63 things about me

1. I never owned a Barbie doll.
2. My favorite film is "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
3. I used to fantasize about leaving with Klaatu and being a musician on his planet.
4. I love gloves.
5. I drink my weight in Indian black tea every day.
6. Some of my closest friends are pen friends.
7. I've been an epistolary addict since I received my first penpal at the 1964 World's Fair in the Parker Pavillion.
8. I gave up on one pen friend from England because all she ever wrote was "It's raining in Tavistock."
9. I own more stationery than shoes.
10. I have kept journals since 1970.
11. I am afraid to reread them.
12. I was born in the Chinese Year of the Rabbit.
13. The wild rabbits by our house have become so accustomed to the carrots we leave for them by a particular tree, year round, that they hop there as soon as they see us.
14. I have been a semi-vegetarian for most of my life.
15. I used to be 5' tall, but I'm melting.
16. My favorite actors are Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, and Susan Sarandon.
17. I studied piano for many years.
18. I haven't touched a piano since college.
19. I played viola and cello for many years.
20. See # 18.
21. I have begun to write at least a dozen novels.
22. I have been known to write poetry, including haikus.
23. I love Kwan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion.
24. I love the moon. Passionately.
25. My Jewish mother taught me about Zen.
26. I can not draw.
27. I never learned how to fall asleep.
28. I rarely remember my dreams.
29. Knitting is my meditation; frogging is my fate.
30. I don't believe in fate.
31. I studied ballet and hatha yoga for many years.
32. Neither of the above has kept me from a life of klutzhood.
33. My grey hair sometimes gets caught in my waisband.
34. I love lighthouses.
35. I would love to have known Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Ottoline Morrell. I would have been afraid of Virginia Woolf.
36. I met Allan Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman.
37. I would like to meet Laurie Anderson, Gore Vidal, George Carlin, and Camille Paglia.
38. My favorite living poets are Diane Ackerman and Jane Hirshfield.
39. Everyone and everything in/about the current administration makes me sick.
40. I love Jimmy Carter.
41. I have only been out of the country once, to London.
42. I loved the gracious and serene swans near the palace. They nibbled crackers from my hands.
43. I once threw a coin into the Serpentine.
44. The only thing I cook well is rice.
45. The only housekeeping chore I enjoy is washing dishes by hand.
46. I am not a good housekeeper.
47. If I could time-travel, I would observe the Elusinian Mysteries.
48. My migraines begin with truly bizarre auras.
49. I almost called this blog "Swan in the Evening," from the song "She Moved Through the Fair."
50. I hate clowns. Doesn't everybody?
51. I don't mind spiders and snakes.
52. I want to see the Northern Lights.
53. I want to ride in a blimp.
54. "Wish I could find a good book to live in." (thanks, Melanie.)
55. My husband and I have merged our philosophies. Mine: "Anything can happen to anyone. His: Anyone is capable of anything." Pretty much covers it, eh?
56. My husband is one of the funniest and smartest people on earth.
57. We met through a personal ad. Mine.
58. He responded using a fountain pen. It was love at first sight (of his letter). It was, as they say, beshert (Yiddish for written).
59. The sun is not my friend.
60. "The Lark Ascending" and "Five Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' " by Ralph Vaughan Williams are my favorite pieces of music. Ever. They have never failed me.
61. I collect fountain pens.
62. I like to imagine what the antique pens have written, and for whom.
63. Writing with a fountain pen makes me feel as if my little handwriting is touching the Tao.