Weblog 207
January 24, 2010~ 12:00am
In this dullest time of year, I think we all look for something
Red Wondrous
"What is that?" you may ask. It's anything that is so breathtakingly odd and gorgeous, you forget for a minute that it's the end of January and the world is pretty bleak right now. I look for it in books, in sites I happen upon on the internet, in art....just anything at all that is a beauty-shock to the system.
People send me Power Point emails at work that feature beautiful places on earth, happy pet pictures, sand castle competitions, vegetable carvings in uniquely unbelievable shapes....inspirational things or those that are just plain pretty, and I appreciate every single one. I'm always looking for the 'red wondrous' that can't be explained and that leaves the mouth hanging open; the eyes lit from the inside.
I do hope Annette's stray Teddy Bear, and my own departed Beethoven, have met up in such a place. I hope they are walking paw to paw, haunch to hauch, investigating. I believe in cat heaven. I have to....
...and I believe it's a place that's all around us, though we can't pierce the thin membrane that separates us. For instance..I hear sounds that shouldn't be there, little trills and happy mews at times, and when I turn to look, of course there's nothing there.....but maybe there is. Do you think the dead are with us all the time? Not just pets, but beloved relatives and friends, just out of reach, but present, aware of this side of the veil, and caring for us still?
I suspect I'll become even more mystical as I age. Maybe we all do -those of us not so angered by death we shun all hint of an afterlife. Maybe in our later years we begin an extra kind of stretching, reaching out with minds and fingers for what is just beyond us, though we're certain it exists.
Every love imprints us. Those of pets do especially purely. So much so that when they're gone, if we close our eyes, we can see their outlines.
And they're rimmed in fire- vivid and warm. I can't conceive of a life where Beethoven never existed for me. He enriched everything, and still does. Teddy does too, for Annette. Memories are little campfires in the night that we grope towards for comfort, if just for a while.
Our lives are endless porches, the people coming and going, arriving and departing, and the chairs are so often filled to capacity. But one by one, the empty chair appears....
and that shadow is the thing we are aware of all our days, more intensely as time slips by. The older we get, the more we wish to see that some of them are still rocking, ghost or not, and that those we loved remain. Life without that possibility is a wasteland to me, and I reject it out of hand.
(Besides, I hear those trills, I see the shadow sliding by me on the stairs out of the corner of my eye.) It may be only imagination, but what if it isn't? What if there's another dimension that coexists with this one, and it's only in rare, split-second moments we are given the grace to experience it? I believe......I believe.... I believe, and that belief gives me peace. Life continues, but transformed. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but it can change. Perhaps time is the greatest illusion of all.
This... 'before and after death'.... perhaps they are only different planes occupying the same place, and all is as eternal as love. We ride the current, we abide.
We rented the StarTrek movie prequel and watched that Saturday night. It's got me thinking in these circular patterns, and the way life may not be a straight line at all-- that there may be alternate realities. Science fiction, yes-- or is it? Anyway, it's opened some portals in my thinking (and though Wayne, Trek purist that he is, did not enjoy it as much as I did...lol) it did lead to some interesting musings for this viewer. And it left me happy. Which is a wonderful thing for a movie to do, hokey or not. I loved seeing the characers in their youth and how they all got together. Loved seeing the young Mr. Spock meet up with the very old Leonard Nimoy... alternate realities shaking hands. Saturday evening was a pleasant diversion, the movie just right for my frame of mind. It's not a great film but it was an enjoyable, colorful foray into the imaginative. Like those emails I talked about. Like, well....flowers, or laughter, for heaven sakes. We need such things.
January 25, 2010~ 12:00am
Bad Moon Morning
6:00 am- (rainy, miserable in pittsburgh) I got into my car to start my morning commute, and the car would not cooperate. I backed out amidst a grinding sound and a sense of pulling a barge full of coal with my little Focus. Off the chunky gravel of the carport (which I blamed for the weird sounds and drag) as soon as I was on the asphalt...."PLAT! PLAT! PLAT!"....with smoke coming from my right front wheel. I slammed the car into park, jumped out, shone my flashlight on the thing (because my alley is PITCH BLACK at that hour) and sho 'nuff....GODDAMNED FLAT TIRE! Not just flat... rim hanging out like an eyeball, PANCAKE flat, and creating enough friction from rim against the road, to smoke!
