Boston

 

 

Ugliness, hatred, greed and aggressive indifference pour out in overwhelming abundance from our various American media every day, but when it finally literally explodes in our faces, we polish our halos, turn innocent eyes to the cameras and wail, “Why?”  Unrestrained rage, racism and verbal violence are anonymously spewed all over internet opinion sites across America; yet we are shocked and outraged when a senseless act of  physical violence occurs in a public place?  While we’re wringing our hands and rending our garments—in that instant before we begin very publicly plotting our revenge—why don’t we indulge in a little “Terrorist Attack Q & A?"  Let’s grab those questions being wrenched from our hearts, and let’s give some real thought to answering them truthfully.

 

“Who would do such a thing?”  We would.  We would torture, attack, maim, destroy and demoralize anyone to get what we want.  As individuals, millions of us threaten precisely this, mincing no words, in blogs, on Facebook pages, on websites and in comment spaces all over the internet every day.  As a nation, with the legal rationalization of torture and the pre-emptive war on Iraq, we have shown the world that we would.  WE would do such a thing.   

 

“Why do ‘they’ hate us?”  Because we hate them.  Twenty-first century Americans will say what might have been unspeakable and do what might have been unthinkable twenty years ago.  Egged on by the Rush Limbaughs, Glen Becks, and Ann Coulters of the world—those who would encourage us to give vent to our personal fears and bigotries, the better to politically manipulate us—we cherish and cultivate our hatred.  Compassion, respect and moderation are for losers.          

 

“How did this person get his hands on this weapon or the means to create this weapon?”  We put them directly into his hands.  Unable (unwilling?) to regulate the unquenchable addiction of “law abiding American citizens” to playthings  that explode or make loud noises or can take many lives in a matter of seconds, we have turned our streets, our schools, our public places, into battlefields.     

 

“Why didn’t the government protect us?” Because we won’t let it.  The toxic political climate of 21^st-century America has fitted us with a government incapable of governing. We’ve exalted partisan politics above all.  Washington is stocked with politicians who will not make a move—right or left, forward or back—if it carries the possibility of alienating a voting bloc.  Politicians who know any action is going to piss off someone, so the safest course is to take no action at all.  Protect us?  Not a chance.  They’re too busy protecting their jobs and covering their own asses.

 

In the next several weeks, there will be raucous and divisive debate about who to blame for the bombing at the Boston Marathon 2013.  Blame the President.  Blame the Muslims.  Blame the Republicans.  Blame the Democrats.  Blame gay marriage and abortion.  Blame anti-government domestic terrorists.

 

But those who point fingers can’t put their arms out to carry a wounded man, can’t keep their hands on the wheelbarrow or the broom or the hammer and nail.  Those who blame cannot be part of the solution…so they must be part of the problem.  If you must blame, look in the mirror.  Take five minutes, ten minutes, an hour.  Think honestly and clearly about what YOU might have done to promote the culture of violence and hatred in America today.

 

Then pick up a shovel or a mop or a blanket or a bandage and help clean up this mess.

 

Walking For My Life

This past winter, I hibernated like a bear.  Well, maybe not like a bear.  I holed up in my cave and didn’t move around too much, for sure.  But while bears spend the winter months sleeping and NOT EATING—living off the fat they packed on before their long nap—I just kept right on feeding my face.  To the tune of—well, I don’t know exactly how many pounds, because I refuse to get on a scale.  But it ain’t pretty, and my wardrobe ain’t happy. 

Midwinter sucks for physical activity in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s cold and dark and rainy.  Going outdoors for exercise is singularly unappealing; even indoors, the short twilit days just make me feel sleepy and sad.  Still, I scored an exercise DVD from Amazon, and tried to force myself through its paces several times a week.  With limited success, but it was better than not making any effort at all.   

But spring is here, though it has been doing its predictable “Now you see me, now you don’t” routine.  Even so, I am inexorably drawn outdoors.  Walking has been my preferred form of exercise since I was a teen-ager.  When I was young and fit I didn’t do it for exercise.  I did it to sap off excess energy.  And to clear my head.  Twenty years later, I walked to work out the kinks from standing on concrete floors all day—one of the less agreeable conditions of my chosen profession.  A decade and a half after that, I “power walked” to lose weight.  Often on a treadmill, no less.

