Asked, "what are you going to be when you grow up?" my son responded, "I don't know yet." His answer was firm, accurate and final and he continued his homework seemingly without another thought to the question and more interested in looking up the defintion of the words "biophobia, biophile and biophilia," which was assigned by his new classroom teacher on the first day of returning to school after the summer holidays. I shuddered as memories of my childhood when I was always asked that question--seemed like on a regular basis--came flooding back.

I recalled that if I was around my parents especially my mother when asked that question, I would grow anxious and felt hard pressed to answer with some kind of worthwhile job description or professional title and would say something like: "I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," for the look she eyed me with before I would answer was one which said, "you better say something sensible/worthwile (or else...)"

These days the questions most asked of me is "where are you from? what do you do?" and of course I provide the typical small talk answer describing location and job title. Speaking of which, I read somewhere that the next most interesting question along these lines is usually "where are you going?" I agree it is an interesting question but for me, this would take sometime (maybe a lifetime)to explain.

Now how about this question: "where were you and what were you doing on 9/11/01?" Hmm...My personal answer to this is something I doubt I'll ever forget for the rest of my life. Perhaps this quote from Great Expectations summarizes it best: "That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."{ Chapter 9 }

Don't know why but Dickens' opening in { A Tale Of Two Cities }also comes to mind whenever I reflect upon the day of September 11, 2001..."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

*Update* The downtime is up.

Hi all--I'm sorry things have been slow around here lately. It's been difficult to access this site or any antville site for that matter as the team at { Project Antville } has been updating to make things work faster and smoother around here, as one team member, { Robert } explains.

A bunch of Antville users seem upset or shocked or both when they tried logging in and began getting errors. See some of the { comments} I myself was astounded when I tried to access X-pressionz and received the message URL not found--Imagine, thought I lost everything. Anyhow...

I Don't know how long the downtime will last and I'm not even sure if this message will be submitted successfully due to the many timeouts and other errors but hopefully it will so you can know what's happening.

All in all, I commend and thank the Antville team for providing a great service for us which itself is free and also AD free. To you, thanks for visiting! I appreciate those who return daily to read my words. Makes me feel good that someone thinks I have something worth saying.

In the spirit of sharing thoughts and fragments of our lives, I'll be back soon so we can speak/share some more. Think happy thoughts today! Good Morning.

The photograph, like the human eye, is also generally thought of as a window to the human soul. I thought of this as I sorted and skimmed through old photos yesterday (being a really quiet Labor Day), and interrupting myself ever so often to examine the portraits of those whom, in my family have passed on and those now living. I stopped to scrutinize the ones I found interesting, to see if the theory held up, to see if somehow, I could look beyond the portraits--beyond the glossy surface of the photos, to make out what I could of the souls therein.

But to define the soul much less to perceive it is not an easy thing to do. A rather interesting one is the close-up of my father, a dark young man confined within a soldier's uniform (a Vietnam Veteran) with various war gems appended to him; a soldier's hat, buttons, badges and other adornments. He appears nipped and tucked into a stiff package. His eyes appear businesslike, serious, steady, and seem to contradict the wide grin and the appearance of joviality that the camera seemed to want to capture. In one hand he holds a photo of my mother. Her beauty and youthfulness are breathtaking. Like his, her eyes also appear steady though intent, thoughtful and soft. She does not smile but her lips are slightly parted.(Wedding photos of her and my stepfather whom she married in later years reveal the same look about her).

I asked her about it once when I was younger--why she hadn't smiled in her wedding photos and she remarked something to the effect of being thoughtful throughout the whole proceeding and celebration; she wondered if she was giving up her freedom to marriage too soon and too young at the age of twenty-one. She somehow had the feeling during the wedding that she was making a mistake. I remember all kind of thoughts running through my mind at her revelation but never mouthed a word of them to her partly because it was sad, partly because I didn't fully understand. Five children (well four now, as my sister died five days after birth--she would have been in her mid-twenties today) and a bruised and battered life later, my mother finally found the courage to abandon the marriage...

As to the photo, I tried to discern what I could of the souls of my parents in the photo. I doubt that I found anything of their souls and if the camera had indeed captured their souls, it is well preserved in the photo along with the essence of "life" and "time." What I did consciously discern though, was an undercurrent of emotions, memories, dreams, love, hope and suffering ( I've always thought my mom suffered the most). Perhaps a camera does not capture souls. Perhaps as Viramontes says, it steals them.

To explain further: In "Snapshots" Viramontes tells the story of an older woman who becomes haunted by loneliness and acquires a habit she describes as being more deadly than alcohol addiction; the habit of nostalgia. She begins flipping through family photos to pass the rest of her time away while she is alive.

"Snapshots are ghosts" the narrator says. The narrator recalls the first time her picture was ever taken. Her grandfather who had just learned how to operate a camera, took pictures of her which made her grandmother extremely upset. "She kept pulling me out of the picture, yelling to my grandfather that he should know better, that snapshots steal the souls of the people and that she would not allow my soul to be taken." The narrator states that he took the picture anyway but it never came out. "My grandfather, not knowing better, thought that all he had to do to develop the film was unroll it and expose it to the sun. After we waited an hour we realized it didn't work. My grandmother was very upset and cut a piece of my hair, probably to save me from a bad omen" (Helena Maria Viramontes| Snapshots|1983)