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In Your Eyes

December 24, 2011 by Cynthia

Made stew yesterday.  Had the strangest feeling I had worked with meat and plants many times – for millennia.  And I have.

Washed a pot today, same feeling,  a thousand years of wash-up, store, reuse.  Not the realm of deja vu, but of Being, once and again.

For all their diversity and unique individual nature, humans are collective creatures.  Experience, pain, action, inaction, curiosity and so much more.  Cellular, physiologic, emotional, and spiritual inheritance.  We flow – through day, lifetime, epoch – despite incessant belief in bodily punctuation.

The fundamentals,  food, shelter  – the needs of you, of me, of those that walked before,  and those that will walk after.  Witness, live, and relive the coarse rich necessity of our species.  Energy passing through skin, bones, blood, inhabiting new lives, seeing with old eyes.  Storied.

I have lived for a thousand years.

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Good Words

December 15, 2011 by Cynthia

A good and dear friend forwarded me the following opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities.  I pass them on here, with a comment on their appropriateness for this day, this age – for so many.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period….

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Can I Just Say…

December 12, 2011 by Cynthia

Tis the season – eggnog, holiday feasts – the latest toys.  Last year I was taken aback by Video Barbie.  She of platinum blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, and lens disguised as  pendant around her svelte neck.  Only word I could muster was creepy.

But lo, this year my eyes have fallen upon a toy better deserving.  Monster High Dolls.  Check out Frankie Stein, suitably pallid, with scar – and according to the Mattel website, a cool ghoul with killer design details.

As a longtime student of  folklore surrounding the supernatural – phantasms, banshees, and vampires, I understand the lure of Beyond.  Hans Holzer could not have found a more dedicated admirer when I was not yet a teen.  And there is always a literary vampire lurking somewhere – before Stephanie Meyer was Ann Rice, long predated by Bram Stoker… ah, Renfield.

Before and after those – there will always be the friend, parent, or stranger draining away life energy that does not belong to them.  The real undead, the vampires among us.

And now ghoul dolls, sold to young girls to strut and style long black and grey hair.  Video Barbie gave evidence of one disturbing cultural preoccupation, Monster Dolls, yet another.   Outside of folklore, rotting flesh is not a domain of immortality nor of entertainment.  Death is not cool, dead dolls even less so.

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Sign of the times

December 10, 2011 by Cynthia

They gave out small books and stickers instead of candy at Halloween one year.  At Christmas, their outside decorations always brought a smile – they did it up right.

There was no For Sale sign.  Just a rusted red metal bin with the words Cheap Dumpsters parked in their drive two days ago.  Full of yard toys, household things.

Today as I walked by, occupants of three trucks providing Mortgage Field Services carted out a bed frame, a couple of boxes.  Whoever left –  took only what they needed.

There are a number of houses for sale in this neighborhood.  A realtor with a young couple looked over a foreclosure on the corner down the street.  Sale pending across the street from that one – owners maybe got lucky.  Moving on does not mean moving up around here.  Sign of the times.

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What it holds

December 7, 2011 by Cynthia

My garden is small, but it contains the world.

Few years back I took up the lawn and an extra gravel parking space on the south side.  Xeriscape and a few other things took hold – memorializes my western leanings.

In spring it comes alive, summer is lush, autumn – a microcosm of eternity.  Winter, snow covered, quiet but for the birds seed picking.  Throughout each season colors impossible,  jutting, drooping, soft and stiff textures.  Residue of human occupancy, nature of many types come to call.

To walk, or sit awhile here is to sink, to the small world, the leaves, seeds, and weeds, that are everything.

Leaves off the aspen grove, the hummingbirds and butterflies – jewels of summer – gone for now.   Distant memories of the smell of rich summer soil, baking heat, hidden shades of green, wood.  A child’s  perspective that small spaces hold so much – and they do.

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All dressed up…

December 7, 2011 by Cynthia

Barbecue grills covered, Christmas decor up and lit around the burg,  road potholes patched pending incumbent weather.  City Works fellas out today pounding wooden stakes to mark road edge for snow plows – and there are no significant winter storms forecast.

Ready and waiting.  Sometimes life is like that.

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Up on the roof

November 29, 2011 by Cynthia

Tis the season.  I had the Christmas lights up on the roof before Halloween this year.  Beat the holiday rush – and inclement weather.

Nice view from the roof.  Birds-eye, tree tops instead of roots, where things are going – results, not beginnings. Repaired a few things.  Laid flat for a spell,  watching clouds.  Private.  Very few passerby look up.

Fear of those heights crippled me on the roof a few years back.   Used the cell phone to call the Neighbor to talk me down.   Thanks again Neighbor.

Now two stories up and on the edge, fear gets no truck with me.  Job needs to get done.  Emotion a luxury in the face of things – like shingles – that need repair.

Thanksgiving saw the lights turned on, pretty nice.  Tis the season.

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Signs

November 22, 2011 by Cynthia

On walkabout, cloudless, sunny cold day.

Rounding  the street, my mind happened on an idea worth pursuing.  Simultaneously my eyes caught an airplane splitting the vault of the sky evenly by contrail.

Atmospheric conditions being what they were, the disappearing contrail followed the plane closely, a daylit  shooting star down the western horizon.   Airy exclamation point on thoughts worth considering.   Maybe a good sign.

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Resting place

November 20, 2011 by Cynthia

It seemed a beautiful cat, large, well-loved.  Rich black spots against white, full curling tail, warmly asleep on a golden rug.

But dead.  Flung by vehicle impact  into a bed of still brilliant yellow leaves at roadside.  Mourners passed at 50 mph.

Asleep.

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Mirror mirror

November 20, 2011 by Cynthia

Caught myself crying in the mirror.

Strangely beautiful.

I do not know why.

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