Random Thoughts
This morning, I don’t have a thought in my head except that I am enjoying the sunshine after yesterday’s grey sloppiness. I saw sparrows and a nuthatch at the feeders this morning and that also made me happy. My coffee tastes exceptionally good and am looking forward to working some more on the kimono sweater (nearly finished the second front) and the poncho (for which I rolled the dice last night - 32 rows of “Waterfall” coming up!)
Order is a nice thing to have - in moderation. Knowing where the measuring spoons are when I need them is good and it’s nice that the supermarket always puts the tomato soup in the same place every week.
Chaos can also be good. I could keep my stash in rigid order, synthetics here, blends here, cottons here, wools there, all ordered by weight and color. But then I wouldn’t get the heady explosion of colors when I open the cabinet doors that I do now. I have a general idea of where to find what I’m looking for. Even if I didn’t, pulling things out to search for something I know is there is a journey of reacquaintence with things I might have forgotten about.
I have started many journals over the last 30 years and they all fall off after about 6 months. I know how useful it can be to have that kind of reference to the person you were at a particular point in time, but something in me rebels at making that kind of regular notation. The connections I make with my former selves tends to be more lateral than straight-forward.
When I find a book (or a story, or movie or piece of music or art) that I love, I tend to go back to it again and again. These are my touchstones and if my reactions to them and appreciation of them changes, it’s because I have changed.
Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” overture was the piece of music that explained to me that Classical music could be interesting, entertaining and even invigorating. It is an old friend now and the last time I bought a CD player, I brought this CD with me to test the sound of the machine.
Likewise, Orion was one of the first constellations I was able to identify. When I first moved out of my parent’s house in New England, 2000 miles away to the midwest, I watched it from the window on the bus and didn’t quite feel as alone as I had thought I would. A friend was coming with me, you see. And it has become a habit to look for it wherever in the world I happen to be - my silent, glittering travelling companion.
Of course there are books. I have been a compulsive reader since my mother taught me how. “The Folk of the Air” by Peter S. Beagle, “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein, and “The Keys of the Kingdom” by A. J. Cronin and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee are all things I return to periodically. I’m not sure I can even quantify why they are so important to me but my library has never been without a copy of them.
And I spend a fair amount of time, as I’m sure we all do in our own ways, trying to unscrew the inscrutable. I don’t pursue answers to the question of life, the universe and everything out of desperation but because it pleases me to do so. Also, because I can’t not do it :)
My mind seems to have a knack for pattern recognition and I couldn’t turn it off if I wanted to. I suspect that’s at least part of the reason for the compulsive reading and acquiring of new information and abilities. You never know what kinds of things are going to connect up in your mind and the broader your information base is, the more likely those connections are to occur. Not that any of this takes place on anything like a conscious level, mind you…
Light and dark, order and chaos...it so often depends on where you’re standing. I find myself, more and more often these days, trying to acquire the middle ground so I can see some of each and there are occasional side trips into one or the other as well.
I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
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You are reading deLint! What a fine choice, though Spiritwalk is not one of his best, imo (not that it’s bad...). Have you read Someplace To Be Flying?
Yes - I think it was the first novel of his that I read, after “The Ivory and the Horn” collection. I keep checking out the new stuff but, sadly, it seems to be going downhill :(
