Abyss

Things are all wrong.  Oh, so wrong.  I should give up being irritated, scared, hurt, anxious, and just let the things go badly as they will, because now that what little callous to my exoskeleton structure has been worn away, the karmic vultures are smelling the soft fleshy parts, calling on their comrades, and picking away at it too. 

Okay, so that is simplistic and rather disgusting.  It’s just that since before Christmas, I seem to be on a steady decline.  I thought I was toughening up, and then the roof starts threatening to cave in again, the computers get petulant, garage doors and air conditioners decide to thwart our years of attempts at shoddy patchwork.  Add to that, the dryer, a leaky faucet, and two screaming children… and a loyal companion who is dying.  I know, I know.  Everyone goes through things like this, many go through worse. 

I think I could have sucked it up and dealt with all of the other stuff in its own time, or been able to ignore it, but D’Artagnon, I cannot ignore.  He is like another child of mine, and the thought of dealing with what comes next puts me in a deep, deep despair.  It isn’t fair that pets live not nearly as long as we do.  It isn’t fair.  I owe him some make-up walks…lots of them.  I owe him more hugs and snuggles than it seems we have time for.  More than that, I owe those things to Tillie as well.

I know they are getting old, and that is painful beyond words.  It panics me more than other concurrent crises.  Is that foolish?  For the first time, I am begining to think that not having dogs or cats is preferable to going through the pain of losing them.  Not just of losing them, but of watching them grow old, like a super, time-lapse version of one’s children. 

Agonized,

Pru

Whos in the Fridge?

About a week and a half ago I started a sour-dough bread starter.  It did a little bubbling, I stirred it, it stopped bubbling, I kept stirring it.  Finally, today, I made the bread.  I have to say that it was a long process, and not really worth the wait, as the bread tastes like, well, white bread.  Possibly, the cookbook I used is best suited for elderly white Floridian tastes (read: no taste at all).  No matter who it was designed for, I now have two giant loaves of rather tasteless white bread. 

While I was adding the room temperature starter to the flour and yeast, I realized how absolutely insane it was to add something to my life that also needed to be fed and cared for…but which has less personality than mud.  I couldn’t fathom having to “feed” such a group of creatures on a ten-day regimen.  It seemed ludicrous.  All I could think of was the Horton and the Whos.  So, I am back to making regular bread that does not require the lives of billions of organisms to be kept refrigerated, let out to warm up, fed, etc.  It was an interesting idea, and I am not upset that I tried it, but I don’t think I will be doing it again, unless by chance I should forget that I tried it…and that is not unlikely (particularly given that the bread has no flavor).

Pru

Kinder than it was

To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, it seemed very kind; to my longing and famished thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than it was. 

So little had I hoped, so much had I feared; there was a fullness of delight in this taste of fruition—such, perhaps as many a human being passes through life without ever knowing.  The poor English teacher in the frosty garret, reading by a dim candle guttering in the wintry air, a letter simply good-natured—nothing more:  though that good-nature then seemed to me godlike—was happier than most queens in palaces.

            Of course, happiness of such shallow origin could be but brief; yet, while it lasted, it was genuine and exquisite: a bubble—but a sweet bubble—of real honeydew.  –Villette

I’ve spent a good deal of time with Charlotte Bronte lately, and though I have always felt a certain attraction to her work, it seems ever more pertinent the older I get.  I have lately wondered, if I haven’t subconsciously modeled my life on Lucy Snow and Jane Eyre.  Thinking back, I am almost certain that I must have.  Too many hours spent with Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, can’t have helped much either.  So, here is the rub:  Is it a fiction that any of these women are fighting against anything real and truly repressive?  Is it a fiction that they are any different from the over-primped coquets, or trollops?   I don’t know.

If a woman’s means of fighting against oppression is to assume a more masculine character, as Lucy does, is it safe then to say that she also becomes part of the oppressive culture?  If she must become characteristically more stoic, less emotive, and more self sufficient, does the prolonged denial of feeling make her feel less?  Even with Lucy’s outburst of “over-excitement” above, she tempers it by telling herself, and the reader, that she will never be loved with passion, never be thought of like the flirty girls are, and never be written to in the manner she admits to thinking Doctor John’s letters are first written.   Do we all read more into things that mean so much to us that we are blinded by our over-emotional interpretations?

I feel as though I feel less all the time.  Maybe that’s a skewed perception, but that’s how it feels.  Things are declining in a way that I can’t fully describe, other than my view of humanity is always in jeopardy of making life one futile, long game of scrabble.  You know, the big words don’t win you the most points, necessarily, it is most likely strategy that does it.  Strategy, being something I apparently lack. 

When I was a child, I was certain that I would grow up.  Certain that I would fill out.  Since neither of those scenarios have  come to pass, I have often found myself spending too much time comparing myself to other women.  It’s a nasty thing women do, and I constantly question its purpose, but questioning it doesn’t diminish the compulsion.  So, I stare at myself in the mirror, and try to figure out what makes me less.  What makes me feel less.  I have lots of answers for that.  What I lack, or what I have too much of.   In doing so, I realize that the problem is competition, and that I feel like I am no longer worthy of competing, if ever I was.  Lucy never did that. 

I do though, find that I cling to words more than ever before.  Clingy, clingy, clingy…I guess I need to stoic-it-up.

Pru