2. THE EDGAR ALLAN POE NIGHTMARE
[In Part I of this story I told you how my brat brother played an evil joke on my Mother, and for this he was thrown into the root cellar and the cellar door shut tight…]
And so, now as I write this, I wonder. ‘What would today’s psychologists say about a child that would play that kind of nasty trick with a rope tied to a rock in the well? And would root-cellar-discipline head the discussions for weeks, even months on prime television?’
If there were to be any media discussion, it should be no more than three minutes. After all, Brat Brother got no physical beating. He simply got modern-day sanctioned time-out. And boy, did he get time out. I’m certain sure he would have preferred a good thrashing. I know I would have.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I did not have to press my ear to the cellar door to hear the muffled cries and sobs from that cold chilly ethereal pit of hell. My brother was trapped in an Edgar-Allan-Poe-nightmare with only darkness and the beat of his heart. And I was glad, so very glad, it wasn’t me.
But still, I couldn’t in my wildest imagination think how scared my brother must be. And although I so often told him that I hoped some day he would be so far removed from me that it would cost a thousand dollars to mail a letter, I did feel truly sorry for him and begged for his release.
But Mother was adamant that he would remain there for a time (long enough I guess for remorse to set in because remorse is important). But, of course how could he even for one New-York-second consider the weight of his actions in a place that so seriously threatened survival. Was there sufficient air? And I know he was thinking, ‘If I mold and die in here, they’ll be sorry.’
And so after hopeless raking and clawing at the root-cellar lid, and screaming until he could scream no more, and crying until his face was thorough soaked, he moved to the more dire thought of what would he eat. The eating part, to Brat Brother, was the most fundamental of survival. To survive one must eat, one must eat much, and one must eat often.
And if the experts are right, that eating is a remedy for other distresses, Brat Brother’s distresses at the moment were overwhelming, and so his next clear conviction was no matter what else, he must eat.
And so he felt around in the blackness of the cellar and had one flash of relief when he found a tin can with a lid. He managed to pull the lid off. He felt the stuff. It felt like jam. He tasted it. It seemed to have a weak sweetness. It was hard to know for sure what it was by taste, but because it was stored in the cellar, it could only be one of two things – pork lard or jam. And though questionable which it was, that weak bit of sweetness convinced him it must be jam.
And so, he commenced dipping and licking his fingers. Taste was of little matter. One MUST eat.
Now I expect my brother was probably in that cellar no longer than ten minutes but I’m sure, and quite understand, how to him it must have felt like many long hours. He was in survival mode and so he was eating jam. Unfortunately when the cellar door was eventually cast back and he was released, he found to his dismay, the meal he had partaken of was in fact, finger servings of, what was called in those days, axle grease.
_____
So this is where we’ll leave this story, but now as I watch Court TV, and see so many suspects of child murder and abduction refusing to talk, I am so dismayed. Seems to me that within the Geneva Convention and the Fifth, the authorities have no way to force confessions, and no way to get to the truth – though that truth might redeem an innocent child.
But wait, maybe there are acceptable ways of making people talk. And it is not by locking them in cellar-holding cells in Remand Centers with painted walls, air-conditioning and concrete floors. These conditions are totally false misappropriations of what a cellar is.
The Geneva Convention and the Fifth (which admittedly I know little about) must be upheld, even when childrens lives are in danger. But, at the same time, society accepts without protest or qualm the new discipline of Time-Out.
So for those who refuse to talk, why not time-out in a damp, fusty, funereal, black-mold-lined, dirt-excavated cubbyhole five feet square and four feet high, piled with rotting carrots, potatoes, and turnips, inhabited by fungi of all slimy convictions, and misty demon-like poltergeists...crowded into a darkness as thick as black-strap molasses?
And if that be not enough to make them talk…
Dry bread and axle-grease for dinner!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
THE ROOT CELLAR - Part I
1. HORRORS SPAWN COURAGE
It was a secret door, almost secret, except for the metal circular ring that lay flush with the floor in a round shallow cut of the same size. You had to bend and look closely, within a certain line of light to see in the lino, the outline of the little square door that led to the secret passage.
When the ring was lifted and the small door pulled open, nothing could be seen but a few steps and a hole of black darkness. The coolness was such that when the door was opened, spirits rose from within in wispy transparent death-dress. Hell’s hole. Pretty much. But still, t his is where my Mother sent us for carrots, potatoes, and on one occasion — for disciplinary measure.
The root cellar smelled earthy, fusty, funereal. The five wooden steps were slick with black mold that made their sturdiness questionable. And when I descended gingerly with pail in hand, I shivered with horror and a definite foreboding. Multiple times, I offered my services to do another’s chores, or my small monthly allowance to a sibling to avoid the split-second task of getting vegetables for dinner. Descent into that tomb? Not if I could avoid it.
_____
Always my greatest horror was someone would shut the door before I was resurrected to the light. And it would bind and stick as it so often did. And I would thus find in my crouched position on the upper steps a law of physics that in my mind was already suspect. That without methodology, instruction, or Newton-theory or Einstein-understanding that ‘an upward pressing force is far less efficient than an elevating lift’ –particularly if some stupid fool is standing on the door and cannot hear the pounding of my fists on sodden moldy wood or my yells to be released forthwith.
Monsters under the bed? So what?
Boogie-Man in the closet? With one eye in the middle of his forehead, and a pitchfork, and a black stallion for quickness of movement? So what?
In these matters I can be so brave because all of it and none of it was comparable to the horror of the thought of being trapped in the cold cellar.
_____
And so a day came, when these theories were tested.
In one act of parental desperation my brat brother was put in the cellar and the door was shut. On that particular day, he chopped a hole in the ice in the well with an ax. He then tied a length of rope to a large and heavy rock. And when I disappeared for a time in the quiet of my upstairs room with books and dolls, that was the opportunity he was waiting for. That meant it was time to perform what he thought was a wonderfully witty joke on my Mother. And so then, while my Mother busied herself in the kitchen, from outside my brother sent up a terrible howl from the yard.
My Mother ran to the door to see what the problem was. There was my brat bother holding a taut rope some twenty feet from the well.
“Help Mom! Oh Help!”, he screamed. “Roberta is in the well and I can’t get her out.”
Without donning shoes or coat, my mother ran to the well leaping through the snow in bare feet to the bottom of a hill as fast as her legs would carry her. Meanwhile my brother was screaming, “The rope is slipping. I can’t hang on. The rope is slipping!”
And then, just when my Mother got within five or ten feet of the well, my brother let go of the rope and there was a horrendous splash as the rock he had tied to the end of the rope descended deep into the well.
By now, I heard the commotion and came running from my upstairs hideaway to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
_____
Now my Mother was a very patient and kind woman. I don’t remember what was said, I know my mother wept loud sobbing cries of relief when she saw me. And then my brother, grinning sheepishly, was firmly grasped by one arm and tossed into the root cellar and the door was slammed shut.
That is the only time anyone was ever in there with the door closed that I know of.
(to be continued...)
NEXT POST: 2. The Edgar Allan Poe Nightmare
It was a secret door, almost secret, except for the metal circular ring that lay flush with the floor in a round shallow cut of the same size. You had to bend and look closely, within a certain line of light to see in the lino, the outline of the little square door that led to the secret passage.
When the ring was lifted and the small door pulled open, nothing could be seen but a few steps and a hole of black darkness. The coolness was such that when the door was opened, spirits rose from within in wispy transparent death-dress. Hell’s hole. Pretty much. But still, t his is where my Mother sent us for carrots, potatoes, and on one occasion — for disciplinary measure.
The root cellar smelled earthy, fusty, funereal. The five wooden steps were slick with black mold that made their sturdiness questionable. And when I descended gingerly with pail in hand, I shivered with horror and a definite foreboding. Multiple times, I offered my services to do another’s chores, or my small monthly allowance to a sibling to avoid the split-second task of getting vegetables for dinner. Descent into that tomb? Not if I could avoid it.
_____
Always my greatest horror was someone would shut the door before I was resurrected to the light. And it would bind and stick as it so often did. And I would thus find in my crouched position on the upper steps a law of physics that in my mind was already suspect. That without methodology, instruction, or Newton-theory or Einstein-understanding that ‘an upward pressing force is far less efficient than an elevating lift’ –particularly if some stupid fool is standing on the door and cannot hear the pounding of my fists on sodden moldy wood or my yells to be released forthwith.
Monsters under the bed? So what?
Boogie-Man in the closet? With one eye in the middle of his forehead, and a pitchfork, and a black stallion for quickness of movement? So what?
In these matters I can be so brave because all of it and none of it was comparable to the horror of the thought of being trapped in the cold cellar.
_____
And so a day came, when these theories were tested.
In one act of parental desperation my brat brother was put in the cellar and the door was shut. On that particular day, he chopped a hole in the ice in the well with an ax. He then tied a length of rope to a large and heavy rock. And when I disappeared for a time in the quiet of my upstairs room with books and dolls, that was the opportunity he was waiting for. That meant it was time to perform what he thought was a wonderfully witty joke on my Mother. And so then, while my Mother busied herself in the kitchen, from outside my brother sent up a terrible howl from the yard.
My Mother ran to the door to see what the problem was. There was my brat bother holding a taut rope some twenty feet from the well.
“Help Mom! Oh Help!”, he screamed. “Roberta is in the well and I can’t get her out.”
Without donning shoes or coat, my mother ran to the well leaping through the snow in bare feet to the bottom of a hill as fast as her legs would carry her. Meanwhile my brother was screaming, “The rope is slipping. I can’t hang on. The rope is slipping!”
And then, just when my Mother got within five or ten feet of the well, my brother let go of the rope and there was a horrendous splash as the rock he had tied to the end of the rope descended deep into the well.
By now, I heard the commotion and came running from my upstairs hideaway to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
_____
Now my Mother was a very patient and kind woman. I don’t remember what was said, I know my mother wept loud sobbing cries of relief when she saw me. And then my brother, grinning sheepishly, was firmly grasped by one arm and tossed into the root cellar and the door was slammed shut.
That is the only time anyone was ever in there with the door closed that I know of.
(to be continued...)
NEXT POST: 2. The Edgar Allan Poe Nightmare
Saturday, January 16, 2010
January Desperation
Do you remember how fast time was flying from December 1st to January 1st?
It was speedier than Hub’s most frenzied driving. The G-force drove my hair back and pressed my lips and nose into flat tight lines. And then, before I knew it, before I was even ready, New Year’s Day arrived and it was all over.
And then the world stopped spinning. Time stopped. Even the sun no longer rose and fell in the sky. It didn’t seem worthwhile for Old Sol to climb so high, so slowly, with no height of day to rest before a return to hiding on the western horizon. Days dragged in 2-second increments with the sun in hiding and the sentry of night and day nothing but a cloudy moon. A cloudy moon that permitted no differentiation of night from day.
And still January progresses at a pace too slow to know, see, or observe. It seems a drag of too many minutes and too many hours; too many monotonous days, and too many monotonous nights. Nights that are far too long for restful slumber.
In the space of the Christmas rush, this is what I longed for, but now it is far too extreme, in reverse, to be appreciated.
And so what must be resurrected is a sense of humor. Oh yes, easy said, but not so easy done. Hub and I have just gone through whirling days of phenomenal feasts, grandchildren chatter, arrivals and departures from the front door, and lovely surprise offerings under the tree.
We have gone from Christmas carol-bells-ringing, tinsel glowing, lights glittering, endless and very busy activity to this dull, slow-crawling, and meaningless creep of time.
And so there is a new kind of desperation for humor. I didn’t realize how desperate until the situation of Hub’s lined-jeans-exchange. Hub was so happy when he got a pair of lined jeans for Christmas. He loves lined jeans because they eliminate the need for donning underwear. But the new pair was snug so yesterday he went to town and exchanged them for a larger pair.
Now the wee bit of disappointment for him in that exchange was that the original jeans had blue flannel lining, and the larger pair he brought home yesterday have red flannel lining.
So this morning he puts on the larger pair and says to me, “I wonder why these jeans have red flannel lining instead of blue? I’m not sure I like that.”
Of course, my response, (while thinking to myself – ‘silly old fool’), is…
“Why…?”
“Because,” says Hub, “when I am out in the snow I might get them wet and they will turn my legs red. And then people will laugh and poke fun at me. They will taunt me. I can hear them already.”
‘There goes red legs. Ha-Ha! There’s that old boy with red legs again!’
_____
If you didn’t laugh, you better. You were supposed to.
This is Motif 1 in Hub’s desperation (and mine), to find the sense of humor we had before the laggard tempo of January 2010 virtually stopped the clocks.
It was speedier than Hub’s most frenzied driving. The G-force drove my hair back and pressed my lips and nose into flat tight lines. And then, before I knew it, before I was even ready, New Year’s Day arrived and it was all over.
And then the world stopped spinning. Time stopped. Even the sun no longer rose and fell in the sky. It didn’t seem worthwhile for Old Sol to climb so high, so slowly, with no height of day to rest before a return to hiding on the western horizon. Days dragged in 2-second increments with the sun in hiding and the sentry of night and day nothing but a cloudy moon. A cloudy moon that permitted no differentiation of night from day.
And still January progresses at a pace too slow to know, see, or observe. It seems a drag of too many minutes and too many hours; too many monotonous days, and too many monotonous nights. Nights that are far too long for restful slumber.
