It seems the fear of death is hammered down some once there is knowledge being looked upon and into. If a mind can find new things to think about rather than playing a same mixed tape on continuous loop of things already known and experiences already experienced, new things to think about and potential new experiences to have can give new life to life and a little death to death. It seems it is when one has no longer wonder that one wonders what comes next and thinks it can only be an end since one can’t seem to think of what to think of past the color of their shoulder pain.
She wants to be done with foul kinds of thinking — like whether or not to rearrange the ceramic animal vases on the shelf above or the books on the shelf below them or whether or not to dust or mop — and only have the time for thinking about thinking about thinking or some other such cerebral-type endeavor like that or maybe even practice doing art.
Things are distractions that rob time and real living.
She’s noticing that the tanning of the leather that is still the skin over her wrist is showing many little white hair-like lines that are likely healed scratches cats or dogs made or other small accidents that came to claim the passing of time — brushes with brush.
She studies them and tries to recall an incident but they were all too inconsequential except for the scar on her shinny shin shin which she got when she and her sister defied their mother when they were in or near junior-high-school age and took her double-edged razor to shave their legs behind her back. It was the very first pass but she kept going — bleeding to death — and they finished both their sets of legs before informing their mother of the accident.
They never knew that sheets could feel so good. They were hooked. They were tired of seeing hair under their gartered stockings and everyone else was doing it — shaving their legs and wearing stockings and it was a few short years or months before pantyhose came into existence.
Their mother gave in but only after they went back to not doing it for awhile because it felt a little too grown up as yet — the same as wearing a bra. It was too late though — they were growing against any will of their own and there was the public to think about now and what the public thunk and the public didn’t seem to like the look of hairy legs — not even on prepubescents — or little nipples showing through pullover soft knit sweaters.
The healed road map of her past drew up days of being in a moment and of adventures no matter how small — like trying to get the pup to want to take a bath and of her sweetly remembered little red-haired paws scraping their nails over her wrists as she tried to do it. Or of reaching through a bush she was hoping would grow to pull a weed out from under it so it wouldn’t have too much competition for the scarce water and nutrition.
The Good Life.
Ceramic animal vases also served to help her remember of a time in her life, maybe not so good — a moment, moments — when she was somewhat lonely and to keep from being far too lonely she went out into public where there were other people milling around doing a thing, too, that she liked to do — investigating vintage things. And while she was out there mingling without really knowing anyone or getting much to know them, she collected ceramic animal vases if they were shapes or colors that appealed to her and had cute faces and now has a fairly long row of them strung along a high shelf with pretty green glass vases mingled in among them and they are all arranged in a nice manner for looking upon and admiring. But, they get dusty and eventually get so dusty that it shows and that is when she has to think about whether the value of continuing to admire them and remember those lonely happy days is worthy or if packing them in boxes for moving on would be an even more worthwhile consideration since dusting them means moving them from their handsome places and trying to get them back in the same studied and decided upon position.
Neurotic behavior isn’t friendly.
Just better to quit thinking too much about them. They’d be better off in boxes and then that process would inspire her to put more things in boxes and eventually she would have all her things in boxes so she could decide whether to forget about the boxes and go somewhere else for a new adventure that didn’t have any boxes and a place where she could keep herself from getting things that would ever need to be considered for dusting or boxing again.
If that was even possible.
She thinks that people who lose their things in hurricanes or fires might be blessed in some unusual way. You have to be careful what you wish for so she’s not wishing, just thinking.
So a new device that lets her listen again to lectures and many of those lectures being, so far, Dr. Robert Sapolsky and others about human behavior and Alain de Botton’s School of Life about writers and poets has been a real boon to her existence and will for living because suddenly she is aware, again, that for the most part most people live in somewhat misery, not a lot unlike her own and they keep going and wanting more of it and time because there is always a wonderful new thing to learn or do. And the other thing is that humans are unlikely to change very much so all the worrying she’s been doing about the environment and poor animals being so abused has little benefit to any of it changing much other than what she can do herself…so…she’ll say it again, it’s better to just be happy.
That troubled kind of thinking needs to go the way of mopping, dusting and looking at ceramic animal vases.
Writing Spool 