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 Thoughts destined to be washed away by the tides of life. |
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I've been studying my cover photo for a while now, and it seems to me that it is more than just a photo of what is there that can be seen, more than just three white rocks stacked on a beach. It contains an important question about the future, about what happens long after the photographer has gone. What will happen to our pile of stones when the tide comes in? Will it topple or has the architect built this structure at a safe distance? I don't know what will happen to these words that I stack here on the sand. They may prove safely distant, or they may be swallowed up by a rush of self-doubt. They may be here for a season. They may lose their balance and be scattered by the shoreline, or be hidden away under shifting sands. Perhaps someday, the tides of life will reclaim them. Or maybe that's just a bunch of poetic, romantic nonsense. After all, this is just a blog. |
| I mentioned to someone the other day that if I didn't seek out the information, I could go all day without knowing if it was sunny or cloudy or whether it was night or day. I like to cover windows for privacy. But a window they can't see into, is a window I can't see out of. And then I was looking for something to write about and came across this prompt from "EXPRESS IT IN EIGHT "  :WRITE A POEM ABOUT SOMETHING YOU AREN’T SURE OF The two concepts seemed to go together, especially for an indoor writer, thus: The Cloistered Life The sun may be rising or it may be that sunset will fall. I don’t know if it’s raining, Or if leaves have started to fall. Though I cannot see, I think (but could not to it swear) that beyond the shaded windows the world is still out there. |
Recently, Beholden  wrote about politics and the wisdom of avoiding them here. I agree with that, but not everyone does. Some members often mention politics - not in a piece of writing, but as an informal post in the newsfeed - and with such a casual air that it is obvious they expect universal agreement. I find that amazing. I expend much effort to avoid responding and disrupting their confidence. |
| For the last week or two I have been fighting an infestation of what I eventually determined to be drugstore beetles. They are a form of pantry beetle that enjoy dry goods. I thought I had found their source a few days ago but they kept coming. I finally decided to do a complete clean-out of all the cupboards and found some surprising things. For instance, who bought a box of protein pancake mix, opened up the box, left the box open so that the flour-y contents were completely exposed and then hid the bug hotel they’d just created way in the back of an upper shelf behind everything else? I also found myself questioning the packaging that manufacturers choose to put their food into. It’s almost as if they want to encourage staleness and bug infestation so they can sell you more sooner. Nah, they wouldn’t do that. So anyway, I have eradicated the beetles, their breeding and dining spots and a lot of forgotten dry goods that were lost in the dark corners of high shelves. And just for good measure, I moved all the food to another cupboard and switched it with the dishes so if the bugs do come back they’ll be confused by all the empty plates. |
| I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of being told that I'm doing everything the wrong way. You know what I mean, all those videos on TikTok and X and Facebook that show you how to do everyday things in these new and inventive ways that you never thought of because you've been doing it wrong all your life. Now, these videos usually have titles like: “My mother taught me this”, or "My grandmother showed me this", or “I learned this from an expert”. This is to make you think that it's some secret knowledge that you never were taught because your mother, grandmother or chosen expert were total morons like you. Today, I watched a reel on Facebook of a woman showing me how to fold a towel. Apparently I've been doing it all wrong all my life. See, I just hold the towel in my hands and fold it up, first in half then into a rectangle or a square or whatever shape fits my closet best. I have in fact folded towels many different ways through the years depending on where I was storing them. However, it seems that the right way to fold a towel is to lay it down on the floor. Then you get down on your knees on the floor. Fold up one end about five inches or so. And then go to the other end of the towel and roll it up until you get to the folded bit, which you then wrap over the rolled towel. That holds it in place, like a cover, so to speak. Now you have a cylindrical towel. Now, my mother didn't teach me to do it this way. She definitely didn't. Neither did my grandmother or any expert that I've ever met before. All of the aforementioned taught me the wrong way. And for a very good reason. It works. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my old fashioned and very wrong method of folding towels is easier and quicker than getting down on the floor on my hands and knees, laying a fresh clean towel on the floor and then rolling it up into a tube that isn’t going to hang very nicely on my towel rack. Maybe it's me, but I don't think these mothers, grandmothers and experts with all these fancy new ways of putting garbage bags in your cans, straining your pasta, opening cans in the apocalypse or rolling up your towels on the floor ever actually existed. Because all the mothers and grandmothers and experts that I know taught me to do things all the wrong ways. All the wrong ways that these videos attempt to correct. Funny thing is, these wrong ways have worked perfectly well all my life and continue to do so. And I don't have to get down on my hands and knees on the floor to do any of them. |
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As usual your poetry is always a pleasure to read.
