Stacy Horn

I posted about this before, but it got lost in the webserver make-over. I’m going for a new look. My appointment is Monday and I’m freaking out. These cuts are kinda what I’m thinking about. Right now my hair is longish, but I never ever wear it down. The thing is, I love the pulled back look, or wearing it up, so am I going to miss that too much??

Scared, scared, scared.

But, they’re cute, right? I know it will always grow back, but who wants to look bad for months until it does? Especially around a birthday? (My birthday is next month.)

My friend Chris called me yesterday to tell me how nice my brother Douglas is. He is so nice she had to call me to rave about him for a while. He is THAT NICE. He had called her to invite her to go to my choir performance and that he would be taking everyone out to dinner beforehand. She was actually high on the wonderfulness of my brother and she had to tell me. I was working and she didn’t have my complete attention. Then I got distracted by a 1947 Maya Deren movie of kittens. I am probably everyone’s most infuriating friend.

But I knew what she was feeling. My brother Douglas is the kind of person who says the things that we all later think, “I should have said that.” He says them. He is direct, honest, funny and sweet. It’s a heady thing sometimes, talking to him. Then we talked about how nice my other brother Peter is, but a different style. Douglas is effusive-nice, and Peter is quiet-nice. I once said I wanted a jewelry box and had been looking and looking for one, but I couldn’t find any that I liked. The next Christmas Peter gave me a jewelry box that he had HAND MADE. Plus, he’s gifted in how things are put together, so when you pull out the top tray of this box and put it back it always softly shooshes into place with this very satisfyingly perfect cushioned plink-feel. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, Peter has a good heart too, and manages to communicate what Douglas communicates, but in his way. Anyone who has ever gotten a perfectly crafted thing knows that it is love made into a physical object, and is every bit as comunicative as words.

Seriously though, I lucked out brothers-wise, they really are special. AND THEIR WIVES, Robin and Karen. Great people attract great people. I will never forget how Robin and Karen cared for my mother when she was dying. Robin is an artist. I’ve got a couple of her pieces here! Karen, I think she should be a school principal. She’d be like the cool principal. She is great with kids, but she has a wicked sense of humor. AND THEIR KIDS, Greg, Ellie, Nicole and Christopher. Greg is a writer too, although he may decide to go in an entirely different way with his life, he’s 16. But he’s really good and could be a writer if that’s what he decided. He’s a sweetie. Totally Doug and Robin’s kid. His sister Ellie, who is 9, is a handful, which for me is BIG compliment. I love a girl who is a handful. Go out there and KICK LIFE’S ASS, Ellie. Christopher, I know him the least, but he’s an aethist!! YAY. He’s also young, 17, so we’ll see if it holds, but one more for our team maybe!! Nicole is at Stonybrook and she loves animals like me, so of course Nicole is the BEST ONE. Just kidding. They tie. I keep meaning to ask Nicole how she likes Stonybrook because one of the women who I’ve been interviewing for this book (her grandmother was a medium I am writing about) has a daughter who is thinking of going there.

The top picture is Douglas on the beach at Amagansett, I think it was 1975. The next picture is Peter, around 1973. This is the Peter I grew up with. He was NEVER not playing guitar, and he loved Jimmy Hendrix, and while I can appreciate the man’s talent, I was not a fan. Many a time I plotted against my brother’s guitar. I wonder if they felt the same way after my millionth rendition of Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag?

Oh, and please be noting that they are both blonde. I’m the adopted one, right??

I’ve got this schedule taped to the lamp in front of me so I always knows where I am and don’t fall behind.

Those edits are parts that people told me were kinda boring, so I need to edit them down. I wish I had left myself more time for the final edits. That’s when I go back and read the whole thing and see how the whole of it feels. Until I’m done, I can’t really tell what has ended up being superfluous, and what became important. I need time to go back and tinker, to take things out, and build other sections up, to make sure all the connections between events are strong and clear. For instance, I bring something up in the very first chapter that I come back to in chapter 12. There’s this whole big fat book in-between. Maybe I need to put a reminder in half-way through.

The epilogue is scaring me. Every time I came across something that might be interesting to bring up in the epilogue I put it in a pile. Naturally, I have a massive pile of stuff. There are so many ways to go. I could:

– say where everyone I wrote about ended up.
– give an update about parapsychology.
– go into some of the issues raised about consciousness and the mind-body problem.
-talk about physics and quantum mechanics, the hope of the new parapsychologists.
– I have also been thinking about what interesting question I could ask a bunch of parapsychologists, and an interesting question I could ask other scientists about parapsychologists, and if anyone answers me I could include an array of the best answers. If I’m going to do this, I have to get those questions out NOW.
– or all of the above.

Ugh.

Who doesn’t love lilacs? (That’s Finney sniffing the lilacs.)

My friends Matt Belanger and Marianne Petit who helped, she says she was a sidekick, have two new websites. Here are descriptions that Marianne sent me, but just go. I love this sort of thing, these collections of stories, and I love how Matt does them. You’ll see what I mean if you go.

Disappearing Places is both an archive and collective map of places that no longer exist, at least not as they once did. Users can upload stories and images about a place, link them to a corresponding location or street address and tag them accordingly, as well as browse the stories and places other individuals have submitted.

Time Indefinite is both a repository of significant moments and a collective timeline so that we can chart where we all stand in time next to each other during our individual significant moments. Users can upload stories and images about a specific moment in time and tag them accordingly, as well as browse the stories and moments other individuals have submitted.

(PS: I can take Marianne in a fair fight.)

What the hell?? My desk make-over is apparently a total flop. I was going to put a nice, tall house plant where the lilacs are now (lilacs are in season, YAY). It would have been quite dramatic and make-over-y. But I decided I prefer buying myself flowers from time to time instead. Oh well.

I’ve been cleaning for two days, and if nothing else, my apartment is nice and clean and relatively organized. I think I might take tomorrow off. That reminds me. I saw two movies recently that I would recommend. The Host and Hot Fuzz which stars the Shaun of the Dead guys who I just adore. I wish they were my friends so I could hang out with them and play video games. (I don’t actually play video games, but it seems like the kind of thing they would like to do and it would be fun with them.) I watch Shaun of the Dead every time it’s on TV. It never gets old. Hot Fuzz was great too, but it’s hard to beat zombies, but still. It was great and totally worth seeing.