all of the selves we Have ever been
I am here to warn you: if you are having trouble sleeping, do not turn on late-night television. I repeat: DO NOT TURN ON LATE-NIGHT TV. You will be transported to hell and will spend the night circling all nine rings. You will wish you had pulled your left kidney out through your navel with a fork instead of picking up the remote. The heat you generate will not be from tossing and turning. It will be the actual flames of hell. I have the burns to prove it. When we were young, our parents warned us that nothing good happens after dark. I will add an adult corollary: There is nothing good on TV after 12:30 AM. As a matter of fact, the FTC should require an automatic warning beginning at that hour: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The anguished screams you hear will be your own.” Once you turn on late-night TV you will be tormented by commercials for identity protection services. Don’t bother changing channels. The same ads will be on every station. These infomercials will remind you how right now, at this very moment, bad guys are stealing the deed to your home and trading national secrets with foreign despots using your passport. What else? These monsters may even be stealing your butt prints as you lay on your sheets, prints they will use in some future diabolical scheme to pretend that they are you as they back out of a lead vault with a briefcase full of nuclear codes. And do not stare, because the bad guys may take an iris scan as you watch… By the time these infomercials are through with you, you will have visited all nine rings of hell, and you will be regretting your life. All of it. You will regret not accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior, having pre-marital sex, helping yourself to seconds at Thanksgiving dinner every year, squandering precious allowance money on baseball cards when you were 10, screaming at that scam caller who tried to get your Medicare number, refusing to buy a flower from the Hare Krishnas at the airport in 1965, voting for a questionable politician one too many times, and being a rude host at that professional convention back in 1990 when the hall was packed and the air conditioner broke down. No Minotaur will need to eat your flesh. You will have bitten your nails to the quick. This nighttime experience will add to your daytime hypervigilance. You will be reminded that scammers are stealing your voice by calling you on your phone and waiting for you to say “Hello,” and that your image has been stolen from your g-mail profile picture and now your head is on dozens of indecent photos that are going viral on some dangerous porn site where they are sure to ruin your future except now you don’t have one. The pervasiveness of these identity threats will haunt you and rob you of your faith in humanity and in your higher power. Will there be anything left of your identity to show at the Pearly Gates? You wonder: “What if someone already took my spot?” It’s possible. Let’s face it--Santa has already been scammed by identity thieves. We all know some very naughty people who have gotten some mighty fine presents. Now I understand why. If you unwittingly do turn on late-night television some sleepless night, I strongly suggest that you do not open your email the next morning because you can be sure another ring of fire awaits you due to the internet’s Lucifer having heard of your vulnerability by spying on your smart TV. An automatic subscription renewal notice will be waiting. It could be for some add-on to the identity theft package you purchased in your middle-of-the-night-panic or one of those “free trials” and “one-time purchases” you made because you believed them when they said “free” and did not see the fine print that said what they really meant by “free” was “you will be billed forever.” No matter how desperate you feel the morning after, don’t think you can call the authorities to report this violent mind-rape. It will be deemed your own darn fault for being up in the middle of the night and inviting these strangers into your home by turning on the TV. And weren’t you already in bed? In your pajamas? Well, then, you were just asking for it. And forget a morning-after pill to calm your frazzled nerves. They have disappeared from the shelves because, after all, two wrongs don’t make a right. Unfortunately, you will not be able to leave the country because your passport has been compromised and no country wants stinking American immigrants with guns in every pocket--especially illegal ones without a passport. If your mind is already overwrought and the anguished screams you hear are your own, then late-night TV is not for you. For your own sake, ask someone who loves you: “Please! Hide the remote.”
