn't that what Yoo Hoo is? But no---you add no milk or cream. You compared it to an egg cream--I don't know what that is. The Japanese food sounds wonderful. I've never really eaten Japanese. The one time I went to a Japanese steakhouse, we sat at the counter stools where the guy does fancy stuff while cooking food and I stayed safe ordering what amounted to chicken and vegetables. That was when I 20. Now, I'd never go "safe". I want to try every neat and wonderful and perhaps icky thing there is. I once thought octopus would be yucky, but I liked it. There's a billion things beyond 8-leggeds sea creatures to eat! That's why I like your little food adventures. Vicarious pleasure.

How's your project, YOU MIGHT AS WELL?

Mom came Wednesday and told me that her boyfriend has been working on a blogspot blog for me and I told her that we already set up wordpress and myspace and the issue is that I need them typed up. She has now committed to typing them up again, so we'll see how this goes. She had been sick for months and didn't know why, until she found out about her diabetes. I guess she has found new energy. One can only hope I will let you know if she gets to typing up my writings. I have a question--when you paste in links to your blog---or rather from your blog, usually those are links to other website, right? Well, can you post a link to a PDF file? Or post a PDF file into the blog where people can access and enlarge it to read it.? The reason I ask is that I wonder if I can just write very clearly, and have my mom scan the paper and create a PDF file to post instead of having to re-type stuff? I figure you'd know.

I've been writing sections about David, my first real love, for my memoirs, and his been stuck on my brain. I just woke up from a nap where I had a wonderfully erotic dream. I began with my girlfriend, she morphed into a friend whom I've had a crush on, but never told her on acted on it, then into David. I rarely have these sexually-themed dreams, but when i do they almost always involve more than my past loves, always my girlfriends, but I welcome David anytime. I miss him. He's the guy I stood by when no one else did and my Dad criticized us. When I enrolled in that judgement and left him, he's the guy I should have went back to. I was right all along. I'd stay straight forever to have him back again. Although, I know everyone changes. We are both different now, but I still hang on to the idea that it could be or what should've been. It's always good in my dreams.

I'm so people-deprived that I daydream about hugs.

And so conversation-starved that I regularly talk to my handicapped ladybug.

No wonder they allow Death Row inmates pet cats. It's the only way the prison can prevent the condemned from suicide before the State gets a chance to kill them.

That's sad.

No more sad talk.

Hpe you are well.

Peace, Sarah

P.S. A bit of happy talk. I just got a JPay letter from my friend Kye and she happened to mention the Hunger Project. Isn't that odd? She just read a book by a lady who was one of the primary fundraisers for the Hunger Project, Lynne Twist. Instead of raising money to give away to charity, the project uses it to collaborate with impoverished nations/regioins so they could justify their own strengths and resources (other than money) and adi them in starting small businesses, farming, etc---building sustainability.

How smart!

That is one of the biggest downfalls of the Zimbabwean people. Back in 1980, after 100 years of British colonial rule/protection, Zimbabwe was granted independence. Robert Mirgabe was the leader of the Black nationalists that fought for its independence and was then elected prime minister. Over the next 20 years, he worked to bring power, money, and land back to the flack Africans, but did it through force and corruption, eventually stealing white Afrikaan's land and business and giving to the people in his cabinet/family members. Well, because most of the blacks were laborers, low-level mgmt, cattle herders, and bush people, so many businesses left or collapsed and thousands of acres of food ready to harvest, died in the fields. The new owners were not empowered to use what they had been given. No one taught them. So the US and countries around the world would fly in tons and tons of relief food and your $ into a nation destined to starve. Many of the educators, farmers, govts had been white and were run out of the country or left on their own. What they needed, and still do, is to learn how to fish (well, farm). So, hooray for the Hunger Project.!