Unusual To Find

It was I that thought of you today. I often do. Others may as well but I only know of me.

You were in a dream first and my sister was luring you with her charms – you succumbed and I was fraught with pain and anguish at the thought of abandonment. I had been clamoring after you in my usual attempt to find the love you have for me – it isn’t often clear.

I found you in a bed together.

You tried to convince me that it wasn’t that you didn’t love me.

She wouldn’t have purposely done a thing like that when she was alive. Just as you told me in the dream, “I couldn’t help myself.”

No one could resist her. She attracted everyone. I repelled. She couldn’t help herself either – it was just the way things were.

If not for you and a scarce few others, including my sister, I might not have had any chance to try to be known. That is what we all want – a chance to be known. We want someone to want to know us. Someone to ask questions. Someone to say, “Is that really how you feel? How did you come to feel as such? That’s very interesting. Tell me more.”

You don’t always do that but you do it enough to make me believe. My sister was the same – sometimes but not always – interested to know what thoughts I had. It wasn’t unlike her to call me a cynic and point out all my flaws though – too.

We want someone to want to see pictures of us in our younger days where we might be able to see our better side. We want someone to want to recall those days when we might have been together in them. We want someone to want to be with us – even if we must remain silent. We might even prefer the silence – just want the company and we want someone to want to accommodate us.

These things are quite unusual to find.

Sometimes, mostly in dreams, I find that unusual thing in you. Other times, I find you in bed with someone else.

Isn’t it a pity.

Ruts And Gullies

We played outside. We climbed in trees. We dug holes in the ground and covered them with boards and the dug out dirt to make forts we could crawl into and hide. We roller-skated at the school – which was open 24/7 and only a block or so away. Sometimes we climbed on the roof. We got there on our bikes or by bare feet over dirt roads with ruts and gullies in them. We swung on the swings and marked out hopscotch with chalk and used broken chains as markers since they landed so well. We played four square – or two square if there was only two of us. The big boys played football on the long strip of grass that lined a string of classrooms – the wing for the first and second graders because it was the flattest. The girls hung on the sidelines dreaming of one of the big boys becoming their boyfriend.

I wasn’t much of a fan of football in those days any more than now and I had no illusions that one of those boys would like me – my sister was so much cuter than I and all they could see was her. Shallow boys.

The house we lived in was too small to stay inside much. On rainy days we had to. Our mother had drawn roses on pieces of white cloth for us to embroider – or we played dolls or board games or watched a cartoon or two – or spun in the chair that was a swivel until Mom yelled out to us to stop. Some rainy days she would drive us up to the laundromat just to dry a load or two – normally, she hung them on the line outside – the same frame my sister and I used as a monkey bar. She would leave us there and come back later. We loved that chore because the U-totem was hooked to the laundromat and we each had a nickel for a candy bar. Oh joy!

I’m so glad that I was born in the 50s. What a wonderful era it was. So fresh and clean. So trivial.

We seldom had nothing to do.

It’s possible there were greedy, controlling monsters behind it all – but they were hidden behind the veil that still existed.

Evenings the adults would gather on someone’s porch and the kids could hang out among them if they wanted to. I loved to. I loved to hear the adults talk – they seemed to have all the answers and all the best of the gossip.

Line-dried clothes.

Ruts and gullies.

Roller skates, dolls and Cooties.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Now the beast is clear.

The Right Height

“Would you like to go to the top of the Empire State Building?”

“No, I’m afraid of heights.”

I wasn’t always. I seem to have become afraid of anything that is higher than my bed or a step ladder in the kitchen. I’m fairly okay on an extension ladder trying to lop off a dead limb on a tree or to inspect the roof. Anything much higher and I run the risk of expelling myself to tempt death – the thought occurs.

What’s so fascinating about death?

It’s well worth considering and I think that because I have considered it quite well that the thought of something as tiny as an unseeable particle of some matter that is thought to be devastating can’t seem to touch my psyche. I thought about death so much for so long before March 13, 2020 that I was relieved when an invader was thought to have been discovered that could knock out half the population in a matter of weeks. It brought me back to life.

It’s been almost a year now.

Everyone is still afraid of death. I think everyone just likes being afraid. It’s primal. It’s easy. It’s base to be afraid.

How many movies are horror?

And everyone likes obeying.

Except me. And one or two or three other people that I know.

I wanted more room for crafting and my mattress was getting old and was too big. I tore it apart for its parts before I had anything else to sleep on and have been suffering ever since.

Until today.

I got a $7 blow up mattress. I’m in heaven. It’s just the right height now to not be tempted to expel myself and I can stand up without having to bend my knees too much.

I’m happy to be alive now. And, I’m not too afraid of death. I’d still like to live to be 108 – but who am I to say.

Funny what $7 can do to make me happy as I sit here atop it typing.