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![]() Such is the magic of Christmas in childhood… that a single gift can provide one with endless hours of adventure while not even requiring one to leave one’s house. Amor Towles in A Gentleman in Moscow With so much attention on the November election and its potential aftermath, it is hard to believe that the holiday season is not far away. I am doing some light research in case the Christmas miracle is that we do have Christmas this year. What launched my study was a mailing from a large chain store. I received its holiday gift guide, a slender 35-page catalog that I found in a flimsy roll in my four-inch-wide-apartment-sized mailbox. My inner child scoffed at the sight. Talk about shrinkflation! I grew up with the Sears catalog, a compendium of anywhere from 322 to 1,000 pages. I am going to guess that it weighed about half of whatever I did, and it required two hands and a baby brother to lift it into my lap. While it felt disrespectful to Sears and to Christmas wishing, in general, to even consider the flyer a Christmas catalog, I took it to my apartment and smoothed it out on my desktop. I studied the cover. Festive holiday colors formed the backdrop while the featured cover items were some of the classics that have stood the test of time: Barbie dolls, Transformers, and fisher-price Little People. The child in me forced my hand, and I turned the pages. The first page featured gifts “under $10.” There were only nine items in this price category including a Play-Doh Swirln’ Smoothies Toy Blender. Wow! I would have sold my sister for that. Still might. The second page featured items “under $20” and included the classic Lite-Brite. But beyond page two, there were no prices listed as I found myself at a two-page spread for Lego. Perhaps the price tags were missing because today’s parents already know they will need to apply for a mortgage and provide the bank with the credentials of the builder. Curious, I turned to Google for a price check. Most of the Lego sets were priced at $99.99 or more, some topping $499.00. When I was growing up, I could have purchased my first car with that amount of dough and it would have come assembled. Flabbergasted, I moved on to the next pages where my beloved Barbie had been given a two-page spread with similar displays for Disney and fisher-price. Deeper into the catalog, I smiled at the pages of familiar board games many of which still line my closet shelves. The classics still in my possession are also still in the game of games: Clue, Life, Monopoly, Operation, Sorry, Trouble, and the ancient Battleship. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but Nerf had an entire page devoted to its guns. They have gotten much larger and more varied. Nerf now makes a machine-gun named the X-shot Insanity Motorized Rage Fire Blaster. Just keeping up with the times…Rage and insanity, the name says it all. After that bit of discouragement, I rejoiced to find that the arts have not gone out of style. There were pages of craft kits with more Play-Doh items, Crayola products, and the ancient Spirograph. Even a few books were featured on page 27. I was all the way to page 29 of the 35 pages before holiday tech made an appearance: lots of dull-looking headphones, controllers, and keyboards. All-in-all this slim catalog didn’t stink, but it sure did shrink. It made me wonder what has happened to the magnitude of our wishes and the enormity of our gratitude. When I was a child we wished hard and expected little. We hoped something special would arrive by sleigh. We marked just about everything in the book in hopes of getting one item that we prized. Our minds got a workout just by looking and imagining. I closed the catalog filled with mixed emotions: the old joy I felt as a child along with the sadness of wondering what has happened to childhood and imagination in the age of technology and AI. I saw into a future in which the human mind becomes as flabby and diabetic as our bodies did in the age of conveniences. I don’t think I ever realized how much our young minds grew just from imagining what we could do, what we would do. And then, after the present arrived, what we did do: all of those hours of Barbie dramas, Erector sets, coloring books, Play-Doh, improvisation, playing games, learning rules, taking turns, it all amounted to something. Now, at this stage of my life, the thing I prize most is my mind, the one that grew from all of that wishing, imagining and playing. But then came the October surprise. About a week after receiving the catalog, a coworker reported that her nine-year-old daughter watched an old-time detective show on television. The child was fascinated by the lack of technology and the way the investigators used their minds to solve the case. “I want to do that!” she said in awe. Awe and ah! A Christmas miracle in October! I plan to give her the Christmas catalog and show her how it’s done. ![]() “…many of us have internalized the message that our bodies are some kind of burden that must be subdued and transcended.” From Goddesses Never Age Once upon a time there were no exercise classes, no gym memberships. There were no leggings or sports bras, no water bottles or heart rate monitors, no power bars or protein shakes. Daily life was the treadmill. People stepped on when they awoke and off when they fell into bed at night. They moved to the rhythms of life and the changes of the seasons. Out on the farms, in the suburbs, or on the manufacturing floors it was called “work” or “chores.” Out in the yards, in the neighborhoods, or on the school grounds, it was called “play.” Somehow people managed to get motivated and get moving without a throbbing musical beat in their ears. But the war-weary people were vulnerable, and they fell under the spell of the Gods of Progress. The Pharmaceutical Giants gave the people vaccines and