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05/05/03

Angels Among Us

Lin Osterhage died yesterday. She was one of the original Daily Buzzz-ers. I met her only once, last year, at a goodbye party given to her by her friends as she was leaving for Hawaii to live in a treehouse. She'd realized that she could no longer beat her cancer.

I only knew her through her responses to the photos, her writing, and a friend's comment when he emailed me she had died, "She used to share with me about being an artist, I considered her the art, a rare and wonderful creation." If you look below today's photo, I've posted a piece she sent to me a few months ago.

ANGELS AMONG US
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT:
A POSSIBITY

November 2002

I spent a fast and furious first fifty years.
It all flew by my window in one glorious moment! ZOOM!
Baby land, teenage-waste-land, marriage land / baby land revisited, on-my-own land.
All just a question of Time / Place. Just ZOOM!
And yet, I was not quite ready to give it up, to fly over to the other side.
Not yet anyway, not looking the way I did. I am far too vain for that. Besides, my mom recently died with a pruned up face and one little tooth in the center of her lower gum.
BUT NOT ME! Oh No!
So, what the hell, I mean really, and after all, I was in Beverly Hills 90210.
I looked around, made my selection and did it.
I GOT A FACE LIFT!
It was not all that easily done. I spent many pre-surgical hours waiting in the plush lobby where my every wish was their command. And I did have a few -- freshly squeezed orange juice and hot lattes – to name two.
In-between the endless hours of measuring, I must have dozed off and began to dream.
I began to dream about flying and having wings. I do not mean like those small flying creatures of the night and day we most often see, such as bats, birds, bumblebees, butterflies, etc. Oh No!
I mean the real things. WINGS!
Those big things that grow on your back, Yes, WINGS!
Then I noticed a special magazine laying on the coffee table in the surgeon’s office underneath my latte. On the cover was a pencil drawing of a balding woman with her head lowered who had been altered.
That is to say, she had a pair of the most powerfully, outrageous, white feather wings I had ever seen. She was beautiful!
SHE JUST TOOK MY BREATHE AWAY!Page 2
Inside the magazine, on page 44, was the recipe – a step by step procedure for the alteration – which, as you can imagine, would take some time to do.
I decided to do it.
Why stop with just a face lift – when I could go so much further and fly!
First thing they did, of course, was to measure my arms length and across my chest.
5 _ feet. Not bad.
Then they measured precisely the spread of my finger joints.
1.2 cm Not bad.
It could be done. It was all just a question of Time / Place.
Very, very slowly I began to be altered. It felt wonderful.
NOW I HAD A REAL REASON TO LIVE!
I enjoyed almost all of it.
I loved having my head shaved (no more worries about those quarterly trims).
I was injected with an albino serum which made me nearly transparent.
The feathers themselves seemed almost an afterthought, yet they did look good,
I could move them and they gave me plenty of style.
The coup de grace was when he tipped a few of the feathery edges into silver –
thus rendering me INVICIBLE. His work was done. I was “finnito”.
He was proud of his work.
SO WAS I. I felt magnificent! I was ecstatic!
AT LONG LAST, I WAS AN ANGEL!
The only side effect, was that I seemed to be blind. REALLY BLIND!
I COULD NOT SEE. Like the statue of justice – everything felt to be equal.
Just close your eyes and you will see what I mean.
But I could hear --
I could hear really well.
I could hear your inner voices, thru the chaos, into the cacophony and beyond,
A surgical voice in my head kept repeating –
LET ME BE YOUR GUIDE.

People Confuse Bee Ottinger's The Daily Buzz with The Daily Buzzz. If you were looking for pictures and typed The Daily Buzz, Notice we have three z's not 2 as in The Daily Buzz. Bee Ottinger.