|
|
|
||||||||
|
The Richards Bend Journal
|
||||||||
|
This Until the Hepatica Bloom
October 27, 2001 - Late Feburary/Early March
Page 18
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
Listening to: Enigma
January 3
...tired as tired can be... must have stored it all up over the holiday - driving to get Jon Boy, and visits - meals, and bedtimes, brushing teeth - wrapping presents - worrying that it was all enough, and the church services; people and friends - family dinners - and what good fun and pleasant - toy building, staying up late 'cause there's no school and then working - the 79 miles onewaytowork, then back - a few days, and worries for projects, new years resolutions, new years resolutions... new years resolutions - I wasn't allowed to be tired then - only now... now that the pressure's off - i'd say exhausted, no - more. mush. total mush. So, it is how I've received my capacity to discharge my resolutions.
And it's cold, no - more. crystal-perfect-days (nights included) - if it got any colder, i think i might begin to fear for the survival of mankind - but that's only an instinct - My nephew and I went hiking sunday - to visit a few woodland waterfalls - see them frozen - see them all frozeup - and it was cold - we had our modern gear you know, and a vehicle never more than about three miles away - could get back and warm up in a crunch, unless a bad spill incapacitated either one of us - not like back then, way back - I thought about it a minute, on the trail - back then, babies were born into the world with nothing at all, and that's how they lived their lives - even for cold days like Sunday - babies born today get nice, warm receiving blankets, and it only gets better from there... not back then - Say - humans have had 100,000 years of nothing but animal skins and grasses, then boom, 300 years of textiled materials and less than a 100 years of warm cars at the end of cold hikes. Can you imagine surviving even one winter with nowhere to get in to? Or a lifetime? Honestly, I am surprised humans even survived at all, as a species, say - and it seems to me, something has changed - i can't imagine being well suited for life lived only in the wild - I mean, could we go back to those times, and as a race, survive?
... which isn't to say, i don't still have those resolutions; those new years resolutions - i just let them slip my mind for a moment, and what a good moment it was. There are things I am fixing - I am fixing a few things - broken things, you know. And while it feels good, it is also frightening. These are cold days.
And the weather is cold too.
January 5
Browsing in the bookstore the other day, i spotted a book on Magnolias. Magnolias. I've spent most of my life knowing that Magnolias existed, but never really knew what they were... and I'm not talking about the fake looking, hard-plastic-leafed domestic things, some people have in their yard... While still beautiful and worthy of "tree status", that's not what's on my mind... What I'm talking about are the wild Magnolia... my God, the wild Magnolia - the Broad Leafed Magnolia - i've been thinking about it. I mean, it's been on my mind, even before i saw the book. A truly large tree, with huge leaves- in the month of May, it blooms - it blooms out with these gigantic flowers, and I can't imagine a more beautiful thing. I've noticed, they only bloom deep in the woods, and only in sandy geological environments. Last May, i spent an entire Sunday, looking for blooming Magnolias - and I think now, deep in these winter times, how wonderful and beautiful the blooming Magnolias are.
the last day or two, i've been a damn mess. not sure what's going on in my head, but i've been so irritable... spent some time out at the walmart lastnight, and i finally had to decide that the difficulties were my own - everybody was pissing me off... cutting in line, bumping into me, people walking directly at me, with no inclination that they were actually going to turn, and walk around me, even while i was standing still, looking at a thing. one of two things is going on... either i've lost my coping skills, temporarily, or people have gotten extremely rude. I was standing at a glass counter, waiting for the clerk to get off the phone; i wanted to ask a question - i was no more than two feet from the counter, see, and all of a sudden, this person, walks right up, stands in the tiny space directly between me and the counter, and stands there to wait for the clerk... clerk gets off the phone and waits on him, before me, even through the clerk acknowledged my arrival by saying he'd be with me in a moment... seven or eight run-ins, walking on my the backs of my shoes, and i had to say to myself "lets get the hell out of here!" - Then i get out to my truck, get in and start to back out, and the person who was parked right beside me, tries to go between my car and theirs, WHILE I'M BACKING OUT - I couldn't even back out for fear of running over them. hang on there man, i'll be out of here in just a second - and when i looked at them, they had this nasty, go-to-hell expression on their face... so I thought a minute; who's difficulty is this? Is it mine, because I am being unreasonable? I would have politely waited for the person parked next to me to remove his or her car, before I tried to get into my own car, especially if they had clearly gotten to their car first... One of the difficulties is this... i have manners. Most of the people i encountered yesterday, didn't have a shred of manners. and some days, it really makes me mad... But ultimately, i'd have to say the difficulty is mine. And, as much as I would like to believe otherwise, I am being unreasonable... the world doesn't meet my expectations - so, who the hell do I think i am, to have expectations of the world?
The Magnolias meet my expectations.
|
||||||||
| page created with Easy Designer |