antibiotics adding years to their lives and giving the people a false sense of health. The Wizard of Madison Avenue began to speak to the people from a new device called television infiltrating their minds and hearts with yearnings. Everyone began talking about an abundance of cheap, magical, labor-saving devices and convenience foods. The Wizard told the people what they should want, what they deserved, and after a taste, the people agreed. They began to seek entertainment in their homes from their laid-back positions in reclining chairs called La-Z-Boys. And after they finished their TV dinners the people puffed on burning rolls of tobacco that the Tobacco Giants said were healthy and tasted good like cigarettes should. Tik Tok, time passed. Soon the people became spectators to life. And as they watched other people do stuff, the people grew in size along with their sectional sofas and flat screen TVs. They no longer needed to walk upright. Their hand held phones became smarter than the people themselves. With a gentle tap of a single finger, the people worked. They paid their bills, ordered food to be delivered, did their Christmas shopping, wrote to friends, and asked an invisible woman named Alexa to answer the door while a robot vacuumed the floor. And still, the Gods of Progress wanted more, and so they teamed up with the Wizard of Madison Avenue who had already corrupted the Gods of the Metaverse. Together, they hatched a plan to sell more ads while stealing the minds of the people and replacing them with artificial intelligence. “We’ll create a device more addictive than tobacco. It will be so addictive and so distracting that it will rob people of their free will, the ability to think for themselves, the desire to work, or the capacity to love one another. They won’t need to do a thing ever again.” But the Gods were so full of themselves that they forgot that intelligent life still existed where it first began--outside the Metaverse. They overlooked people like Dr. James Levine who were warning that, “Sitting is the new smoking.” People began to repeat this new mantra which angered some of the Gods. They still weren’t happy with the former Surgeon General who exposed their claims about tobacco and nicotine. But ever opportunistic, the diabolical Wizard of Madison Avenue saw a way to turn natural bodily movement into a new product, and he called it “exercise,” and a multi-billion dollar industry was created to press people into buying something the Wizard had already taught them to hate. “Ah, the power of ambivalence,” said The Wizard. “And if we teach people to hate themselves, we shall have it both ways!” As expected people flocked to the gyms and purchased the memberships, the trainers’ time, sports wardrobes, and special shoes. Cinderella looked down on the scene from her throne in the happily ever after. Not a doctor, a god, a wizard, or even Jane Fonda, Cinderella always knew that it was the hard work of life that kept her mentally and physically fit to pursue her dreams, to dare to attend a ball, to climb in and out of a pumpkin carriage, to race up and down the stairs, and to dance all night. She still resents that her fairy godmother was given so much credit for a dress and a pair of ill-fitting shoes. ![]() “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Arthur Fletcher, United Negro College Fund “In my head I was thinking.” The speaker loses me right there. His brain may be a luxury liner, and he may be about to tell me the secrets to world peace, climate change reversal, and how to grow thicker, more luxurious hair, but my thoughts dive overboard. I replay his words while awaiting underwater rescue: “In my HEAD I was thinking.” “In my head I was THINKING.” I want to interrupt the speaker and ask, “Where else would you be thinking?” But my son’s insistent voice tugs on my mind in the same urgent way that he pulls on my arm in a department store when I am about to confront a shoplifter: “Mom, it doesn’t work that way anymore.” Oh! And uh-oh! Another reminder that I am either touched or out of touch, drowning in a sea of changes. The most fundamental truths no longer hold water: now we must qualify where our thoughts come from. No expert, but ever curious about why people do what they do and say what they say, I take a deeper dive. What better arena to find people talking than in politics? I listen. I try to grasp the thoughts behind the words. I try different news sources, and then I ask myself: Did that really come out of the head of a person educated at Penn? Yale? Harvard? Stanford? Pretty pricey educations. And in my head I think I have found the reason to forgive student loans. Just to be sure it’s not just me struggling with the question of where thought comes from I turn to a friend about one of her recent experiences. Needing assistance in a store, my friend approached the customer service desk where another woman was already waiting for help. No one came to staff the desk. After waiting a bit, the women approached an employee stationed in the self-checkout area to assist customers who, shockingly, were having problems with self-checkout. On the surface, it seemed like the customer service representative and the two women shared the same language, but this customer request for a manager or someone to assist them just did not seem to compute