Before we bought the restaurant, dog and I logged many miles up the hills behind the house, down on the dike, round and round the neighborhoods.  Then I signed up to “live the dream,” and for five years, I barely had the mental and physical acuity left to start the car and pilot myself home to bed after a twelve- or fourteen-hour day in the shit-storm.  I continually paid lip service to wanting to walk to work (it was less than a mile and a half one way), but in all those months, I never quite got around to it.  On some level I must have known it was a bad idea, because by the end of the day I would not have had the energy to get more than about a block.  They would have found me crashed on a bench in Veteran’s Park.

I would love to say that immediately upon ditching the restaurant two years ago, I was free to resume the activity I so missed…but I had developed such a terrible case of plantar fasciitis that I couldn’t walk more than about 500 yards without severe pain.  Believe me, I tried.  But it soon became obvious that the only cure for my problem was REST.  I had to give up walking.

Now, many months later, I can walk three or four miles without a lot of pain.  It’s a welcome thing; a wonderful thing.  But as I tie my shoes, shrug into my jacket and step out the front door, I find my approach to walking has changed once again.  Yes, I need the exercise.  But I need so much more as well.  I need the smell of freshly cut field grass.  I need the sight and sound of birds, from the buzzards and osprey far overhead to the quail scooting across a gravel driveway.  I need the gurgle of the creek and the sigh of the wind and the smell of damp fir needles wafting from the dank depths of a treed lot. 

So you won’t see me chugging along at an Olympic clip, pumping my arms and chewing up the miles.  I’ll as likely be found pausing to chat with a little flock of sparrows skittering through the blackberries; or tipping my head and turning to triangulate the location of a turkey call and catch a glimpse of the big fowl himself; or slowing to bid good morning to the horses and cows I encounter along the way.

I may not be getting the “aerobic benefit” out of my walks that the health gurus tout as the be-all and end-all of exercise.  But I’m pretty sure that life consists of more than just making sure your heart is beating at a certain optimum rate.  You need to be filling your heart with beautiful things, wondrous things; opening it wide to things of the spirit and things outside yourself.  That is where my walks take me now.  And I’ll bet I’m getting more life out of the exercise than ever.  Certainly more than the gal who just breezed past me; with her sports bra and her pedometer and her ipod plugged into her head…    

(West-)Winging Into the Future

I mentioned last Christmas that probably my favorite gift was a boxed set of West Wing DVD’s.  Sometime around mid-January, husband and I cracked open the box and waded into the 47 discs that comprised the seven-season series.  Last night, we watched the last three episodes.    Everything came to a satisfying conclusion: a vigorous young Democrat was duly installed in the White House to take over for the weary, scandal-worn and not altogether successful Jed Bartlett.  The changing of the surrounding guard mingled the mists of nostalgia with high-powered visions for the future.

The West Wing debuted in 1999.  Many of the writers and consultants were fresh from gigs in the Clinton Administration.  The events that would shape American politics for the first decade of the new millennium were still on the horizon.  The 2000 election debacle.  9/11.  Iraq and Afghanistan.  Filibusters.  Sarah Palin.  All the events that pushed many of us to the far left shoulder of the middle of the political road. 

But in 1999, the country was already well on its way to the paralyzing political polarization in place today.  Republicans, stung by Bill Clinton’s ability to emerge victorious in 1992 despite unceasing attacks on his character and business dealings, hounded Clinton throughout his presidency, seriously hampering his ability to govern.  This was especially true during his second term, when the single-minded refusal of congressional Republicans to bow to the will of the American people and play the hand the election had dealt them reached its crescendo in the sensational impeachment saga of 1998-99.

This was perhaps our first real experience of the “new” Republican modus operandi—the policy that  permanently elevated the promotion, the will and the good of the Republican Party over more trivial matters like forming a more perfect union, providing for the common defense, insuring domestic tranquility, and promoting the general welfare.  In those dismal months, government took an ignominious back seat to party politics.  And has remained there ever since.