I called Triple A, called work to say I'd be late, hauled a TRUNKFUL of stuff out of the trunk so I could get to the spare- (stuff that had been there since we moved my mother to assisted living, and I just plain let it sit)- and waited.
The guy came in a half-hour, put on the little donut tire and filled the flat with air to see if it would hold -- maybe a pothole, of which there are TONS now, had bounced the tire right out of its seal. No dice. It popped back on the rim and sealed again, but a constant hiss of air confirmed there was some object in the thing, and a hole.
I called the dealership, which is right up the road, took the car there, and sat watching morning shows on the TV in their waiting room for 2 hours. Good news: they could fix the puntured tire. BAD NEWS: the two rear tires had bad, bad wear patterns and if undergoing a state inspection today, would not have passed. The tread was too thin.
With a good 6 weeks to 2 months of bad weather ahead, I told them to give me two new tires-- and of course, with Pittsburgh potholes, the damn car needed an alignment. $300.00 bucks later-- it was 10:30am and I was driving to work, my curled hair frizzed out like the Bride of Frankenstein, just a wild, matted mess --and wondering why I didn't just stay home. Start over tomorrow.
Should have....
I got to work at 11:00, but at 1:30pm, the computers were taken down for an upgrade and I couldn't work on billing anyway. {{{{{{{{{sigh}}}}}}}}}} That was my Monday. How about yours? Nothing to do now but crawl into bed with a book and hope for a better tomorrow.
January 26, 2010~ 7:45am
More snow today.....(man, I'm glad I got those new tires!)...and in honor of the snow, which is always so pretty, despite being dangerous....here is a happy snow picture grabbed off the net
lovely snow dog, for sure! He looks like he's right in his own element, part of the landscape, in the secret, soft, 'whoosh whoosh' of new snow...as pretty as any postcard you'll ever find!
January 28, 2010~ 6:45am
(Sometimes, ya just gotta steal something....LOL!!!) On the way into work this morning I heard- as per 'THE ONION', and quoted on NPR: "Steve Jobs stays up all night inventing the iPad by gluing 9 iPhones together onto a lunch tray."
ROFLMAO!
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
In this dullest time of year, I think we all look for something
Red Wondrous
"What is that?" you may ask. It's anything that is so breathtakingly odd and gorgeous, you forget for a minute that it's the end of January and the world is pretty bleak right now. I look for it in books, in sites I happen upon on the internet, in art....just anything at all that is a beauty-shock to the system.
People send me Power Point emails at work that feature beautiful places on earth, happy pet pictures, sand castle competitions, vegetable carvings in uniquely unbelievable shapes....inspirational things or those that are just plain pretty, and I appreciate every single one. I'm always looking for the 'red wondrous' that can't be explained and that leaves the mouth hanging open; the eyes lit from the inside.
I do hope Annette's stray Teddy Bear, and my own departed Beethoven, have met up in such a place. I hope they are walking paw to paw, haunch to hauch, investigating. I believe in cat heaven. I have to....
...and I believe it's a place that's all around us, though we can't pierce the thin membrane that separates us. For instance..I hear sounds that shouldn't be there, little trills and happy mews at times, and when I turn to look, of course there's nothing there.....but maybe there is. Do you think the dead are with us all the time? Not just pets, but beloved relatives and friends, just out of reach, but present, aware of this side of the veil, and caring for us still?
I suspect I'll become even more mystical as I age. Maybe we all do -those of us not so angered by death we shun all hint of an afterlife. Maybe in our later years we begin an extra kind of stretching, reaching out with minds and fingers for what is just beyond us, though we're certain it exists.
Every love imprints us. Those of pets do especially purely. So much so that when they're gone, if we close our eyes, we can see their outlines.
And they're rimmed in fire- vivid and warm. I can't conceive of a life where Beethoven never existed for me. He enriched everything, and still does. Teddy does too, for Annette. Memories are little campfires in the night that we grope towards for comfort, if just for a while.
Our lives are endless porches, the people coming and going, arriving and departing, and the chairs are so often filled to capacity. But one by one, the empty chair appears....
and that shadow is the thing we are aware of all our days, more intensely as time slips by. The older we get, the more we wish to see that some of them are still rocking, ghost or not, and that those we loved remain. Life without that possibility is a wasteland to me, and I reject it out of hand.
