Life is Short #432

A little drop in an infinite pond = my life.

On the floor of my closet I have a plastic box with my husband's ashes in it.

Here today... then in a box on the floor of someone's closet. My hope is that I don't accidentally put it in with the Goodwill donations....see? Can't do serious.

And so I am unable to give much weight to anything I do. Maybe that deprives me of purpose, but I have adopted this slogan as my purpose - I am here to bring what beauty I can to the world, while I am here.

Many people are more comfortable working with a net, and I believe that they bring their own beauty in that manner.

I ... just can't. So, if others need me to be serious, I ... well, I guess I 'feign' it. No good can come of proselytizing my own brand of nihilistic nonsense.

If you find wonder in the world, I say you find it because it's in you - a bit trite, but it takes one to know one. And by that I mean that the wonder that is you recognizes, responds to, the other wonders that, yes, are all around. It's no less a miracle for being brief or even 'commonplace'.

Longing Put Off Indefinitely

how not to spend my life

longing for that one day

that will be perfect

why did I speak to him so coldly?

why can't they read my emotions by

noticing what color I'm wearing?

why can't i just say I want the ring

the name

oh, permanence...

oh, love....

This is from a LiveJournal entry I made a few years ago:

As usual, I go through my day, thinking of things I want to write about, and when I finally sit down at the computer, I can't remember a single one of them. I know it's a weird combination of household tips, philosophical questions, funny things I saw (oh, I remember one, I saw a sign that said "loose gravel", except my peripheral vision isn't great and at first I thought it said "loose grave"...!!! creepy!) and my feelings on the state of the world in general, all of which would be utterly fascinating in a Pulitzer-prize sort of way, if I could but recall them.

Credit for this idea goes to Mark Twain

I forget that I have a blog! Not conducive to communicating the many crucial issues that we are all faced with, and the solutions that I believe would revolutionize day-to-day life and the quality thereof. Two preposition endings! I think.

Anyway, one technique for improving day-to-day life is to smile at people. I've tried this, and in nine cases out of ten, people smile back, get in on the joke, and I have to think that they get a least a small amount of shiny endorphins that make them feel better than they did seconds prior to smiling. The cumulative effect of this practice, if employed more widely, would reduce stress and make people feel more accepted, and therefore more likely to think of others before adding up the thousand natural shocks, slings and arrows of the day that they believed were aimed at them. 'Thinking of others' as a benevolence to society and ourselves should be self-explanatory.

One of my favorite stories from the days when I used to go to church is the one about the long-handled spoons. I wish there were a better story that illustrates my point, because the fact is, I can figure out a simple solution for the people in Hell. But anyway....here it is:

Long Handle Spoons
By: Author Unknown

A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell. The Lord said to the man, "Come, I will show you hell."

They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew. Everyone was famished, desperate and starving. Each held a spoon that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their own arm that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths. The suffering was terrible.

"Come, now I will show you heaven," the Lord said after a while. They entered another room, identical to the first -- the pot of stew, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons. But there everyone was happy and well-nourished. "I don't understand," said the man. "Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room and everything was the same?"

The Lord smiled, "Ah, it is simple," he said. "Here they have learned to feed each other."

This is what Mark Twain said..."Keep smiling - it makes people wonder what you've been up to."

Another possible effect of smiling is that it's possible that the physical expression might change your mood. There have been scientific studies about this, but I think it's simpler and more cost-effective to just try it. 8-)

Classical 91.5 fm KUSC - Playlists

Classical 91.5 fm KUSC - Playlists: "Christoph Gluck: Alessandro: Suite
Musica Antiqua Koln / Reinhard Goebel"

The reason I don't have a blog.

As it turns out, I cannot write. At least not prose. I have a myriad ideas swirling around, like the carnations that got fed to sheep in Gaza instead of going to lovers in Israel, and wondering why we all don't have big internet parties once a year and meet all our dear friends who live inside our computers, and why we don't do more to help adolescent girls develop self-confidence instead of modeling themselves after pop stars, and why can't I just be good friends with President Ahmadinejad? and does anyone else sometimes lay around trying to see that swirly lacy stuff floating on our eyeballs? ( I know Annie Dillard has) ....should we embrace our emotions or try to control them, and is there a way for me to let go of preconceived ideas about gender relations and just treat people as individuals?

However - all I end up cranking out are small poems that try to communicate either my happiness at being able to enjoy the day, or my anguish over all the things that need to be fixed, in my scant opinion, but are impossible to heal.

See...case in point. This entry is disjointed and could easily be turned into a nice little poem.