 Red Room Writer Profile
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Pat Montandon's Blog
October 12, 2009
- Farewell The welcome sun had just set when I lit small white candles floating in a crystal bowl alongside delicate pink camellias. The candle glow cast warm shadows on a table in my glass-roofed solarium, where I could gaze up at the stars. Covered by a white linen cloth once belonging to my grandmother, and set with heirloom silver engraved with birds and a plate inscribed, “You are ...
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July 31, 2009
- Lordy! There were missteps galore with my first book How To Be A Party Girl, beginning with the title. Misstep? No, it was more like Bigfoot throwing a bolder from the top of the Empire State building and hitting me directly in the chest. Frank Taylor and Sam Stewart at McGraw Hill loved the title and I was so naive and had such a healthy innocent sense of humor, that it didn't occur to me ...
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July 31, 2009
- Dreams and NightmaresRereading the supportive and poetic messages you sent before my heart surgery, I suddenly realized how much I’ve missed you. I truly have. It’s astonishing how close I feel to you. Our connection via Red Room, gave me the courage to keep smiling as I envisioned light from the candles you lit illuminating my bed, doctors, and my faltering heart, and ascending high into the ...
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June 1, 2009
- I’m Baaaaaaaaaaack! I feel like I have been on an alien planet, and perhaps I have, where blackness defined the hours of life during surgery. I’m home now and RECOVERING, which my doctors say will take about three months. My blood flow went from the “size of a pea” to “the size of a quarter”! My heart is pumping away in joy and I'm beginning to think about writing again!Thank you ...
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May 22, 2009
- Pat's son, Sean, here. My mom wanted me to let you all know that she is doing really well. The surgery was a great success. She was up and walking around the ICU the next day, and then she was moved to the regular recovery wing, where she's been walking, eating, and breathing with increasing ease. She should be home tomorrow, and then you will hear from her. Thanks for all your thoughts ...
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May 17, 2009
- This image of The Buddha’s hand I attached to a large antique Buddha I have in my home. In the hand is a rock given to me by a child in an Ethiopian famine camp after I gave him a shirt. The synchronicity of the rock, the child and the Buddha across time and space is a mystical story and one I write about in Whispers from God. Please check my new video clip so I can thank you for your ...
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May 14, 2009
- Have you ever wanted to cry until no tears were left? That’s how I’m feeling. The reality of facing major heart surgery on Monday and not having anyone to hold me while I sob is sobering. I’m the kind of person who does it, if it has to be done, whatever it is, without complaint. I shut off my feelings, acknowledging that it’s self-pity, and telling myself to get on with it. But all of a ...
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May 7, 2009
- I've come to realize, after a lot of inner work, that any demons I may have are those dancing around between my ears. But having said that, I can still get riled a bit when I think someone has done me wrong. Since I have precious little energy these ten days before surgery, and having been at the bedside of a brother in Houston when he died last December, and the funeral of another sister in ...
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May 3, 2009
- In spite of a week of loss when the last of my four sisters passed away, there have also been abundant rays of sunlight. As I gird myself for heart surgery on May 18th, I’ve been thrilled to hear from friends, and especially from a long-ago lover, although he didn’t know about my heart problem, from across the multicolored filaments of my life. My once-upon-a time lover is a writer and a ...
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April 25, 2009
- I have found my village. It’s called Red Room/where the writers are. Where friends are too, I’ve discovered. How comforting it is to be able to let it all hang out regarding my impending heart surgery and not be concerned about commas, or periods, or spelling (thanks to spellcheck) and know that Dr. Jitu, and Ellen, and Huntington, and so many of you are thinking of me and offering kind ...
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April 23, 2009
- He was a sad looking little thing, just a bit of gray fur, laying a cage with three other cats at the back of a pet food store. All of them had been either abandoned or born in a ditch somewhere without a chance of living the good life of a pet, or staring in a Broadway musical. “You don’t want that cat,” said a young woman who noticed me eyeing the animal. “He’s afraid of ...
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April 17, 2009
- I hope you had a joyous Easter. I sure did. Friends, Bret, Mary, Don, and Susan, prepared the entire meal and brought it to my house, all I had to do was don rabbit ears, dye eggs, and set the table. My friends are so solicitous of me that I almost wish I could drag this heart surgery thing out for awhile, but, alas, I can't. It's now set for May 25th at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. ...
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April 4, 2009
- This heart stuff ain’t no joke, honey. I’ve had so many Cat Scans that I must be radioactive by now. If you don’t know and I didn’t, a Cat Scan or CT scan, computerized axial tomography, is an x-ray procedure that combines many x-ray images with the aid of a computer to generate cross-sectional views and three-dimensional images of the internal organs and structures of the body! I swear ...
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March 23, 2009
- The raw folds of the Caucasus Mountains streamed beneath the silver wings of the Siberian airliner taking me, and my cohort Koko Kondo, into the craggy depths of the mountain, to Beslan, Russia. This was my second trip to that land of unimaginable sorrow. My first trip to Russia since my run-in with the Russian Mafia, was in January 2005, and was prompted by a calamity of such magnitude that I ...
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March 20, 2009
- When my cardiologist called and said it was important that he speak to me right away, I thought I knew what was coming. My heart function has been under surveillance for quite a while and for the past year I felt that it wasn’t quite up to the task of my active lifestyle.How ironic, I just launched a new project for Children as The Peacemakers called Mending Little Hearts. (the photo with ...
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