So Aaron Sorkin had plenty of raw material to work with.   There was enough historical skullduggery and partisan maneuvering imprinted upon the political consciousness to provide us with a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of the highest office in the land. 

What struck me most about those “old” West Wing episodes was the eerie recognition of the absolute topicality of the plotlines.  As if they were ripped right out of the headlines.  Because they were.   More than a decade ago.  The unfortunate truth is, they still are.  Twelve years, and this country is still tossing around the same political footballs.  Abortion.  Equality for women.  Gay marriage.  Medicare reform.  Judicial confirmations.  Gun control.  Budget turmoil.  Illegal immigration and border security. 

Honestly, if I did not KNOW that show was over ten years old, I would have thought it was written last night.  How shameful is it that we can gaze out over the political landscape and see the same legislative turd piles that have been littering the countryside for more than a decade?  Only now they’re bigger and smell a whole lot worse. 

Twelve years.  The Bush Administration managed to spend every minute after the 9/11 attacks, from 2001 to 2008, spinning the terrorist threat into justification to push an agenda that either covertly or blatantly advanced the interests of its deep-pocketed backers.  Leading to, among other things, the ship-wrecking of the American financial system just before GW abandoned ship.  Hard to know whether that was deliberate or accidental.  At any rate, the timing was off…because the economic death-drop seemed to be the determining factor in the Obama victory of 2008.  All the election-tampering and conservative-base-pandering in the world could not blind voters to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression; not enough to entice them to sanction four more years of the same s**t,  different day.

As we were celebrating the Obama victory, anticipating the return to some version of normalcy in the federal government, Congressional Republicans dug in their heels and declared their primary goal, the one directive that would form their every action from January 20, 2009 until the next presidential election cycle, was to make this president fail.  And another four years swirled down the toilet.    

So it appears our intrepid elected officials have devised a way to permanently derail the wheels of progress in America.  The issues of real importance, the problems that need to be solved, only get trotted out as hot-button issues at election time (which seems to be ALL the time, these days…) or any time it appears that calm and rationality might try for a serious comeback.  And of course, if we actually addressed these issues and solved the problems, what would be left to throw out there every two years to rile up the base?  No doubt about it.  Our government is Oh. So. Broken.

This is where I fervently wish that life could imitate art.  Because in those final episodes of the West Wing, two presidential candidates who embodied a return to the political center duked it out in the election of 2006 (the fictional election cycle was two years off of the actual…) The candidates actually agreed on many key issues.  Each honored a tacit agreement to reject negative campaigning.  They met in a televised debate that truly was a debate—(that meant-to-be-edgy “live” episode that showcased, among other things, the Democratic candidate’s vigorous defense of the word “liberal.”) 

What rather sappily played as “hopeful” and “visionary” seven years ago, comes off as pure laughable fantasy today—as embarrassingly simplistic as the “morality play” of any sixties sit-com.  We have left centrism so far behind that we couldn’t find our political center with a map and a sextant.

Government—actual legislation—has not been the focus in Washington for a long time.  Almost too long for many people to remember.  I know I’m older than dirt, but as I write this, I think to myself, “Who am I talking to here?  Everybody knows these things.  We all lived through the same past twelve years.”  In reality, if you pay attention to today’s political discourse, it’s as if the world began no more than a couple of years ago and anything prior to that is incomprehensible primordial muck.  The word on the streets is that everything was going along fine until Barack Obama came along with his deficits and his wars and his bailouts that have sent the country to the brink of ruin. 

Even so, at the end of last year, in spite of yet another ugly campaign designed to demonize the president coupled with concerted efforts to disenfranchise voters who might lean in his direction, Obama won again.  The Republican Party was handed its head in an election that was not nearly as close as was stubbornly broadcast up to the minute its candidate was declared the loser on national television.  For about ninety seconds, we cherished a glimmer of hope that this fact might actually inspire the party to put its failed obstructionist policies in the past and go back to the business of governing.

The first action of the Republican controlled House of Representatives was to trot out a budget plan that had been proposed (and rejected!) by the losing vice-presidential candidate.  “You have to show the people what you believe in!” they asserted, as they invested the first weeks of the tenure of the new Congress into an empty political gesture.  

