Blogging Flu Prognosis and Diagnosis

First off, get your facemask on. Just as a simple precaution for yet another contagious disease not so fully understood.

It has been one very long, tough winter. Long enough that I have been almost driven to take some kind of mind-altering drug for the first time in my life to keep my nose and eyeballs above the high waters of depression.

But I’ve somehow struggled through with the bit of rudimentary stupidity and mild-dewed bravery that I was born with. Some say I’m depressed, but what do they know? They’re as apt to make stuff up as I am. And besides, I don’t need a diagnosis; I need a cure.

The winter battle has left me fatigued. And when I sit down to my computer there is the real threat that I might stay so long that my writing becomes too painful to read. So painful that the few readers who hap by will be saying, ‘Why doesn’t that foolish woman stop while she is ahead?’

That may even have happened already. My readers coming to a full stop before I do. That’s what seems to be happening, but so what? I’m a stubborn, opinionated soul who will clutter up any available writing space for the rest of my life just to get those backed up words that ‘anxietize’ my soul, out of my system.

I’m not one of those who loves myself enough to rigidly exercise, monitor my diet, take fitness classes, or rotate clothes at a maddening speed to keep in fashion. So likewise, I am not one to quit when quitting is preferable to me looking good.

That’s not me. No such self-discipline here. So, in accordance with who I am I’m not going to be self-disciplined with my writing either. I should probably stop but I will continue to write no matter how tough the struggle.

But there is one supportive factor that urges me on. That gives support to my situation without that being the intent. There are as many bloggers right now struggling with spring maintenance of their blogs, as there are writing joyful notes of goodwill at Christmas and loving thoughts on Feb 14th. So I think the nasty infectious web-blog flu is making its rounds like any other seasonal virus.

But in reference to that flu, let it be known. I didn’t start it. No one caught if from me even though I am NOT the author of consistently cheerful and uplifting thoughts.

Truth is, I don’t know who started it, but I don’t think I’m the only one that caught it. The painful part of the malady, not being so much what I write, as the disheartened tone with which I write it.

It’s enough to make me think that colds and measles all those other maladies labeled ‘contagious’ are not caused by transfer of micro-beasties but by an unwilling shared state of mind. It may even be possible that blog-flu is linked to the absolute expectation of climate warming. Warming that, though housed within a ruinous context, is still what I have steeled my soul for and I am most prepared for. But how can it happen while winter so arduously still threatens cancellation of the whole evil event?

I only theorize here. The origin is not fully understood. But still this blog-flu will only mend by plunging onward and upward. And as choked as you may be by reading this depressing caricature of how I feel at the moment, don’t run. This flu is dire, but it is not life threatening.

We will recover and when recovery is complete, I want you to dance around the May Day tree with me. We’ll really get into a frenzy of ecstasy, that will transport us back into the rapture of those original vague-in-memory-now, good times.

“See you later, commiserator!”

When the Exodus?

When will the Exodus begin?
When will manna rain from the heavens?
When will the interchange of Winter and Spring
Bring nimble representation of the switch?
When the soft warm kisses of Spring?

How much longer will curtains of gloom
Shadow Sundays and Mondays and daytime?
How much longer will arctic landscapes
Fall from the sky and plummet ground-ward?

How can Nature’s metabolism remain so anorexic?
Deficient of organic splash and temperatures
Needed for copulation of sprang grass
And tuned bird song?

Why is Spring not yet inseminated?
Why does Winter, though impotent,
Hang on to a foolish Viagarian belief
That it can seduce yet again with frosty charms?

It’s too much. This lustful beastly Winter relationship
That duplicates the unrighteous wickedness of Babylon.
And strikes those who look back into
salt-white
salt-like
pillars of ice.

Good Times

We haven’t done morning conversations for a very long time. So that is what is on today’s agenda. Maybe you had to ‘be there’ – maybe not. But regardless this is what took place at today’s regular Mind Expansion Seminar.

[The kitchen television is on while Hub and I are having morning coffee. Neither is paying any attention to the kitchen TV. But when an ad comes on for a concert by ‘RealBigSea’ 'GreatBigSea', we both look and listen. Then we look at each other, smile, even chuckle a bit, and suddenly realize it is a Good Day.]

Not-so-silly Roberta: You know, Hub, that is one Band that will always be popular and well loved. And I don’t think it has as much to do with the music as how they look. Look at them – smiling, hopping happily while they sing—having a really Good Time.

Silly Hub: That is certainly true, Roberta. I know all about it. People are truly drawn to anyone having a good time. And I guess it’s time I let you know. That is why so many women are drawn to me.