in the young employee’s head. Finally, he pulled a response from the same pocket where he keeps his much smarter phone: “There’s no one here that can help you.” End of discussion. Problem unsolved. My friend, a very bright woman who carries a big engine in her own head, persisted, “Well, who would you call if the store caught on fire?” That seemed to get the lights flickering in the young man’s eyes: “Oh! That would be Tom?” “Well, could you call Tom?” Tom never appeared but the two women with the thinking heads solved their own problems. Back at home, I watch a neighbor walk down our shared hallway, dripping and dropping food onto the carpet as he goes. Not unnoticeable, and yet he keeps walking. Keeps dropping. Keeps spilling. And steps in it! Days pass. No attempt is made to clean up the mess. His smart phone is on and updated, but his beautiful head is on lockdown. At work people appear to be busy on their computers. They receive a constant stream of music and podcasts from their earbuds. As their minds process all of that sensory stimulation, I wonder: where do they think? And when? I would ask them, but they can’t hear me. Wonderful people I’ve known for a lifetime are suddenly up in arms about a variety of conspiracy theories. Salacious, crazy ideas picked ripe from the internet and social media are turning their good minds into debris fields. No thought or fact checking required. All of their mental input is handpicked and arranged by AI the new thought generator. I contemplate the notion of “artificial” intelligence. Is that an oxymoron? Or a bad substitute like ill-fitting dentures? Whatever AI is, it bears a shocking resemblance to the artificial additives that enhance the color, flavor, shelf-life, and addictive qualities of processed food. All of the flavor but none of the calories. And none of the nutrition. Seems to me the food giants do their thinking in their wallets. Never mind that artificial ingredients have led to an obesity epidemic that is the leading cause of death in America. Perhaps they learned this approach from the tobacco industry whose product is known to kill one out of every two of its best customers. And so, in my head, I ponder: What does this new artificial substitute for thought mean for our minds? After tobacco, it was food. Now it is technology. We are already experiencing AI poisoning. Maybe we will eventually kill each other. And like the tobacco and food companies before them, big tech owners will stand back and claim it was all “freedom” regardless of their industry’s psychological manipulation. But, by then, the big tech guys will own all the real estate on Mars and the only rockets to get there. Don’t you love freedom? The life of the mind is under siege. The future of thought is not looking good. What is to become of that vault of jewels that makes us human, the many faceted gems of thought, wonder, creativity, and empathy polished by time, experience, education, flexibility, maturity, and relationships? What happens when our heads are as junk-clogged as our arteries? A poor swimmer in these uncharted waters I doggy paddle to stay afloat. I conclude that psychologically manipulated information--no matter the volume--is not thought any more than Cheetos are nutrition. To the in-my-head-I-was-thinking-guy—I owe you an apology. And some credit for trying. ![]() Following my usual route along a nondescript section of urban bike trail, I spot something new! A row of tall banners blows in the breeze and forms a lively parade along the guardrail. I look for the cause of such celebration. Beyond the guardrail and down a small slope on the far side of an enormous parking lot, a new establishment is open for business. One of the signs unfurls on an east-to-west wind, and I see the words, “Dry Needling” displayed on a banner that looks like a boat sail. I repeat the words to myself as I move along the path: Dry needling? What can that be? I scour my mental glossary and come up with an ancient parental rebuke, “Quit needling your sister!” The tone made it clear that continued needling came with consequences. And needle each other in public? A girl better be prepared to grow her hair out like Rapunzel if she ever wanted to leave her room again. These needling memories increase my curiosity, and I imagine a business built on a model developed by kids in junior high school. If only I had known then that I could build a profitable empire on those sarcastic, uninspired, and mean years! Making my way home with the words dry needling still jabbing my brain, I look up the word needling and find that it is “a teasing or gibing remark.” But then I have to dig into the word gibing – “to make someone the object of unkind laughter, deride, jeer, laugh at, mock, ridicule, skewer, scoff, or make fun of.” Yep, my parents knew what they were talking about. I dig deeper. What can dry needling be? My parents were not that explicit. Perhaps they assumed that at age 12 there was no alcohol involved in these exchanges of psychic puncture wounds. Therefore, I assume that despite the fanfare, this new establishment along the bike path is not a bar. I guess people of any age can needle while sober. I walk the short distance home and think of how long it has been since my parents scolded us for needling. If only they had lived a little longer, they would