Today I've been struggling with something I can't put my finger on. It has been a difficult struggle and perhaps the tv is right, which now randomly spouts:

"You are a survivor, woman." (One of my housemates is watching Sigourney Weaver in Alien).

I've been reading the Anne Waldman interview in the latest Poetry Project Newsletter and thinking about the war in Iraq and my relationship to it.
She says war has some interesting passive support from women and that we're under a blinding habitual pattern of destiny that we don't see our way out of.
There are other versions of the world we could be living, but we choose this one instead. Why?

I don't feel that I'm being passive about the war, so much as, well, as Anne Waldman states in one of her songs from "In the Room of Never Grieve,"
I was never one of the major players. It's boggling to think about the kind of aggressiveness involved in war compared to my own struggle for ego consciousness. I've also been thinking about Oprah, who said recently in her magazine, "Never hand over your power to ANYONE."

Anne Waldman:
"Say I won't/get shuttled or shoved by fear again."

There is the feeling that everything I struggle with in my mind is part of the struggle of the outside world. For some, it is easy. For others, it is struggle.

"It's easy if you try," said John Lennon.

One of my friends from work is now enrolled in NYU's art school for painting. She's a very beautiful girl, but I wouldn't say she's particularly intellectual. When I asked her how she does it, how she maintains her inner equilibrium despite the craziness of the outside world, she said, "I just work." She doesn't allow herself to brood, she stays active and cheerful. She's right. It's important to keep a positive mental outlook. Don't worry, be happy, as they say.