The “Sequester” became fiscal reality after no compromise between the executive and legislative branches would be reached to circumvent it. 

The Senate recently returned from its Spring break so it can use the filibuster to prevent gun legislation from coming to a vote. 

Not looking too good, is it?

Governing?  Meh.  Bring back  Matt Santos and Arnie Vinick. 

Cross posted at Women On...

Not-So-Creative Ramblings

Creativity—artistry—is a common thread woven through my life.  I have always loved color and design, words, melodies…beauty in every form.    This has been my joy as well as my cross.  Because I fear I have lived the misspent life of the artist with no real talent.  Though beauty gives me great joy, it is joy tinged with sadness, because I cannot create it.  I so want to express myself beautifully.  But my efforts consistently fall short of my ideals. 

In high school, once I got all the technical requirements out of the way —math and science and driver education— I spent my Senior year immersed in artistic endeavors.  I was enrolled in three art classes and four different English classes.  Even at that young age, convinced that I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, I acted upon my innate love of the liberal arts.  But I “knew” there was no money in an art or English degree, so I could not rationalize the concept of going to college.  The point that had been most drummed into my young brain about college was not that it was the social experience of a lifetime, or an undreamed of educational opportunity, or that it might lead to life choices of which I could not conceive as a seventeen-year-old suburban Baby Boomer.  No…the gospel according to our family was that college was expensive.  That it would be a hardship on the family purse.  And if we chose that route, we could never  rest assured that the money would continue to flow from orientation through to graduation.

We grew up imprinted with a sort of “cost/benefit” view of everything.  If something—like an education or travel or a hobby—was going to “cost,” it had better result in an equal or greater “benefit.”  And that benefit would have to be something tangible or material—like money, or an opportunity to get money.  Having fun, exposing oneself to mind-expanding experience or pursuing a fulfilling though not necessarily lucrative endeavor did not enter into the equation.  One did not spend thousands of dollars—and one especially did not go into debt—for the intangible rewards of “fulfillment,” or knowledge for its own sake.

So I chose work.  Being employed.  At the first thing that popped up on my radar.  Got that job at the local pizza parlor and stuck to that line of work for thirty years.  Got good at it, even.   But, I think I was fooling myself for all those years.  I certainly discovered, when I finally made the choice to sink all my life energy into that work, that it was not the channel through which I was destined to achieve success, much less fulfillment.  And now that I have finally walked away from that (and, to some extent, recovered from the experience) I understand that the jobs at which I have been employed were simply ways to mark time, make a living, and keep me away from the place where I could despair about my lack of talent for the things I really wanted to do.

My nearly forty years in the workplace have been marked by “between jobs” intervals.  And my history has been such that, in those times of enforced idleness, I have thrown myself headlong into a frenzy of creative projects.  In 1986, whiling away the weeks between an icky job and my dream job, I set up a table in my living room and immersed myself in hand-making sequined and beaded Christmas ornaments.  In the 90’s, my employment ups and downs resulted in a gardening frenzy that enhanced the curb-appeal of three different homes.  In 2001, I poured myself into home redecorating on a shoestring budget.  Also in the 2000’s, advances in digital photography nurtured my love of photography. 

And in 2003, I believed I had found the love of my life:

“Coming to Terms…”

Though I have always loved writing, and fancied myself somewhat good at it, I had never had the opportunity to revel in it.  To use it as more than a self-analytical tool.   Then the world of blogging fell into my lap, quite out of the blue, and I was smitten.  I have had unimagined success and developed more passion and clarity in my writing between  September 2003 and today than in all the previous four decades combined.  Blogging provided me with the only thing that really matters to an artist; the grow-light under which we develop and mature: an audience.  And I blossomed accordingly.

But if I have learned one thing in my life—and it has been a hard lesson for me in particular—it’s that nothing stays the same.  Life is a journey.  You never stop for long.  And even if you try to stay in a place, the place will change.  Most times, this is a wonderful thing; sometimes it sucks.  But it is what it is.

