If Even Havoc From the Heavens

A person I know gave up their Dreams and is now living a happy and fulfilling life. 

The added sixth of a chord is an increasingly bull's-eye solution to a mental ear problem I've been having.

Heroism in Scandinavian mythologies shakes within me more so than that of other cultures' stories. 

Is "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morissette one of the best popular love songs ever? 

Should I just give in to sleep and attempt this blog again tomorrow?

If I had a million dollars for each month spanning this post and the prior, I would be a quasi-nonomillionaire, and could retire for–well, not as much in the old days, now that, thanks to inflation, time isn't worth what it once was. You would have my apologies, if I believed it were my duty to process posts at regulated speed; the sorries would be for me anyway, since this is mainly for myself. Name check this blog's title. 

There is upon my desk a stuffed frog of love, an amphibian of Valentine's, that I bought when I worked at Walmart, because his face mirrored mine so well in its dejected sense of "so, this is what my life has come to be?" A common enough facial setup these days: a slant of straight mouth line slightly askew, and eyes looking into the distance, as though one were looking across some sunny wideness of plains and wondered where all the stuff was. Every now and then I would look at this forlorn frog and sigh an agreement, and then return to my dear, Netflix.

Are we born a clean slate of plains or mountains? My own story makes the plains personally important; I'm sure you can figure yourself out. Unlike some people, or most people–I don't know, I don't speak for the people–I am fascinated by these vast stretches of land. I have several times traveled I-55 between St. Louis and Chicago, and I am rarely bored from simply staring out the window. One of the earliest dreams I remember having involved me, little child I was, being sucked out the window of our moving car and into the mysterious fields, entering some kind of Midwestern Wonderland. Anyway, what do I find alluring? The solitary things that appear neither suddenly nor slowly, but at your own pace, whether rising from the horizon or peeking round the imaginary corners we build in our moving space. Or awake, and after gazing about you see a loner tree; then connect-the-dots to a stream nearby; cast the line further into the years, as the stream supports a shelter, which brings in more refugees, who build further and further for the city they themselves project in the future. It is a city of streams, for these refugees have only their sadness for materials; it is a city called in the tall-tales Dodge, for people are always getting outta it. Sleep again, and wake again, but now eye a different patch of sky, where naught but dirt is considered population. Here will other refugees settle, but they will hit pay dirt, for it is fertile; and they will hit pay dirt because they are refugees to and not from: they are the hardy folk, and they build a city of constant directions, for their materials are visions and hopes and dreams. Oh, but will it withstand the weather of the plains? What wanderers will find themselves in your plains, and what shall they find, and what shall they add? Just as most gatherings of hovels never become more, so to will loss fall about. Just as aged and aging farming towns stick to the country lands, so to will the strong feelings wither about. But benefit is every when, and who is to deny a thing its springtime, even though it should happen in winter?

Hey, though, the spring of my soul is aligned with the spring of the times, and as harvest begins, I can early-call a bounty of a good year, a year that could weather the bad times of January and any possible difficulties of these last months. If even havoc from the heavens, 2014 is a better year than 2013. Survival blossoms into thriving. Wandering ivy clambers towards the sun. There is direction in more and more sensibilities. 

This is the crop yielded from six months of love. Reader, i.e., myself, he loves me, he is here, fa la la la fa la. And I sing, how I do sing, in return as well, "he loves thee." Into the char and ash of my smoldering bitterness he happened, and now the greenery has returned, and forecast into the bleak midwinter it will continue. A charge zings through these plains within, and all locales are electrified. Are those new windows in the small town store? Is that a new family renovating the rundown farmstead? Now is the tingle of possibility before blossom.

Two months ago I got another person to call niece, and a few weeks ago she was over here. Considering her size, the stuffed toy I thought most appropriate was the forlorn frog on my desk. Since then, he has not made his way back. 

There is a new sound trying to find its way out in my (instrumental) music, and the plaintive qualities of the added 6th are intriguing to the point of being decided upon.

And perhaps the Dream wasn't necessarily abandoned; for me, just as I was giving up again, my dream was revived unexpectedly.

Finally, cynics beware: from the moment he walked in the joint, he had already won me over.

A Ciao for Now, In Which I Restrain Myself

The weather comes down upon us, releasing more and more in its build towards a wicked winter these next few days. Before the temperature could drop further and the winds rise faster, I took a quick stroll around, sifting through the powdery snow more than walking on it; it was pleasant, even with this slight cold I have (and unexplainable pain in my left foot). A shade, though, was threatening to form all that while, this bitter chill casting light upon my self and in the shadow revealing a dark aspect I have been stifling. Blow, freeze, bite, the winter wind is urged on, for the vicious forces of nature do not pain as much as the vicious forces of our hearts. And boy do I know those vicious forces.

