The personal blog of a genuine old maid and a closet transcendentalist. Blather about my everyday life, creative stuff, humor, political, and social commentary and, since I'm hopelessly Whovian, references to Doctor Who.
To START the player, click on pause/play button. It is set on automatic shuffle. Click POP OUT to have the player continue to play when you surf away from this page.
The wind is literally whistling and howling 'round my eaves, right now. I can even feel the odd chill breeze wafting through the living room, now and again. There's a restless crow that's been wheeling and flapping around, outside. The snow that fell on Saturday night and Sunday morning, is dropping off the branches...hopefully none of it will end up down my neck, as I walk to work.
The sky is flat and dull..pretty much like my week so far, actually.
I just snapped this pic of my front windows...what you see is pretty much what you get...can't hardly tell the sky from the snow, except the sky's marginally grayer.
Some things we can learn from a snowman (or snowwoman):
Wearing white is always in style - even after Labor Day.
It's fun just to hang out in your front yard or back garden.
We're all made up of mostly water
Accessories don't have to be expensive
If you're a little bottom heavy - hey, that's okay!
No one cares how long or different your nose is
Don't get too much sun!
Sometimes sweating too much can have disasterous results
Not having a good afternoon...there's something wrong with me, and I probably should be in the ER right now, quite frankly...but, I just plain haven't got the cash to spare...it's not just the cost of the visit (which is only marginally covered by my federal Medicare insurance), and the cost of cab fare, it's the cost of not getting paid for being out sick when I have bills to pay. And, it's also the very real risk of possibly losing my job, for excessive absences.
I don't feel right, though. I'm excessively tired and my heart is fluttering...mostly though, I'm abnormally tired..not tired from lack of sleep, more of a weakness and tiredness like I'm going to pass out. I tried lying down for a bit, but it didn't help. Oh dear. Well, I really can't do anything about it. I HAVE to work tonight, I honestly do not have any choice...jeez, and I was feeling so much better, yesterday...and I shouldn't have dusted in here yesterday... I'm still sneezing my head off. Go figure.
Someone told me (again) recently, that I need someone to "look after" me and to take care of me. Ha! That's never going to happen..well, unless I get sectioned, heaven forbid. Sure, I know that I probably could use a helping hand, but...it's never going to happen, not in my lifetime. For one thing, I've got way too many issues, too much emotional baggage, to ever let anyone inside my life...no way. Not going to subject someone to that, I refuse. Why would I want to drag someone else down the loo of my life with me, for pity's sake? And, more importantly, who in their right mind would want to go there, anyway? Yeah riiight, don't think so, matey.
Well, I've got to jump in the shower and get changed for work in another half-hour or so. There's no way in hell I'm going to hospital, forget it. Blood transfusions, insulin injections, IV's...no needles for me this week, thanks!
Meh, the way I see it, I'll either get better or I won't, simple as that. What the hell do I care? It's just me and the cats...I'm very replacable on my job, anyone who can talk and read can do my job...and...you know, as awful as it must sound to some of you, I honestly have decided that that's the attitude I have to take to survive. Anyway, maybe this will pass on its own. So what? I mean, who in their right mind wants to sit in a hospital room all alone anyway? Sit there in a chilly room, in your threadbare hospital gown, eating tiny portions of horrid hospital food,, needles and tubes stuck in you, with nothing but beeping machines, chattering nurses in the halways, old people moaning, and soap operas on the telly, to keep you company all day...not me! Screw that!
Another week as a telemarketer begins, glory halelujah.
Even tho' it's technically early afternoon over here..and it's heading into early evening over there in the UK, I felt the need to post this little tune.
Now, I know this is going to sound really pathetic and sappy, just like that "Touching the Stars" post a few posts back...but, what the hell. Anyway, I loved this song, sappy though it is. When I was a teen, I used to sing this on my morning hikes, I was just so chuffed to be out there, walking in the dewy grass in the sunrise...and, when I was around 30, I used to sing this to the horses in the barn, when I opened up in the morning to feed them. It was my favourite time of the day.
That last post was so dreadfully depressing, I felt it better to show that I'm not all gloom and doom today--no bad news in the post, ha-ha.
We've a bit of snow coming in today, nothing much though. I hear it's to be only at best, maybe 3 or 4 inches, just a nuisence storm, nothing more. We've had no big blizzards dumping a foot or two of snow, yet this year. Fine by me. The one blizzard we had only gave us around 6 to 8 inches...pfft. That's nothing.
It's the cold that's going to be a witch this week. Today's our last "warm" day for a while--it's to go up to the low 30's F, this afternoon. Temps will range from tomorrow on though, from a daytime high of minus 11 C...that's on Thursday, to a nightime low of minus 23 C, Thursday night. Supposedly it'll warm up to minus 3 C, by Saturday afternoon, though.
But Saturday night it's going to be...minus 20 F! That's minus 28 C! Brrrrrr!
And certainly, 20 below zero F, isn't the coldest it's ever been in these parts...I can remember more than a few times in my teens, in the late 70's, when it was 25 to 30 below zero fahrenheight, some days. And we did get down to minus 40 C/F, in winter of 2004. So really, put into perspective, minus 3 C seems rather warm, when you think on it.