In the space of the Christmas rush, this is what I longed for, but now it is far too extreme, in reverse, to be appreciated.
And so what must be resurrected is a sense of humor. Oh yes, easy said, but not so easy done. Hub and I have just gone through whirling days of phenomenal feasts, grandchildren chatter, arrivals and departures from the front door, and lovely surprise offerings under the tree.
We have gone from Christmas carol-bells-ringing, tinsel glowing, lights glittering, endless and very busy activity to this dull, slow-crawling, and meaningless creep of time.
And so there is a new kind of desperation for humor. I didn’t realize how desperate until the situation of Hub’s lined-jeans-exchange. Hub was so happy when he got a pair of lined jeans for Christmas. He loves lined jeans because they eliminate the need for donning underwear. But the new pair was snug so yesterday he went to town and exchanged them for a larger pair.
Now the wee bit of disappointment for him in that exchange was that the original jeans had blue flannel lining, and the larger pair he brought home yesterday have red flannel lining.
So this morning he puts on the larger pair and says to me, “I wonder why these jeans have red flannel lining instead of blue? I’m not sure I like that.”
Of course, my response, (while thinking to myself – ‘silly old fool’), is…
“Why…?”
“Because,” says Hub, “when I am out in the snow I might get them wet and they will turn my legs red. And then people will laugh and poke fun at me. They will taunt me. I can hear them already.”
‘There goes red legs. Ha-Ha! There’s that old boy with red legs again!’
_____
If you didn’t laugh, you better. You were supposed to.
This is Motif 1 in Hub’s desperation (and mine), to find the sense of humor we had before the laggard tempo of January 2010 virtually stopped the clocks.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Ejection, or should I say Rejection? (III-IV)
Part III – The Search for Redemption
For three days I punched every link I could find. I tried search engines from every possible angle and direction. I even went through these rituals on all three computers, but no luck. Yes, it was all too true. I was solidly shut out. No way to crash this party with that kind of 24-7 security.
Now I had one wee bit of fragile hope in all this. Hub and I are here alone most of the time so when my computer stalls, or cycles some kind of stupidity, or takes to flashing nothing but pop-ups, or refuses to be cooperative in a thousand other ways, I say to Hub, “I am having a problem with this computer. Will you have a look at it?”
And so Hub looks at it and always says the same, “What the hell did you do to it? You must have changed something. This wouldn’t be happening otherwise.”
And of course I say, “I didn’t touch a thing. Honestly I didn’t. I changed nothing.” And it is the truth. I didn’t change anything.
Then Hub, who fully understands computer hardware, virus control, and all the other behind the scene aspects of computers, goes to my computer and does his bit of magic, and we are back up and running in good form. Sometimes it is simply manipulation from the keyboard, sometimes it is installation of a new bit of hardware, but when he attacks a troublesome computer, the trouble is normally short-lived.
Now one of the truly most enviable things in the mind of a computer is that, if it royally screws up, or gets a really nasty virus, Hub can subtract the computer’s moments of irresponsibility or disease and reduce its life to only the good times. He can erase the errors, the mistakes, the blight, and actually subtract from that computer the memory, and all of the segments of its irresponsible past that interfere with its performance.
I so often think now nice it would be if human beings could do that as well. This day it would be particularly nice to be able to so easily recant something I may have said.
But Hub tells me that being shut out from anothers blog cannot be cured in that way. That is their right, that is their choice, and without an e-mail address, there is nothing that can be done to re-establish contact.
Part IV – The Come Back
I am so utterly heartbroken. I cannot believe how heartbroken I am. It is stupid, utterly stupid, how sick at heart I am. At the same time I am so techy-dumb, dumb, (and forgetful as well), that I wonder if I could have changed something on my own page that caused this?
Anxiety over all of it plagues me like a nasty head-cold stuffling my mind. And then, a few days later, quite by chance, I notice in my archaic tracking system that although I can no longer visit my friend’s site, my friend had visited mine. Now I know, though I seldom do it, that if I highlight the site that visited me, occasionally that will take me back to their place. And so I try, and oh glory, it works. But now what?
The site name was not altered in any way, but nevertheless, I cut and re-pasted it on my links and suddenly we were back in business. No door slams in my face. No barred threshold or virtual voice screaming, “Get away, get out of here, and don’t ever, ever come back!”
But that is computers for you. They screw up and Hub thinks I did something to make them screw up. And as for me, I suspect he inadvertently did something to make it screw up. But he is as persistent that he didn’t change anything as I am.
So I have to accept that computers, like myself, are not always lucid. And within their incredible brains, they sometimes reflect in ways that cross signals and alter synapses. And in doing so wrack horror and rawness on people that is beyond belief.
And so now, as a final thought, if my friend really did want me out of there (which I am quite certain was not the case) – then all I can say is that, like the Salahis' at the White House Dinner, I too, have crashed the party.
But my mind is at rest that all is well. Since that horrible time, we have spoken often, and our conversations are as delightful and openly friendly as they ever were in the past. This was obviously nothing more than a friendship thwarted by some kind of inexplicable computer interference.
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Ejection, or should I say Rejection? (Part I-II)
Part I – The Nightmare Begins
To begin with, I’m a strong believer in good courage. Of chucking one’s chin in and getting on with it. With the belief that things can only get so bad before they have to get better.
Still the courage I have is not always so deep-seated as I may lead others to believe. The self-confidence I have is not so deep-seated as I may lead others to believe. And the goodness I want to have. And the faith, appreciation, and strong work ethic, I want to have. I guess we’re all like that to a certain extent. If all our attempts to be all that we would like to be are not sufficient, we apply a bit of make-up to more than just the face.
Now I’m telling you this because I had a really raw moment a few weeks ago that I wanted so much to tell you about. But I hesitated to do that, because the rawness I felt at the time completely reduced to rubble the embodiment of courage that I need, and feel obligated to maintain.
And when I write in the moment of that kind of conviction, I can spread rawness like a wildfire, because rawness is pouring out of every cell of my body. And when that is the case, I feel like I could literally drown my readers in my own sorrow. But I am no longer saturated with that rawness and so I am finally ready to tell you what happened.
___
Part II – Me, and My Big Mouth
I have been blogging since March 2003, and since that time many blogger-friends have come and gone. Quite often there are clues in their final post. Some simply need to take a break. Others find a new significant other, move to a new job or locale, and suddenly fall silent. But the little clues of what happened to them are enough that I can deal with it. And yes, a few discontinue because of health reasons and when that happens I am very sad, yet all of it is understandable enough to accept.
What is harder to accept is what I am unable to understand. And so I was less able to accept the situation of going to a blogging site, that I frequent more often than most, only to find that I no longer had access. When I hit the link on my page, I got a message that said, “No Access”. When I googled the site, I got the same message – “No Access.”
But yet I had a rather strong confidence that this was not the type of person that would just disappear without a ‘fill-in’ or friend letting readers know what was going on. This was a person to ‘into blogging’ to just erase and shut down his/her rants. So what does that mean? It must be me. Me—and my always-at-an-obtuse-angle-big-mouth.
It must be something I said that was too sassy. I mean all I say in good humor, but what I say is easy to misconstrue. I must have somehow inadvertently put one foot in my mouth and the other over the line where enough is enough is enough.
I raked my mind and could think of nothing offensive that I might have said that would drive a person to such a radical reaction. I tried again and again to stop by, but it was like getting a door slammed in my face again and again. The discard of friendship and the bolted passageway hurt. And what also hurt was the foregone conclusion that I was not welcome there. Not wanted there. Like – “please leave and don’t ever come back!” There was nothing for it except my strongest suspicions that my ‘friend’ was still out there, but they were absolutely, completely, unalterably done with me.
I won’t tell you that I wept bitter tears. That sort of thing is too intimate and private to tell. I will tell you that I said to myself, in my extreme disappointment, that if I was so careless that this could happen, I best not blog. ‘Twould be best for me to shut it down, and go back to the furnace room and write only for the sake of writing, for myself, and no other.
To be continued....
Monday, January 4, 2010
Too 20th Century
Now you just can’t take someone as reclusive as I prefer to be, and have been for the last three years, and yank them away from familiar things and redeposit them in the fast lane without some thought, consideration, and re-orientation.
Now Christmas usually gives me a jolt. That’s when small discoveries and new discoveries are revealed to me that can be most puzzling.
The grandchildren come wrapped in tiny wires with little boxes with buttons and sometimes ear phones, maybe heart monitors, for all I know, and yatter at high speed in excited voices about the new gift. But despite all their garbled speech of excitement as they wave it in the air, I have no idea what it is, what it does, or what is so entrancing about it.
They rush past me at the stoop, head straight to my living room, seat themselves in a chair, plant the thing in their laps, and then go into a trancelike state. I can’t help but wonder if what comes up on the screen is nothing more than a hypnotizing silver ball on a string swinging back and forth and a low beep whispering in digitized voice, “You are getting sleepy, very sleepy….”
And there they stay in their trance-like state till dinner call. And when I ask, no one got a doll, no one got a truck, no one got a book, no one got a watercolor set, in fact no one got a thing that looks like anything from the 20th century.
___
I tell you this just so you realize how out-of-the-loop I really am. But I guess that is to be expected for someone who has avoided public places, shopping malls, and the whir of the city for several years now. It is enough for me to make the dreaded trip to town every two weeks. It is enough for me to stop on that dreaded trip at the one-person post office, the 2-clerk drugstore, and the 3-clerk grocery store.
But on New Year’s Eve, all that changed. Hub and I went to the city to stay with Youngest Daughter (YD) for a few days. Her house was quiet, warm, peaceful, like my own so I was grateful that for the first couple of days YD and Hub left me at home while they went on cruise about, gad about, shopping trips. But they are schemers and behind the façade of quiet submission to my desire to maintain the reclusiveness I am used to, they were scheming to get me out and about.
___
The sessions of re-orientation to get me back into the swing of modern life and the real world started New Year’s Eve with an introduction to the World of Wii. YD and I played Wii golf, tennis, bowling, and even jazzed for a while with Wii rock band with guitar strapped to my chest.
It was fun at the time, but when our performance wound up, it was a bit discomfiting for me. YD was loudly applauded for her singing, while I was rudely booed off stage. They said it had to do with my guitar playing – it most definitely did NOT!!
They’re a bunch of dummies. The notes I played are important and add depth and a sweet resonance to the music and I played them for that very reason. Though other band members skipped over them. I played Minor chords at mostly appropriate times. And Minor chords are not so 20th Century as the younger crowd may think!
In the Wii World, the Sporting Wii World, I paid little attention to the avatar gawkers watching our games. I was too involved in technique and accuracy to worry about those little people scurrying about me. They probably poked fun at me then as well (because I’m old and less than graceful of movement), but I was oblivious to their disdain.
Then we went to a Wii Village and hung out. I thought that would be nice. In my youth I always liked sitting in a food court in a busy mall and people-watching and that is more or less what we did.
Watching the avatar inhabitants, I noticed that they wore brightly colored clothes (rather out of vogue with fashion in the real world) but none wore lovely plaid or paisley. I noticed they did not cluster with close friends as real-life mall-crawlers do. I also noticed they walked about with determination, like persons of independent will, strong mind, and strong purpose. Clusters only happened by chance when walkways were overcrowded.
I smiled cause I could tell they were happy little villagers. Friendlier, in some oblique way, than people in real life. Though not clustered in gangs, or hand-holding couplets, they happily looked about them for reasons to approach and interact with others.
It was, for me, quite comfortable mingling there. More so than in real life in a crowded mall or airport. I had no underlying dark suspicions of them, or they of me. I fit in so easily. I had no fear of being followed, harassed, or having my open purse rummaged behind my back. It was a nice place to hang out. Really it was. And I had a comfortable feeling that here friendships could be easily formed.
___
The next day Hub and YD started a marathon of cruise about, gad about, shopping trips and sight-seeing tours. They took the puppies to the park, and came home from their frequent circuits full of gay laughter and adventure.
But then, oh yes, on the third day, having run out of excuses why I should, and could not go, I was compelled to leave the house. So that is when YD and Hub dragged me away for a dreaded shopping trip. I bumbled after them through parking lots and crowded aisles, (where did all these people come from?), with panicky fear that I might get lost. Of course neither would hold my hand – that would be too 20th Century!
Eventually we went to an incredible shop with every nature of kitchen appliance and furniture ever invented. Then as I followed close behind, YD paused by a large black recliner and told me to sit down and relax for a moment or two.
I leaned back in the comfy chair and as I began to unwind, something, or someone gripped both my legs firmly with a warm embrace. And then knuckles crawled up both sides of my spine in a rolling, circular movement.
When they reached the back of my neck, the knuckles unfolded and paddle-hands gave my shoulder blades and neck a patty-pat like those given in family hugs. They caressed the back of my neck at the sides slowly first, then rapidly, but still gently. They patted and circularly stroked my back some more.
Meanwhile my legs were compressed in spurts that put me in mind of a forward making a pass at me under the table skirts in a crowded bar. My feet were elevated gently and then lowered. I felt the warmth of the other body caressing me. No pinch of the thigh, but a gentle rub and firm nudge rather than pinch – and yes, it was located on the fleshy part of my upper, outer thigh.
