Insight gained from living abroad...

No matter what race, religion, language barriers or other differences, ALL children really do laugh, cry, and play exactly the same. In a manner consistent with being children that transcends all those things that separate them by their unique characteristics, they are all learning, laughing, loving, hurting, crying and ultimately experiencing the same things. Even if they express these things verbally in many different languages, which happens frequently here in Discovery Bay, it is very easy to understand.

I find great comfort in this.

I have thought this was true all my life, that people are all the same inside, and now I find that my experience here has given me the gift of seeing it first hand. We may all look different, speak different, act different, believe different...but ultimately our humanness binds us as one.

Maybe to some this all sounds stupid or naive, but it makes me smile every time I find myself in a position to be seeing it first hand and on such a grand scale of diversity.

Blah, blah, blah...

That is how I am feeling today and for no apparent reason. I just feel blah. Not bad, not good, not really anything.

I am sure it will pass.

I think too much, that is the real source of my problem. I can't stop, my mind never seems to shut off. I haven't been sleeping well because of it, I go through phases like that.

So, I will just maunder a bit...

I read a lot in order to focus my mind on something other than the constant reel of thoughts and images. I just finished all three "Books of Blood" by Clive Barker. I read them back when I was in junior high, but wanted to read them again since it had been a while and I enjoyed every morbid detail. Before that I read "The Rising" and the sequel "City of the Dead" by Brian Keene. Those were great. I was on edge waiting for the sequel to come out. It was just as good as the first book. I also recently read a few biographies on severely abused children. Books like "Sickened", "Ghost Girl" and "Behind Closed Doors". I have this morbid fixation on these terribly sad, true stories. I can't get enough of them for some reason. I think it captivates me that the people writing these stories really experienced such horrible atrocities and survived. I relate to their strengths and weaknesses in a number of ways, as I am sure many people do.

So, when I read I don't think as much. I sing, too. It makes my mind slow down.

Today I am listening to and singing Tori Amos - "Happy Phantom".