Saturday, May 24, 2014

I Don't Even Know What To Call This!


I've been in such a somber mood of late. It is time to break on down to the other side.

But first, I have had the discussion of people's impression that I am eccentric with someone again. I am at 100% in yays rather than nays. This covers the span of a few years now. I chafe at the definition though I can't imagine why I give a rat's tiny buttocks about it. Could be that I am even proud of it. How would I know? It is an assignation that does not match with my vision of an eccentric. Hold one moment! I am going to get the definition of eccentric. Be right back!
Whadda' ya think?




A personal favorite!






I just like this little song! Ya!





Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Lark Ascending - Ralph Vaughan Williams





This is long and it is beautiful. I put it here for me but each of you are worth the hearing. My spirit calms, sorrow takes a place a little further from my heart. It is well with my soul.

Seventy Times Seven

 
OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER .
 
 
 
Matthew 18: 21-22
21 Then Peter came up to Him and said, Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I forgive him and [a]let it go? [As many as] up to seven times?
22 Jesus answered him, I tell you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven!
 
 
 
Oh, wow! This journey is difficult and I am tired!
 
I am going to bed!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

HERE THERE AND EVERYWHERE

I have lost my mouse. I lost it a week or two ago. Now I have lost the thingy I plug into my laptop so that I can operate that mouse. I don't do so well using the pad on my laptop. I tend to hit super scroll by accident or delete everything I have written with some movement I have yet to discern.

I am writing in large letters because normal appeared so tiny to me. Yeah? Well, I am not young anymore and normal is unnatural to me on a good day. If anyone reading my posts prefers normal, leave a comment. I dare you! I don't even know if the darn "comment" function works on this blog. Not resentment or anything. This is me writing so of course the words are precious and beyond reproach. But they don't have to be in large text. I am a people pleaser. Let me know. I am also sarcastic so I will either change the size or ridicule your request.

My friend John has lung cancer. Little place on his left lung at the top of the lung. My friend John and his wife Miss B are among my favorite people in all the world. I worked with John for a number of years before I retired. He is about my age...little older. He wears khaki to work every single day. He carries ink pins in his top pocket with one of those plastic pocket protectors inside the pocket. He makes a steady "huh-huh" noise 95% of the time. He is a conspiracy theorist. He is the quintessential gentleman. He loves his wife of over 30 years in a precious and romantic way. He is detail oriented. DETAIL ORIENTED! He loves God and his country. Will defend women with the bravado of one of the legenday knights of King Arthur's court. He will drive anyone absolutely and completely nuts with his convoluted thinking processes. He is old fashioned. He wears real clothes away from work and he is nice looking in his street clothes. He is an accomplished painter, He paints historical scenes of our area. He researches for up to 2 years for accuracy. Very few people even know he paints. Very few people allow themselves to look past the decidedly eccentric ways of my friend John. He is funny. He has very little understanding of the computer creating multiple opportunites for side-splitting laughing moments. He doesn't get what is funny and launches off into a conspriacy theory with wild abandonment, talking to himself when we have long ceased to listen. He is probably a genius. Probably at the high end of the genius level. He had an awful childhood. Crazy mother who put him in an orphanage, orphanage put him into foster care, he put himself on the streets making his own way by the age of 13. God graced John with an awesome, petite woman full of southern grace and charm. They married. They have never had children. They are spectacular. She is a lady through and through. She is John's reason for breathing. John is the product of a sad mischance. John's father looked for all of his children and he found them and raised them and sent them to college. The orphanage would not tell John's father where they had placed him. John did not know this story until about five years ago...Soon enough to meet his dad and to be able to attend his funeral not long afterwards. John drives me nuts. We dig at each other verbally all the time. We laugh and have the best time poking fun at each other. He is the best of the best. He is a square peg in a round hole and I am so grateful. I am so filled with joy for knowing him and his lady love, Miss B. I will be at the hospital when he has his surgery. Of course I want John here but if God has decided to bring His strange and wonderful child home then I will have one more reason to shout with joy when I meet him in our Father's House.

John 14:2

The Message (MSG)

The Road

14 1-4 “Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”

 

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

YUCK! BLEH! POOR ME! (Copious tears of self-pity)

On days like today I wonder where my gratitude has gone. I look for it to appear instantaneously. This is a futile expectation on days like today. I am required to go looking in every nook and cranny for it. I will rephrase that last sentence. It is best, by a long shot, that I try to find my gratitude on a day like today. It is not a requirement.

 I have been in low cotton, for three weeks or so, with a viral something or other that hit like a sledgehammer one evening while I was watching t.v. Yep! Felt o.k. one minute and the next wondered what on earth had taken over my body. Keep in mind that I am a recovering alcoholic with the ability to exaggerate even the smallest event in my life but, this time, I am telling the gist of it. I've got doctor's notes to prove it. Because I tend to dramatize I called a close friend today and asked her to tell me if she thought I was being a drama queen. She  assured me, with references to my past, notes at the bottom of her conversation with me, quoted resources, etc. that I am not dramatizing. She reminded me that at one time I was ill like this on a recurring basis with few breaks between. In essence I have been doing much better. Unfortunately, I have gotten stuck  in a familiar pattern of trying to get well. The difference is that I am choosing to rest.

