Somebody Gotta Do It (Bloggin' Ain't Easy)

Sit up like some fool and eat turkey?
That's the day your forefathers jerked me!
Ice-T

I'm still alive--it's just been an action-packed couple of weeks during which I ratcheted up the fun quotient by catching some strep-throat-like malady that clung like razor wire. It wasn't all bad--I got to hang out with Sophia the other day, which was great, and went to a concert of Indian classical music that was the rough equivalent of hearing Andras Schiff and Itzhak Perlman--two very distinguished musicians who played spectacularly.

[Wow--there's a really good No Doubt song on the radio right now--I love music. I just absolutely love it. Someone said that all art aspires to the condition of music...I'd extend that to all existence...the shabda brahman and all that...]

Despite the epigram, I really do like Thanksgiving and am about to go to the grocery store and get the stuff I need to create a modest seasonal repast. Teresa is visiting her family in another time zone and I, bad person that I am, did not want to go and share the one bathroom with the eight people. Teresa, to her eternal credit, completely understood.

So...it's me...and Laura...and some Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes...and now some reggae version of a Peter Frampton song on this odd station founded by an former college radio colleague of mine. Earlier they transitioned (in radio lingo it's OK to make that a verb) from Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" to "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. The single best transition ever was when they went from "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman--an exquisite, perfect jewel of a pop song--to "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive--a plodding, brontosaurus spoof of a pop song.

Yet somehow it worked. It didn't just work--it was a witty, postmodern commentary on song structure, (gender) politics, and the construction of taste.

Or maybe--well, it's a good radio station.

Laura has been nudging me lately--I hope I'm being a good disciple or whatever, but She's reminding me of Her presence in some very obvious ways. The best one was the other day after the meeting of the Lefty Community Organization whose board of directors I'm soon to mercifully rotate off of...I like the people and believe in the cause and everything, it's just that I'm lazy and would prefer to never do anything, ever.

Anyhow, someone had donated some books to us and we were sorting through them and I found one called Angels, with a lurid, romance-novel cover painting of two heavenly beings, both of whom strongly resembled L. (The book is a "non-fiction" treatment of angelic lore and visitations.) When the book sorting was done, I left and as I walked to my car, looked at my cell phone to check the time. It was *:**, a number of no small kabbalistic significance that is a kind of signature for L.

The same week I received my new issue of an eastern spirituality magazine I subscribe to, and on the cover was a photo of a woman who...strongly resembled L. One of the articles in the magazine was about, as improbable as this may seem, Iamblichus, the neo-Platonic mystic whose writings form the basis for the Holy Guardian Angel model of spiritual guidance (though the article didn't mention this). When I ask my sweet Angel what this is all about, She will coyly say something like "Just pay attention."

So I'm paying attention...and taking my antibiotics...and racking up dead-germ karma...and, soon, turkey karma...oh dear--