I am not sure how to interpret this advisory sign:
Beware of …?
Am I to understand that they lack cyclists there?
Or do they only care about one of the cyclists?
Should I watch out because one of the cyclists (and apparently all the hikers) are dangerous?
Or is the takeaway message if the hikers don’t get you, the cyclist will?
(Posted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge.)
I love to dig in my garden. My neighborhood lies in the foothills of a mountain range, so all the yards are full of rocks of many sizes which were shed from the mountains in ancient landslides.
When I dig a hole for a new plant, I am a rock archaeologist, discovering buried artifacts. Except I don’t have to be careful where I slam my shovel. Sometimes the rock is so weathered that I can pull it apart with my hands, exposing fresh glittering crystals in the local granite (technically a granodiorite, for other rock nerds).
When the shovel catches and bends, I know I’ve caught a big one. A boulder. Then I dig from many angles, eventually on my knees with my hands, to excavate it. Often a rock is lodged in place against several other rocks, still locked and buried. I have to use my fingers deep inside the hole to figure out which rock to move next in order to release my target. So removing a lodged-in-place rock requires working a 3D puzzle with your eyes closed.
And when I finish the puzzle, I have a hole for my plant and new borders for my garden.
The undug.
This post topic comes from The Daily Prompt.
We could debate whether silver linings exist in reality or in attitude but the answer may not matter. Either way, from my perspective, the ability to perceive silver linings is essential to happiness, contentment, and peace of mind. Silver linings are all about the ability to hope, to get past the inevitable bad and ugly times with the belief it gets better. Many other people have thought about this, too, that’s why we have anonymous sayings like
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
or the Springsteen lyric
It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.
or Eugene O’Neil’s
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
I know a young woman who tried to kill herself this year. Twice. In between, she found a boyfriend – apparently also preoccupied with death – who did then kill himself. I have struggled and flailed to find the right words or argument that would convince her to keep going, to not give up. But I realize it won’t be anybody’s words that turn her around. The desire to live has to come from the inside.
When I was younger I was obsessed with not getting tricked or fooled and I was always determined to Know the Truth in every situation. I don’t think I care about that nowadays. I’m not saying I believe everything I read or hear. I’m not saying I’ve lost interest in truth. All I’m saying is that a suspicious nature takes a severe toll.
It is a fantasy to imagine I or anyone can live without illusions. Optimism is a kind of illusion. Optimists live longer and happier lives. (There are scientific studies about this so it must be true.) My current thinking is that I am going to believe that things will work out and life will evolve in good ways. Maybe on my deathbed I will say Wulp I was sure wrong about that. but in the meantime I will have enjoyed many days of hope and enthusiasm rather than bitterness and resentment.
Wildfires make nasty air.
Wildfires make gorgeous sunsets.
This post topic comes from The Daily Prompt.
Because we must be insane, we have 5 cats. Two grown cats, Bop and Luna, age 10; and three teen cats age 8 months. The youngsters immediately displayed distinct personalities but are all as friendly and as loving as can be.
Bop (left) and Luna. Bop needs an attitude adjustment. Luna is an object of worship. In ten years together this is the only time they have ever hung out together!
One of the grown cats, Luna, tolerates the youngsters but avoids them because whenever they spot him, all three converge to incessantly sniff him and follow him and try to get him to touch noses with them.
Grown cat Bop wants to be the only critter and she never will be, which has made her bitter. She is sweet to humans but chases the 45 pound dog; she is prone to unpredictable attacks on Luna (until Luna whaps her one); and she wants to kill the youngsters. Whenever she gets the chance she attacks youngsters Arrow and Bo.
Arrow and Bo, the most frequent victims.
Mostly we have kept her separate from the youngsters, which is even more of a pain than it sounds. Every so often we let them mingle, in hopes the youngsters will realize that they are now larger than Bop, and that if they stand up to her she will leave them alone. Bop is a classic bully. But so far the youngsters still run.
Recently, for the first time, Bop attacked the youngest cat, Leo, who started as a runt and doesn’t understand that he is now enormous. Leo’s is a goofy and gentle soul. He purrs when he eats. He plays with the dog’s tail.
