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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 have a form of mental illness. I don't know what category it falls under. Perhaps it is a neurosis or some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder or maybe it's just some hidden well of hope that bubbles up to the surface now and again, but it's definitely not normal. I know this because all those around me say it's not normal. See, I have this need to rearrange the furniture. Not constantly, just frequently. Maybe three or four times a year, tops. I can't say when the urge strikes or what causes it to strike, but once the thought of rearrangement sparks in my soul, I cannot stop thinking about it. I appear to be watching TV, or typing on my laptop, or even calmly knitting round and round as the leg of the sock on my needles lengthens, but what is really going round and round is the furniture on the imaginary floor plan in my head. Normal people tell me everything is fine as it is. I know that they really just hate to be bothered with all the fuss when the furniture starts to rotate round the room. And no one welcomes the uncovering of secret sins hiding beneath the formerly stationary seating. Now the dropped wrappers and odd socks come to light, covered in dust and cat hair. It's all futile, really. The truth is that I hate all my furniture and the room is uncommonly boxy with doors and windows in exactly all the wrong places so that there is no good or right place for a long sofa, or the right angle for the chair so that the television is well in view or even a spot where the light from the window or the lamp is not glaring off the TV screen. Still, deep down inside, I harbor a tiny hope that if I just keep moving the furniture around, I may accidentally hit upon the arrangement that makes it all agree with each other and nestle into a logistic harmony with the room's construction. Until that happens, I am doomed to keep it all revolving. |
| Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of rock stars...* Ric Ocasek of The Cars just died. It was a bit shocking, mostly because up until this past Sunday, when he died, I didn’t know he was 75. I suppose he was bound to be, but I hadn’t seen him in years so he was still young-ish in my memory. Eddie Money died, too. He was only 70. But he looked older. It’s not a big shock when rock stars die, they do it all the time. These days, there are many rock stars who are dying because they’ve reached that age - the one past which few can continue if they’ve abused their bodies with sex, drugs and rock & roll for several decades (Keith Richards is the obvious exception that proves the rule). But these deaths are depressingly predictable and don’t really hit one with the same emotional impact as the deaths of rock stars did when I was young. Back in my day, rock stars did not die of old age or natural causes. They died young. They died suddenly. One minute they were all vibrant rebellion and energy, the next they were an example that parents could use to support their opinion that rock & roll was an evil perpetrated upon the younger generation. My generation. Baby. Our parents weren’t entirely wrong, some of those rockers were a very bad influence. I could listen to Janis all day, but no young woman should emulate her lifestyle. Drugs and alcohol took out far too many of our idols - Janis, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix - the list goes on and on. These senseless deaths were so at odds with their dynamic talents and stage presence. And we were all so young, then. Nowadays, when a rock star dies at some age numbered in the 60s or 70s, it only reminds me that when I was young, they were young. The thought that the opposite is now true is equally as depressing as the news of their deaths. *apologies to William Shakespeare |
| I wondered if it's alright to moan a bit on my blog. Blogs are random and spontaneous, no? Therefore, they should be outlets for all sorts of things - within reason, of course, this is a family-friendly blog. And I fully expect these musings to be largely ignored before they are washed away. I know we all have a love/hate relationship with reviews. We love the good ones and hate the bad ones. And I do moan a lot over bad reviews, but that is mostly because I am an undisciplined brat. But some reviews just leave me scratching my head. I enter a lot of contests. I enter a lot of contests with short windows and tight word counts. So, I often have quite a few items that are short - very, very short. For instance, the "Tweet Me a Story" contest requires a character count of no more than 140. Total. And there's a 25 word contest and a 24 syllable contest, etc. There are flash fiction contests with strict word counts. I try to be clear when things are written to prompts and word counts. So, it leaves me completely puzzled when a reviewer of a 24 syllable poem tells me it would have been better if I had made it longer. Or a 300 word flash fiction is marked down because some background needed to be expanded, etc. The answer, of course, lies in the description of the item. The poem, or whatever, cannot be made longer. But I can be made crazy. I hope that when I review things that were contest entries that I consider the form and word count and prompt limitations placed on the author and try to appreciate the work within those guidelines. Okay, moaning over. We return you to our regular programming. |
| I got an email today from an online furniture retailer which encouraged me to consider "accent chairs". This intrigued me. What sort of accents would these chairs have? Or would they alter the accent of the occupant when sat upon? I could not resist, so I clicked on the link. I will admit that many of these chairs had accents far too posh to be in my house. They would look at the state of the rest of my furniture and refuse to speak, of that I am sure But others had me scratching my head. The cow chair, for instance, upholstered all over in brushed black and white Holstein. I guess the accent is "bovine", and perhaps it is easy to Moo-ve (okay, groan). There was one chair that had me completely puzzled, however. It appeared to be made from the twisted and gnarled branch of a very old tree. I looked at it from all sides (thanks to the 360 function on the website's photos) and for the life of me, I could not figure out where one sits. What I do know is that it looks ridiculously uncomfortable. It is available from the company called - wait for it - Loon Peak  ! for a little over $5,000 (marked down from $12,000).I decided that accent chairs are not for me. Nothing can tie my decor together, it isn't meant to have a theme. If I go furniture browsing again, I shall look in the "ugly-but-comfy" section. |
| The email says that it's been 4 days, 14 hours, and 42 minutes since I last updated my blog. That was when I created my blog, actually. I have never updated it. But I get an accounting of how long ago my last non-update was. It's as if I just signed up for daily reminders. I am not saying that daily nagging isn't a good thing. It guarantees that I will have a message in my inbox each day. In a way, it's an AI friend so I don't feel all alone. But, it takes four good nagging emails before I attempt to blog, so not the most effective reminder. If it came as an audio file that played a high-pitched whine until I wrote in my blog... nevermind, that wouldn't work either - I can turn the speakers off. The problem is that I created a blog without a plan. And that was 4 days, 14 hours and some minutes ago. Let' s see what happens tomorrow. Will there be a reminder? |
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Not quite what I meant. "Pufts" was a sidelong reference to the famous dog show, Crufts