I went looking for my gratitude and found this and know that it is true. Pass the humble pie, please!







Monday, May 12, 2014

TINY LITTLE POST



Walking home from my mother's house tonight I thought, "My gosh, I think I just heard a whip- o-will." (I've no idea how to spell that name correctly and am too lazy to look it up.) This distinctive bird call brings a flood of memories when I hear it.
My Papa (maternal grandfather) imitated the calls of many birds. This was a gift he earned through hours of time in the woods hunting or farming along side of those same woods day after day.

This whip-o-will was one of his best calls. I have stood by his side as he responded to the call of this wild bird luring it closer and closer to the edge of the property. "Whip-o-will!" would come from the woods surrounding my papa's home. "Whip-o-will!" my papa would echo back in a whistle which must have seemed like an identical echo to the unsuspecting bird. I may be a bird brain at times but I have no idea what birds are thinking. There is the possibility they were onto my Papa and would volunteer to take turns calling their distinctive call, listening for my Papa's return call and move just a little closer until they were at the edge of the woods. I can see the remaining birds holding their sides in bird laughter at their precocious choice.

I said this would be short. I called back to the whip-o-will I heard tonight. Even I didn't believe myself. My papa, temporarily resurrected, stood at my side. He drew in a breath, paused a split-second and whistled a clear, spot on, reply to the whip-o-will. As I turned the corner of my yard my papa faded. Another second passed. From the woods I heard the replying call of the whip-o-will.

I miss my papa!

(I wrote the post before including the actual call of the whip-poor-will but I'll be darned if I am going back through this post and correct my spelling of the bird's name. Maybe that is why the bird did not respond to me.)



Friday, May 9, 2014

Shameless Stealing Mr. Sponsorpant's perspective.

StaySilent
For me that's not about stuffing, or denying, or even that great old alcoholic standby: silent scorn.
It's about pausing. It's about not letting other people's actions determine my actions.
It's about breathing and understanding that someone else's spiritual sickness does not have to activate my own.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Flotsam and Jetsam

I chose the title because as a child I loved that combination of words. I remember it today in the same placein my mind where I remember the pungent odors on certain streets in Taipei, Taiwan or in a memory of sea air briny and strong coming to me on a rush of night air. I remember the tree I climbed in Africa where I settled into a comfortable position in the tree limbs with a book and an apple. In those days I read voraciously imagining myself as the heroine of a neighborhood; dashing out into the imagined night imitating the likes of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. I saw myself fling a cloak around my shoulders, medicine bag in hand, a carriage waiting in the dark night as rain driven by the wind lashed against my running legs. Headed for the carriage and the person who somewhere in the dark night needed help I saw myself leaping into the carriage, heart pounding, cloaked against the harsh weather abandoning all need of sleep for that dark evening as my mind filled with the task ahead.

Or

Alice in Wonderland. Oh my, how I loved that book. After a time I began to imagine myself with Alice.  Each paragraph of the book fed the image I created of myself lost in a land full of  strange events, up being down and down being up, the Cheshire cat grinning,  fading out of sight without moving a muscle. The mean, sharp-tongued Queen chasing us as we ran from her screeching shouts.  Oh how I loved the adventures and characters I met on my way through Wonderland. I spent an inordinate amount of time imagining the mouse in the teacup. My heart sped up as Alice and I became tall and then small ingesting a magic potion at great peril to ourselves. The Mad Hatter, Twiddle-de-dee and Twiddle-de-dumb, the catepillar; all these characters sprung to life as I sat, time after time, reading the story of  Alice and her adventures inWonderland.

I could go on and on...The Yearling tore my heart from my chest. Little Women and Jo's Boys drew me into their family so deeply that I thought I would wake up in one of the living room chairs placed by the fireside.

Memories of the day I learned to ride a bicycle. Too short for the height of the bike I devised a method of jumping onto the seat of the bicycle from a nearby cement block. There were more than a few failed attempts. At last I pedaled off into the distance with my feet barely touching the pedals as they rose and fell with the rhythm of my legs. It would be years before I had a bike that fit me. I learned to ride in Africa. Strange how I can see myself jumping from the cement block onto the seat of the bike. It was freedom. Freedom to put distance between myself and home. Freedom to experience the hot African wind blowing through my hair. Freedom to dream. There is something about Africa. I was young when we lived in Ghana, West Africa. I miss Africa. I yearn for it. Something in Africa comes to dwell in a visitor's psyche. It stands the test of time and distance. I have heard many people speak of Africa with a wistful craving.

Enough of my musings. Flotsam and jetsam. Memories. Homesick for the little girl who lived in those times and places I promise to visit again. She waves at me over the long years and I wave back. Until we meet again, my friend.



Thursday, May 1, 2014

Whee Doggie!



If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!
If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!
If you're happy and you know it then you smile will surely show it!
If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!