(Besides, I hear those trills, I see the shadow sliding by me on the stairs out of the corner of my eye.) It may be only imagination, but what if it isn't? What if there's another dimension that coexists with this one, and it's only in rare, split-second moments we are given the grace to experience it? I believe......I believe.... I believe, and that belief gives me peace. Life continues, but transformed. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but it can change. Perhaps time is the greatest illusion of all.
This... 'before and after death'.... perhaps they are only different planes occupying the same place, and all is as eternal as love. We ride the current, we abide.
We rented the StarTrek movie prequel and watched that Saturday night. It's got me thinking in these circular patterns, and the way life may not be a straight line at all-- that there may be alternate realities. Science fiction, yes-- or is it? Anyway, it's opened some portals in my thinking (and though Wayne, Trek purist that he is, did not enjoy it as much as I did...lol) it did lead to some interesting musings for this viewer. And it left me happy. Which is a wonderful thing for a movie to do, hokey or not. I loved seeing the characers in their youth and how they all got together. Loved seeing the young Mr. Spock meet up with the very old Leonard Nimoy... alternate realities shaking hands. Saturday evening was a pleasant diversion, the movie just right for my frame of mind. It's not a great film but it was an enjoyable, colorful foray into the imaginative. Like those emails I talked about. Like, well....flowers, or laughter, for heaven sakes. We need such things.
January 25, 2010~ 12:00am
6:00 am- (rainy, miserable in pittsburgh) I got into my car to start my morning commute, and the car would not cooperate. I backed out amidst a grinding sound and a sense of pulling a barge full of coal with my little Focus. Off the chunky gravel of the carport (which I blamed for the weird sounds and drag) as soon as I was on the asphalt...."PLAT! PLAT! PLAT!"....with smoke coming from my right front wheel. I slammed the car into park, jumped out, shone my flashlight on the thing (because my alley is PITCH BLACK at that hour) and sho 'nuff....GODDAMNED FLAT TIRE! Not just flat... rim hanging out like an eyeball, PANCAKE flat, and creating enough friction from rim against the road, to smoke!
I called Triple A, called work to say I'd be late, hauled a TRUNKFUL of stuff out of the trunk so I could get to the spare- (stuff that had been there since we moved my mother to assisted living, and I just plain let it sit)- and waited.
The guy came in a half-hour, put on the little donut tire and filled the flat with air to see if it would hold -- maybe a pothole, of which there are TONS now, had bounced the tire right out of its seal. No dice. It popped back on the rim and sealed again, but a constant hiss of air confirmed there was some object in the thing, and a hole.
I called the dealership, which is right up the road, took the car there, and sat watching morning shows on the TV in their waiting room for 2 hours. Good news: they could fix the puntured tire. BAD NEWS: the two rear tires had bad, bad wear patterns and if undergoing a state inspection today, would not have passed. The tread was too thin.
With a good 6 weeks to 2 months of bad weather ahead, I told them to give me two new tires-- and of course, with Pittsburgh potholes, the damn car needed an alignment. $300.00 bucks later-- it was 10:30am and I was driving to work, my curled hair frizzed out like the Bride of Frankenstein, just a wild, matted mess --and wondering why I didn't just stay home. Start over tomorrow.
Should have....
I got to work at 11:00, but at 1:30pm, the computers were taken down for an upgrade and I couldn't work on billing anyway. {{{{{{{{{sigh}}}}}}}}}} That was my Monday. How about yours? Nothing to do now but crawl into bed with a book and hope for a better tomorrow.
January 26, 2010~ 7:45am
More snow today.....(man, I'm glad I got those new tires!)...and in honor of the snow, which is always so pretty, despite being dangerous....here is a happy snow picture grabbed off the net
lovely snow dog, for sure! He looks like he's right in his own element, part of the landscape, in the secret, soft, 'whoosh whoosh' of new snow...as pretty as any postcard you'll ever find!
January 28, 2010~ 6:45am
(Sometimes, ya just gotta steal something....LOL!!!) On the way into work this morning I heard- as per 'THE ONION', and quoted on NPR: "Steve Jobs stays up all night inventing the iPad by gluing 9 iPhones together onto a lunch tray."
ROFLMAO!
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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