There simply are not enough hours in the day...or the night, for that matter. So much to do, to experience, to enjoy and accomplish...and the approach of Autumn fills my senses with startling fresh air and beauty. Sometimes, I think I am about to enter a state of sensory overload, and then, I just try to ride with it.

Once upon a time, when my mother spoke in structured sentences, she told me that as I grew older that I would require less sleep. That remains to be seen, but I really do not feel especially rough this morning, considering gnawing muscle cramps in my legs prevented me from easy slumber, and at the most, I only got 4 hours of sleep last night.

Yesterday, with great effort and moderately severe stabbing pains in the aforementioned legs, I successfully completed my goal of 5 miles of treadheading. Yestermorning was filled with excitement & pleasure, much as this morning is, as I started the day downloading the gift of music from my on line Blogstream bud, Petey. Ever since I visited "Petey's Music Place," on the Stream, well over a year ago, out of the kindness of his heart, Petey has been sending me wonderful music through cyberspace. I have no clue as to what I have done to deserve such heart lifting gestures, but I must have done something well. "I Put A Spell On You" starts my day with Joe Cocker. Can it get any better than this? Sensory overload, indeed, here I come, complete with shit eating grin of delightful anticipation on my face. Three Dog Night, "Never Been to Spain" and The Beatles, "Rocky Racoon." Thursday was an array of Hank William's Sr. classics...roots, that grew to rock n' roll's fruition. So many days start out on so many glorious notes, random acts of kindness from a sweet young man who belongs on your favorite radio station, spinning platters that you never knew that you loved until you heard them in the here and now. His youthful, yet deeply insightful perceptions start my days magnificently, and I am inadequate to reciprocate due to sadly limited knowledge of this wonder, the computer age. Perhaps, one day, I will learn how to do something to repay his kindnesses over almost the past two years...rarely a word or a phrase from Petey, the Giftster, just soulful, tender, beautiful, soaring music every day or so in my mailbox. I try to write to him to thank him, but I feel sorely lacking, in comparison to the unspoken wisdom of his musical selections that he send my way. "Mad World" now...Petey lists the artist as "Unknown", but I will find the song via google or something akin to it, later today...I vividly recall hearing it on the radio, awestruck, related, heartfelt...and, perhaps if I can tell Petety who recorded this sad and real tune for us to, for a change, to do something nice to him. Thank you, my as yet unmet friend, thank you for making so many of my days so much more profound and magical.

I try to re-gift Petey's music...send it to friends and family, but no one other than myself will ever know the full signifigence of these almost daily insights of the selector, Petey. I know he is in pain, and yet borne of his pain are these presents of his heart to a strange lady he met on line who babbles incessantly about her little life and knows next to nothing about his life...other than his generosity, and the intenseness of his experiences described only in the music that he sends to me. Yes...it is a "Mad World," Petey-Friend, but you make mine, so very much better. You ease my pain, and I thank you with all of my heart. I know that there is hope for this "Mad World," when there are people as giving, thoughtful and kind as you are..you lift me up, and you give me hope, and again, and again, I have only praise and thanks for your efforts...heartfelt praise and thanks.

I have a lot that I want to blog about-my little life has been so full of late.

It was not possible for me to blog on 9/11, nor to browse the Stream for painful insight from others. I know no one who died on that infamous day, but I was watching "Good Morning America" when things began to happen. A puzzled, unsure Dianne Sawyer interrupted what ditties had been planned to report that a plane had been reported crashing into one on the Twin Towers and that they were going to cut away to a live shot of the incident. How could anyone have yet realized the full implications resulting from the first crash, let alone expect the fallout of the second? I like to believe that the television show was in shock and denial after the first plane or the would not have cut away to show it to us, thereby catching the second impact with the resulting dark figures of human beings leaping from the Towers to escape the blasts. I have difficulty thinking that they knew what they were showing before they acted on a journalist's impulse. Even to see it on the tube, in Nowhere, Indiana, live from New York City...Dianne and I screamed in unison. Shock and awe-we were being attacked and droves were downward airborne people left no room for denial. If I had not seen it, perhaps, for a few hours, I could have denied it, but I did, and it was so very horrible.

