Saturday, January 2, 2010

2010: A New Year, A New Decade

January 2, 2010: the beginning of the 2nd decade in the new millennium. So on a lazy and gray Saturday I spent most of the morning in my bed with my laptop and a cup of Roboos tea while listening to jazz classics on Yahoo internet radio when the next tune that came on was Billie Holiday song, ‘Day In Day Out’.

The year 2009 for me began with a profound dream: hearing the voice of GOD. From a grand foyer of rich polished oak walls framed of crown molding surrounded by floor to ceiling windows and stained glass, I ascended to the sky over an oversized staircase to enter through a massive door. In my dream, I leave a fearful friend and a sacrificial soul behind to still the turbulent winds that allow for me enter into another space and time: in a house above the sky to follow the VOICE that kept repeating, “I’m right here.” And just before I see the face of GOD, I am suddenly awakened from my lucid dream by good buddy in L.A. who phones me at 6 AM. It was not time for me to see the face of GOD and be able to tell others about it. But not just yet.

Recollecting my thoughts of 2009 since the beginning of the new millennium, it not seems like it was just a flash of space and time shared with many people. In 2009, we have seen Katt Williams get arrested yet again, Ophra Winfrey make an incredible announcement that she is retiring…how do you retire your ego when you have been the sole person on every cover of your own magazine for the last ten years?? While we were blessed to witness the unfolding of American history with the inauguration of an African American President, we lose Michael Jackson the King of Pop way too soon.

Weathering the storms of 2009 with good intentions, last January along with other local women I swore to serve an organization consisting of council of realtors in which we all witnesses the unraveling personalities that reflected the unstable leadership in place and the mortgage industry instability. By mid July the chapter all but completely disappeared.

Later in the year I sampled what it must have been like for post Katrina when thousands of people experienced life inside the Super Dome arena. I spent a minimum of fifteen hours for two days at Cow Palace in South San Francisco at a NACA event, in an attempt to get my mortgage modified along with thousands of other persons who camped out in the cold and rain seeking assistance to save their home; a matter that remains uncomfortably open.

For the last decade, Americans have witnessed the devastation of terrorism first hand on 911; weathered major storms like Katrina; heard interviews from only few Tsunami survivors; seen Wall Street come to its knees in financial crisis; and watch Olympians triumph and be defeated. We’ve been indoctrinated with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and entered into the reality of My Space beginning with the Flavor of Love through Court TV and watched the banter and foolishness of privileged housewives across America. I’ve had ten broken and lost cell phones, replaced numerous of inoperable cordless phones, removed computer numerous of viruses and ultimately replace five computers and four operating systems. I’ve watched my insurance sharply increase, then go down and then up again. I've purchased a CPap machine to keep me breathing while sleeping; I have nervously taken to the air domestically and internationally in friendly discomfort and in exchange rode Amtrak down the Capital Corridor repeatedly. I eagerly got married and wearingly filed for divorced due to "irreconcilable differences." And finally, I have allowed my passport to life to almost expire.

At the beginning of the century, reality for me was watching my dad transform from a proud single arrogant cocky golfing blue-collar well-paid BART-employed soul brother-man with income property and a descent pension who occasionally sprinted to Reno to post football bets; a man that often tinkered on his vintage 1976 Corvette and who frequently prepared his famous barbeque to passionately subdue the beckoning belly, to become a half-conscious feisty inaudible piss-smelling diaper-wearing pale old man-resident of the Lakeside Dementia –Alzheimer care center. I am his only visitor. And on every other Sundays, we go on occasional outings often to church.

All we have is today, Day in and Day out: just one day at a time. But what a difference a day can make! To quote the lyrics so poetically song by Dinah Washington: ‘Twenty-four little hours brought the sun and the flowers where there used to be rain.’ Today is another day to make the best of life, one day at a time. Wow! And just to think about the dream I had the beginning of 2009, is still like I just woke up this morning from the same dream - hearing the voice of GOD. It makes me pause right where I am, right now. Someplace else…deep and far away yet right here. It serves as a simple reminder of how close GOD really is. Have a healthy, happy and prosperous 2010.

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