have seen that those junior high skills and the art of needling can have a big pay-off. Today, we call it Twitter. ![]() I return home from work to find a bag hanging from my doorknob. I know what’s in there, and I hurry to enter the house, tossing my keys to the table and my work bag to the floor. A fresh crop of magazines! I have always loved them, but they have become too expensive to purchase often. Some now top $12.99 per issue with not much content, a real budget buster. There have been times when I considered selling my plasma in order to acquire a beautiful, fresh edition, but, thankfully, I have a magazine-loving neighbor, and we chase down back issues and re-circulate them. We don’t care if they are a few months out of date. They don’t spoil. Now and then, I leave a bag for her, and she returns a bag to me. It’s my bag now, and I can’t wait to see what’s inside. I spill the contents of the bag onto the coffee table and study my options. Should I consume it all at once, or dole it out a day at a time? I brew some tea and settle in for a late night. Magazines were a much bigger deal before the internet, and I became conditioned like Pavlov’s dog. Throw a magazine on the table, and I start salivating. I grew up with magazines piling up around the house—my father’s National Geographic and Popular Mechanics, Look, and Life, and my mother’s Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, and McCall’s. Magazines were meatier back then: beautiful photographs, informative articles, great short stories, recipes, and coupons! As I got older, I added my own favorites: Tiger Beat, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, and Glamour. I could spend hours on the phone turning the pages while my friend on the other end of the line did the same as we studied the magazine together, an early preview of the now popular Zoom call. In 2020 when Oprah announced she would no longer produce her monthly print magazine O!, I mourned the death of magazines. If Oprah couldn’t make a go of it, what hope could there be for any others? Look was long out of sight, departing in 1971, with Life expiring in 2000. Mademoiselle said au revoir in 2001 and Teen in 2009. Most shocking of all was when US News & World Report ceased publication in 2010. Was there ever a high school report or a school debate that did not rely upon the facts in US News & World Report? No wonder no one trusts the news any more. But back to the payload at hand. I begin sorting. I have before me now a familiar title that has managed to hang around since 1937: Woman’s Day, and a few relatively newer ones: Real Simple and Health. A couple of Vogue magazines are at the bottom of the heap. Vogue is the oracle of fashion and began as a newspaper in 1892 with a cover price of 10 cents. I stare at the December 2021 edition with a newsstand price of $7.99. I always thought Vogue was as out of my league. There is nothing haute about my couture, and so I have never been a subscriber or reader. But, hey, today’s price is right! And expensive magazines can afford to pay for good writing. I dig in. I turn back the cover and my eyes fall upon a very slender woman dressed in a pair of…well, I’m not sure what to call them…Pants? Leggings? Tights? Spanx? Whatever they are, they cover her high-heeled shoes as well. They are…? Again, I am not sure what the word is for that color—somewhere on the spectrum of very old and worn cardboard boxes with the deep green Gucci logo all over. Complementing these, for a lack of proper vocabulary, these bottoms, is a long-sleeved shirred purple top with a thick diagonal red and black stripe. At the midriff is a large jewelry-like piece holding the shirring together. The outfit is accessorized with elbow-length metallic gold gloves, a purple #10 baseball cap, and a large dangling nose ring that covers the model’s lips. It hangs down like a long, thick, and sparkling booger. If I had more class, I would say, “a piece of dried nasal mucous.” This is called high fashion. Perhaps that is because a person must be high in order to wear it. I come from the low place where young women match their purses to their shoes and jewelry only finds its way up the noses of curious toddlers who get expensive trips to the emergency room. I shake my head. I could never carry this off. I would be picked up immediately for prostitution, a mental health assessment, or a stay in a homeless shelter. My mind drifts to the image of a coffee cup I once saw in a Spencer’s gift catalog when I was still a high schooler. It featured a drawing by a kindergartner with the words: “Your face is ugly and your mother dresses you funny.” But that’s the first page. Maybe the editor is just trying to get my attention. A few more pages in and I see an ad for Valentino. Three strikingly slender and beautiful people lounge on a red leather sofa. The female models are wearing what appear to be oversized blouses, but they don’t appear to be wearing pants. Perhaps in high society, pants are optional. I study a multi-page ad for a high-fashion line of purses, something I understand. The bags look sturdy and reasonable, but reasonable ends at the price tag. They run from $328 a piece to $568. Since the price is shown for each bag, I am assuming that, in the Vogue circle, these are considered a real bargain. But I cannot afford the