Blogging has changed.  It is not the same place, the same experience it was ten years ago.  Not remarkable, really, considering the rate at which 21^st century technology explodes and decays.  But it has left me in a creative vacuum when I am more in need of an artistic outlet than at any other time in my life.  In the past, I’ve negotiated smooth-ish transitions from one creative endeavor to the next.  But I’m finding it very hard to put my blog in the past.   

I don’t want “Coming to Terms…” to be a keepsake that I keep in a box on my dressing table.  I don’t want to see it fade from a passionate, living thing to an album of discolored photographs and yellowing pages of writing that used to matter.   I’ve tried to revive and re-imagine it, but I can’t get it right.

I can’t seem to come up with  a definition for it—however temporary or evolving—that fits the genre of blogging as it is now defined, that fits comfortably into my life today, that allows it to mean something different than it did in the days when I first fell in love with it and still inspire the passion and the joy to which I became addicted.  I visit “Coming to Terms…” at least once a day.  I click on the icon, look at the entries, poise my fingers above the keys…and nothing happens.  “What should I write about?”  “How do I begin?”  “Do I really want to share what I’m feeling/thinking about today?”  “Who is going to read this, and will they understand or care?”   The questions rise from my soul like a mist.  The answers…don’t come.

I made myself sit down and write this today.  It’s pointless and vague and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  But I had to try to put it into words…distill it into some kind of recognizable language.  Try to understand why I…just can’t write, these days.  I hate it.  It makes me sad and frustrated; makes me want to take the whole damn thing and send it sailing out the window with a satisfying crash.   

So I’ve unearthed a few new creative hobbies.  I have been trying my hand at jewelry-making.  Doing some ceramic tile projects; playing with my pictures in Photoshop.  But my efforts in those directions feel half-assed and disposable.  Because I can’t turn completely away from the thing I’ve loved for the past ten years.  I can’t.  I’ve lost too many things these past several months.  I can’t lose this…this thing that saved me from the losses I had racked up before I stumbled into it.   

I don’t know who I am, right now.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I don’t know what I love, or what I hate.  I have this sense of the finiteness of the time left to me, and that I’m not honoring it at all with any worthwhile endeavor. 

And not being able to write about it has robbed me of the one thing that has kept me sane for the past ten years. 

Monday

At our old abandoned opinion blog, Women On, we used to have something called "Photo Friday."  Here at Coming to Terms..., I'm announcing "Movie Monday."  Well, at least a series of one.

I took this cute little movie with my pocket camera, then had a devil of a time trying to post it because, evidently, it was recorded in the finest, highest resolution HD (who knew that little son-of-a-gun was so high tech?) The file for the one-minute movie was so huge, I couldn't load it into any program on my computer that could edit it. 

Finally, I uploaded it to youtube (this took twenty minutes) so I could post it on Facebook. 

And after all that work and worry, none of my Facebook friends looked at it or commented.  Sigh!

Oh well.  So I'm posting it here, if only so that I can get my hands (eyes) on it quickly when I want to look at it.  Because I really like it. 

I've witnessed the aerial dogfights that erupt between these two species when the rufous hummingbirds arrive back in town every year.  As a rule, the poor Anna's males--who have enjoyed free reign over my feeders for the entire long, cold winter--are rudely browbeaten away from the feeders by male rufies every spring.  The (smaller!) new arrival will station himself on a tree branch where he can keep an eye on any action going on around the glass bottle.  When another bird enters the picture, the little hellion swooops in, and with loud buzzing and chattering and aerial acrobatics, drives him away.

This year, apparently, the Anna's males have been shooting testosterone or something, because they are not being cowed by the antics of the frenetic newcomers.  In the video, our little Anna's male sits there calmly and continues to sip, exuding an attitude of, "If you're very polite, I'll LET you share my feeder..."

To see these two feeding rather chummily is kind of like watching the lion lie down with the lamb. 

    

The Next Chapter?

By way of letting any interested parties know what I am currently up to:

Hello:

We are Lisa and Matt R, owners of "Cafe de la Rue." We are a festival food concession business--we travel northwest Oregon during the festival season serving our pocket sandwiches and desserts. We've been in business since 2001. We also owned a restaurant here in Columbia County for five years, during which time we used our restaurant kitchen as our commissary for the concession business. We closed the restaurant in 2011, and find ourselves in need of a kitchen in which to do our food prep. We have gone the rent-a-kitchen route, but we find that our needs would be best served if we had our own place.