I'm sneezing to beat the band this morning, for some reason. Must be something in the air in here. Maybe I should open a window a wee crack, for a bit, while it's still fairly warm outside.
I have to take my National Grid bill into work tomorrow, and see if I can figure out what the hell is going on, and why they've arbitrarily, without any sort of explaination, changed my budget plan agreement, that I've had for the past TWO years. I'm sorely pissed off about that, and still very depressed and upset. I swear, every time life seems to get better for me, it slams me back down into the sewers again. Do you see why I hate the word "hope" now? Hope is for idealists, dreamers, and rich people. The poor don't stand a chance in this life, not one gosh-darn iota of a chance! Every time we start to re-gain our feet, either big business or government slaps us back down into the poo again.
When you're poor in this world, the only motto you can hold on to is: Life sucks and then you die. Don't tell me otherwise.
Sometimes it seems like everything I'd ever cared about has, or is, just slipping away, like sand trickling through your fingers. From my family, to my dreams, my home, even Dr Who. Everything just trickles away, and I'm powerless to stop it.
Well, who cares? It's not like I'm alone...there's millions of us out there...invisiable people...barely registering as human. Let's face it: the BBC is never going to give the Doctor a poor, ordinary-looking companion....image is everything, the poor are invisiable because no one wants to look at them. Reality is not a television programme, reality is poverty. Reality is ugliness and imperfection and pain.
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.---Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature."
I first read those words as a teenager. I was sitting at the check out desk at mum's library. Mum was busy, and I was rather bored. There was this bookshelf behind her desk, which harboured new books for patron's, that were either very popular, or on waiting lists to be read...one such book was "Essays" By some bloke I'd never heard of, named Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I picked it up, wondering what this chap had to say, to make him so popular with the local English teachers and other upscale minds in our village. The first chapter was titled, "Nature." Hmmm--fancy that. I was in the early stages of tree-hugging, so the title intriqued me. Then, I read that first few lines, the same one's at the top of the page...
...oh my gosh, they just totally floored me. I mean it! My teenage brain was absolutely gobsmacked. I'd always had an affinity for words, and, for nature...and here was this fellow, whom lived more than 100 years before I was born, intertwining the most beautiful words, with thoughts and feelings and experiences, I'd already had--but had never been able to put adequate words to! Wow, what a heady experience.
I'd found, in these words on a page, both a peer and a hero.
You see, I was never alone when I walked outside, not ever. I was living in the heart of nature, surrounded by the everchanging days and nights and seasons. Filled to bursting with the joy of being part of everything around me, every tremble of a blade of grass, every sigh of the wind, every drop of rain falling on a leaf...they were a part of me, and I them.
I was standing in the center of the universe, the magical tapestry of the cosmos isn't just that stuff you see in the telescope..it's inside us, as well. It's inside the circles and cycles of the life around us...a never-ending heartbeat, a dust-mote in the sunlight or a speck of stardust...in a way, they are one and the same, because they were all formed of the same universe. The cosmic dust and gasses that created the earth, created all the life around us...including us, the human race.
It's difficult to describe, the feeling one gets, alone in solitude. Alone--but not alone. I watch the hawk swooping and soaring with a grace no human can ever truly match. I see the sun dancing off the pine boughs and dappling the leaves, making them seem as if they are laughing with joy, as they dance in the wind. I hear the wind as well, sighing and soughing, rustling and scraping. I feel my breath...my chest rise and fall, see the clouds shifting through the sky....and inside me, I hear a silent smyphony, a magical silent tapestry that knits and draws all the pieces of the picture together, until they make for a masterpiece so grand in its scope and magnificence, that the sheer serenity and harmony of it all, just makes me want to burst with such joy, as few people, sadly, shall ever know.
No one taught me this, no one ever can teach this. This is something you just have to find in yourself. Maybe you're born with it, maybe you find it somehow, but it's there inside most of us of us...Emerson knew, John Denver, Henry David Thoreau, and others, they knew it as well. Most people shut it off...many don't even know that have it in them--and perhaps some of them really don't. Maybe people shut nature out, out of fear of the unknown, or perhaps they simply just don't care and don't want to know. I don't have an answer for that.
I could never be as eloquent as Ermerson, but still...the words on the page, aren't merely words--they are truth, and life and the universe.
To me, the past is gone, but I can still hold those moments of quiet joy in my heart, forever. They are mostly long gone now; The days of me grabbing my boots and hiking staff and hitting the woods for some quiet time...they'll quite probably never return...but it's still inside me, it's been ingrained in me...once you've tread the universe, there's no going back again.
Got some junk mail in today, apparently one of the local pizza shops has gone electronic...you can now order your pizza, drinks, sandwiches, etc. online, without ever having to pick up a phone, and deal with some ditzy order taker, who puts you on hold for an eternity, then when he comes back on, seems totally obtuse about what you what to order, and can barely figure out how to write down where you live.
Yeah, you can order online, then watch the little graph that tells you who took your order..and follow the progress from "prep" to "baking" to "boxed" and finally, "Delvivered" Whoo-hoo! Now I have something fascinating to do on those long winter evenings! Oh, I bet the rednecks are thrilled, "Hey maw! This little do-hickey on my computer says here, that hey've baked the pizza, and NOW they're going to box it! Whoo-hoo! Isn't this exciting?"