After a few minutes, the chair released its grip on my legs and pulled away and I knew my lover had left. I wanted him to come back. I wanted to oil my body and sit naked in that chair. (Did I say that out loud?)
Now maybe another day when tempers are worn thin, I might not have reacted as I did. But today was a particularly good day. I was so enjoying the company of both YD and Hub once I realized they were not going to allow me to get lost. They were both so affable. In extreme good humor and so mindful of my comfort that when we exited the shop, I looked sideways at Hub and grinned.
I had no wish to purchase that chair. None at all. And I knew that back home no dogged and unsurpassable niggling yen would rear whispering without abatement, “I want and need that chair.” That isn’t going to happen because I have all the delights of that chair in easy reach – though so 20th Century it may be.
I have the comfort of such caresses without spending in excess of two grand to get a warm hug, a patty-pat and a wee nudge in the fleshy part of my thigh. The chair is good, but somehow it still lacks something in the ambiance, though I have to admit, what it lacks is not easily understood or described. And seems to me, without a strong sense of inner soul, and spiritual intuition, one could too easily supplant the delights of one with the other – and perhaps find warmth and human comfort as much in a chair as in a physical embrace.
But I think you now see what is happening here. Through all these experiences I am getting up to speed. Getting back in the loop of life outside of my own reclusive world of reading, blogging, and weaving in knit stitch, crochet stitch, and tatting stitch, threads of 20th Century nostalgia.
And so then we went to another shop. Here we looked at virtual gardening lamps and plant trays. One growing kit was half-price although there was only one left. We bought it. Hub and I brought it home. Seeded some tomatoes in the magic, dirtless, compounds of nutrition, stabilizer, water, heat, and light. I picked up the empty box to discard it and saw written on the box, "Dirt is so 20th Century”
So despite all that I have done, despite all that I have seen, despite the avatars that sought to draw me in, despite the chair that wanted to love and comfort me, sadly I choose to remain in the 20th Century. I happen to like plaids and paisley, minor chords, flesh to flesh patty-pats, and dirt. But I wouldn’t mind having a few avatar friends if they are as dear to me as my blogging friends are!
Now Christmas usually gives me a jolt. That’s when small discoveries and new discoveries are revealed to me that can be most puzzling.
The grandchildren come wrapped in tiny wires with little boxes with buttons and sometimes ear phones, maybe heart monitors, for all I know, and yatter at high speed in excited voices about the new gift. But despite all their garbled speech of excitement as they wave it in the air, I have no idea what it is, what it does, or what is so entrancing about it.
They rush past me at the stoop, head straight to my living room, seat themselves in a chair, plant the thing in their laps, and then go into a trancelike state. I can’t help but wonder if what comes up on the screen is nothing more than a hypnotizing silver ball on a string swinging back and forth and a low beep whispering in digitized voice, “You are getting sleepy, very sleepy….”
And there they stay in their trance-like state till dinner call. And when I ask, no one got a doll, no one got a truck, no one got a book, no one got a watercolor set, in fact no one got a thing that looks like anything from the 20th century.
___
I tell you this just so you realize how out-of-the-loop I really am. But I guess that is to be expected for someone who has avoided public places, shopping malls, and the whir of the city for several years now. It is enough for me to make the dreaded trip to town every two weeks. It is enough for me to stop on that dreaded trip at the one-person post office, the 2-clerk drugstore, and the 3-clerk grocery store.
But on New Year’s Eve, all that changed. Hub and I went to the city to stay with Youngest Daughter (YD) for a few days. Her house was quiet, warm, peaceful, like my own so I was grateful that for the first couple of days YD and Hub left me at home while they went on cruise about, gad about, shopping trips. But they are schemers and behind the façade of quiet submission to my desire to maintain the reclusiveness I am used to, they were scheming to get me out and about.
___
The sessions of re-orientation to get me back into the swing of modern life and the real world started New Year’s Eve with an introduction to the World of Wii. YD and I played Wii golf, tennis, bowling, and even jazzed for a while with Wii rock band with guitar strapped to my chest.
It was fun at the time, but when our performance wound up, it was a bit discomfiting for me. YD was loudly applauded for her singing, while I was rudely booed off stage. They said it had to do with my guitar playing – it most definitely did NOT!!
They’re a bunch of dummies. The notes I played are important and add depth and a sweet resonance to the music and I played them for that very reason. Though other band members skipped over them. I played Minor chords at mostly appropriate times. And Minor chords are not so 20th Century as the younger crowd may think!
In the Wii World, the Sporting Wii World, I paid little attention to the avatar gawkers watching our games. I was too involved in technique and accuracy to worry about those little people scurrying about me. They probably poked fun at me then as well (because I’m old and less than graceful of movement), but I was oblivious to their disdain.
Then we went to a Wii Village and hung out. I thought that would be nice. In my youth I always liked sitting in a food court in a busy mall and people-watching and that is more or less what we did.
Watching the avatar inhabitants, I noticed that they wore brightly colored clothes (rather out of vogue with fashion in the real world) but none wore lovely plaid or paisley. I noticed they did not cluster with close friends as real-life mall-crawlers do. I also noticed they walked about with determination, like persons of independent will, strong mind, and strong purpose. Clusters only happened by chance when walkways were overcrowded.
I smiled cause I could tell they were happy little villagers. Friendlier, in some oblique way, than people in real life. Though not clustered in gangs, or hand-holding couplets, they happily looked about them for reasons to approach and interact with others.
It was, for me, quite comfortable mingling there. More so than in real life in a crowded mall or airport. I had no underlying dark suspicions of them, or they of me. I fit in so easily. I had no fear of being followed, harassed, or having my open purse rummaged behind my back. It was a nice place to hang out. Really it was. And I had a comfortable feeling that here friendships could be easily formed.
___
The next day Hub and YD started a marathon of cruise about, gad about, shopping trips and sight-seeing tours. They took the puppies to the park, and came home from their frequent circuits full of gay laughter and adventure.
But then, oh yes, on the third day, having run out of excuses why I should, and could not go, I was compelled to leave the house. So that is when YD and Hub dragged me away for a dreaded shopping trip. I bumbled after them through parking lots and crowded aisles, (where did all these people come from?), with panicky fear that I might get lost. Of course neither would hold my hand – that would be too 20th Century!
Eventually we went to an incredible shop with every nature of kitchen appliance and furniture ever invented. Then as I followed close behind, YD paused by a large black recliner and told me to sit down and relax for a moment or two.
I leaned back in the comfy chair and as I began to unwind, something, or someone gripped both my legs firmly with a warm embrace. And then knuckles crawled up both sides of my spine in a rolling, circular movement.
When they reached the back of my neck, the knuckles unfolded and paddle-hands gave my shoulder blades and neck a patty-pat like those given in family hugs. They caressed the back of my neck at the sides slowly first, then rapidly, but still gently. They patted and circularly stroked my back some more.
Meanwhile my legs were compressed in spurts that put me in mind of a forward making a pass at me under the table skirts in a crowded bar. My feet were elevated gently and then lowered. I felt the warmth of the other body caressing me. No pinch of the thigh, but a gentle rub and firm nudge rather than pinch – and yes, it was located on the fleshy part of my upper, outer thigh.
After a few minutes, the chair released its grip on my legs and pulled away and I knew my lover had left. I wanted him to come back. I wanted to oil my body and sit naked in that chair. (Did I say that out loud?)
Now maybe another day when tempers are worn thin, I might not have reacted as I did. But today was a particularly good day. I was so enjoying the company of both YD and Hub once I realized they were not going to allow me to get lost. They were both so affable. In extreme good humor and so mindful of my comfort that when we exited the shop, I looked sideways at Hub and grinned.
I had no wish to purchase that chair. None at all. And I knew that back home no dogged and unsurpassable niggling yen would rear whispering without abatement, “I want and need that chair.” That isn’t going to happen because I have all the delights of that chair in easy reach – though so 20th Century it may be.
I have the comfort of such caresses without spending in excess of two grand to get a warm hug, a patty-pat and a wee nudge in the fleshy part of my thigh. The chair is good, but somehow it still lacks something in the ambiance, though I have to admit, what it lacks is not easily understood or described. And seems to me, without a strong sense of inner soul, and spiritual intuition, one could too easily supplant the delights of one with the other – and perhaps find warmth and human comfort as much in a chair as in a physical embrace.
But I think you now see what is happening here. Through all these experiences I am getting up to speed. Getting back in the loop of life outside of my own reclusive world of reading, blogging, and weaving in knit stitch, crochet stitch, and tatting stitch, threads of 20th Century nostalgia.
And so then we went to another shop. Here we looked at virtual gardening lamps and plant trays. One growing kit was half-price although there was only one left. We bought it. Hub and I brought it home. Seeded some tomatoes in the magic, dirtless, compounds of nutrition, stabilizer, water, heat, and light. I picked up the empty box to discard it and saw written on the box, "Dirt is so 20th Century”
So despite all that I have done, despite all that I have seen, despite the avatars that sought to draw me in, despite the chair that wanted to love and comfort me, sadly I choose to remain in the 20th Century. I happen to like plaids and paisley, minor chords, flesh to flesh patty-pats, and dirt. But I wouldn’t mind having a few avatar friends if they are as dear to me as my blogging friends are!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Ships in Bottles
I have always been completely fascinated by Ships in Bottles. I’m certain the very first clipper ship I ever saw was a miniature in a bottle.
I saw it at a house my parents visited when I was but a child. But to me, it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. I never forgot how beautiful it was with its wee sails and rigging and every detail so exact. And yes it was on a blue ocean and there in front of a window, with bright sunshine lighting the interior of the bottle, it seemed all too real. And then, of course, the most fascinating enigma of all, was “How did they get that ship in that bottle?”
And so now, for Christmas, I found a very simple kit for building a ship in a bottle and bought it for my 7-year-old grandson. Now just because I have a great love, and fascination, with ships in a bottle will not mean that he has. There is no context in his experience to give him the same fascination.
So I wrote a wee book for him with ship poems, ship-in-a-bottle history notes, and my own story of my first encounter with the ship in a bottle when I was a child. I will spare you the reading of the entire book. I only want to share with you a silly poem I wrote for his little book.
SHIP IN A BOTTLE, SAIL SAFELY AWAY
They were sailing, fast a-sailing
In a sunbeam on the shelf
Sea a-foaming, sails a-billowing
Captained by a tiny elf.
They were rum-mied up and jolly
Singing songs of sailing fame
And I could not help but want so much
To join them in their game.
To face the sea from the upper deck
And see flat waters with a curve
They call’d to me, “It is your watch.”
I thought that quite absurd.
The tiny ropes were coiled up tight
Lifesavers in their places
The main sail billowed like a flying kite
With the ocean spraying traces.
___
I could not stay my little hand
The sea called out to me
So I took the ship down from the shelf
To sea what I could see.
I turned it over in my hands
To have a better look
And yes, I saw the captain there,
And I think I saw the cook.
I pulled the cork out of the bottle
Looked in that porthole small
Then suddenly the bottle slipped
I saw it bump the wall.
I scooped both hands so quickly
Down near the hard slate floor
And in a nick of time I caught
And saved the Misty Moor.
Tiny voices rummied up
All danced and cried with glee
And in that careless wreckless dance
They fell into the sea.
Before I could cast my tweezers
Down the tiny bottle-neck
I saw the cook throw out life savers
And say, “Get these round your neck!”
They grabbed the tiny lemon candies
The LifeSavers that were chucked
And so managed to keep a-floating
Till with tweezers they were plucked.
I pinched their trousers in the backside
And pulled them up on the deck
And again I heard that same small voice
Muttering, “What the heck?”
So now they’re back there in the cabin
Of the tall ship, Misty Moor
And I am very grateful that
With my help, they did endure.
When ships are built in bottles
The crafting lends a charm
That will safely keep the real ship
Forever free from harm.
____
Later on the radio,
I heard something very odd
The real Moor was so embattled
Only help could come from God.
They said she clashed with giant waves,
Round the coast of Cull Eldees,
There was little hope she could be saved
In those rough, tempestuous seas.
But a miniature in a bottle
Made with patience and with care
Gave salvation to the Big Ship
To escape the wild sea’s snare.
Because that mini-ship was bottled
The Big Ship was safe that day,
And the Misty Moor, at nightfall
Docked safely in the bay.
2009 Roberta Smith
Hope you enjoyed the poem.
Have a Very Happy Holiday Season!!
I saw it at a house my parents visited when I was but a child. But to me, it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. I never forgot how beautiful it was with its wee sails and rigging and every detail so exact. And yes it was on a blue ocean and there in front of a window, with bright sunshine lighting the interior of the bottle, it seemed all too real. And then, of course, the most fascinating enigma of all, was “How did they get that ship in that bottle?”
And so now, for Christmas, I found a very simple kit for building a ship in a bottle and bought it for my 7-year-old grandson. Now just because I have a great love, and fascination, with ships in a bottle will not mean that he has. There is no context in his experience to give him the same fascination.
So I wrote a wee book for him with ship poems, ship-in-a-bottle history notes, and my own story of my first encounter with the ship in a bottle when I was a child. I will spare you the reading of the entire book. I only want to share with you a silly poem I wrote for his little book.
SHIP IN A BOTTLE, SAIL SAFELY AWAY
They were sailing, fast a-sailing
In a sunbeam on the shelf
Sea a-foaming, sails a-billowing
Captained by a tiny elf.