Let’s Start Over

He blew her some kisses but they were emoji kisses. They would have to do.

“I truly wish I shared your optimism.”

“Me to,” she replied, virtually – hoping to stave off his reasons for wanting to go on to some place that might be a little more like heaven – or some place that wasn’t at all, anything.

“On your last note, seems a little presumptuous. The end may be glorious.”

Who knows what is to come? Certainly some may think they do. Seems more fitting to wait and see. Braver anyway.

Today the little space heater quit all of a sudden. “Well, there that goes,” she thought and her next thought was, “I guess it’s time to invest in a wood burning stove. Get off this lazy sit expecting electricity to never fail and for products to last longer than a season.” It was only 55° F inside – but clothes and blankets can get rather cumbersome.

More expectations of ease.

It turned out the kitties had roughhoused around the plug and pulled it out. She could go back to being lazy and wasting some more money.

“Wood can be free. What else can be free? Hmm.”

She was drumming up ideas for how to get out of the matrix – the coming nano, cloud connecting, reset, AI, jab matrix. She wondered how she could become invisible – elude and evade the enemy.

“It’s always something – electricity and appliances failing or jabs coming.”

London bridge is falling down.

How to be happy. Just be happy.

She was also wishing that he was free. She was wishing that she could say, “Let’s start over. Let’s try it again. This time, let’s be happy.”

Jingle Bells.

He wasn’t a kind to be very happy. Some people are just made that way. He was inclined to be encumbered with depression. She could be too if she wasn’t careful.

Art. Art saves a person’s soul. There is truth in art and truth is what will set the spirit free. Making it especially.

Maybe he needed to make some art.

Hopefully the sun will come around again tomorrow with its warming rays and brightness. Or perhaps some rain. Either way – maybe tomorrow we can all start over.

Let’s start over.

Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay 

Nothing But Disappointment

It might appear from another perspective that someone’s life had been nothing but disappointment.

Especially if that someone had kept so much to themselves other than the visible appearance of struggle.

Having not had the remnants of large success, it might seem to have been a triviality of existence.

Another perspective altogether – someone she’d never known – if they’d known, might have thought that, indeed, she had lived large and had remnants of success. But the people she knew, she was sure wouldn’t see it that way. She was sure they saw her as a refugee – not in the same world that they were.

She didn’t like their world so much.

There had been love and romance and beautiful things.

Just no children to speak about it to others after that life had left them alone in the world.

She woke in the middle of the night after just barely having nodded off. It was Christmas Eve. She couldn’t sleep. She’d eaten half a box of Whitman’s chocolates to soothe herself – a present to herself. She felt lonely or some sort of existential ambiguity that was making her feel a need to wrap her arms around something other than thoughts – so she went to her closet and there he was.

Bar – looking her right in the face – waiting.

How had it been decided that Bar was a boy?

She was one when he came into existence – at least to her existence – but one isn’t having existed long enough to know that something else exists – is it?

Perhaps.

She seems to remember him always with her – in a little doll stroller or in her bed being tucked in with another littler bear riding on his tummy.

She tried not to show partiality, but Bar was her first love. The littler brown bear was a love too, but somewhere along the line, he went missing. He was a boy too. Where had he gone? She missed him.

“You’ve lived such and interesting life.”

“Yes…I have,” she replied to the one that said that.

Someone saw.

Some things just need to be saved. Bar. Bar had been with her all her life – less one. What a faithful little bear he’d been. She would never abandon Bar.

Bar spent the night riding on her tummy – a string of colored Christmas lights working as a nightlight.

Bar made her cry, for the realness that he had tucked in with his stuffings.

Christmas came and went – again.

Image by Iván Tamás from Pixabay 

One More Minute

She didn’t want to think about that anymore. It was useless to. Time was too important to consider one more minute doing that kind of wasteful time spending. So she would create instead. Only create. Or, do the things which would free her to create. Nothing more.

Sweeping floors and mopping could be useful toward the goal of creating and organizing would be too. Anything that might make creating easier and clear cobwebs in the mind. Talking to people about things other than how many ways paper can be folded, painted or glued is useless. Other people have no interest in what is in someone else’s mind – unless it is to comment on or consider what is in theirs.

They aren’t very often interested in folded paper either.

Wasteful spending.

Wasted time.

Time spent creating is to be with the divine.

Petting cats is useful too. They deserve it. A dog too, if there is one near enough to pet. You can borrow someone else’s dog to pet if you must. Or ants. Ants don’t seem to want to be petted. They go about their business and don’t like much to be interrupted.

Ants are efficient.

Ants are good models.

Someone said the other day, “You wouldn’t give that any more consideration than you would to step on an ant.”

She gives a lot of consideration to how to avoid stepping on ants.

Some people are so self absorbed.