I am leaving Facebook, for now, perhaps permanently--we'll see. It is become burdensome to keep myself from bitching, kvetching, and otherwise caterwauling on a platform that gives breath to some of the problems I would thereof complain: non-productivity, loneliness, and most bitterly, comparison. Seeing pictures of trips, reading about the latest successes--Hell, just yesterday two of my FB friends married and another celebrated his first anniversary, and I don't even have night cheese to work on--all of this and more has inbred such bitterness that I can't continue to let it fester, so I'm killing at least two birds with one stone with this profile deactivation: removing such immediate sources of comparison, and freeing myself to actually do things, or maybe stuff. When I first signed on, I was reluctant, mocking those for whom the Internet was more of a home than physical ones, and now I am become an object of my derision. But I got an account as I said, because social pressure (i.e., the cool kids were doing it); however, it seems all the cool kids these days are diversifying their (social media) accounts and Facebook is, like, so last Tuesday (tchya, as if). I'm not a cool kid, though, so I'll be selling my stock, to speak figuratively, and ridding myself of a bad...something (blew the metaphor!). (Actually, I'll be deleting my shortlived Twitter account as well, because I don't use it.) ...Investment! That's the word I was looking for--I think. Fording this stream-of-consciousness, when I started I limited myself to two or three FB visitations a day, checking notifications, scanning the News Feed, and then being done with it. Now it seems FB allows me two or three visitations a day with the physical world, excepting real obligations, and that has to stop. Knowing myself, I can't just limit myself partially: it must be cold turkey or bust. 

What have I been restraining? The initial urges of envy upon seeing the latest engagement, the first signs of derision when reading about someone's dreams and goals, but most fully, bitterness and its incestuous relation regret. A few weeks ago I just sighed and said "I don't know anymore." Everything and nothing seems possible; each time a foothold is made, vexation after vexation is met, and I, for whom much used to come easily, would give up. But stronger yet is regret--and now a story:

A little boy, whose mind and heart breathed in knowledge for themselves and breathed it out for other like minds and hearts, discovered early on his delicate path through the shifting woods of life-- shifting, because in the wild, all around is scary when one is lost and meanders; when a way is found, though all does not become perfectly bright and clear, one can appreciate the dark beauty of the chaos of the trees and thickets. He knew that just as he loved learning, so too must others, and he would help them along. There was happiness for this boy to find this path so early, yet he carelessly ambled along it, taking for granted his abilities, his support, and his future. After all, despite some minor difficulties, it was all a clear and easy going. Into this naivety strolled the Well-Meaning Distraction and his accomplice the Convincing Counterpoint. Together, Distraction and Counterpoint filled the boy with other ambitions and other ideas, and their voices so resounded that the woods around seemed to second their every word, the echoes chiming in with affirmations of the boy's intelligence and likely greatness. For years these baubles were dangled like a carrot before a donkey, and as he aged the boy continued to believe he was on the same path, as the initial dream still remained in memory, until one day--or week, so inconspicuously it appeared--a faint siren call from behind joined the mix of chatter that Distraction and Counterpoint had continued with, and a kernel of confusion popped up. Then other voices from the wood would whiz past, against which the true meaning of the boy's two companions became clearer and clearer. Suddenly, the tonal mirror was complete and all he heard was his own voice--yet, so hollow and foreign it sounded that he didn't believe it was his. You, Reader, might think this to take the usual turn and that I will say "and yet it was," but that is not quite the truest picture, for in that doubt came through, with the help of Instinct, the boy's original Point, or at least his Point's sickly hand. For the truth is that it his voice saying these things, but while his mouth and vocal cords were moving in unison with those of Distraction and Counterpoint, the truest of his thought and feelings were trapped along Point; yet Point had heard that siren, heard the other voices, and stirred the confusion and shame which were necessary to shake open the boy. Seeing the threat to their work, all pretense from Distraction and Counterpoint was dropped and a bitter battle was fought around and within the boy, and for over a year there was much attrition. Yet Point, with focus ever on that siren call, kept gaining ground, until, when physical and inner natures both turned towards bleakness and cold, Point seized full control, and Distraction and Counterpoint began dissipating. With a freshness of sense long-since lost, the boy looked around--and was terrified. This was not the path he thought he was traveling; he had not been a boy for some time; and though his Point now revealed that the siren call was the voice of Original Vision, it could not help to discern from whence it came nor how to find it. Turning this way and that, all that was lost was returning to him, but he himself was lost, and he just didn't know anymore. Yet, with ear turned carefully to the siren, he began one step after another.

What shall I--[cough], I mean, our hero--do to get back to what he was meant to do, which is to teach? What further anguish must be endured? Find out next week when return to the exciting adventures of--and you get the picture, regret at losing what had once seemed so obvious. But I don't want to fill myself with regret anymore, nor distraction, so that dissipation of those two misleading characters must continue, and part of that, at the moment, is removing myself from Facebook. Granted, even as write this it all sounds so dramatic for such a trifle as a social media thingamajig, but we don't always get to pick our peculiar downsides. 

If there's something I really won't miss, it's all the FB people who don't have even a modicum of self-control that I will allow myself to applaud myself for having. I mean, wow, I thought I had problems, but you're deluding yourself if you think your naked narcissistic aggression is somehow a sign of strength, confidence, intelligence, or beauty; most importantly, all of it is interesting only as a warning. (Of course, being narcissistic, you are already delusional.) There, I will allow myself one unrestrained comment, and I feel better.

This doesn't mean I'm removing myself to a hermitage, just focusing on the actual and physical realm instead of the digital one. I still want to see friends, speak to friends, even write to friends should that occasion arise. I am, however, in tandem with renouncing the social media world turning from the dating world. That's a whole kettle of stinking, unattractive, self-obsessed, emotionally squashed--sorry, my bitterness is showing--fish, but that has proven a destructive area for me and for now am not actively seeking it. Sure, should someday he'll come along, the man I love...and he'll be big and strong...and maybe that'll be tomorrow, and I hope to ever be open for that, but gone for now is the heartaching search.