Taking liberties

MPJ over at A Room of Mama's Own was tagged for a reading meme that works like this:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag 5 people

Now, MPJ didn't tag me, or anyone else, and that's just fine, because I'm not going to tag anyone either. However, I did like the concept of this meme and happen to be in love with books.

Of course, I'm sitting next to four bookshelves and there is not one book closer to me than the others ... and selecting one of these now becomes very difficult, so I'm going to go over and the first book I put my finger on, I'll pull it down and do the meme.

Here I go ...

Ahh, good, it was one I was hoping for -- as if they all weren't in the running:

The book: "Living to Tell the Tale," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is the first installation of what is to be a trilogy of his autobiography. This particulra volume was published first in Spanish in 2002, and then in translation in 2003.

Pg. 123, sentences 6,7 & 8

"I felt very uneasy about this change in my life. I had been to Barranquilla several times to visit my parents, as a boy and always in passing, and my memories of that times are very fragmentary. The first visit took place when I was three and had been brought there for the birth of my sister Margot."

Marquez wrote the book on which the recently acclaimed movie "Love in the Time of Cholera" was based. However, I most love his book "One Hundred Years of Solitude." In fact, many of my favorite writings bring to mind solitude. Thoreau's "Walden" comes to mind.

And just since I am making up my own rules here, I'll do one other "reading" from Pg. 123 of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, a book that I always keep close.

Sentences 6,7 & 8 from this book happen to be the 7th, 8th, and 9th traditions of the program:

"7. Every SLAA group ought to be fully self supporting, decling outside contributions.
8.SLAA should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. SLAA as such ought never to be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve."

I feel special ... I've been Tagged

Jen over at 12 Steps Closer To God has tagged me for a meme. I don't even know what that means ... or if I said it right, but I know that it means that Jen wants to know more about me ... and for that I am thankful. Although after completing this exercise, I think I must feel miserable today ... or that I only write about miserable stuff here ... because everything I've linked to links back to my pain. I'm glad to have been connecting to that pain over the past few years and look forward to connecting to hope and friendship and a sense of freedom in the years ahead.

So, according to Jen's post, the rules for this tagging thing are:

1. Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like.
2. Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Oh I get it, it's sort of like those spam e-mails I get all the time that say I'm going to have a horrible life if I don't forward it to at least 10 people! Haha. I'm only joking of course. I am happy to have the chance to share and to tag some other people to let them know they are special to me.

So here are my five posts:
1. Family - Over the past few years, I have had to come to grips with a lot of truths about my mother, but this loving tribute still stands true.
2. Friend - Interestingly, in doing this exercise, I have realized that I haven't really written about my friends here. I suppose some of that is to protect anonymity and another part is a realization that I am totally self-absorbed. However, I have elected to post Emotions vs. Thinking under this category as it deals with the friendship that is forming in my mind.
3. Myself - There is one post on this blog that completely defines the way I see my life. I wrote Parallel Lives in July 2004 and have spent the following months and years trying to learn how to reunite my wholeness.
4. My love - Anyone who has read my blog knows that over time I've had a hard time figuring out exactly what love is. I thought I once knew and this is a post about how my confusion looked on one particular day: How the Big Day Went for Me. For those who haven't been reading long, R. was a man I had a torrential one year "love affair" with. After I followed my heart and returned to my husband, R. married another woman -- the same one mentioned in this entry -- two months later.
5. Anything I like - Mine is not a blog of happiness -- though I often share a lot of hope and recovery here. My blog is a place where I have shared my story, my recovery, my awareness and my acceptance. It is through writing that I have began to understand my journey and it was through Thoughts Finally Surfacing that I began to see where a vibrant young woman who had surpressed the truth and her pain began to live in the misery of all that was coming to the surface. It may not make sense to include something so sad in the "Anything I like" category -- but I do get to include anything I like, right?

And I would like to tag:
1. Summer at 107 Madison Street
2. Vicarious Rising
3. Andrew at 4th Avenue Blues
4. Woman.Anonymous7
5. Kellee at Crossing My Bridge