Some people don’t think ants are worth considering – that they can just be stepped on without thinking any more about it.

Cruel, evil people.

Order takers, mask wearers are likely among them because surely they aren’t giving much consideration to anything other than how to behave like they are supposed to. And someone has probably told them to go ahead and step on ants because ants aren’t important.

Monkeys.

Are monkeys wearing masks?

Maybe only lab monkeys. Monkeys in prison.

As Nothing More

“Use your indoor words.”

Fuck

Shit

Damn

Something was always in her way or going wrong or falling off the table she was passing

because her hips were wider than the small aisles she’d created to have all the things she wanted at her disposal.

@#*%!!!

Use them all if you must.

Use them outside, just the same, if you want to. The neighbors likely cannot hear or aren’t listening.

Maybe GOD hears all words as nothing more than nonsense anyway.

image credit: How Data Reveals The Words Candidates Used To Stand Out At GOP Debate

Pick It Up

* see red edit below

So sad

this frame that used to hold such a beautiful picture of potential

crooked, sideways now

bent with aches and pains

can barely stand up

As the picture is released to fall in tatters to the floor

and can’t be picked back up

mind

can you please pick it up for me to see once more

or twice

before we are a picture no more.

* I must apologize. I found this written in an old journal of mine and thought I’d never posted it. Only because one of you visited this post, and I went to see what I’d written there – did I discover that I had. This one is posted exactly like I’d written it in the journal. I like this one better. Funny how similar the header images ended up being. 

Header image by ShonEjai from Pixabay 

Sunday Morning Doodles

The kitties are in, bouncing off the walls making circles around each other while trying not to hiss. 

I’ve been outside — in spite of the fact that my hair is salt and pepper frizz this early in the morning and most of any day — to bury yesterday’s kitchen scraps. I hope no one is looking — other than the GOD I know who clearly takes me as I am — the kitties do too — they never say a word that sounds a bit like judging. Sometimes they do hiss, but mostly at each other when Mr. Shire is in the front yard and they can spy him through their giant peering glass. They are jealous that he is out there and that it isn’t them — at least that’s the gist.

Mickey curls up on the rug that he has ruffled — one paw hanging over the hump that he created — then lays his head on it and stretches out to his full length. Lucy oversees him.

Everyone has settled. It’s time for Sunday morning doodles.

A cup of coffee to start. And then another — as many as it takes to prime the engine. Yesterday the floors were vacuumed, swept, mopped and one was painted — again — because it was buffing off to show the under color that was making it look dirty all the time. Some things just needed to be straightened so that all of the congestion in the noodles could be freed of their congestion. 

It’s hard to create when so many things are laughing. The dust is hard to see without glasses, so it might be willing to wait another day — but it’s still laughing in the background making a very unpleasant rattle. 

It feels safe in this little cocoon that has been created just for that purpose — to feel safe. The world seems far away and, if the media is kept off, one would never know of any chaos — so the media stays off. The music is birds or cars racing by — sometimes a train. It’s so soothing to listen to the conversations of all the birds. They seem busy — and so always happy. 

Mickey is still on his hump, staring into space. Lucy likely went into the bedroom for her Sunday morning doodles — her high perch is in there.

The engine has been started but it’s still a little slow. Maybe there is a need for a cookie while there is still doodling going on — something to soak up some of the exhaust of the coffee that is rumbling through the pipes.

People must be getting out of church — more cars a speeding by. It’s time to do some doodles in the journal room where all the papers are.

Don’t sweat the small stuff and it’s all small stuff. Don’t bother stuffing ballots — nothing like that ever works. A cocoon with painted floors works much better in the long run and the short run too.

Image credit: Ms. Spoolteacher 

Fallen From Trees

Sticks.

Oh, it is wonderful to have this machine to type on and go back and delete or rearrange — unlike the mess of paper with scratch-outs and arrows and white paint and sometimes illegible handwriting.

It seems to be a thinking machine.

Some machines think too much. Sometimes we don’t use the k’noggins or k’noodles we are blessed with.

Isn’t it a pity. Isn’t it a shame, that we so seldom play with sticks anymore, along the way? It was so fun in those days we did.

Come to think of it, I do still play with sticks. I sometime hold them in my hands and break them up into little bits when putting them into compost heaps or hugelkultur beds. I like the texture that they are and their colors and all the animals living upon and in them. Those are usually the ones that have fallen from trees. Little limbs too old to hold their own weight anymore, dried beyond repair — a little too much like me. It’s nice that they can crackle.

It’s a joy to play with sticks.

Sticks and stones. Sticks don’t last as long as stones. Stones can wait for another day. Play with sticks today.

Isn’t it a pity
Isn’t it a shame
How we break each other’s hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other’s love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Now, isn’t it a pity

~ George Harrison

header image credit: Patrick Dougherty; stickwork.net