ETcetera...THE OTHERWORLDLY REPORT

In the beginning was the Word, and Microsoft did not create it. Our lives are being continually downloaded with words and data that are exponentially increasing in both volume and speed: Facebook, that narcissistic playground for adult children who no longer feel comfortable in public screaming “Mommy, Mommy, look what I can do!” and have three hundred pictures of themselves doing everything imaginable and inform you when they are baking a cake, having their coffee or a BM or thinking about having a BM, MySpace, the textspot for sexpots, Twitter, or how to be a narcissistic from any location on the planet, Farmville (whatever that is and all I can imagine is Old McDonald), forwarded emails and superstitious chain letters that forewarn my demise if I don’t pass them on, SPAM, celebrity gossip and “which celebrity do you look like?” (and who really gives a BM?) reality TV, iPods, texting, blogs, websites, advertisements, hard copy junk mail, and GPS systems which help us get to where we...

Many years ago I attended a very expensive workshop. The agreement for all of the participants (about 75 or more) was that everyone had to be present in order to enter the room to start each class. A few members were consistently late. Those who were angry that we couldn’t begin started to accuse and blame the others who couldn’t seem to make it on time. Those who were late gave good excuses. Neither side heard or acknowledged the other. This continued for forty-five minutes. We had been listening to lectures about being an example to others and yet the message had quickly been forgotten. I was reluctant to remind them, but someone close by overheard me mumbling to myself and raised her hand. “This person has something to say!” she yelled. And suddenly everyone stopped talking and turned to look at me. I was embarrassed and afraid to speak, but something inside of me gave me the courage that I needed. “We have all spent a lot of money and time and made the commitment to be here this we...

When I was a baby, Mom had a hard time keeping me still, and one day I did a back flip out of her arms and landed on my head on a silver box. The doc said that I was fine. The box, however, was not, which is a testament to the hardness of my head. I was a sleepwalker too. My Indian name was Walks with Diapers (kidding), but one night when my parents were sleeping, I managed to climb out of my bed, open the front door, and stroll off the property in only my diapers, headed toward the main drag where I would have been Gerber road kill if my psychic Mom hadn’t awakened and screamed, “The baby’s outside!” Luckily they found me in time, but they scared me awake and the diapers came in handy. So you can imagine how traumatic it might be for a little jumping bean to get stuck in the Alice in Wonderland spinning teacup ride with her Mom, trapped in the dark, ascending structure, the Mad Hatter jumping up and down maniacally during every painful, horrifying minute. They eventually had park...

Maybe there is something wrong with me. I am sure that there are a lot of folks who might attest to this. But I am sitting here in my Los Gatos studio listening to my thirty year old (or older) refrigerator compressor rattling on and off every five minutes (blowing its ancient dust all over my floor), yet my apartment manager doesn’t think there is anything wrong with it. He is one of those people who think it’s me, but I have told him that he needs to think about sleeping ten feet away from this thing every night. He says I’m “noise-sensitive” and without my knowledge, he put sticky rubber strips under all of the items on top of my refrigerator because he said that was what was making it rattle, but it still does. He and his wife announced that they just bought a new refrigerator. I’ll take their old one. I bet it’s quieter than my Hotpoint from Hell. My neighbor is idling his motorcycle right under my unit (which makes me want to idle his unit) and as I write this, another neighbor,...

“Mommy, Mommy! Come and see!” She had her hands full with an exuberant eight year old. “Look!” I screamed, as I pointed up to the sky. “What, Honey?” she asked. “Can’t you see the distance between the stars?” I asked. “LOOK!” I was frustrated. I could tell by the look on her face that she couldn’t. I had been stargazing again, something I did regularly with my blanket on the back steps of our house. But this particular night, something had changed for me. In one nanosecond, my vision had shifted and I had my first glimpse of infinity with no limitations. Mom shook her head, turned, and walked back into the house. I had done a back flip out of her arms when I was a baby and landed on a silver box. The box was severely dented, but the doctor said that I was fine. Maybe that bump on the head was a blessing and perhaps that is why I saw things a little differently as a child. And I always felt temporary. I always had a fascination with the moon, the stars, and the sky and I seeme...

One of my readers wrote to me the other day and told me to stick to my dating stories and not rant about NASA. But every once in a while, I think something is more important than dating when someone decides to bomb the moon or someone dies and I have to attend the funeral. And although losing a dear family friend is tragic and heartbreaking, it forces me to take a break from the adventure and insanity of coupulation (my word.) So I was off to Arizona for the funeral that turned out to be more of a celebration and drunkfest which my friend Carl would have wanted. I could hear the words Carl would be saying in his southern drawl that I always loved hearing. “I’m gonna go run interference for ya’ll.” While I was in Arizona, I decided to take a short, but overdue vacation to Sedona, a New Age mecca for seekers and girls who have dated too much. I have always been a spiritual person, albeit a bit sacrilegious. I was raised Catholic and was taken to church in my mother’s arms. She coul...

I once attended a writer’s conference in Maui. There had to be over a thousand people there, half of them men. And I was attracted to one of them. Just one: the most dysfunctional, admittedly maladjusted, bipolar one of them. I could feel it when he walked into the room. He wasn’t overwhelmingly attractive, but he was wildly intelligent and a great writer. He didn’t use his real name when he wrote which made him all the more mysterious and deadly. There was just something about him. I had found the needle in the haystack and got stuck with it. I had found something that hurt without even trying. Call it crazy. I tended to call it chemistry (and fireworks that burned.) So I am determined to figure this out. Is chemistry a physical attraction or is it more? It obviously doesn’t always work to our benefit. In fact, sometimes it hurts (a lot.) Is it real or is it imagined? Does he (or she) remind us of Daddy (or Mommy?) Are we finishing (or unfinishing) some business in our past? If I coul...