TRY TRY AGAIN

Do what? Live my life again? Could I do things better?

What age, which self would I want to be?

Be young again? See Mom one last time before she died? Find another place in Malibu to live? Produce my "Shattering Panes" play one more time?

Be a beginner dancer again? Could I stretch more, make myself more limber and, despite my feet, be a ballerina, even though some of essential ballet steps always looked silly to me? They still look silly to me.

Be a teenager, and deal with making the highest marks in school, and what am I going to be when I grow up? And pimples? And fall in love with the quarterback Dave, the big man on campus in High School?

I changed myself -- makeup, clothes, dimmed down my brain, learned to talk sports, made friends with Dave's side-kick, a shrimpy twerp who ran Dave's errands. Did I really gave the shrimp my facetious do-you-like-me love letter to hand-deliver to Dave?

Never, never would I want to be back in those days and feel how I felt when Dave never, never, never answered.

So what about love -- go back -- go on dates? I'm not geared up by my upbringing, my era, to picture myself functioning successfully in the current scene. And what would I wear? Would I wear Victoria's Secret bras that create super cleavage? Oh dear, I don't think so -- the man I've got is my pal, my family, my very best friend.

What would I want to go back and do again? Perform on a world tour? I've done that! I don't want to see the sights I've seen before.

Write another novel? Do another version of a "The Woman," a/k/a "Cordelia," a/k/a "Woman of the Century," a/k/a "'Somebody?" What about producing my play "Shattering Panes?" I did produce it, but I could improve it. Why not try try again?

Not again! Haven't I learned/yearned for a hit play? Revised it, loved, hated, mourned, sought -- that's me -- sticking to what I was, what I am now because that's me!

Hey, look beyond -- wave your magic wand!
Don't you see -- you're free to be or not to be --
Like "Hamlet" sad, or "Cinderella" glad!
Just don your glass-slipper sneaker and be stronger not weaker,
And write, write, write -- delight in your blog-site!

THE HUMAN BODY

Wow, this just arrived from my friend who knows what tickles me, and what I think is important!

It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach. One human hair can support 3 kg (6.6 lb). The average man's private area is three times the length of his thumb. Human thighbones are stronger than concrete. A woman's heart beats faster than a man's... There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet. Women blink twice as often as men. The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain. Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still. If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. Women reading this will be finished now. Men are still busy checking their thumbs.

MILITIAS REVISITED

Do you know anyone in a militia? I don't. I don't even remotely know for sure that anyone I know has a friend in a militia.

Well ... wait a minute ... among my Facebook friends, I have come across some passionately anti-Obama attitudes, people who are anti-everything he's accomplished.

I don't live near these friends. I don't know that they or their relatives and hometown friends aren't part of the Militia Movement.

Feeling as I feel about war, about killing people, about finding a way to talk to your enemy, not to kill him or destroy his land or his possessions -- feeling that the Militia Movement is getting to be a real threat -- that they're gathering, drilling, rehearsing how to make a civil war ... Well, I wish I were a preacher.

(I'm remembering Jean Simmons in "Elmer Gantry," the movie about preachers in which she played a preacher.)

Could I put on a long white dress, carry a Bible and talk about civil war? I could ask the militia guys not to make war against their neighbors. Tell them -- "Talk with your neighbor, honor him, he's part of your family -- we are the family of each other. Don't let your politics affect your moral standards. Civil war in our country is -- oh God -- it's a wrong, foolish, terrible idea!"

Well, I don't have a long white dress, though I could borrow a Bible -- but I'm telling you, anyone who's reading this, wherever you live -- if you've got friends meeting and marching with a militia -- tell them loud and clear: Fight your enemy-neighbor with good deeds that help you communicate with him! Give him what you grow in your garden -- plants, flowers, food, dinner invitations, and an offer of friendship.

Talk with your neighbor, meet with your neighbor, coalesce, please. Even if it's just a sort of theoretical thing, hug each other and coalesce.

EQUALITY

I read three articles about equal opportunity for women today.
I have to admit, I never thought that gender equality was very important. Yes, the latest statistics show that a female earns seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man makes doing the same job -- and, yes -- there are jobs for males only, that females can do just as well. But gee, there are other issues about equality that I think are much more important to confront and fix.

People of color, males or females do not get the jobs the whites do!

Yes, yes, they do once in awhile, and yes, doors are opening -- lots of doors have already been opened, and that's progress, but it isn't equality. People of color, Moms, Pops, and kids, entire families -- they don't get the breaks, we get.

I am talking about American Blacks, American Indians, and India's Indians, people from Asia, the Far East, Orientals, Hispanics, Latinos, Australians, Blacks from East Africa and Blacks from South Africa -- whatever you call them -- blacks, reds, browns, yellows do not have the same possibilities for the good life, the hopes for success, and opportunities that whites have.

Affirmative action helped people of color for a while -- colleges deliberately enrolled minorities, but it became too important and whites objected, and then of course, times changed. Nowadays, with our economic troubles, the enormous cost of a college education and the fact that we have a Black President, the foundations and donors who were helping the blacks, reds, browns, yellows have been supporting other urgent things.

Hey, if I were black, red, brown, or yellow, finishing high school, thinking about a career in education, law, social work, government, or the arts, I'd be bracing myself -- gearing up to push, work, shove, and squirm my way into the upper echelons -- and even then, I'd know that I might not get there.

I think race prejudice is STILL a rumbling volcano.

What to do? People of color already know the future, for them, is fraught with troubles and dangers. We whites have to acknowledge it -- move over, make room, and share what we've got with the other guys.