New "change" post

It's official: my next "change" post will appear here, either late tonight or by about noon tomorrow.

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Warning: it's long. I may have undergone a lot of changes, but I can't seem to change that aspect of myself.

Whenever I'm writing one of these things, I feel a bit like a boa constrictor who's swallowed a rather large and unwieldy elephant (or donkey). It seems all but indigestible; impossible to assimilate. But then it's done and I feel so much better, although I can't really evaluate the worth of the project. I can only place it up here and hope for the best.

But one thing kept striking me again and again as I struggled with this particular portion of the story. It wasn't easy to look back and admit my own previous (pre-9/11) lack of interest in things that were so important, my tendency to skim the surface of the events of our time, and my seemingly blind trust in just a few media sources. My interests lay elsewhere, as they do for so many of us.

And that's probably not such a bad thing. After all, relationships and people, art and music and theater, fiction and movies, food and nature and work and play, all call to us with insistent voices that should not be denied. Who wants to spend so much time reading the fine print of newspapers, or trying to ferret out the elusive truth, when all those other important and life-affirming things beckon?

In that respect I was (and, to some extent, still am) typical of most people. I don't want to spend my life in front of a computer screen, and I still don't do so--although I spend a good deal more time there than I used to, and sometimes more than I want to. But only fanatics (on both sides) or experts become utterly obsessed with these things. I think I've managed to avoid becoming either, although some of my friends might disagree and rank me among the former.

It would be wonderful (perhaps) if we could all simply sit down with some sort of Krell learning machine and be able to instantaneously absorb reams of information. But we can't.

My introspective nature combined with my training as a therapist might enable me to describe the process of political change better than some, it's true. But if you find yourself reading my next "change" post and wondering at my previous (or present!) naivete and/or lack of expertise, just remember that I consider my story valuable for its relative ordinariness, not because I'm some sort of seer or savant.

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But I stand by what I write. It's a story I've been wanting to tell. And if you feel like the wedding guest stopped by Coleridge's ancient mariner, I apologize.

But please understand that I feel at least partly responsible for the slaying of the albatross. Do you?

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns :
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach.