Weblog 211
February 21, 2010~ 12:00am
This has been a harsh week. Getting in and out of the house, back and forth to work, in and out of bed....all of it's been difficult. The snow shaped the character of life for the past two weeks. The first week I was entirely trapped, but the past seven days have been- in their own way, harder.
It's been one long burden.
Nothing spells it out as beautifully as the paintings of French artist, Honoré Daumier. The fact that there is a century between the way he saw the trials of the every day lives of ordinary people- the non-wealthy, the workers -those same faces and postures could be painted today....each seems to be carrying a weary load. We tend to feel crushed by the demands of life when Mother Nature herself seems to jump into the mix and lend a hand in making things as difficult as possible. Oddly, it's the impersonal atmosphere of this electronic age that also seems to dehumanize other people, making them less real, even as we think that constant contact through cellphones, Smart Phones and computers would enhance our connectedness, it's only illusion.
Such things only render the people around us one-dimensionally, as figures projected on a screen and ultimately less real than before. For all the immediacy of communication, we remain the center of the universe-- all others around us are faceless --or merely 'furniture', or"props" in a shrunken world that is filled with self.
This last bout with snow and blizzard has stretched everyone's patience pretty thin. I noticed that some folks who are normally nurturing and supportive at work were testy and snappish-- that felt uncomfortable all week long, the feeling of being among strangers at times instead of friends. The weather has affected everyone.
The worst incident (besides the wholesale ignoring by the City of Pittsburgh when I called and wrote repeatedly to please come and plow the two city streets I have no choice but to travel on) --happened Friday evening. I'd never been truly in fear for my life until Friday evening when a car nearly hit me, as Wayne and I were forced to walk in the rutted, unplowed road to get back to my house. The car came barreling and made a hairpin turn, clunking along the ruts we were walking in and just missed me. "Kay, move! That guy's not going to stop!" -Wayne shouted when he looked behind and saw the car. "Wayne, he sees us. He has to slow down"-- just as Wayne pushed me out of the way and the car missed me by inches.
Wayne punched the door of the SUV and rocked the car, yelling at the driver who then opened his door and released a string of screamed profanity. Wayne walked around to the front of the car, his anger VOLCANIC at that point, and the guy closed his door and gunned the engine, trying to run Wayne down. When Wayne jumped out of the way, the maniac hit the gas, then came to a stop about 15 feet down the road, put his car in park, threw open his door again, got out and reached into his jacket.
"I'LL SHOOT YOU, YOU M______ F_______! I HAVE A GUN. I'LL SHOOT YOU!!"
At that, I screamed, "We HAVE to walk in the street! I LIVE there! We have to walk here, the snow's too deep!" I thought we were going to be killed-- shot because the City of Pittsburgh never did their job and cleared the road -in a section, by the way, they announced 'was taken care of' while Mayor Ravenstahl was making his media sound bytes over 'blitzing the streets'. ) That monster (probably drunk or high) got back in his car and sped away, bumping all over the icy road and sped off. That was my lowest point.
Incidents like that make me totally despair of the human race. How evil and self-centered must one be to put one's own desire to get where they're going- in a hurry- before other people's lives? It makes no sense. (Or the sense it makes is simply too frightening to contemplate because of what it says about human society at this point in time.)
Like Daumier's Quixote
I see the dead mule in the road.
The mule is decency. It's folks beaten to death by the ugliness of so much of our world right now. It's our own dead or dying goodness, and it's why we are so brittle and easily broken: the heart has been squashed by trivialities-- the self has swelled into all of the universe for so many, and nothing else registers. This week has done me in....but not completely.
I also had the pleasure of my daughter and her family on Saturday evening, and it was wonderful. Little Bill and Kay remain untouched by all that junk, and their freshness heartens me. Just that contact means the world. (I only wish it were a better place, or at least improving....but alas, I see only that it gets worse with the passing years. Good God Almighty, what will we have to hand over to them? It makes me tremble.)
February 22, 2010~ 3:00am
Sometimes I just search the net for beautiful things. Things that make me soar right out of myself if I've been feeling 'off'....places that pull me into new dimensions. This is a lovely site for surreal paintings. (I blocked out the words because they are simplistic rhymes that grew annoying right off the bat) but clicking through and studying the images was a lovely experience. You might enjoy
...just keep clicking on the little door with stairway at the bottom of the pages. You'll feel calmer. I promise.
February 22, 2010~ 3:30am
Still in an artistic vein here, this is an artist I'd never heard of till now but I'm crazy for her paintings! With a lively personal history, this lady rubbed elbows with well-known artists from the mid-twentieth century.... please check out
Annie Truxell
who paints with a child's own innocence. She digs into the place where we stash our dreams and she does it with whimsy and a paint-soaked brush. Her art makes me happy.
February 23, 2010~ 6:15pm
Every now and then I reach a point in this journal where I want to tiptoe off the stage. Quite simply: I've grown bored with this again. It begins to feel like calling down a well... hearing my own echoes to the point where I want to scream -"SHUT UP!!"- ....so I shall.
(Don't know if it's the residual depression of the last two weeks of constant frustration, or what the heck it is)... but I know when to step away for a while when the joy's gone out of it and monotony's walked right in and sat right down.
I'll just close the blinds for a while
and take a break. (Truth is... only a good book grabs my interest right now. TV has lost its luster and fizzled out on me as well. I can't make myself turn the thing on.) Even on Thursdays, with the comedy schedule I enjoyed so much-- I can't bear the inane commercials no matter how much I want to see the shows. (The internet is the same with me; that's why I browse 'bareback': no scripts, no images- the ads are annoying and distracting as hell.)
Reading and playing solitaire and making an earlier bedtime of it is what's on the agenda for this old girl. I'm plum tuckered and flattened out.