We chose Lane County as a location to begin our search for a building because our highest grossing event by far is the Junction City Scandinavian Festival and proximity to that festival would be key. In January 2013, we became aware of a commercial building available in Junction City for under $100k. It was in pretty sad shape--the previous tenant had run a Mexican restaurant out of the building, but at some point decided to just bag it and disappeared--leaving behind a building full of junk and a "stack of unpaid bills"--per the seller's agent. 

We have invested a considerable amount of time and funds into the building already--basically trying to empty it of the clutter left behind by the previous tenants, and then ordering inspections and estimates for repairs (on our own dime.) The seller is an elderly retired lady who lives in California now and who is not particularly interested in/able to invest time or money into the building.

Now, it has come time for us to find out how we are going to finance this purchase, or if indeed there are funds available anywhere at this time. To my mind, the total monies required for purchasing and rehabbing this building are reasonable and would be a decent investment for us and any bank willing to finance the project. But we have no idea of the process involved in purchasing commercial real estate, especially in this economically depressed market. 

We have purchased our share of residential real estate (we have owned five homes over our 36 years of marriage) so we have a pretty decent understanding of that process. How different are the procedures when it comes to commercial real estate? Primarily, I guess our first question is, can one be "pre-quailified" for x-number of dollars to purchase a commercial building? If such a concept exists, it would probably be wise for us to take advantage of it. What documents would we need to show a loan officer in order to make this happen? 

Or are business loans granted strictly on a case-by-case basis? If that is the case, what documentation on this particular building/scenario would we need to bring to a meeting with loan officer? 

We're sending this e-mail inquiry for two reasons: 1.) We are currently based in Scappoose and we are not close to anything, so we would prefer to have as much information as we can before we go driving all over the place to money meetings; and 2.) We thought of xxxxsmall-bankxxx first because we really are dedicated to doing business with local or regional financial institutions.

Thanks for your time, and we hope to hear back from you soon.

From "To-Do" to "Ta-DA"

Who says Facebook is a useless, mind-numbing time-waster?  Okay…maybe any really useful information gleaned from Facebook can be filed under the heading of “Even a Blind Pig Finds an Acorn Now and Then…”

 

But of course, if I hadn’t discovered a really useful little tidbit, I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?  And what is that tidbit, you ask (you DO ask, don’t you?)  Well, here it is:

 

Anyone who reads here with any regularity will remember that my entrepreneurial experience left me with a dire aversion to “To-Do” lists.  For five years, I was hobbled by a chain of “needed this yesterdays” as long and as heavy as any strong coil dragged around by Marley’s ghost.  So once free of the café, I declared my independence from to-do lists for the rest of…forever. 

 

What’s so bad about a to-do list?  After all, it’s just like a shopping list, isn’t it?  You write down the things you need so you don’t forget.  Cross them off when they’re done.  What’s so onerous about that?

 

Does anybody really believe this?  That a to-do list is merely an innocent visual reminder of things one might otherwise forget to do?  Hah!  Not so!  A to-do list is designed as an insidious finger-pointing device; with that insidious NEON finger pointing directly to an array of gnarly character flaws we all seek to keep well hidden, particularly from ourselves.  Sloth.  Disorganization.  Inability to prioritize.  Inability to give a damn.  Inability to complete a task.

 

Fear.  Failure. 

 

At the very least, a to-do list is the first billboard on that Highway to Hell:  The Guilt Trip.

 

So, when a friend posted on Facebook:

 

Cynthia Durham Randolph

Monday via mobile .

Another day, another to do list unchecked.

I had to comment that I had given up to-do lists for Lent.  And every other week of the year.

And that, I thought, was that.  Clever, succinct and heart-felt.

But then another friend of my friend posted this comment:

o    Carrie Kemerer Harrington @ Lisa, how about starting a ta-DA list instead? It is a list of all the stuff you actually got done. Making that really helps you see how much you really do get done instead of making you feel bad about what you didn't do.

How simplistic, I scoffed.  How kindergarten!  How “Chicken Soup for the Soul!”

