And So I Begin. Again,

My computer crashed and I lost most of what I had written.

For two days I wandered around hugging a pillow and feeling sick inside.

My computer nerd guy (ever compassionate those types huh?) merely said "if you wrote it once you can write it again"

well that rankled...I mean what am I? some kind of human back up disk?

my words are carefully chosen works of art

I love the line by Oscar Wilde, where he said

“This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.”

writing happens in fits and spurts and is hard won

I cant believe I never made a back up of something I considered precious

so here I am

all my lost and (carefully crafted I might add) words are gone

all my favorite quotes and sayings. All my brilliant moments

gone

ok, maybe I am not a Michelangelo with words, but

It is like my words were road dust and I was put through an involuntary car wash

so I will start again

after all what does anyone do after a disaster?

they start anew

they build better

stronger

smarter

so AMEN to my expired hard drive

and HELLO to my new one

may I make you worthy of honesty and truth

Heaven knows there can always be more of it

so I begin again

The Worm Has Turned?

Today was spent being alone and mellow with my thoughts. All without benefit of a bong or a joint!

I never did do the bong or joint thing, even in the 70s, truth be told...

No,I was the girl over in the corner with her nose shoved in a book.

Or doing some football players English homework for him.

Yes that was me. A nerd girl in the 70s. Always just left of center but it just sounds so hippie-ish to talk about hanging out with oneself on purpose and without chemical help doesn't it?

A shame actually.

I think before we were constantly bombarded by friendly fire (the media) we had to (gasp) think for ourselves. A man out building a barn or hunting in the woods has a lot of time to think, especially thoughts about cause and effect.

Me bring home food= GOOD me miss my shot = BAD om gah wah

A woman similarly, stirring the campfire tending children and a forgetful old crone of a grandma positioned within watching distance, each had time to think their individual thoughts.

A simple, immeasurable, priceless, commodity in our communication driven world.

Solitude.

Time to think

Time to interpret the input from the world around you into your own personal data base of experiences and thoughts without a brightly shined media "face" telling you not only what the news is but how you should "interpret" the news.

When I was a little girl back in the 60's (ouch I know) Kronkite delivered the news as dry as a brown industrial paper towel that you would pull out of a rack at grade school.

Left to form their own thoughts, we the public did just that.


So at what subtle point did we start letting journalists not just inform us but interpret for us? Because that is were we are now and I suspect it is not all their fault but rather our own. We got fat and lazy intellectually speaking. WE got busy with the details of our life and looked at these brightly glossed people as saving us time from reading the paper and framing our own thoughts.

Well that is over and the backlash is tremendous. People are taking the reins back into their own hands. The free wheelingwild wild west of the Internet is their main source and magazines and news shows via television networks, are fighting for their lives.

Women consult their iPad while they wait for the timer to go off on the modern day cooking fire of the micro wave.

Men scour the concrete jungle of the city with a Blackberry or iPod in hand - weapon of choice.

And they each weigh their information and consider their options.

Maybe we are starting to think for ourselves again,

maybe...

The worm has turned.

On Friendships

Friendships are a fragile and beautiful thing

A thread felt not seen

wraps mysteriously around you

drawing you both together

you explore your commons

and admire your differences

the veneers of your outer self peel away

replaced by layers of trust

one at a time

until what you have in common

is more than what you don't

you now exchange thoughts with a glance or a laugh

maybe a raised brow or a shrug

thus is the language of friends

the level of trust flowing as deeply as iron ore

you are my friend

and I am yours

Maintenance

Have you ever noticed that the older you get the more effort it takes to look good?

In my 20's all I had to do was get a tan and comb my hair -
and wear tight clothes.

In my 30's I was still doin ok...I could stay up all night with my girlfriends watching movies and eating chocolate and drinking wine and still get up just a little later the next morning.

Maintenance consisted of shaving my legs and underarms, keeping my eyebrows plucked and getting a good tan every summer.

My hair looked good up or down. My skin was finally through breaking out (maybe?) in retrospect this was my one shining moment between pimples and wrinkles! Who knew?

In my 40's life got a little bit more complicated.

While I waited in line at the Taco Bell drive thru, I could see all of my gray hair in my side mirror as I leaned out to shout my order....

"I'll have a Nacho Grande and OMG what is that stuff in my hair!"

*****crackle over loudspeaker**** "what's that ma'am?"


Did he just say "ma'am"? Am I "sounding" old too?"

"I'll have the taco salad...hold the meat and cheese...and also a diet soda, umm...on second thought just make that a water...."

A pair of tweezers has now become my best friend in my diligent search for the grays, a plan I only abandoned when I realized I could quite easily pluck my way into pattern baldness.

So now I am 50...

I wake up after one dinner at a restaurant, swollen and puffy.

A blooming onion makes me "bloom" for 3 days...

in the meanwhile I am facing "veins" and "age spots" and what's up with the chin hair?

You know, that one lone solitary hair that can grown 3 inches in the time it takes you to check your email.

A magnifying glass has become not a luxury but a necessity, since apparently my eyes are becoming myopic so fast I cant even SEE the aforementioned now 6 inch long solitary chin hair.

The magnifying glass also mirrors my need to get my roots done again in my attempts to angle it so that I can see my chin...

I need a highlight job on my roots again? Didnt I just do that?

Of course I do! I need that about every 3 weeks appperently.