They were rum-mied up and jolly
Singing songs of sailing fame
And I could not help but want so much
To join them in their game.
To face the sea from the upper deck
And see flat waters with a curve
They call’d to me, “It is your watch.”
I thought that quite absurd.
The tiny ropes were coiled up tight
Lifesavers in their places
The main sail billowed like a flying kite
With the ocean spraying traces.
___
I could not stay my little hand
The sea called out to me
So I took the ship down from the shelf
To sea what I could see.
I turned it over in my hands
To have a better look
And yes, I saw the captain there,
And I think I saw the cook.
I pulled the cork out of the bottle
Looked in that porthole small
Then suddenly the bottle slipped
I saw it bump the wall.
I scooped both hands so quickly
Down near the hard slate floor
And in a nick of time I caught
And saved the Misty Moor.
Tiny voices rummied up
All danced and cried with glee
And in that careless wreckless dance
They fell into the sea.
Before I could cast my tweezers
Down the tiny bottle-neck
I saw the cook throw out life savers
And say, “Get these round your neck!”
They grabbed the tiny lemon candies
The LifeSavers that were chucked
And so managed to keep a-floating
Till with tweezers they were plucked.
I pinched their trousers in the backside
And pulled them up on the deck
And again I heard that same small voice
Muttering, “What the heck?”
So now they’re back there in the cabin
Of the tall ship, Misty Moor
And I am very grateful that
With my help, they did endure.
When ships are built in bottles
The crafting lends a charm
That will safely keep the real ship
Forever free from harm.
____
Later on the radio,
I heard something very odd
The real Moor was so embattled
Only help could come from God.
They said she clashed with giant waves,
Round the coast of Cull Eldees,
There was little hope she could be saved
In those rough, tempestuous seas.
But a miniature in a bottle
Made with patience and with care
Gave salvation to the Big Ship
To escape the wild sea’s snare.
Because that mini-ship was bottled
The Big Ship was safe that day,
And the Misty Moor, at nightfall
Docked safely in the bay.
2009 Roberta Smith
Hope you enjoyed the poem.
Have a Very Happy Holiday Season!!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Untitled Thoughts
Today I write recklessly thoughts as they come. Too inebriated with concern to care how my thoughts are perceived. And what I’m so concerned about is ‘my golfer friend’ (may I call him that even though I don’t know him personally), and his wife. And what concerns me most is that adultery may not be as destructive to their two lives, as the media may well be.
Digging for dirt, digging for more dirt. With all that dirt flying reporters are missing the obvious. And the obvious, to me, is that any woman who would pursue her man in anger, with a golf club, and smash windows out of his car – cares. Very much cares. If she didn’t, she would simply fill another bowl on the coffee table with trail mix and settle down to watch a little television.
The two of them have money, and they have luxury, but what they don’t have is time in their busy lives for bonding and more importantly self-reflection. And in that self-reflection, that there is no time for, the understanding of responsible behavior to protect and uphold each other.
And because they don’t have that self-reflective time, neither can find within themselves the realization that despite what has happened, they care deeply about each other. That the livid rage stems from caring. That the heartbreak stems from caring. That the tree and the smashed window all stem from caring.
And furthermore, how can they know any of this when everyone is advising wife, that in order to preserve her good name, and her self-respect, she must leave him? And he, to preserve some slight semblance of dignity must scream from the rooftops what he has done. Neither of them need advice, review of past sins, and more advice. What they need is quiet time with their own thoughts. He needs time alone in his cave to realize the gravity of his actions, and ultimately, the realization that has not yet hit, that she is integral to his life and the well-being of both he, and his children.
Decisions need to be made, but they are decisions of the heart, and thus cannot and should not be based on society’s perception of fashionable dignity. No one, absolutely no one, knows the intimacy of another’s heart, or even their own heart, if they take no time or thought for critical examination.
____
I am drunk with worry. Seriously inebriated. But in this state I am a cranky drunk. Yes, infidelity is evil, no two ways about it. But one of the media persons that is all over the evils of infidelity, the lack of respect, etc. has a story of her own. She was married for a time to a great husband, a lovely understanding person, (who is still a close and dear friend), but she left the marriage because of a change in sexual preference.
So then, I begin to wonder theoretically. What led that individual to this new enlightenment? Would it be too much of a stretch for me to think that a hetero, could know this, could perceive this, have a certainty in this, without participating in a homo tryst? And if so, is that not infidelity? Or is such infidelity not considered infidelity because it is a seamless blend of a homogenous mix?
___
I know we have too many laws, but still we have not enough. There should be a law against all commentary of personal matters of the heart. It is every bit as necessary as a law against uncontrolled police pursuits. This is an uncontrolled pursuit and parallel in everyway to a police pursuit, that so endangers innocent bystanders, in this case, the children.
Famous or not, my golfer friend and his wife, have a right to examine, without interference, where they choose to go from here and be damned the issues of self respect, dignity, etc. in a society that thirsts more for blood than manna.
It seems to me that this harassment of their personal lives, only fuels the heartbreak they are already dealing with. In my mind, these two people, may well have hidden in all the turmoil, a deep affection that needs to grow, that needs to mature, and that needs to heal, and possibly could, if they allowed only their own hearts to advise them the path to take. But the media has buried all that in a mountain of dirty ‘good clean advice’. Even the uneducated man or woman on the street knows that in these situations, you don’t give advice. You simply listen and lend support for strength in the moment.
But in this instance, with all the advice being dished out, the divorce lawyer is too soon on the line.
Digging for dirt, digging for more dirt. With all that dirt flying reporters are missing the obvious. And the obvious, to me, is that any woman who would pursue her man in anger, with a golf club, and smash windows out of his car – cares. Very much cares. If she didn’t, she would simply fill another bowl on the coffee table with trail mix and settle down to watch a little television.
The two of them have money, and they have luxury, but what they don’t have is time in their busy lives for bonding and more importantly self-reflection. And in that self-reflection, that there is no time for, the understanding of responsible behavior to protect and uphold each other.
And because they don’t have that self-reflective time, neither can find within themselves the realization that despite what has happened, they care deeply about each other. That the livid rage stems from caring. That the heartbreak stems from caring. That the tree and the smashed window all stem from caring.
And furthermore, how can they know any of this when everyone is advising wife, that in order to preserve her good name, and her self-respect, she must leave him? And he, to preserve some slight semblance of dignity must scream from the rooftops what he has done. Neither of them need advice, review of past sins, and more advice. What they need is quiet time with their own thoughts. He needs time alone in his cave to realize the gravity of his actions, and ultimately, the realization that has not yet hit, that she is integral to his life and the well-being of both he, and his children.
Decisions need to be made, but they are decisions of the heart, and thus cannot and should not be based on society’s perception of fashionable dignity. No one, absolutely no one, knows the intimacy of another’s heart, or even their own heart, if they take no time or thought for critical examination.
____
I am drunk with worry. Seriously inebriated. But in this state I am a cranky drunk. Yes, infidelity is evil, no two ways about it. But one of the media persons that is all over the evils of infidelity, the lack of respect, etc. has a story of her own. She was married for a time to a great husband, a lovely understanding person, (who is still a close and dear friend), but she left the marriage because of a change in sexual preference.
So then, I begin to wonder theoretically. What led that individual to this new enlightenment? Would it be too much of a stretch for me to think that a hetero, could know this, could perceive this, have a certainty in this, without participating in a homo tryst? And if so, is that not infidelity? Or is such infidelity not considered infidelity because it is a seamless blend of a homogenous mix?
___
I know we have too many laws, but still we have not enough. There should be a law against all commentary of personal matters of the heart. It is every bit as necessary as a law against uncontrolled police pursuits. This is an uncontrolled pursuit and parallel in everyway to a police pursuit, that so endangers innocent bystanders, in this case, the children.
Famous or not, my golfer friend and his wife, have a right to examine, without interference, where they choose to go from here and be damned the issues of self respect, dignity, etc. in a society that thirsts more for blood than manna.
It seems to me that this harassment of their personal lives, only fuels the heartbreak they are already dealing with. In my mind, these two people, may well have hidden in all the turmoil, a deep affection that needs to grow, that needs to mature, and that needs to heal, and possibly could, if they allowed only their own hearts to advise them the path to take. But the media has buried all that in a mountain of dirty ‘good clean advice’. Even the uneducated man or woman on the street knows that in these situations, you don’t give advice. You simply listen and lend support for strength in the moment.
But in this instance, with all the advice being dished out, the divorce lawyer is too soon on the line.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sufficient for Any Season - III (conclusion)
Wounded Enough to Smile
Now all that I have told you so far is a multi-layered thing. And it is only now, in the writing of this, and in present reflective contemplation of my past, that I attempt to peal back the layers to find what drove me to be the kind of person I was.
And regrettably, if only somewhere along the way, I had done the level of inner reflection I now do, I could have done so much better. I could have been, in my youth, so much more the optimist, more the happy, more the dispenser of (sincere) smiles.
But all I can do now is discuss the experience and ponder over what might have been. A useless exercise so many will say, but if there is a story in it, I am a story teller, and I will tell the story.
And so, from that point on, rather than smiling, I took on a wounded countenance. As a teen I used my wounded countenance to flirt with cute boys. Of course it was a wounded countenance with sad, sad, eyes, and no hint of a smile. That proved to be a delicate exercise to get just right, the wounded look, without a scowl.
Now I can hardly bare to write this next sentence – in retrospect, it was such a dumb philosophy, but all I could calculate as a worthy measure at the time. The theory when it came to flirting? Make them feel sorry for you and they’ll ask you for a date. Be humble, be quiet, reserved, and act wounded.
But now I’m going to leave that and fast track ahead to one brief period of enlightenment along my long road of, for lack of a better word, stupidity. Not too many years ago, I encountered an old flame whose looks are now charred, as mine are, by gray hair, wrinkled skin, and the physical wasting and weakening ravages of time.
Now way back then, he was a prize, or so I thought, and so I looked him over and wondered what drew me to him. And immediately I realized it was his smile. His perpetual smile.
And wouldn’t you know it? Right then, in that chance meeting, so many years later, he handed me the gift mentioned in the beginning of this rant – that old familiar smile. And I felt the joy that the gift of a sincere (though somewhat foolish), smile can give. Jolted me back to the original story we discussed at the beginning of this rant.
So now I’m back in a space wavering between smiles and wounded looks. The wounded look cannot continue. I am forced to return to the original act of dispensing with unlimited generosity an abundance of smiles. Not smiles of big God grace, or movie-star pasted, or ‘see my nice teeth’ (though my new dentures are very nice indeed), but smiles of absolutely nothing more than true sincerity. Fundamentally because I have reached a point where I have nothing else to flash that will create a gift-exchange of joy equal to that discussed in a small classroom so very long ago.
And added to that, life has a fragility now that could cause it to so easily break, that it is silly to take it too seriously. And furthermore, I have so many more reasons to smile than look wounded. Because even without the beauty of my youth, and even with the pain of rheumatism and the discouragement of the sameness of routines and the bothersome chores and difficulties of each day, I have reasons to smile.
I smile now because the sky is so beautiful, the season so precious, the snow so white and fresh, and the weather all that it promised to be and more (Brr…). I smile because big scary global warming is happening, but not where I live.
On top of that, I smile because I have the comfort, security, and confidence that I understand where I once was, and where I am now. Truly, that is a reason to smile.
I smile too because compassion is no longer a happening. Try as I might, I can’t even put on a wounded look anymore. You have to be fresh and vibrant to do that.
A failing thing cannot apply a wounded look sufficient for anyone to notice.
Now all that I have told you so far is a multi-layered thing. And it is only now, in the writing of this, and in present reflective contemplation of my past, that I attempt to peal back the layers to find what drove me to be the kind of person I was.
And regrettably, if only somewhere along the way, I had done the level of inner reflection I now do, I could have done so much better. I could have been, in my youth, so much more the optimist, more the happy, more the dispenser of (sincere) smiles.
But all I can do now is discuss the experience and ponder over what might have been. A useless exercise so many will say, but if there is a story in it, I am a story teller, and I will tell the story.
And so, from that point on, rather than smiling, I took on a wounded countenance. As a teen I used my wounded countenance to flirt with cute boys. Of course it was a wounded countenance with sad, sad, eyes, and no hint of a smile. That proved to be a delicate exercise to get just right, the wounded look, without a scowl.
Now I can hardly bare to write this next sentence – in retrospect, it was such a dumb philosophy, but all I could calculate as a worthy measure at the time. The theory when it came to flirting? Make them feel sorry for you and they’ll ask you for a date. Be humble, be quiet, reserved, and act wounded.
But now I’m going to leave that and fast track ahead to one brief period of enlightenment along my long road of, for lack of a better word, stupidity. Not too many years ago, I encountered an old flame whose looks are now charred, as mine are, by gray hair, wrinkled skin, and the physical wasting and weakening ravages of time.
Now way back then, he was a prize, or so I thought, and so I looked him over and wondered what drew me to him. And immediately I realized it was his smile. His perpetual smile.
And wouldn’t you know it? Right then, in that chance meeting, so many years later, he handed me the gift mentioned in the beginning of this rant – that old familiar smile. And I felt the joy that the gift of a sincere (though somewhat foolish), smile can give. Jolted me back to the original story we discussed at the beginning of this rant.