Leo, the latest victim. Ferocious looking, isn’t he?
When Bop chased him, Leo got so scared he wet himself.
Now this is where the story gets good. After I sprayed Bop with water and locked her away, the other 10-year-old, Luna – the worshipped one – demanded to come inside.
He went over to Leo and touched noses with him several times, apparently in solidarity. Then he went back outside.
Leo pulled himself together a little and soon the other youngsters showed up to help Leo with his grooming. Within the hour he was back to his goofball ways.
P.S. Although this post makes light of it, I’d appreciate any advice about how and whether the youngsters can be put together with Bop. My son wants to get rid of Bop, but I can’t do that. She may be a mean asshole but she is part of the family.
Bop the villain, back when we had a rabbit. Bop loved to go in the rabbit’s cage, probably for the adrenaline rush. The rabbit attacked anyone who went near that cage. Bop and the rabbit were kindred spirits.
This is the symbol for infinity, a concept that gives me a headache and makes me feel privileged to be part of the universe. Even at its most routine and mundane, daily life takes place in this astonishing place that must go on forever, else there would be an outer edge with nothing beyond it. (Ow. Headache.) Infinity doesn’t induce headaches in mathematicians, though. Math, for all its rigor and precision, very comfortably accommodates infinity. There are infinities everywhere in math. An infinite collection of numbers exist between 0 and 1, for example. Also, you can do a calculation and get a result that goes to infinity but you can still know the quantity well enough to engineer a bridge based on that calculation.
When I look at the symbol for infinity I think, what goes around comes around. I think of the mobius strip. I dwell on karma. So many westerners including me wield the concept of karma as revenge. You’ll get what you deserve. Lately I’ve been attempting to exercise my very under-used sense of compassion. From this effort I realize that karma, viewed from the perspective of compassion, takes on a very different meaning. We are all in this together. You must face your karma just as I must face mine.
This symbol also suggests the Lazy 8 Dude Ranch. When I was a kid my parents took me on a Dude Ranch vacation. So mortifying. I couldn’t control my damn horse. It kept taking me back to the barn. (I never got the horse appreciation thing.) Recalling this, I speculate that perhaps memory loss increases with age because our brains become cluttered with pointless recollections like my dude ranch horse. And of course, with TV theme songs from the ’60s.
This post topic comes from The Daily Prompt.
Childhood was long ago but I clearly remember the pain and horror of boredom. Nothing to do, no one to play with, can’t go outside, and so forth.
I can’t remember the last time I was bored (except at certain work meetings or airports). Have I learned to embrace the moment and appreciate every day? Or have I dropped my expectations?
I no longer remember boredom but surely I must get bored. Tedious conversations and situations abound. I mean I drive in southern California, people. I must get bored but the boredom is no longer memorable.
Or maybe there’s a guilt component. I can’t be bored, I have too much to do.
Or maybe I remember childhood boredom because it was such a novelty. Maybe nowadays it is my status quo.
Maybe the boredom at work meetings is a key to understanding. Maybe what underlies boredom are issues of choice and control. Surely I still stream boring movies, start boring books. But – ha and aha – nowadays I don’t have to finish them. And if the opening act is no good I can always go play with my phone in the lobby.
I don’t seem to be coming to closure on this. How about for you? Are you more bored or less bored than you were 10 years ago? Than you were as a kid?
My name, Suzanne, has never inspired me. As a kid, I hunted for great artists and thinkers with the same name so that I could pretend they were my namesake. I found the minor league actress Suzanne Pleshette. Throughout my life I’ve been called Susan by mistake.
Once I got sprung from high school I ditched Suzanne except on forms, and I’ve been Sue ever since. That isn’t more fulfilling, but it doesn’t remind me of childhood. My grandmother used to call me Susie and I bet it would be fun to be a Susie but I don’t think it’s me. Maybe on a long holiday I should try it out, somewhere among strangers who could say it with a straight face.
For a while in high school, somebody called me Sudsy. Glad that one didn’t stick.