Not-so-silly Roberta: How silly is that? You’re not having a good time. They should be able to see that. You are silly. Yes. But having a good time?? Not so much.

Silly Hub: I know I’m not having a good time. You know I’m not having a good time. But I am completely unable to convince others I’m not having a good time. No matter what I do, they all think and completely believe I’m having a Good Time. So you see, it isn’t my fault, the women mob me. They’re just drawn like everyone else to someone having a Good Time.

(And so, Roberta is left, as she often is after a Mind-Expansion Seminar, to ponder this new unexpected manifestation of meaning).

Blogging vs. Facebook

I have questions. Maybe you have answers.

So to resolve my questions, I want you to complete one of the following sentences in the comments section:

I prefer Facebook to Blogging because_________, or…
I prefer Blogging to Facebook because_________.

…or maybe you can tell me why you think other people prefer whichever of the two they prefer.

A Shitty Day

I am so sluggish, my mind it is mush
Incisiveness gone in a circular flush
So gather with me those of similar mind
Let’s toast the raw day in insipient wine.

The dreary of mind can mix with the day
No matter what horrors are thrown in the way
To those others, so happy, with contented appeal
On down days their spirits can quickly congeal.

They say they can rally in the magic of Earth
Me, I’m not so certain if that’s better or worse.
I liken that thinking to scamming and fraud
Those gay songs of sunshine, flora, and sod.

You may find restoration in the song of a bird?
I find more release in a finely-formed turd.

A Futile Warning

Hub warned me again today. About how old people start thinking weird, talking weird, acting weird, looking weird.

I laugh.

“What’s to fear?” I ask, “I’ve always been that way.”

_______

This wee note written in preparation for me next post.

Rivalries of Spring

WORD PROMPT: For everything there is a time and season.

Today, I'm just a teeny bit annoyed that no one ever discusses the evolution of Spring the way it really is. Can’t anyone get the story right about the line-ups, the waiting, the cancellations, and unexpected delays?

All those poets and bards and dizzy dreamers press on us the premeditation that seasons transition as quickly as Clark Kent in a phone booth. That with the arrival of the scheduled date, the authority of Winter is ousted that self-same morning and Spring fully inducted and sworn in before the dinner bell. ‘False! Falsehood,’ I cry. ‘It just ain’t so!’

Winter is not so easily defeated and other sovereignty established. The conversion is slow and shaky. Winter remains at the ready sojourning into April, May, and even June with a small group meant to threaten and intimidate with rowdy comrades who were previously in positions of authority —ice rain, snow, frost, fog, sleet, and blizzard winds.

And so, it takes ‘long-time’ for the snow to sluice away. And when bare patches of grass are finally revealed, here comes another big git of snow. So, truth is, though the solstice be past, Winter again reaches for the sparkling ice-crystal Scepter of its rule.

And no, you silly bards of rhyme without reason, trees don’t simply bud and grass green. There are birthing pains involved. There is the messy business of all that afterbirth. All that dirty mix of dead grass and crusty snow and dog poopies revealed. And the nastiness of icy ponds at the corner of the house where they have no right to be and where I skid and fall like a ton of bricks.

And the gravel road, now bare, jokingly mimics hard solid smooth pavement for a couple of weeks but when the perma-frost retreats, the bottom falls out and now it is a greasy, soggy, slushy bog that ‘clums’ to tires with the sure strength and adhesiveness of Velcro.

Sun flames are weak and far too frequently I hear those old Winter winds whistling at Spring in a non-complementary way between narrow gaps of stiff skeletal finger-branches. In a way that tweeds the sound into an awful shriek rather than a sweet come-hither call. Winter is such a villain with its everlasting games of animosity. It runs interference for way too long. Until the coming of Spring looks as hopeless as it does on this, yet another, gloomy snowy day.

It is difficult for me to remain convinced that what is supposed to happen will happen. That the shrieking wind will eventually be replaced by the soft cooing-rustle of infant leaves as they weakly push and kick aside swaddling wraps with the sounds akin to the opening of a tissue-wrapped gift.

The gift of Spring. With ‘Belated Wishes’.

Nevertheless, I hope it comes soon because if Summer and Spring come together, we’ll just have more prodding, pushing, shoving, and carrying on that will create weakness in the system. Enough weakness for Winter to storm in again some time in mid-May with a impressive snow storm and then in mid-summer with an unimpressive killer frost.

I CAN deal with Winter in its own time and season, but man I hate the way it sneaks around and crashes my Spring and Summer parties.