So now I’m back in a space wavering between smiles and wounded looks. The wounded look cannot continue. I am forced to return to the original act of dispensing with unlimited generosity an abundance of smiles. Not smiles of big God grace, or movie-star pasted, or ‘see my nice teeth’ (though my new dentures are very nice indeed), but smiles of absolutely nothing more than true sincerity. Fundamentally because I have reached a point where I have nothing else to flash that will create a gift-exchange of joy equal to that discussed in a small classroom so very long ago.
And added to that, life has a fragility now that could cause it to so easily break, that it is silly to take it too seriously. And furthermore, I have so many more reasons to smile than look wounded. Because even without the beauty of my youth, and even with the pain of rheumatism and the discouragement of the sameness of routines and the bothersome chores and difficulties of each day, I have reasons to smile.
I smile now because the sky is so beautiful, the season so precious, the snow so white and fresh, and the weather all that it promised to be and more (Brr…). I smile because big scary global warming is happening, but not where I live.
On top of that, I smile because I have the comfort, security, and confidence that I understand where I once was, and where I am now. Truly, that is a reason to smile.
I smile too because compassion is no longer a happening. Try as I might, I can’t even put on a wounded look anymore. You have to be fresh and vibrant to do that.
A failing thing cannot apply a wounded look sufficient for anyone to notice.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Sufficient for Any Season - II (cont'd)
The Wounded Look
In my analysis of other people, which I have been doing for a lifetime, more so than analysis of myself, I realized early on that sincerity coupled with wholesomeness has great appeal. There is no denying that. And so I returned to an examination of other facets of righteous, forever smiling, beautiful people like those depicted in my Sunday School paper.
And what I came to realize is that Godly people, (and perhaps even the un-Godly), if they are sincere in their role of a beautiful person, must, as part of that dedication to being a ‘beautiful person’, be compassionate to the nth degree. That is a necessary requirement for the ‘beautiful person’ commitment.
So in my struggle for popularity, acceptance, and joy in life, why not forget about the foolishness of smiling and instead simply reveal my need for compassion. Life is too worrisome to smile all the time, so why not put on a glum, serious face, and in doing so, buy into the compassion of the beautiful smiling people?
After all, my Father is a beautiful person, and he is compassionate when I am sad. My Mother is a beautiful person and she is compassionate when I am sad. Even my siblings, though not exactly beautiful people, become compassionate when I, for a certainty, am sad.
The bottom line is if one must smile with insincerity or foolishly, for the sake of a smile exchange, wouldn’t it be better to adopt a wounded look that invites doting compassion. And then smile with true delight while bathed in the compassion of others? Somehow, that seemed like a loftier perch than the equanimity of foolish and rather meaningless smile exchanges.
Seeking compassion, and receiving it, it seemed to me, could create a situation touching for all, and for me, only me, a dramatic saturation of joy in all my emotional hot spots.
And so, with that realization, I took on this wounded countenance. This glum look. This unsmiling look. This look that begged for compassion. And soon it became a way of life.
NEXT POST: Wounded Enough to Smile
In my analysis of other people, which I have been doing for a lifetime, more so than analysis of myself, I realized early on that sincerity coupled with wholesomeness has great appeal. There is no denying that. And so I returned to an examination of other facets of righteous, forever smiling, beautiful people like those depicted in my Sunday School paper.
And what I came to realize is that Godly people, (and perhaps even the un-Godly), if they are sincere in their role of a beautiful person, must, as part of that dedication to being a ‘beautiful person’, be compassionate to the nth degree. That is a necessary requirement for the ‘beautiful person’ commitment.
So in my struggle for popularity, acceptance, and joy in life, why not forget about the foolishness of smiling and instead simply reveal my need for compassion. Life is too worrisome to smile all the time, so why not put on a glum, serious face, and in doing so, buy into the compassion of the beautiful smiling people?
After all, my Father is a beautiful person, and he is compassionate when I am sad. My Mother is a beautiful person and she is compassionate when I am sad. Even my siblings, though not exactly beautiful people, become compassionate when I, for a certainty, am sad.
The bottom line is if one must smile with insincerity or foolishly, for the sake of a smile exchange, wouldn’t it be better to adopt a wounded look that invites doting compassion. And then smile with true delight while bathed in the compassion of others? Somehow, that seemed like a loftier perch than the equanimity of foolish and rather meaningless smile exchanges.
Seeking compassion, and receiving it, it seemed to me, could create a situation touching for all, and for me, only me, a dramatic saturation of joy in all my emotional hot spots.
And so, with that realization, I took on this wounded countenance. This glum look. This unsmiling look. This look that begged for compassion. And soon it became a way of life.
NEXT POST: Wounded Enough to Smile
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Sufficient for Any Season - I
1. Beautiful People
Today I’m thinking about a story told by my teacher (when I was in first grade), and a fascinating story it was. A story about something we all have in abundance. That caught my full attention because in my childhood the only thing we had in abundance was ‘want’. Want of money, want of food, want of warm clothes, and want of enough coal for the long winter.
And more surprising, the something in the story, though precious, was meant to be given to others fast and furiously, yet it could never be depleted. Because always as much as one gave away, the same, or more, would be returned. And the exchange, whether giving or taking, would bring much joy. How amazing is that!
Obviously, ‘This is either a new fairy-tale, or a pretend situation similar to the trick of my Dad pinching my nose and playfully extracting it between two fingers and putting it in his pocket. A story, like the extracted nose trick, that requires me to pretend something is real, that isn’t real.’
Pretend or not, the answer was eventually revealed, and the answer, of course, was ‘a smile’.
I was a wee bit disappointed but still I smiled at the story and so did my classmates and as we glanced (and smiled) at each other, for one quick moment the joy that the story promised for ‘the exchange’ was felt. True to the tale, but the recompense rather short-lived. And so I began to give much thought to the worth of smiles.
And that is when I noticed that in Sunday School papers there were always children who ceaselessly smiled. Children with ruddy glowing faces and great broad and beaming smiles.
I envied their beauty and could only think it was because they were wrapped in pure thoughts, silver notions, and God-possessed grace. The orphan child’s face, the forgotten waif’s, the thin hungry child – all of them – depicted with beaming beautiful smiles. It mattered not that they faced such obstacles. Regardless of their many trials, they peeked at me from those pages with optimistic delight. I guess if you have enough discipline, self-confidence, and righteous grace, it is not possible to be ruffled by want or cruel misfortune.
And so I envied their happiness. I envied their happiness when they had reasons to be happy. But I envied even more the individuals who were happy when they had so little to be happy about. It never occurred to me that their flat world of printed and color-washed sketches was too vastly separated from my reality to even have relevance.
I reveled in their glowing faces and broad smiles that made them so stunningly beautiful. That is what I wanted as well – to be that beautiful. So I tried desperately to clone the personalities revealed in the stories that surrounded them. I tried to clone their purity, grace, patience, forgiveness, and staunch self-confidence in their own righteousness.
But it was not so easy. Classmates taunted me for my valiant goody two-shoes efforts. Even my teacher became impatient, as did my parents and siblings, with this great and wonderful righteous thing I was trying to do.
___
And so, before long, I had a different take on the perpetual glowing smiling face. I was still a pre-adolescent when I realized that life is not something to be taken that lightly. Life is a struggle. A struggle to do well in school. A struggle to make friends. A struggle to feel good about wearing hand-me-downs, that are neither fashionable, colorful, fresh-looking, or warm. All of these obstacles added up to too much embarrassment and degradation for me to pass around smiles all day long without reservation.
Furthermore, as time passed, I met too many people that smiled too much. There was the nurse my Mom knew whose face was forever flushed with an ironic smirk-smile. A smile that deviously attempted to mask her distaste for all of life and the inhabitants in it.
And there was the Sunday School teacher that smiled too much in an attempt to clone wholesomeness beneath a private wealth of sins. And there was the School Bus driver that smiled too much in an attempt to always look professional (I guess). And there was the man and his team of perpetual smilers who walked the streets shaking hands and knocking at doors for several weeks in order to gain support for a local upcoming election.
There was the half-wit in town sweeping the sidewalks and perpetually smiling at some nonsensical nothingness. There was the neighbor who smiled all the time but in all things was such a failure because his smile was a cover for all he did not understand about finances, farming, or the seriousness of life. I began to think they were a bunch of fools. Foolish people smile all the time. People too foolish to realize life is serious business and all applications of it, serious as well.
Obviously, with these observations, I could only conclude that the value of a smile is both overstated and overrated, and so it quickly became a shabby accessory in my books.
_____
Cont’d: Next Post: The Wounded Look
Today I’m thinking about a story told by my teacher (when I was in first grade), and a fascinating story it was. A story about something we all have in abundance. That caught my full attention because in my childhood the only thing we had in abundance was ‘want’. Want of money, want of food, want of warm clothes, and want of enough coal for the long winter.
And more surprising, the something in the story, though precious, was meant to be given to others fast and furiously, yet it could never be depleted. Because always as much as one gave away, the same, or more, would be returned. And the exchange, whether giving or taking, would bring much joy. How amazing is that!
Obviously, ‘This is either a new fairy-tale, or a pretend situation similar to the trick of my Dad pinching my nose and playfully extracting it between two fingers and putting it in his pocket. A story, like the extracted nose trick, that requires me to pretend something is real, that isn’t real.’
Pretend or not, the answer was eventually revealed, and the answer, of course, was ‘a smile’.
I was a wee bit disappointed but still I smiled at the story and so did my classmates and as we glanced (and smiled) at each other, for one quick moment the joy that the story promised for ‘the exchange’ was felt. True to the tale, but the recompense rather short-lived. And so I began to give much thought to the worth of smiles.
And that is when I noticed that in Sunday School papers there were always children who ceaselessly smiled. Children with ruddy glowing faces and great broad and beaming smiles.
I envied their beauty and could only think it was because they were wrapped in pure thoughts, silver notions, and God-possessed grace. The orphan child’s face, the forgotten waif’s, the thin hungry child – all of them – depicted with beaming beautiful smiles. It mattered not that they faced such obstacles. Regardless of their many trials, they peeked at me from those pages with optimistic delight. I guess if you have enough discipline, self-confidence, and righteous grace, it is not possible to be ruffled by want or cruel misfortune.
And so I envied their happiness. I envied their happiness when they had reasons to be happy. But I envied even more the individuals who were happy when they had so little to be happy about. It never occurred to me that their flat world of printed and color-washed sketches was too vastly separated from my reality to even have relevance.
I reveled in their glowing faces and broad smiles that made them so stunningly beautiful. That is what I wanted as well – to be that beautiful. So I tried desperately to clone the personalities revealed in the stories that surrounded them. I tried to clone their purity, grace, patience, forgiveness, and staunch self-confidence in their own righteousness.
But it was not so easy. Classmates taunted me for my valiant goody two-shoes efforts. Even my teacher became impatient, as did my parents and siblings, with this great and wonderful righteous thing I was trying to do.
___
And so, before long, I had a different take on the perpetual glowing smiling face. I was still a pre-adolescent when I realized that life is not something to be taken that lightly. Life is a struggle. A struggle to do well in school. A struggle to make friends. A struggle to feel good about wearing hand-me-downs, that are neither fashionable, colorful, fresh-looking, or warm. All of these obstacles added up to too much embarrassment and degradation for me to pass around smiles all day long without reservation.
Furthermore, as time passed, I met too many people that smiled too much. There was the nurse my Mom knew whose face was forever flushed with an ironic smirk-smile. A smile that deviously attempted to mask her distaste for all of life and the inhabitants in it.
And there was the Sunday School teacher that smiled too much in an attempt to clone wholesomeness beneath a private wealth of sins. And there was the School Bus driver that smiled too much in an attempt to always look professional (I guess). And there was the man and his team of perpetual smilers who walked the streets shaking hands and knocking at doors for several weeks in order to gain support for a local upcoming election.
There was the half-wit in town sweeping the sidewalks and perpetually smiling at some nonsensical nothingness. There was the neighbor who smiled all the time but in all things was such a failure because his smile was a cover for all he did not understand about finances, farming, or the seriousness of life. I began to think they were a bunch of fools. Foolish people smile all the time. People too foolish to realize life is serious business and all applications of it, serious as well.
Obviously, with these observations, I could only conclude that the value of a smile is both overstated and overrated, and so it quickly became a shabby accessory in my books.
_____
Cont’d: Next Post: The Wounded Look
Friday, November 20, 2009
The Evolution of Correspondence
I see them everywhere. The many who so totally thrive and seem to be nurtured in some strange way by ‘word correspondence’. And yes, although my neighbours are all socially polished enough to ignore the newspaper on the kitchen table when they come for coffee, at the same time, in one short hour they will whip out cell phones every four minutes for a brief ‘read’ or more amazing yet, to write.
It is all, to me, such an amazing phenomenon. When did ’writing’ and ’reading’ become such a passion, such a delight, such a part of humankind’s existence? I would never have expected our species to come to this.
I remember my Mother nagging us when we were kids to send a note to Grandma to thank her for the new doll, or a note to Aunty for inviting us for the weekend. We cringed and wailed and held back hoping she’d forget it. She had to be kidding. Expecting us to go to school everyday, and write all those words and figures and then on an evening or weekend to be expected to send written correspondence to someone. Yikes.