As I stand in my kitchen popping vitamins by the mouthful I remember the words of a neighbor I adored that has since moved away. She and I used to walk every day. She was turning 50 and I was turning 40. She said,

"I had a deep massage today so I hurt all over. I had my hair dyed and highlighted and my nails done."

I said, "well you look great!"

"Yes" she replied tiredly and with a rueful grin, "I can still look great but it is taking more and more effort to do it."

I listened to her and I thought that was interesting but I didn't really identify.

Now?

I GET it!

I wake up with a cranky hip.

I run with a faulty bladder to the nearest bathroom.

My allergies are in full bloom and my hormones tell me I should kill someone.

Too bad I am not in Iraq. I'm sure once I quit sneezing and peeing, I would be a human death machine!

"Fear THIS! Ha!

I am hormonal and have nothing left to lose!"

I probably wont offer myself to my country though...

I don't want them to tell me I am too OLD!

Every Day Is Mothers Day

I actually wrote this last May but for some reason, never posted it.

No time like the present though, right?

~~~~~~~

With the coming of spring mothers day is every day on a farm and in the wildlife around us.

A little bird saga was going on this weekend and I thought that this winged mothers story was fitting for the day.

I feed my dogs at night. One last time for the day as they basically eat all day long but feeding them at night encourages them to stay close and not roam far away in the fields and woods, following whatever fascinating scents and wild calls they may hear and smell late at night.

When our cat was still alive we had no problem with birds or mice. Since her death at 23 yrs of age (who can blame her?) the mockingbirds have gotten more and more bold.

I know they are the state bird (whose dumb idea was that?) and they are "protected" but after a couple of years of them nesting in our chimney I grew rather disenchanted with the whole process.

I remember it was late one night and the house was quiet when I first heard that strange fluttering sound in the fireplace. Oh look! A baby bird!

I got a lid from a mayonnaise jar, washed it and filled it with water along with a small plate of bread crumbs in the fireplace to feed this little accidental house guest.

Little did I know there was nothing accidental about this. Mockingbirds are the Gambino family of the bird world. They take over. No other birds can stay. They run the place. Once the cat died they were home free in bird speak. They were here to stay....
We (I mean me) fed the little fallen fledgling there in the fireplace, while listening nightly to his brothers and sisters practice flapping their wings somewhere deep within our chimney. After a day or so we took the little feathered thing out of the fireplace. This involved a brave 21 yr old son putting on an oven mitt and diving into the fireplace along with a small degree of fluttering and chirping. Once the gray feathered chirpling was within grasp he was tossed (gently) out the front door near a big bush which he fluttered to. His parents chirped and flew back and forth nearby. A mother and child reunion. So be it. I closed the front door.

Imagine my dismay when it happened again the next year!
I mean I love animals as much as the next guy but give me a break!
We put an iron grate on our chimney top. Problem solved!
No.

They pecked through it (apparently there was one weak spot that rusted) and once again I try to watch TV with the accompanying tempo of the magnificent beat of rehearsing wings in my chimney.
Tonight when I went out to give the dogs their last of the day food, I heard an unusual thing.

The mama mockingbird was perched up in the tree and was pathetically running through some serious stage lines. First she was "dying" with soft little chirps. Then she was singing in a voice like an angel that drew you to her. The beating of wings in the chimney was so strong, gathering momentum so that for the first time I could hear it while standing outside of my house.

She was calling her babies! Oh my!

After a few minutes she changed her song to a soft whimper. The sound that a puppy makes late at night when it is alone.

In a few minutes she was joined by her mate. They both began to make soft whimpering helpless cooing sounds together.

Simply amazing.

There were answering coos form within the chimney along with much beating of wings.

The babies will fly tonight.

Out of the chimney where they have practiced their stattaco calls on feathered pinions.

Out into the night world of a full moon, a waiting tree

and their mothers voice.

~

Streaming Thoughts

It has been an interesting week here. I always feel that life runs somewhat like a river or maybe something smaller like a creek or a stream. You have things that are standing still in the moving water like the rocks and pebbles for instance. Then you have things that are moving along in the water at their own pace....like a floating leaf or a little bug. Then there are things that shift sometimes and remain immovable at others such as the sand at the bottom of the stream.

Life seems like that to me...always moving on so many multi dimensional levels. Some things are stagnant, some fresh, some bogged down, some churning up. Some good some bad. It has always been the biggest of head shakers to me how grief and joy are allowed run through our lives in such a concurrent way. It seems to me that there should be some universal rule requiring that they be separate. If we are having a time of great joy say, maybe, when we are falling in love with that perfect person...we should not have to experience a parent dealing with cancer or our siblings divorce. If it worked that way then our joy would transcend itself into a bliss that we could just float on and everything we looked at and thought about and did would just radiate that happiness pouring out of us.

But I guess if I flip this particular coin of thought over then it would also mean that when we walk through those dark times it would truly be very very dark. Dealing with illness or death or loss of any kind with absolutely no little moment of joy or the tiniest ray of hope would be soul crushing to say the least. The pain might just be outside the human scope of endurance.

So perhaps the universe has it right after all and all of life flows in this inextricable, inseparable and yet glorious mish mash of love and joy and pain and suffering along with all the surreal moments that can and does bring with it.

So we live. And we live with that steady current of time streaming around us. Sometimes we stand still, sometimes we float and sometimes we swim madly. Just like all the other things that are in the stream with us. Our joys and our triumphs, our failures and losses all swirling simultaneously.

There most be a really good reason why life functions this way. Maybe there are several reasons.

Quote of the Day

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
--Robert A. Heinlein