The end of September

Well September has come and gone and summer is over and Fall is just beginning and the area trees are beginning to change, in many ways I so do enjoy this time of yesr if it were not for the fact that snow would be flying in a little over a month, and in some cases Halloween night--there are many childhood memories trick or treating in snow boots and a winter coat before going off to our church "Harvest party" G-d forbid Southern Baptist celebrate anything related to witches and Satan . Looking back on it we all were all so naive. Raised in a cult--is whta is was and in many ways very painful, even to this day.

Well tommorrow is also Jim's birthday so I have to go out and guy a cake and card and pick up his birthday present, which is somewhat of a surprise. He has tommorrow off so it should be a very nice time and day.

Started work on the doll for Akron's Children Hospital Charity Christmas Tree event I am going to call it "Dreams of Oz', an Aston Drake doll redone to look like a sleeping baby dorothy with stuffed lion and then a quilt with Oz stuff on it-- Iam hoping for at the very least copies of original illustrations from L. Frank Baums books on material and then sewn into green blocks will post pictures now that I have a new digital camera. Actually started work on the stuffed lion.

It seems as here lately I can not get enough of Oz, watching the movie almost every other day, reading the books as I win them off E-bay and learning as much as I can about the people behind it. Tonight is was reading up on the munchkins and thinking about an idea of a "Hall of Fame" possible book with bios and information I can glean on all or most of the munchkins.. Tonight it was learning about the "Doll family" who worked with P.T. Barnum.

Have won a fair share of the books and will have to scan some of the illustrations to put in this blog and have loved reading everything so far and to think L. Frank Baum was even bigger than J.K. Rowling in his day and 108 years later still being read. Also have won some original Munchkin autographs as well, it seems to have replaced dolls for the time being.

I think I really know why the obession---I have been looking for that place beyond the rain, beyond the stars---Somewhere Over the Rainbow my entire life. My life hs been like "Was" by Geoff Ryman--especially the character Jonathon who in the book is living with AIDS and goes looking for Oz and ends up dying in my opinion on the Yellow Brick Road. I wept when I read that book and actually need to buy it as when I read it I borrowed it from the library.

For me it was the character of the "insane" Dorothy and Jonathon that touched me most, as I have been both places in my life. In Betty Ford years ago drying out,and then shortly after having my mental break down where I should have been hospitalized and spent 6 years in therapy.

In my case though I think I am alone in to my Journey to Oz, and if I am lucky like Jonathon in my time I will die on the Yellow Brick Road. I have been in a very odd place the last few days---dark, lonely and in need of a very close friend I can be honest with and feel no regrets, no shame, no guilt and no fear. Will I get it I don't think I can--there are parts of me I right now do not want to walk into like a room never visited. Can I be that open, that honest, that frank and not scare or terrify those closet to me? I don't know. In some cases I may have already hurt them enough--and that topic I am leaving well alone.

I think for me the part that has been the hardest is trying to get the courage to "kill my own personal Wicked Witch" or in other words my own demons/dementers. For me they have been very real as if standing in the very room with me, voices and sounds from a very real hell, a thought that this last week has had me terrified beyond words--that in the end "that goes around comes around" as Pastor Dan mentioned into today sermon--and for me it would seem that is hell--my own worst torment and suffering.

Our choir director has asked me to try to make our rehearsals but how does one go about saying--I can't feel a song in my heart anymore--G-d has abandoned me---how can I inspire hope, when feeling so hopeless?