Play among yourselves. This lady's givin' it a rest.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
This has been a harsh week. Getting in and out of the house, back and forth to work, in and out of bed....all of it's been difficult. The snow shaped the character of life for the past two weeks. The first week I was entirely trapped, but the past seven days have been- in their own way, harder.
It's been one long burden.
Nothing spells it out as beautifully as the paintings of French artist, Honoré Daumier. The fact that there is a century between the way he saw the trials of the every day lives of ordinary people- the non-wealthy, the workers -those same faces and postures could be painted today....each seems to be carrying a weary load. We tend to feel crushed by the demands of life when Mother Nature herself seems to jump into the mix and lend a hand in making things as difficult as possible. Oddly, it's the impersonal atmosphere of this electronic age that also seems to dehumanize other people, making them less real, even as we think that constant contact through cellphones, Smart Phones and computers would enhance our connectedness, it's only illusion.
Such things only render the people around us one-dimensionally, as figures projected on a screen and ultimately less real than before. For all the immediacy of communication, we remain the center of the universe-- all others around us are faceless --or merely 'furniture', or"props" in a shrunken world that is filled with self.
This last bout with snow and blizzard has stretched everyone's patience pretty thin. I noticed that some folks who are normally nurturing and supportive at work were testy and snappish-- that felt uncomfortable all week long, the feeling of being among strangers at times instead of friends. The weather has affected everyone.
The worst incident (besides the wholesale ignoring by the City of Pittsburgh when I called and wrote repeatedly to please come and plow the two city streets I have no choice but to travel on) --happened Friday evening. I'd never been truly in fear for my life until Friday evening when a car nearly hit me, as Wayne and I were forced to walk in the rutted, unplowed road to get back to my house. The car came barreling and made a hairpin turn, clunking along the ruts we were walking in and just missed me. "Kay, move! That guy's not going to stop!" -Wayne shouted when he looked behind and saw the car. "Wayne, he sees us. He has to slow down"-- just as Wayne pushed me out of the way and the car missed me by inches.
Wayne punched the door of the SUV and rocked the car, yelling at the driver who then opened his door and released a string of screamed profanity. Wayne walked around to the front of the car, his anger VOLCANIC at that point, and the guy closed his door and gunned the engine, trying to run Wayne down. When Wayne jumped out of the way, the maniac hit the gas, then came to a stop about 15 feet down the road, put his car in park, threw open his door again, got out and reached into his jacket.
"I'LL SHOOT YOU, YOU M______ F_______! I HAVE A GUN. I'LL SHOOT YOU!!"
At that, I screamed, "We HAVE to walk in the street! I LIVE there! We have to walk here, the snow's too deep!" I thought we were going to be killed-- shot because the City of Pittsburgh never did their job and cleared the road -in a section, by the way, they announced 'was taken care of' while Mayor Ravenstahl was making his media sound bytes over 'blitzing the streets'. ) That monster (probably drunk or high) got back in his car and sped away, bumping all over the icy road and sped off. That was my lowest point.
Incidents like that make me totally despair of the human race. How evil and self-centered must one be to put one's own desire to get where they're going- in a hurry- before other people's lives? It makes no sense. (Or the sense it makes is simply too frightening to contemplate because of what it says about human society at this point in time.)
Like Daumier's Quixote
I see the dead mule in the road.
The mule is decency. It's folks beaten to death by the ugliness of so much of our world right now. It's our own dead or dying goodness, and it's why we are so brittle and easily broken: the heart has been squashed by trivialities-- the self has swelled into all of the universe for so many, and nothing else registers. This week has done me in....but not completely.
I also had the pleasure of my daughter and her family on Saturday evening, and it was wonderful. Little Bill and Kay remain untouched by all that junk, and their freshness heartens me. Just that contact means the world. (I only wish it were a better place, or at least improving....but alas, I see only that it gets worse with the passing years. Good God Almighty, what will we have to hand over to them? It makes me tremble.)
February 22, 2010~ 3:00am
Sometimes I just search the net for beautiful things. Things that make me soar right out of myself if I've been feeling 'off'....places that pull me into new dimensions. This is a lovely site for surreal paintings. (I blocked out the words because they are simplistic rhymes that grew annoying right off the bat) but clicking through and studying the images was a lovely experience. You might enjoy
...just keep clicking on the little door with stairway at the bottom of the pages. You'll feel calmer. I promise.
February 22, 2010~ 3:30am
Still in an artistic vein here, this is an artist I'd never heard of till now but I'm crazy for her paintings! With a lively personal history, this lady rubbed elbows with well-known artists from the mid-twentieth century.... please check out
who paints with a child's own innocence. She digs into the place where we stash our dreams and she does it with whimsy and a paint-soaked brush. Her art makes me happy.
February 23, 2010~ 6:15pm
Every now and then I reach a point in this journal where I want to tiptoe off the stage. Quite simply: I've grown bored with this again. It begins to feel like calling down a well... hearing my own echoes to the point where I want to scream -"SHUT UP!!"- ....so I shall.
(Don't know if it's the residual depression of the last two weeks of constant frustration, or what the heck it is)... but I know when to step away for a while when the joy's gone out of it and monotony's walked right in and sat right down.
I'll just close the blinds for a while
and take a break. (Truth is... only a good book grabs my interest right now. TV has lost its luster and fizzled out on me as well. I can't make myself turn the thing on.) Even on Thursdays, with the comedy schedule I enjoyed so much-- I can't bear the inane commercials no matter how much I want to see the shows. (The internet is the same with me; that's why I browse 'bareback': no scripts, no images- the ads are annoying and distracting as hell.)
Reading and playing solitaire and making an earlier bedtime of it is what's on the agenda for this old girl. I'm plum tuckered and flattened out.
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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