Blogging is not writing; it is
graffiti with punctuation.
(Contagion, the film)

Last night was a momentous moment (can one say that: momentous moment? Oh, well…): I finally beat Kiwi-san at Scrabble and by a humongous 119 points!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is after at least twenty-five games where I have been miserably beaten and one where I almost won (one/won, hmmmm). The interesting thing was that it didn’t feel like a glorious victory: it was almost too easy. I got all the right letters at all the right moments and with just the right spaces available. At one point I even got the word LITHIUM and managed to cover two Double-Word squares and one Triple-Letter one for 66 points. The game finished at one a.m. If he had stopped playing and gone to bed before that, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep; as it was, he didn’t sleep and not because he had lost (at least that is what he said) but because the pill he takes to insure a deep sleep had worn off by the time he hit the sack. But I won. I did have a grin on my face when I turned off the light and snuggled down. Soooo, this is the real reason I have finally sat down to write some more “graffiti” after almost a month without publishing anything.
If you do not want to run into people you know, do not move to a small town. The truth is that I love meeting people I know; it’s people I don’t know that I prefer to avoid. So this afternoon was a special treat. I went to Carrefour for a couple of things and bumped into my cleaning lady, my downstairs neighbor, the husband of a friend and the woman who frequently takes care of Salomé when I go away for the day. They all stop their shopping to chat: it is a rule of a small town that no one is in a hurry and everyone has time to remark on the climate, the sunshine or lack of, the daffodils that I am buying, the latest visit of a lover, the couple that is moving out or moving into our building or the computer guy I had recommended over a week ago and who hasn’t been called yet. It is a friendly, warm, soft feeling that I come away with and it seems to compensate for the fact that I had a horrifying mental blank when I tried to tell a story using Complex Past, Imperfect Past and More Than Imperfect Past in French class. Anything other than simple and very bad French is still a tremendous effort and usually a total defeat. Will I ever be able to speak the language decently?
As for Blogging, I do not know what has happened. I could say that I am very busy, but it wouldn’t be true. I have time to play Scrabble, watch movies and eat popcorn but I don’t take the time to add a piece to the blog. It has 112 posts and this will be (if I post it) number 113.  I can continue it ad infinitum or begin pulling together themes and make a book out of it, but I am not doing either. At the moment, I seem to be content being unproductive. C’est la vie, what to do? The year is filling my time with other things. I am watching a series of documentaries on TopDocumentaryFilms.com and thoroughly enjoying being brought up to date on things such as the influence of the Net on the global mind, or the different ways one can live and observe Time. I have been instructed on the World Wide Take Over by the documentary “Thrive” and reviewed the falling of the Twin Towers on another film with which I was reminded of the who-dun-it saying of “if you want to know who done it, find who had a motive and WHO BENEFITTED!”  What I thought immediately after the happening has not changed, rather it has strengthened with the passing of time and other events: The motive and the Benefit both fell on power structures within the United States; it assured these structures that Bush (apparently a dumb and very manageable president whose ratings were falling drastically right before 9/11) would repeat and it opened the door for increasing control at home and all the military meddling into the Arab countries abroad. The event that seemed to clinch my belief was the supposed death of Osama Bin Laden. After all, when Sadam was captured, tried and hung we saw it all in lurid detail, but with Osama all we were shown was an empty room with blood stains on the floor. Not one picture, not one item of proof that the man was actually killed or that the person killed was actually Osama; and the burial, carried out hurriedly at sea with no press present, just makes it all the more suspicious. I find it unbelievable that practically no one has publically questioned this supposed death. Are Americans really all that gullible?
Besides these “spectator” activities, I am also taking a few telecourses, requisites for keeping my certification as a Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie. These, along with my continuing French lessons, take up quite a bit of time because of the homework and studying I am obliged to do. At this time, also I am working with several people over Skype.
But all these excuses would not be of any value and I certainly would find the time to Blog, if it were not that the natural cycles of writing and living –in my case- are usually a question of years. At this time, I have been writing the Blog for over a year and a half and for the moment, its cycle is spent… apparently, and who knows, anything can happen.