Eventually, with all the nagging, the girls in the family might eventually send an un-inspired floral card. But with the boys, it was a useless battle, like expecting them to wash their ears once a week -- Not going to happen!
And yes, we were all keen to have a pen-pal. I enlisted several. Did I write to them? Not so much. A couple of grand epistles and that was the end of that. And even dear friends that moved away. The written exchanges dwindled away rapidly.
And I remember in school when the English Lit assignment was a short paragraph. An audible sigh of objection swept through the classroom that mimicked that same collective sigh heard when the health nurse arrived and we were all advised we were going to get a shot. And if the assignment was 200 words, the wail was a grand duplication of anguished souls in a great pit of fire.
Nothing was quite so degenerating as a request to write something down. We object, we scoff. We know full well what is, or isn’t, a waste of time. And written correspondence is a complete waste of time.
Reading, likewise. But without the luxury of television, we will read comics of a Saturday morning. Yes we will. But assigned reading? Not so much. For the book report, the art of it was to read a bit of the introduction, a page in the middle, and the final chapter all of which sufficed for that assignment. But even that was too much for most of the boys. They shuffled their feet under their desks, they agreed the book report was due, but even at that, no such attempt ever saw the light of day.
Hub was in the same Lit class with me when we were in school, and I know it is true, when he says he did not submit one written assignment during the entire year. He did not, nor did other boys in that class of the same ilk. In those days there were no bigger nerds, than the savages that devoured text or spit it out for love of it. No fashion in it, no style, no sophistication, no class, no koolness.
But now, look around you. Texting, texting, everywhere, without a chance to think. Talk about a savage perusal of written language. People, both young and old, of all genders, are tweeting, twittering, texting, like fiends out of control. And the necessity of doing it ranks right up there with the need for food, water, and shelter.
Texting is totally swank. Written exchanges are welcome and heartily engaged in whether one is eating, sleeping, driving, socializing, sexing, or on the john. When and how did this all happen?
And the amazing thing is the art of texting parallels, in a crazy way, that of the book report aforementioned. It has less to do with content and more to do with speed, terseness, compaction, and overall efficiency.
But even more an enigma, is my position in this new clime of correspondence. I don’t text, but I’m in there. Doing the trendy thing with my writing and blogging.
Yet, even in this new clime, among my circle of friends that are texting someone, somewhere, every four minutes. And same friends that are simultaneously aware of my passion for writing and aware that I have a secret blog. These same, reportedly, among themselves, with sadness that precipitates dewy eyes, express an ongoing and painful concern about the mental deficiency that drives my passion for written text on a daily basis. Go figure!
It is all, to me, such an amazing phenomenon. When did ’writing’ and ’reading’ become such a passion, such a delight, such a part of humankind’s existence? I would never have expected our species to come to this.
I remember my Mother nagging us when we were kids to send a note to Grandma to thank her for the new doll, or a note to Aunty for inviting us for the weekend. We cringed and wailed and held back hoping she’d forget it. She had to be kidding. Expecting us to go to school everyday, and write all those words and figures and then on an evening or weekend to be expected to send written correspondence to someone. Yikes.
Eventually, with all the nagging, the girls in the family might eventually send an un-inspired floral card. But with the boys, it was a useless battle, like expecting them to wash their ears once a week -- Not going to happen!
And yes, we were all keen to have a pen-pal. I enlisted several. Did I write to them? Not so much. A couple of grand epistles and that was the end of that. And even dear friends that moved away. The written exchanges dwindled away rapidly.
And I remember in school when the English Lit assignment was a short paragraph. An audible sigh of objection swept through the classroom that mimicked that same collective sigh heard when the health nurse arrived and we were all advised we were going to get a shot. And if the assignment was 200 words, the wail was a grand duplication of anguished souls in a great pit of fire.
Nothing was quite so degenerating as a request to write something down. We object, we scoff. We know full well what is, or isn’t, a waste of time. And written correspondence is a complete waste of time.
Reading, likewise. But without the luxury of television, we will read comics of a Saturday morning. Yes we will. But assigned reading? Not so much. For the book report, the art of it was to read a bit of the introduction, a page in the middle, and the final chapter all of which sufficed for that assignment. But even that was too much for most of the boys. They shuffled their feet under their desks, they agreed the book report was due, but even at that, no such attempt ever saw the light of day.
Hub was in the same Lit class with me when we were in school, and I know it is true, when he says he did not submit one written assignment during the entire year. He did not, nor did other boys in that class of the same ilk. In those days there were no bigger nerds, than the savages that devoured text or spit it out for love of it. No fashion in it, no style, no sophistication, no class, no koolness.
But now, look around you. Texting, texting, everywhere, without a chance to think. Talk about a savage perusal of written language. People, both young and old, of all genders, are tweeting, twittering, texting, like fiends out of control. And the necessity of doing it ranks right up there with the need for food, water, and shelter.
Texting is totally swank. Written exchanges are welcome and heartily engaged in whether one is eating, sleeping, driving, socializing, sexing, or on the john. When and how did this all happen?
And the amazing thing is the art of texting parallels, in a crazy way, that of the book report aforementioned. It has less to do with content and more to do with speed, terseness, compaction, and overall efficiency.
But even more an enigma, is my position in this new clime of correspondence. I don’t text, but I’m in there. Doing the trendy thing with my writing and blogging.
Yet, even in this new clime, among my circle of friends that are texting someone, somewhere, every four minutes. And same friends that are simultaneously aware of my passion for writing and aware that I have a secret blog. These same, reportedly, among themselves, with sadness that precipitates dewy eyes, express an ongoing and painful concern about the mental deficiency that drives my passion for written text on a daily basis. Go figure!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The Roberta Speaks to You of ‘The Inequality”
Lend your ear. “The Roberta” has something to say.
To start with it amazes me how we beat away at the pendulum of racial bias, social injustice, political incorrectness, etc. and seems the more we beat it, the farther out of whack it becomes.
We push it and push it away from the bad, towards the perceived good, never mindful that it can be pushed too far the other way. And then, in the end, there is no balance, no sensible sway, and it is way out of perpendicular.
But one thing about it, it has left us all with a truly refined understanding of social injustice and discrimination. No one can deny that. The media daily reviews and renews our understanding of inequality and injustice. And the schools incorporate this mind-set into students whether the discussion be centered around communication, living skills, history, or anti-bullying.
Should be good, should be well. Should make all of society the best it can be -- should it not?
But now, there is a new style of discriminatory address, nomenclature, that I feel compelled to discuss. Saw it on television two days in a row. So, seems to me, it is catching on fast.
First it was Donald Trump. In case you are unaware, Donald Trump is no longer Donald Trump. He is now “The Donald”. And furthermore, Oprah is no longer Oprah, she is “The Oprah”.
And so, why should it matter? I’ll tell you why it matters. It creates a status, a bias, a separation, an inequality of these people with the rest of us. Maybe not in a negative way for them, but in a negative way for the rest of us. Why? Because “The”, (simple word that it is) means very distinct, unlike any other.
The distinctiveness of ‘the’ speaks of a uniqueness unequalled. Even titles of “Queen”, “President”, and “Duchess” are less powerful or separating, because there are more than one of them. They belong to a group, a rather large group if the history of the world is taken into account.
But with “the”, there is no group, no fraternity, brotherhood, or even clan. “The” specifies something completely unique. Simple example would be if I direct your attention to ‘the pen’ I hold in my hand, ‘the’ signifies no other though there may be many pens equal and alike in every respect.
___________
Now I don’t know Donald Trump well enough to know if he could ever get it. His forte, according to him, is being able to spot a beautiful woman and “inappropriate” speaks to him of a sexual act rather than anything else. With that kind of restrictive thinking, I don’t think he would get it.
But Oprah? That is a whole different story. She has heart and spirit and human understanding, and I am truly disappointed in her if she can’t see that this kind of thing speaks of discrimination and inequality of persons. I would have thought she’d have no part of it.
And that’s ‘The Roberta’s’ spiel for today.
To start with it amazes me how we beat away at the pendulum of racial bias, social injustice, political incorrectness, etc. and seems the more we beat it, the farther out of whack it becomes.
We push it and push it away from the bad, towards the perceived good, never mindful that it can be pushed too far the other way. And then, in the end, there is no balance, no sensible sway, and it is way out of perpendicular.
But one thing about it, it has left us all with a truly refined understanding of social injustice and discrimination. No one can deny that. The media daily reviews and renews our understanding of inequality and injustice. And the schools incorporate this mind-set into students whether the discussion be centered around communication, living skills, history, or anti-bullying.
Should be good, should be well. Should make all of society the best it can be -- should it not?
But now, there is a new style of discriminatory address, nomenclature, that I feel compelled to discuss. Saw it on television two days in a row. So, seems to me, it is catching on fast.
First it was Donald Trump. In case you are unaware, Donald Trump is no longer Donald Trump. He is now “The Donald”. And furthermore, Oprah is no longer Oprah, she is “The Oprah”.
And so, why should it matter? I’ll tell you why it matters. It creates a status, a bias, a separation, an inequality of these people with the rest of us. Maybe not in a negative way for them, but in a negative way for the rest of us. Why? Because “The”, (simple word that it is) means very distinct, unlike any other.
The distinctiveness of ‘the’ speaks of a uniqueness unequalled. Even titles of “Queen”, “President”, and “Duchess” are less powerful or separating, because there are more than one of them. They belong to a group, a rather large group if the history of the world is taken into account.
But with “the”, there is no group, no fraternity, brotherhood, or even clan. “The” specifies something completely unique. Simple example would be if I direct your attention to ‘the pen’ I hold in my hand, ‘the’ signifies no other though there may be many pens equal and alike in every respect.
___________
Now I don’t know Donald Trump well enough to know if he could ever get it. His forte, according to him, is being able to spot a beautiful woman and “inappropriate” speaks to him of a sexual act rather than anything else. With that kind of restrictive thinking, I don’t think he would get it.
But Oprah? That is a whole different story. She has heart and spirit and human understanding, and I am truly disappointed in her if she can’t see that this kind of thing speaks of discrimination and inequality of persons. I would have thought she’d have no part of it.
And that’s ‘
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Another Strain of Influenza
In “Little Dorritt“, Charles Dickens makes some surprising observations about a strain of Influenza, still spreading, still infecting, that humankind chooses to ignore. Dickens explains it here:
“…it is…as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one…
…such a disease…will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague...
[and]…the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions…
[this is]…a fact as firmly established by experience as [the fact] that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere.”
And from there Dickens goes on the say:
“A blessing beyond appreciation would be conferred upon mankind, if the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness these virulent disorders are bred, could be instantly seized and placed in close confinement (not to say summarily smothered) before the poison is communicable.”
Of course, even though the disease is far more rampant today than it was in Dickens’ time, ‘smothering’ is not the kind of archaic cure that modern society would ever consider. We have only those few local governments that still call for a death penalty for the sickest of the sick. For the rest, a shot in the arm, immunization of the yet still uninfected, is all we can hope for, to effect a cure.
But the problem is, that for scientists to create a vaccination, they need weakened or dead vestiges of the ‘organism’ that initially caused the disease, and where can that be found?
Certainly not in woods or fields. Certainly not in fowl of the air, or fish in the sea. There are no creatures of land or water or air who have the self-same evil strain of the moral influenza flagrant among people.
And in humans, the murderers, perverts, and predators, never fully recover enough (despite rehabilitation programs), for the microbes within to weaken or die in order that these same microbes can be extracted from framework or phlegm and used as an effective base for immunization.
There are no weakened or withered vestiges of the evil that corrupts our government, theatres, television screens, churches, cities, or even isolated communities to be found. All causal microbes are alive and well.
So with immunization out of the question, see what a hopeless situation we are in.
Nothing for it…short of Dickens’ suggestion… “summarily (meaning immediately and without attention to formality) …smothering!”
“…it is…as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one…
…such a disease…will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague...
[and]…the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions…
[this is]…a fact as firmly established by experience as [the fact] that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere.”
And from there Dickens goes on the say:
“A blessing beyond appreciation would be conferred upon mankind, if the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness these virulent disorders are bred, could be instantly seized and placed in close confinement (not to say summarily smothered) before the poison is communicable.”
Of course, even though the disease is far more rampant today than it was in Dickens’ time, ‘smothering’ is not the kind of archaic cure that modern society would ever consider. We have only those few local governments that still call for a death penalty for the sickest of the sick. For the rest, a shot in the arm, immunization of the yet still uninfected, is all we can hope for, to effect a cure.
But the problem is, that for scientists to create a vaccination, they need weakened or dead vestiges of the ‘organism’ that initially caused the disease, and where can that be found?
Certainly not in woods or fields. Certainly not in fowl of the air, or fish in the sea. There are no creatures of land or water or air who have the self-same evil strain of the moral influenza flagrant among people.
And in humans, the murderers, perverts, and predators, never fully recover enough (despite rehabilitation programs), for the microbes within to weaken or die in order that these same microbes can be extracted from framework or phlegm and used as an effective base for immunization.
There are no weakened or withered vestiges of the evil that corrupts our government, theatres, television screens, churches, cities, or even isolated communities to be found. All causal microbes are alive and well.
So with immunization out of the question, see what a hopeless situation we are in.
