"Mercy Street"

I'm sitting on the boat having not written a blessed word all day (except for emails and now this blog post) listening to Idina Menzel sing at Humphrey's Concerts by the Bay, to which the marina is attached. She performed in the productions Rent and Wicked and her voice is soaring and pristine. However, I'm longing for Peter Gabriel, the artist's voice I find most comforting when I'm in pain or in trouble. Like today.

Fibromyalgia flares don't lay me low very often (I most often work through them) but I think it's the combination of the "pretend" bed I'm sleeping on in the boat with the extended sitting I'm doing in an equally uncomfortable seat in the extremely small galley. It's not like I'm not being active at all. The boat is on the dock that is farthest from the marina entrance (and hence the restrooms, showers, and laundry facilities) and each round trip is 1/3 mile.

I've done some writing and numerous interviews, but my mind is numbed by the pain in my body and all I want to do is surf the net, imagine myself paddling around the marina in a sea kayak or sailing in San Diego Bay. Imagine. Not happening right now.

So I'm listening to Elphaba but I'm thinking of Mercy Street.

There in the midst of it, so alive and alone,
words support like bone

. . . . Anne, with her father is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea

"Shaking the Tree"

This has been an interesting week. Looking back it would be easy to say that I didn't get much of anything done. And yet I did several interviews for my dissertation and worked on Sunstone Salt Lake City. I spent extended time with a friend who is suffering, and with my grandchildren who are finally getting used to the idea that I'm actually their grandma (and not just a specter of some sort). And though I usually eat most of my meals out (Haji Baba's and Pita Jungle are my local favorites), I bought three months of food storage because CNN and MSNBC have been keeping me informed on the international food situation. I've also done a lot of research, continuing to find participants who fit into the categories in which I'm interested--whether they're blogging or on email lists or "meetup" (http://www.meetup.com) groups. And I spent an entire day with one of my daughters, who is chronically ill and needs help with her diet. I've been cooking more too, doing dishes, cleaning closets, and basically being a real human being. So I can't say that I've been unproductive--though I also watched a lot of TV (vampire movies rock!) and had to recover from a nasty migraine earlier in the week.

But I've been avoiding actually writing, beyond continuing to work on the introduction to my dissertation. I am surely an undiagnosed obsessive compulsive, because I work and rework....and rework again so that sometimes one or two paragraphs monopolizes several hours. Words have power. One of my main concerns, then, is "getting it right." Not that there's a "right" way to write a dissertation, but analyzing what these women are doing and how they are doing it is a great responsibility.