I remember forcing myself to leave the house and start the drive to work. I was already late when I saw it happen, and so much the later getting out of the door, longing for the ability to deny. I drove to home of my co-worker, the young and beautiful Myra, to find her still asleep. lightly hung over from a 21-year old's night before the morning after. She could not grasp the signifigance of what I was trying to tell her had happened and she was annoyed at my rude awakening. We had jobs feeding, watering and perfecting interior landscapings in our town's motels, hotels and well-moneyed business offices. We didn't have to punch a time clock...just complete our jobs and make everything pretty and shiny.It was a great job, and as I was still in shock started the day at the Holiday Inn where I could do busy work and talk about what I had seen and try to come to terms with it. I was barely hanging in, robotically visiting one peaceful mini-jungle to the next, when someone told us that a third plane had crashed in a field, and yet another, into the Pentagon.

"The Pentagon?" I repeated, "The Pentagon?" I sat down hard in the midst of the interior tiny golf course where we were working.

"Oh no, Myra... I can't work today...they can fire me. I can't work. This is too much." It was a sensory overload of a different color, a sudden impact to my soul.

I was still drinking then,just starting to wind down the ugly habit, I guess, as I voiced my desire to go have a drink at my favorite bar where we could watch the television.Thankfully Myra, the young, the innocent and the beautiful and the already slightly hung over Myra, was to smart to allow me to indulge in my shattered state.

"You don't need a bar, you need your friends. We're going to Debbie's"

Deb is still one of my best friends, and her sage counsel, I agreed, is exactly what was needed. I was trying to quit drinking then, and Myra knew that, so she kindly spared me the temptation of the hour.

We went to Debbie's house, and due to her love of work, found her busy in her home office unaware of the proceedings.

"We have to go in the house to watch your television," I rudely insisted when she indicated that she was too busy to stop her business. This was not the norm for me to contradict Deb, and she told me to wait until it was time for the noon news, and then, we would go from her office to her house.

"We have to go watch it now, Deb. We've been attacked. This is big time. It will be on the air now, there won't be any scheduled programming. I have to go see it, now"

In her little world, she was still allowed denial, "For this?" she challenged me, incredulous that a plane crash would interrupt "The View".

"For this. Now. Please. Or I have to go to a bar," I re-insisted. Deb knew I was trying not to drink in order to be a better me. In my own way, I was threating her, as she was intent on assisting me on my quest to improve. I forced her hand, and she set aside her business day.

The rest of the day was an unreal blur. Even now, years later, the rushes of emotion are just too intense. It is why I could not blog in remembrance on 9/11/07. Still, a sensory overload, and even now, I have to take a break from writing. It is still too intense, and too real.

There is so much more I wanted to post today. Good and bad things over my last week. But 9/11...it still takes precedence. I only watched "GMA" and "Oprah" last Tuesday, and when Bubba came home from work & flipped on "World News Tonight," my head was hit with a double intangible ice picks...Wham! Wham! Sudden onset migraine...and I had to go to our darkened bedroom to encase my head with multiple packs of ice. I still cannot entirely contain my emotions, even with the passing of time, and the fact that I only watched a part of it from afar. I did not mean to write so long on such sadness & madness...it just kind of came forth...I have to take a break and rearrange my head space, as it is not healthy to continue, even at this late date. It is still, too profoundly disturbing, and I must strive to keep things in proper prospective. If there can ever be such a thing about that horrible day...I have to try to handle the event from a place somehow, more removed.

I hope to post another entry soon. I am woefully inadequate to even touch on the pain from that day...and I did try to avoid it, but, still, it would not be controlled.

"Mad World," Artist...unknown...