Nothing for it…short of Dickens’ suggestion… “summarily (meaning immediately and without attention to formality) …smothering!”
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Back to Blogging with a Vengeance
Looks like I’ve completely run out of excuses. The garden is done, the yard work is done, veggie and fruit preserves done… I even have a brand new laptop that talks to both printers from the kitchen through some kind of invisible aura, but, despite all this, the blogging is not getting done.
In the knitting basket, there are socks getting done, and slippers getting done, but still the blogging is not getting done. There is Christmas shopping getting done, but no blogging getting done.
Hub is a bit dejected. Thinks I don’t appreciate the new laptop cause he can easily see the blogging is not getting done. And he knows that since 2003, blogging has been so important to me, and now of a sudden, the blogging is not getting done.
I think the real root of the problem is I am quite distressed by what is happening in this old world. The news I heard the other day has investigators, once again, looking for a missing child. This time a 7-month-old babe weighing, according to HNN’s newscasts, 10 pounds. According to the parents, the child went missing from their bedroom while they were sleeping.
Now as sad and distressing as these situations are, I find it comforting to know that the people discussing the situation on newscasts have more intelligence than I. I am comforted when they think of things that I would never think of to solve a case. But now I am quite distraught when, with this particular case, I realize they know so little.
In all their panels of expert detectives, lawyers, medics, newscasters, none zeroed in on the most significant up-front fact in this story. To me, the most outstanding detail in this mystery of the missing baby, described by her family as a little girl with a very big head, is that if a child seven month’s old weighs only 10 pounds, of course she will have a very big head.
And if she weighs only 10 pounds, it is obvious what happened to her. She physically faded away, before her body was hidden, taken, whatever the case may be. I would think any common-sense individual would know that unless a child has a serious hormonal imbalance that affects their growth, what child, at seven months, would weigh only ten pounds?
And so, then what distresses me even more is the realization that we seem to have become a culture that lives with a greater cloud of dread and fear of obesity, than our will and effort to promote good health. We have come to fear obesity to such an extent, that our children are bloody hungry. I see, in shops and on the streets so many babies that are so thin, so tiny, so delicate like porcelain dolls. I ask how old they are and am so shocked at how much older they are than what they look.
Doctors are not helping. Both of my daughters were told by their doctors not to feed their children any solid food until they were 5 or 6 months old. I am so grateful they ignored this advice. Their children got food at two months old and despite Nancy Grace reiterating again and again in the last few days that “babies do not sleep in”, this is not true. Babies can and do sleep in.
When they have had sufficient Pablum to hush hunger demands for eight hours, they will sleep ‘like babies‘ through the night at three months old.
I am just so offended that we do all those seatbelt safety checks, all that monitoring of childhood safety with toys, and bouncers, cribs and highchairs and rockers, and while all this is going on, children are not being adequately fed.
I know what hunger feels like. It is the most anxious, unsettling, empty feeling that one can have. A anxiety that is hard to label and understand. Especially when the child becomes a young toddler and parents are barking, “What’s the matter with you? Stop the whining. You had your supper!”
Meanwhile the clock says half-past midnight, and that very small stomach was last filled at 5:30 p.m. and of course by now is quite empty.
___________
Yes, I am disheartened, sad, and crabby. Anxious and unsettled with a great empty feeling inside. But it is not hunger that makes me feel this way. It is sadness for children who are so helpless, so wholly dependent on our care and good will. I don’t think that legally one adult can force another to diet without ‘permission’, but kids and babies, that’s a whole different story. You must keep them safe, and keeping them safe, is to make sure you never, never, never, feed them as much as they would like.
In the knitting basket, there are socks getting done, and slippers getting done, but still the blogging is not getting done. There is Christmas shopping getting done, but no blogging getting done.
Hub is a bit dejected. Thinks I don’t appreciate the new laptop cause he can easily see the blogging is not getting done. And he knows that since 2003, blogging has been so important to me, and now of a sudden, the blogging is not getting done.
I think the real root of the problem is I am quite distressed by what is happening in this old world. The news I heard the other day has investigators, once again, looking for a missing child. This time a 7-month-old babe weighing, according to HNN’s newscasts, 10 pounds. According to the parents, the child went missing from their bedroom while they were sleeping.
Now as sad and distressing as these situations are, I find it comforting to know that the people discussing the situation on newscasts have more intelligence than I. I am comforted when they think of things that I would never think of to solve a case. But now I am quite distraught when, with this particular case, I realize they know so little.
In all their panels of expert detectives, lawyers, medics, newscasters, none zeroed in on the most significant up-front fact in this story. To me, the most outstanding detail in this mystery of the missing baby, described by her family as a little girl with a very big head, is that if a child seven month’s old weighs only 10 pounds, of course she will have a very big head.
And if she weighs only 10 pounds, it is obvious what happened to her. She physically faded away, before her body was hidden, taken, whatever the case may be. I would think any common-sense individual would know that unless a child has a serious hormonal imbalance that affects their growth, what child, at seven months, would weigh only ten pounds?
And so, then what distresses me even more is the realization that we seem to have become a culture that lives with a greater cloud of dread and fear of obesity, than our will and effort to promote good health. We have come to fear obesity to such an extent, that our children are bloody hungry. I see, in shops and on the streets so many babies that are so thin, so tiny, so delicate like porcelain dolls. I ask how old they are and am so shocked at how much older they are than what they look.
Doctors are not helping. Both of my daughters were told by their doctors not to feed their children any solid food until they were 5 or 6 months old. I am so grateful they ignored this advice. Their children got food at two months old and despite Nancy Grace reiterating again and again in the last few days that “babies do not sleep in”, this is not true. Babies can and do sleep in.
When they have had sufficient Pablum to hush hunger demands for eight hours, they will sleep ‘like babies‘ through the night at three months old.
I am just so offended that we do all those seatbelt safety checks, all that monitoring of childhood safety with toys, and bouncers, cribs and highchairs and rockers, and while all this is going on, children are not being adequately fed.
I know what hunger feels like. It is the most anxious, unsettling, empty feeling that one can have. A anxiety that is hard to label and understand. Especially when the child becomes a young toddler and parents are barking, “What’s the matter with you? Stop the whining. You had your supper!”
Meanwhile the clock says half-past midnight, and that very small stomach was last filled at 5:30 p.m. and of course by now is quite empty.
___________
Yes, I am disheartened, sad, and crabby. Anxious and unsettled with a great empty feeling inside. But it is not hunger that makes me feel this way. It is sadness for children who are so helpless, so wholly dependent on our care and good will. I don’t think that legally one adult can force another to diet without ‘permission’, but kids and babies, that’s a whole different story. You must keep them safe, and keeping them safe, is to make sure you never, never, never, feed them as much as they would like.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Ten Things I Never Told You
I prefer curiosity that I am not in a condition to satisfy
I prefer markers of time lowered into deeper pockets
Buried and ignored
I prefer deviations peculiar to dreams --but still
I prefer to be found in my wrapper by my nightmare
If I cannot sleep, I prefer to cry myself better in a pillow,
(when I haven’t any tissue, And I haven’t any sleeves)
I prefer to give testy dialogue a grand poke in the middle
I prefer to name ‘Monday’ and leave the rest anonymous
I prefer the oblique separation of rain falling in slanted lines
I prefer a world dimensionally narrow
I prefer oblivion to the fact that I am out of place
Most of all I prefer the particularities and generalities of a gloomy life with bright glories of fancy.
I prefer markers of time lowered into deeper pockets
Buried and ignored
I prefer deviations peculiar to dreams --but still
I prefer to be found in my wrapper by my nightmare
If I cannot sleep, I prefer to cry myself better in a pillow,
(when I haven’t any tissue, And I haven’t any sleeves)
I prefer to give testy dialogue a grand poke in the middle
I prefer to name ‘Monday’ and leave the rest anonymous
I prefer the oblique separation of rain falling in slanted lines
I prefer a world dimensionally narrow
I prefer oblivion to the fact that I am out of place
Most of all I prefer the particularities and generalities of a gloomy life with bright glories of fancy.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Burrowing Deep - Part II
A Holistic Conclusion
Now just in case you’re thinking, after reading Part One of this rant, that this is going to be another of Roberta’s sermons, advocating religion and God belief, let me assure you that is not the case.
You may leave ‘The Good Book’ on the dusty shelf, because there are other books that build conscience, (dare I say way more effectively than even that one?). But, like so many other things I have mentioned, these books too are collecting dust – no longer in vogue.
Foremost in my mind are Charles Dickens’ books. Charles Dickens is the strongest advocate I have ever read that makes me fully aware of the pain of hopelessness, poverty, bullying, and cruelty in all its aspects. I truly believe if his books were required reading in elementary schools, there would be no bullying, violence, or cruel taunting of other children. In surprising ways, Dickens’ books mold the best of an ethical conscience without Biblical reference.
Now I wonder if you will allow me for just one brief moment to deviate from the topic at hand. I have wondered and tossed around in my mind for most of a lifetime, whether it is fair to a critically ill or injured individual to let them know for a certainty that their transition is near at hand or if one should slide around the issue.
After reading about the devastating hopelessness of young boys in Dickens’ book “Nickolas Nickleby”, I finally have an answer to the question. No matter what the situation, no one has the right to take away, (or falsely add to) an individual’s hope, regardless of how fleeting or short-lived that hope may be. In that, I’m sure many would disagree, but I’m just saying that is the conclusion I have come to. Each and every separate individual must be allowed to keep whatever primeval and fundamental hope they have within themselves – without outside tampering. There is a kindness in allowing the primeval and fundamental hope within oneself to be left alone.
One of the biggest reasons it just isn’t fair to tamper with a person’s ‘hope’, is because ‘hope’ authors courage and wee moments of joy in the direst of circumstances.
Now with that discussion now concluded, let us return to the original topic. So while others seek ethical guidance in The Good Book, Dickens gives his readers a fuzzy soft heart without them wanting it, seeking it, or expecting it.
And so, now you may argue, “Is this so different from ethics taught through prepared flow charts, manuals, self-help books, and workshops?”
Indeed it is different. Because at no time does Dickens provide instruction. He simply provides for the reader an organic diet of the personal experiences of children, adults, families, and society as a whole, without ethical processing, refinement, or preaching.
If you are only aware of Dickens “A Christmas Story”, you probably wonder what I am yapping about. Well, to be quite honest with you, although the story touches on ethics of generosity and caring, it is the story I least like of all Dickens’ work. Just way too much fiction and fantasy in that story for me particularly because I was born so drenched and saturated in fantasies of my own.
But Dickens’ books are not the only books capable of doing what his books do – but his and other such books are no longer in vogue. The libraries have been pretty well cleansed of the books that tell raw and holistic stories of the hopelessness of the starving beggar, the orphaned child, the forgotten waif, or the betrayed love one. Discarded to make way for synthetic wizards and relationships of caricatures with generic souls and superficial conscience whose greatest trial is loss of flight or a spell convoluted by the unexpected interference of a purple haze.
And so my brain aches for some tiny miraculous sign from heaven or earth that we might find out way back to nobler hearts for the sake of ourselves, and the successors of the present generation. But I see nothing to give me ‘hope’ as I meander about soberly with head downcast to protect the magic wizard-like lens in one eye from the sun. And so I have decided to take off my glasses and look upward and allow the sun to magnify the heat in my brain the same way that the organics of the human mind have been artificially magnified by the application of technical and chemical interference.
And, as earlier stated, if what ‘they say’ is true, the magnified burn applied to my eye will reduce to ashes the anxieties in my brain. After all, the road I walk, is not so long that I need these dismal thoughts laboring there.
Now just in case you’re thinking, after reading Part One of this rant, that this is going to be another of Roberta’s sermons, advocating religion and God belief, let me assure you that is not the case.
You may leave ‘The Good Book’ on the dusty shelf, because there are other books that build conscience, (dare I say way more effectively than even that one?). But, like so many other things I have mentioned, these books too are collecting dust – no longer in vogue.
Foremost in my mind are Charles Dickens’ books. Charles Dickens is the strongest advocate I have ever read that makes me fully aware of the pain of hopelessness, poverty, bullying, and cruelty in all its aspects. I truly believe if his books were required reading in elementary schools, there would be no bullying, violence, or cruel taunting of other children. In surprising ways, Dickens’ books mold the best of an ethical conscience without Biblical reference.
Now I wonder if you will allow me for just one brief moment to deviate from the topic at hand. I have wondered and tossed around in my mind for most of a lifetime, whether it is fair to a critically ill or injured individual to let them know for a certainty that their transition is near at hand or if one should slide around the issue.
After reading about the devastating hopelessness of young boys in Dickens’ book “Nickolas Nickleby”, I finally have an answer to the question. No matter what the situation, no one has the right to take away, (or falsely add to) an individual’s hope, regardless of how fleeting or short-lived that hope may be. In that, I’m sure many would disagree, but I’m just saying that is the conclusion I have come to. Each and every separate individual must be allowed to keep whatever primeval and fundamental hope they have within themselves – without outside tampering. There is a kindness in allowing the primeval and fundamental hope within oneself to be left alone.
One of the biggest reasons it just isn’t fair to tamper with a person’s ‘hope’, is because ‘hope’ authors courage and wee moments of joy in the direst of circumstances.