I was sort of mistaken for a Susie for a while. Back before cell phones, when we had names in curious artifacts called phone books, for a while I got a lot of calls from guys looking for a Susie. Apparently she met guys pretty much everywhere – bars, restaurants, laundromat, in line at the bank – chatted them up and then when they asked for her number she told them she was in the book. Except she wasn’t in the book; I was. Thanks Susie. One time I got a terribly early morning call from a distraught woman.
“Is this Susie? Susie Sunshine?”
“No this is definitely not Susie Sunshine.”
“Susie, this is serious. Listen carefully. Your brother has got a gun and he – ” In retrospect I suppose I regret stopping her before she got to the punch line.
But I digress.
I would love to have a great nickname, and I keep searching. Well. Without lifting a verbal, mental, or physical finger, I keep searching. I remain open to the possibility.
The closest I’ve come so far was also back in the day, when credit card companies sent unrequested cards in the mail. One of them mistyped my name. Suzane. We assumed the correct pronunciation was [Sue-ZANE] and a friend called me that for years. But the usage never spread.
I do enjoy all the names my kids have for me. Madre, Mumsters, Short Stuff are a scant few examples. I heard somewhere that numerous nicknames are a sign of love, so the more the better.
This post topic comes from The Daily Prompt.
Sorry to say you’ll have to make your own video, or picture it in your head. Whenever I grab the camera the moment is over.
I didn’t know my father well. He died last year (after several years of being mostly gone due to strokes). He wasn’t an easy person to understand. In the decades that I knew him, I could count on one hand the number of times that he went internal and talked about what was going on inside him. We are so different in that way – introspective is my favorite state.
Recently, something got me started remembering his driving.
When I was very young, I thought that freeways were an endless race. And considering the number of cars my dad passed, I thought we had a good shot at winning the race. If only we didn’t always have to exit to go to grandma’s house! He had an MG Midget which he adored and gave up because it had no room for kids. He knew everything about cars and spent much time tinkering with ours.
Conversely, coming back after any trip, when he got to our neighborhood, he would slow to a maddening crawl. Was he surveying his domain? Or reluctant to return home?
My stomach still clutches at the memory of drives back from family holiday get-togethers when he was dangerously drunk. One night he went on and on about how interesting it was to see double of everything: twice the lanes, twice the traffic signals. As soon as I got my driver’s license I became our designated driver. Thinking about this still infuriates me. It might be time to think about forgiveness. Now that I have learned about addiction (because Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict), I see that my father was probably a high functioning alcoholic. He drank every day. But it was the family gatherings that were most noticeably out of control.
Only after my father retired was I aware of him having much fun. (Did he change or did I grow up?) Golf was a big part of that retirement pleasure. My kids got their first driving lesson in his golf cart. They were 10, maybe, and for years afterwards gleefully informed me of all the stuff he let them try, as soon as they were out of my sight. He was a complete control freak but just as big a rebel when it came to other people’s rules. In this case mine.
During my recent visit to New York, during a sudden torrential downpour my rain parka pocket filled with water and drowned my phone. The Apple store rushed me in for urgent care but my phone could not be revived. I had to turn in my phone to get a new one. It was either that or go several days without my lifeline crutch thingy while traveling. Everything was Cloud backed up. Except for four months of photos. Except.
Most of my photos stink. That’s not the point. I don’t remember what all I lost. I guess that’s the point. I use my photos to capture all the days and moments of my life. Get-togethers with friends and family. Hikes. Concerts. (The concert photos are always especially bad, of course, and mostly photos of stage lights and the raised phone screens of other attendees.) Cats. The dog. Places I visit. I’ve been surprised at how big the hole feels to have lost this segment of my life. Fortunately it was only a few months. Only.
I never thought I would quote Reverend Jim, a well-despised character in my novel Scar Jewelry. But I now realize that at least one of his views is spot-on right. “Yeah that was sure a good scene, wasn’t it? What a moment. Nobody remembers the whole movie. Book. Concert. It’s the moments.”
[Insert bi-decadal, chagrinned, too-late reminder about regular backups here.]
Required Writing 