 

How…great of an idea is this?  Really?

 

What a simple way to morph the list from a cat-o-nine-tails into a pat on the back?  A “Look what I DID!” instead of a “Look what I COULDN’T do…”  One big smiley face with no other competing emoticons hanging around in the margins.

 

So today, I started my first “Ta-DA” list.  So far, it has only two things on it.  But that’s two more things than it had on it when I got up this morning.

 

And as soon as I post this, I’m going to add “wrote about ta-da list.”  Because I think this definitely qualifies.

 

Ta-DAAAAAA!!!!

I Heart Pictures

It appears that my literary muse is on hiatus.  I won’t say I’m choking on writer’s block.  There is a lack of passion in my life right now, and passion is what usually leads me to pick up my laptop and clatter away as if possessed.  Life is not terrible.  It’s just not remarkably anything at the moment.

It’s like being in the Doldrums.  I mean the actual Doldrums—the place upon which the popular expression is based.  The place where tall ships would languish for weeks until a change in weather patterns conjured up enough of a breeze to set them free and on their way again:

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
' Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, no breath no motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean

(From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner)

 

The weather is fine—the sun shines, no storms or danger on the immediate horizon; but it’s beyond tedious, and I’m not getting anywhere.  So, not the greatest place to pass too much time.  And not a place to inspire stories that would interest anyone else.

 

So I’ve been spinning my creative wheels a little, but have not been altogether without outlets for my right-brained talents.  I have been working at re-staging my plethora of chotchkes (which means stowing the winter decor and rolling out the spring and summer stuff.)  I’ve worked a little with some of my jewelry-making toys.  But mainly, ever since our trip to Klamath in January (which turned out to be an incredible photogasmic experience), I’ve been carrying on a love affair with all my digital photos—old and new. 

 

Digital photography.  What a miracle!  I have ten years worth of photos on my computers or saved to cd’s or thumb drives.  It’s so amazing to just pick up the Dell and start flipping through old pictures with a tap of the touchpad.  Both my laptops have the “slide show” gadget running on the desktop (a Windows 7 feature), and I use the “photo gallery” screen savers on all my computers.  It’s awesome to be so immediately surrounded by my personal pictorial history.  So much easier—and less allergenic—than unearthing big dusty boxes or crackly old photo albums.     

 

I’ve spent hours deeply immersed in playing around with my pictures.  It’s a bit more sedentary an activity than is really good for me, but it sure helps pass the dreary gray late winter days, when I can’t go outside and play in the yard.   

 

I started out just looking through old pictures, posting some on Facebook.  Then I decided to get involved with the task I mentioned in my previous post—restoring what pictures I can locate to their proper places in my archived “Coming to Terms…” posts.  And the combination of playing with pictures and dabbling in my seasonal redecorating led to picking out some of my best bird pictures and playing with them in my photo programs in an attempt to turn them into “art.”

I had a lot of fun with that.   “Artified” photos plus mats and frames from Goodwill adds up to some dirt cheap one-of-a-kind framed art for some naked walls that have been crying out for embellishment practically since we moved into the house twelve years ago. 

 

The bird pictures have turned out wonderfully. 

 

 

 

And of course, I had to try my hand at some of my landscape photos.   

 

 

 

Those last 2 are all Photoshop.  Yes...I have sidled up to that frustrating Adobe program once again.  I still can't get it to do what I want...but I get some pretty amazing results clicking on random icons...

 

I'm no Monet or Degas or even Ansel Adams.  But I'm having a good time, anyway.

Renovation

I’ve never been one for routine, for rising in the morning and performing the same tasks in the same order day after day, week after week.  My husband does this.   He relies on sheer muscle memory to jump-start every day.   He says it gives him comfort and a sense of control of his life.  He says that if he does not go through the same motions in the same sequence every morning, he’s afraid he’ll leave something out.  Like, that he’ll be in the car halfway to work and look down to discover he’s not wearing pants.

 

It’s a skill I have never honed; indeed, a need I’ve never had.  In fact, I am quite in need of exactly the opposite.  I need variety.  I need every day to be different from the last, if only in some tiny way.  Routine bores me to madness and only exacerbates my middle-aged perception that life is slipping through my fingers faster and faster, unremarked and unremarkable. 