purse or a security detail to follow me around just to protect my bag. I continue flipping pages. I see an ad for a skin care line I’ve never heard of. It is a two-page spread. The left page features a picture of the very fit and handsome founder and CEO. How come he gets to wear pants? And not just pants, but some comfortable blue jeans and a plain old white t-shirt? He looks handsome instead of ridiculous. I check him out online. If I stick with him, I can remove my eye make-up for $30.00 which is more than my monthly water bill. This makes me think he can afford a better t-shirt. The next article is about “fringe benefits.” The fringe is four-inch eyelashes “for everyone.” Apparently, eyelashes are “rewriting the rules of who gets to be glamorous.” Uh-oh! More bitter confirmation that I am not in that club either. Even if I wanted to be a member, I would have to trade my vision for glamour. I would not be able to fit my glasses over those lashes. Perhaps it is true at a certain level of society that “men never make passes at girls who wear glasses,” but I’ve grown partial to my eyesight. I favor it over fringe benefits. Another article describes a new class of at-home devices that lift, smooth, de-puff, re-plump, and revive pandemic-weary complexions. This silver bullet we’ve all been waiting for costs $2,499.00, but don’t think that will save the female consumer from the need for micro-current…and you do also have to be “reasonable” in your expectations: “No device can turn back the clock.” Well, maybe not, but it can certainly set back the 401(k). Now in a low mood, I close the book on high fashion. It is confirmed: I do not own the right bag; I am not glamorous; I cannot afford silver bullets. But I sulk only for a moment because those are not the things I wish for or dream about. I return to my familiar magazines, to my life of soap and water--sans electric current, and I put on some pants. ![]() It is the first snowfall of the season. Through my window it is a wonderland of undisturbed white powder and winter quiet. This beautiful landscape portrait conceals the blistering wind that strikes my cheeks and the thick, crunchy ice that causes my feet to slip and slide as I step outside to warm up the car. When I was young, I wondered why older adults went to Florida for the winter. It seemed to me that the heat, humidity, and bugs would be a deterrent to anyone still in her right mind. Perhaps my mind is no longer right. Sunny locations with clear, dry roads sound lovely. Cruising around tropical islands and sipping sweet drinks from a pineapple don’t sound too bad either. Cruises can be expensive, and with COVID and its many variants circulating, they are also a bad idea. While my mind may no longer be right, I do seem to recall a certain inexpensive cruise line that promises restoration of the spirit. That would kill two birds with one stone—help me to succeed with my New Year’s resolution and get me away from it all. Did I mention that it is also affordable? There is no need to contact a travel agent. How does it work? You climb into your bathtub, say the magic words: Calgon, take me away! And you have set sail. I remember the ads and the foil covered cardboard boxes that sometimes sat on the edge of our bathtub at home. I’m not sure if my mom got to sail away that often. A military wife and working woman with four children didn’t have much time to sit down. The box may have offered some hope or a chance to dream, but it was we children who poured far too much of the magic powder into the tub and used up all of the fragrant journeys. I rarely take a bath any more. I am strictly a shower person unless I am nursing some pain. Even then, I am reluctant to sit down in the tub. Seems like too much trouble, the getting in and the getting out, and the cleaning up. Takes too much time, too. That’s way too long to be naked at my age, not to mention my general sagging condition. What if something sticks to the porcelain? As I grow older, I am hounded by doctors, nurses, and ads reminding me that I could slip and fall. The bathtub is certainly a new danger zone. No wonder my divine spark is dying. I guess we grow old by exchanging adventure for safety. We no longer sail away, we slip away. I think about these things as I shovel a foot of snow from around my car. Twenty-five mile per hour winds blast my face with an icy mist. I realize that I am a much braver woman when I am dressed in multiple layers from head to toe and have something I can throw. With this new insight and a tablespoon of resolve, I go inside and search the internet. OMG! Calgon still makes the magical powdery elixir. On their website, I find this reassuring description: For over 70 years, Calgon™ has been dedicated to creating uniquely exhilarating bath and body experiences that stimulate the senses, restore the spirit and take you on a special, fragrant journey to the place you want to be. Yep, that’s the stuff, and it’s been around longer than me. Must be true or else hope dies hard. I wait for the trucks to come by with the road salt so that I can get to the bath salts. I vow to be brave: I will trade a thimble of safety for a tub of adventure. I book my passage. I am setting sail. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
January 2025
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