Now with that discussion now concluded, let us return to the original topic. So while others seek ethical guidance in The Good Book, Dickens gives his readers a fuzzy soft heart without them wanting it, seeking it, or expecting it.
And so, now you may argue, “Is this so different from ethics taught through prepared flow charts, manuals, self-help books, and workshops?”
Indeed it is different. Because at no time does Dickens provide instruction. He simply provides for the reader an organic diet of the personal experiences of children, adults, families, and society as a whole, without ethical processing, refinement, or preaching.
If you are only aware of Dickens “A Christmas Story”, you probably wonder what I am yapping about. Well, to be quite honest with you, although the story touches on ethics of generosity and caring, it is the story I least like of all Dickens’ work. Just way too much fiction and fantasy in that story for me particularly because I was born so drenched and saturated in fantasies of my own.
But Dickens’ books are not the only books capable of doing what his books do – but his and other such books are no longer in vogue. The libraries have been pretty well cleansed of the books that tell raw and holistic stories of the hopelessness of the starving beggar, the orphaned child, the forgotten waif, or the betrayed love one. Discarded to make way for synthetic wizards and relationships of caricatures with generic souls and superficial conscience whose greatest trial is loss of flight or a spell convoluted by the unexpected interference of a purple haze.
And so my brain aches for some tiny miraculous sign from heaven or earth that we might find out way back to nobler hearts for the sake of ourselves, and the successors of the present generation. But I see nothing to give me ‘hope’ as I meander about soberly with head downcast to protect the magic wizard-like lens in one eye from the sun. And so I have decided to take off my glasses and look upward and allow the sun to magnify the heat in my brain the same way that the organics of the human mind have been artificially magnified by the application of technical and chemical interference.
And, as earlier stated, if what ‘they say’ is true, the magnified burn applied to my eye will reduce to ashes the anxieties in my brain. After all, the road I walk, is not so long that I need these dismal thoughts laboring there.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Burrowing Deep - Pt. 1
Behavior Patterns 101
Oh, a blazing sun is a great rarity here, but today is as hot as a brimstone pit. I long to stare at the sky, knowing I should not. Knowing full well that the artificial lens transplanted in my right eye acts like a magnifying glass that could easily and quickly smolder a tunnel into my brain. But maybe, that is just what I need to do.
Since eye-repair surgery, I am no longer in the habit of staring at things overhead – sun, clouds, and sky. I don dark glasses with ritual faithfulness all days and walk about with bowed head looking at my feet. Staring only at ground cover, turf, leaf mold, and soil. But more so, each day, as an elderly with a rotting brain, fading memory, and a fuzzy mind, I want to look up. It’s beginning to seem that a hollowed-out brain, consumed by smoke and fire is of little consequence.
I want to look up because there are things in my gray matter that perhaps a bonfire could cure. Starting with that anxious deep-seated belief that the world is close to utter destruction. An odd sort of destruction – destruction of humanity, not by atomic or cosmic force, and not by flood or fire, or the hand of an impatient creator, but insidiously through the destruction of what we feel and how deeply we feel it.
I believe the days of Armageddon began when researchers began ripping apart the magic and mysteries of life. When they began burrowing into investigations of DNA, brain cells, pheromones, ascendants, descendants, etc. until in their polished wisdom they refined all human behavior and relationships as chemical interactions rather than raw and organic spiritual phenomena.
So now the manual for ‘crafting behavior patterns’ is a mixture of Science, Physics, and Math – minus – for all time – ‘fuzzy emotions’.
I don’t have to tell you or anyone that fuzzy emotions are no longer part of the mix. Fuzziness is out of vogue. So far out of vogue that our present generation knows nothing of fuzziness. They don’t know it, can’t feel it, and fail to understand it. It no longer even rates as a topic for jest.
And so no longer are marital intentions ruled by holistic fuzzy emotions. The new non-organic and highly refined process is ruled by what one’s intended eats, where they work, how often they exercise, what vehicle they drive, and the health of their teeth.
Marital intentions also have much to do with taught, practiced, and reviewed verbal expressions of sensitivity, and taught, practiced and reviewed rituals such as bouquets for anniversaries, and scheduled post-marital date nights. And through these lessons, fuzziness of the heart has been replaced in all its wondrous aspects by physical expectations and rituals, rather than the sweet tug of hearts and souls intertwined. But then, let’s face it, hearts and souls intertwined are no longer in vogue, or understood as well.
I guess this is what happens when behavior patterns are converted into hard learning through charts and data, rather than through internal, and oh-so-vital connections and convictions. Weird how we clamor for organic food and alternative and holistic medicine for our physical bods, but for the soul we only want a highly processed (and somewhat toxic) mix minus the organics of raw conscience and warm, soft, and fuzzy flavor. But then as I have already mentioned, touchy-feely is out of vogue and so is soft and fuzzy.
_________
And so, the loss of a raw and organic conscience and conviction is what happens when the mysteries of life are converted into lab language and reactions.
Yet, prior to today’s sophisticated and over-refined interpretations, when ‘unrefined behavior’ was not fully understood or analyzed from a biological perspective, when it was raw and organic, when it was such a great mystery and enigma, the strength of that monitor of behavior was so much more than it might otherwise have been.
I am witness to that. I saw with my own eyes when the organic conscience, that once was, could crush and break the hearts of wicked individuals with more writhing and pain than an electric chair. And I saw with my own eyes that same conscience, that once was, bestow bountiful joy and peace on those individuals who allowed it to gently guide their way. But that kind of behavior patterning is also out of vogue.
And so, today’s disfavor of violence, bullying, and cruelty; and alternatively favor of positive family intermingling learned from lessons without organic connection, lessons in an academic vein, generic, book learned, superficially planted in mind only, fail to truly alter disposition, or character.
And so such lessons (or should I call them calculations?), rather than burrowing deep into the spirit of individuals, and planting deep seeds of conviction, that can never be compromised, or ignored, are instead superficially splashed on an individual’s exterior, like moisture sprinkled on water-repellent canvas. ‘Good behavior’, manufactured or generic, is accomplished for the moment, but it can be shed at will. There is no inner saturation and so in the end, no certain or everlasting rendering of a delightful disposition of charity and generosity.
NEXT POST: A Holistic Conclusion
Oh, a blazing sun is a great rarity here, but today is as hot as a brimstone pit. I long to stare at the sky, knowing I should not. Knowing full well that the artificial lens transplanted in my right eye acts like a magnifying glass that could easily and quickly smolder a tunnel into my brain. But maybe, that is just what I need to do.
Since eye-repair surgery, I am no longer in the habit of staring at things overhead – sun, clouds, and sky. I don dark glasses with ritual faithfulness all days and walk about with bowed head looking at my feet. Staring only at ground cover, turf, leaf mold, and soil. But more so, each day, as an elderly with a rotting brain, fading memory, and a fuzzy mind, I want to look up. It’s beginning to seem that a hollowed-out brain, consumed by smoke and fire is of little consequence.
I want to look up because there are things in my gray matter that perhaps a bonfire could cure. Starting with that anxious deep-seated belief that the world is close to utter destruction. An odd sort of destruction – destruction of humanity, not by atomic or cosmic force, and not by flood or fire, or the hand of an impatient creator, but insidiously through the destruction of what we feel and how deeply we feel it.
I believe the days of Armageddon began when researchers began ripping apart the magic and mysteries of life. When they began burrowing into investigations of DNA, brain cells, pheromones, ascendants, descendants, etc. until in their polished wisdom they refined all human behavior and relationships as chemical interactions rather than raw and organic spiritual phenomena.
So now the manual for ‘crafting behavior patterns’ is a mixture of Science, Physics, and Math – minus – for all time – ‘fuzzy emotions’.
I don’t have to tell you or anyone that fuzzy emotions are no longer part of the mix. Fuzziness is out of vogue. So far out of vogue that our present generation knows nothing of fuzziness. They don’t know it, can’t feel it, and fail to understand it. It no longer even rates as a topic for jest.
And so no longer are marital intentions ruled by holistic fuzzy emotions. The new non-organic and highly refined process is ruled by what one’s intended eats, where they work, how often they exercise, what vehicle they drive, and the health of their teeth.
Marital intentions also have much to do with taught, practiced, and reviewed verbal expressions of sensitivity, and taught, practiced and reviewed rituals such as bouquets for anniversaries, and scheduled post-marital date nights. And through these lessons, fuzziness of the heart has been replaced in all its wondrous aspects by physical expectations and rituals, rather than the sweet tug of hearts and souls intertwined. But then, let’s face it, hearts and souls intertwined are no longer in vogue, or understood as well.
I guess this is what happens when behavior patterns are converted into hard learning through charts and data, rather than through internal, and oh-so-vital connections and convictions. Weird how we clamor for organic food and alternative and holistic medicine for our physical bods, but for the soul we only want a highly processed (and somewhat toxic) mix minus the organics of raw conscience and warm, soft, and fuzzy flavor. But then as I have already mentioned, touchy-feely is out of vogue and so is soft and fuzzy.
_________
And so, the loss of a raw and organic conscience and conviction is what happens when the mysteries of life are converted into lab language and reactions.
Yet, prior to today’s sophisticated and over-refined interpretations, when ‘unrefined behavior’ was not fully understood or analyzed from a biological perspective, when it was raw and organic, when it was such a great mystery and enigma, the strength of that monitor of behavior was so much more than it might otherwise have been.
I am witness to that. I saw with my own eyes when the organic conscience, that once was, could crush and break the hearts of wicked individuals with more writhing and pain than an electric chair. And I saw with my own eyes that same conscience, that once was, bestow bountiful joy and peace on those individuals who allowed it to gently guide their way. But that kind of behavior patterning is also out of vogue.
And so, today’s disfavor of violence, bullying, and cruelty; and alternatively favor of positive family intermingling learned from lessons without organic connection, lessons in an academic vein, generic, book learned, superficially planted in mind only, fail to truly alter disposition, or character.
And so such lessons (or should I call them calculations?), rather than burrowing deep into the spirit of individuals, and planting deep seeds of conviction, that can never be compromised, or ignored, are instead superficially splashed on an individual’s exterior, like moisture sprinkled on water-repellent canvas. ‘Good behavior’, manufactured or generic, is accomplished for the moment, but it can be shed at will. There is no inner saturation and so in the end, no certain or everlasting rendering of a delightful disposition of charity and generosity.
NEXT POST: A Holistic Conclusion
Friday, October 2, 2009
Fly Poopies on My Toast
It’s quite okay that with aging my flesh has thinned and paled, my hair grayed, and that I have persistent and hardy curly black hairs descending from my chin, and the flesh on my neck is folding. I am not a vain person and I prepared myself to accept these changes with good grace…and I have.
But hey, there are other things going awry that I cannot so easily accept. And one of them, most annoying, most disconcerting is how something with a brain less big than an atom can drive me to such distraction. And how something can so rule my life. And so seriously challenge my sanity by squatting forever near me and casting its glossy eyes on me while rubbing its hands together with evil glee and sticking out its tongue at me with such obvious disdain.
And should I, for one moment, ignore his presence, he alights on my hair or flesh and walks about as if wearing hob-nail boots. He might be tiny, but you immediately know he is there – clomp, clomp, clomp.
So now this is what haunts every minute of my day and in the haunting has thoroughly crushed my confidence, courage, and control. For two long days he and I have been sparring. In my youth, I use to quickly take control of such a situation. But I am now an ‘elderly’ and I can only think it is because of that that I constantly and clumsily and fruitlessly misfire the fly swatter at that one annoying housefly.
No one ever told me that the ultimate curse of being an ‘elderly’ would be the sad day when I would have to give up in frustration on the killing of a housefly. And that someday I would become, in this combat, the weakest link, leaving me with only one ultimatum.
To cover my toast with a napkin and cup my hand over my mug while meekly and submissively horking down my food and drink as quickly as possible.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Sucked in by Another Addiction; Drowning in Another Passion
Yahoo! Anybody there?
Yes, I’m still here. Not often though. Another passion has taken over with burning fervor. I keep hoping (and so does Hub), that I’m fairly close to burn out.
Some days I feel I’m very close. Other days, when the tiles are the best that tiles can be, I’m pretty sure not. But if, and when, burn-out happens, I know what I will do. I will do what I have always done since I lost the competitive spirit of my youth.
I will eventually leave. And on my day of leaving, with no real destination in mind except the comfort and familiarity of places I have known, I will tread the circular pattern of someone lost for a time in life, ambition, and spent passions, but eventually returning to the comfort of my Blog.
But right now, I’m kind of stuck where I am with this feeble excuse. I’m not often going back and forth, because one cannot go ‘back’ without first going ‘forth’. And so in the meantime, despite a heavy ‘nebula’ (Note: good Scrabble word) of guilt, I am hanging out way too much at “Word Biz.com”, my pseudonym is “Keat”, and I am busy, very busy, playing Scrabble.
So if you’re missing me, like I’m missing you, come play a game or two with me. Just ask for ‘Keat’. We can drink coffee, play Scrabble, socialize, and tweet, rather than twitter. And perhaps some new word or bit of tweet will lend itself to the subject matter for a new Blog-rant.
Or, if you prefer to be helpful in another way, Hub would much appreciate any hints, or solid 2-step plans, to cure my latest out-of-control addiction before it drives him to complete distraction. Escape is complicated when one is trapped in an addiction that clutches most firmly lovers-of-words.
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