It’s a day
Just a day.
The sun rises.
Fog clears to clouds
Or the sky is blue.
Snow falls on empty streets.
Stores are dark.
When you meet someone,
they nod and say,
Merry Christmas.
You smile and repeat it.
It’s just a day,
like every other,
but you have to observe
the niceties.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)
I laughed when I read this. I can report that it is completely true, as I enjoy books and music for the first time, though I have read them many times previously. Sometimes I feel like I can’t hold a thought in my head. It’s not really as bad as all that, but I feel often that memory is like an apple barrel. The old memories are down deep in the barrel, still there, although perhaps not as pristine as they once were. The memories on the top of the barrel, however, are balanced a trifle precariously, and are prone to rolling down the pile and off under a counter.
I’m admiring my Christmas cactus and its green companions in my living room, and wondering if my reputation as a plant killer is truly deserved. I recently received two plants- a red shamrock and a lemon geranium- they’re new and looking like gawky pubescent boys at the moment, but aside from those, the green things are looking rather healthy in the room at the moment. There are a 5 year old African violet that has flowered beautifully for me three times, a ‘corn plant’ that is 8 feet hight, that I got in 1989, and very contented spider plant that is almost as old. So. I’m not a complete loser in the horticulture department if I can keep plants alive for over twenty years.
My mother can make anything live. She brings plants back from death and has a garden that is the admiration of the neighbourhood. Her basement is full of intriguing orchids. Maybe I’m considered a bad plant person, next to her rather impressive talents. Plants can survive at my house. They just have to be the right plants.
I would not venture to own something tender and finicky. Plants at my house have to be like my children- tough and independent! I provide the basics when I remember- water every week or two, fertilizer in the spring. Usually. The plants that make it here like to dry out completely between waterings. That’s usually a given. They have to be plants that don’t mind being ignored. Independent plants that reward me by a show of flowers just as they’re dying are very helpful. I understand that means they’re desperate. I’m very good with the desperate.
.
This makes me ponder the essence of reputation. If I am considered a black thumb, just because in comparison with my mother I’m rather pathetic, it’s kind of unfair. Sometimes we get reputations we don’t deserve. Sometimes, we’ve been given tasks (or plants) that simply don’t suit our skills. If we had the right ones, we’d be quite successful with them. We can’t be compared with anyone else. We have to be assessed for our own abilities and given tasks that suit who we are. If we want to change, we can learn, and take on larger tasks later. Celebrate reality. Make the task suit the skills and desires that exist now.
Come.
They said.
The end is near.
Maybe not.
I said.
He’s tougher than he looks.
Not this time.
They said.
Come.
Hurry.
So we sat holding our breath
when his stopped.
Waiting.
But morning came.
And the next.
And the next.
He’s tougher than he looks.
Told you so.
We’re waiting
counting the space between breaths
that stretch the silence
before the next crackling,
static filled gasp
of a soul tuning toward
eternity.
I was driving home while listening to the audio book of Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber. It’s a brisk December day, -3 Celsius.
At this point in the story, the narrator was discussing about how the day of the Battle of Culloden was bitterly cold. Immediately, in my mind, I envisioned a bitterly cold day. -20 or so. The next line was about how the bodies were stacked wet with blood and rain. Rain. Immediately, I adjusted my vision of the cold 21 degrees warmer…
Then I laughed. So much of the story is contained in the perspective of the reader. I know it intellectually, but it always seems to take me by surprise when I see it in action.
A couple of times I’ve had comments from readers of Grace Awakening that baffled me. Sometimes they’ve just misinterpreted something, or missed some detail, but often it is just that their life experience reveals a different view on the events. It’s interesting.
Bitter cold doesn’t need to be -20 of course. I spent a July in Vancouver one year, and the humidity of the city got into my bones and I was cold all the time. It was much worse than the -20 winter days! Living in the dry interior of BC, I don’t like humidity. Perhaps the weather at Culloden, not far from Inverness and the Channel, was that ‘get into your bones’ bitterness, even though it was above zero.
Adjust while reading.
Carry on.
Sleep is the sea
reaching out to you
embracing you in a wave
You collapse under it like a sand castle
dissolving into the depths.
Shawn L. Bird 
standing stones at the solstice… December 21, 2011
Tags: Diana Gabaldon, dreams, postaday2011, reality, solstice, standing stones
I’m spending a lot of time the last couple of months reading Diana Gabaldon novels. The Outlander series is about standing stones, and the opportunity to time travel on the sun and fire feasts of assorted solstices. When I realised the day, I posted this on the Diana Gabaldon Facebook site, but I thought I’d share it with you as well.
What are your dreams?
What is standing in the way of achieving them? If your desires are attainable, just as a little more light is added to each day from today onward to summer, take a few moments daily to take steps to fulfilling those dreams. Write a few words, learn a few things, work out a few minutes. Each small step leads closer to reality. Then the stones of your reality won’t be blocking you, they will be the doors to your destiny.
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