 

Still, if you spend enough years on the planet, you start to recognize the patterns that shape your days, unbidden as they may be.  This time of year—this maddening mid-winter creep toward spring—is traditionally a time of restlessness and tedium for me.  It was something I had nearly forgotten about myself.   During the café years, there was never time to be restless or bored.   I might have traded something very precious for the opportunity to BE bored in those days.  Last year, still In Recovery, I almost relished the concepts of restlessness and boredom.  So this year, I’ve been kind of taken aback by how much I hate being restless and bored.

 

It’s not that I don’t have a stack of shelved projects I could be working on.  I have a buffet-top that needs tiling and a dresser waiting to be refinished for my office/guest bedroom.  But since those projects would involve dragging me away from my cheerful fire and out to the cold, ill-lit (and still cluttered with old restaurant equipment) garage, they have little appeal.  I do, however, have one task that has been on a back, back burner ever since the demise of AOL J-land; one that keeps me busy and engaged in the wee hours of the morning when I might otherwise be doing midnight shopping on Amazon or playing game after game of Spider for no other reason than that a day of restless boredom has not tired me out sufficiently to require sleep. 

 

In 2008, after much work and worry (which I could ill afford in the middle of my restaurant tenure), “Coming to Terms…” was saved from the noose of the AOL J-land death sentence and transferred safely here to Blogger.  Or mostly, anyway.  Every picture I had posted in every entry for five years disappeared into the doomed AOL Hometown ether.  So though my words had been safely transported, the pictures were gone.  Reduced to empty squares with little red x’s.  And since many of my entries were 75% or more pictorial, this was a problem.  A problem with which I did not have the time or energy to deal.  Until now.

 

Luckily, most of the images I had posted to my journal had to be manipulated in some way.  I would choose a picture, crop it, shrink it, mess with it, and then save it to my desktop so I could find it easily once it came time to upload it.  Eventually, the desktop became so crowded with little jpeg files, I created a folder called “Pictures for Journal” into which it became my habit to sweep the files once I was done with them.

 

In this case, my chronic inability to throw things away did NOT come back to bite me in the ass.  It was a lifesaver.  Because the lion’s share of the pictures that disappeared into the ozone when my journal was exported to Blogger are right there in a virtual file where I can easily find them.  All I have to do is sift through five years of postings, one by one, go into the “edit” screen and re-upload (is that a word?) the appropriate pictures.  

 

I’ve been at it for a week or so, and I’m up to August of 2005.  In the back of my mind, I wonder why I’m doing this.  No one, NO ONE but me ever delves back into the archives of “Coming to Terms…”  What difference could it possibly make that some of the entries are meaningless or irrelevant without the pictures?  Or that some of the formatting got mangled in the transfer, or that some of the font colors I used eight years ago are illegible in my current template?  What does it matter?  Who cares? 

 

I care.  It matters a great deal.  To me.

 

With all its warts and boogers, silliness and memes, rants and whining, “Coming to Terms…” is one of the most important accomplishments of my life.  It is something with which I have stuck, through tears and anger, embarrassment and frustration, awkwardness and sanguinity, tentative optimism and hopeless pessimism, for almost ten years.  That’s longer than I’ve done anything in my life, besides be married.  This is a body of work of which I am immensely solicitous and protective.  Not just the writing, which at best shows brief flashes of brilliance but no consistent talent; but the growth, and the change (as well as the things that will never change), and the commitment it represents.  And the history.  The story of my life—at least for the past decade. 

 

Even if I am the only one who ever comes here, ever delves back into the archives, it needs to be good.  It needs to be all that it was…all that it can be.  I’m pretty sure I don’t cherish some secret hope that someday it will be discovered; that someday someone will come here and read, and come to know something valuable about my life and my times. 

 

I just know in my heart that “Coming to Terms…” needs to be in its best order. 

 

Just in case.      

The Old Logo

For anyone who is wondering, I posted this here so I could add the picture to my email signature.  For some reason, gmail wouldn't accept it from flickr--probably because flickr isn't owned by google.  :P