Category Archives: Other than literary days….

March 6, 2013 · 9:02 pm

Loving Half a Person, or, Love’s Complaints….

How often have you heard someone say the immortal (or rather significantly transient) words, “You know, I really love/like him/her, but sometimes his/her temper/pokiness/vanity/fastidiousness/false modesty/hairdo/stinginess/gregariousness/flightiness/shortness/slovenliness makes me angry/sad/amused/sick/etc.”?  It’s that old “I love that person, but…” disease.  And what it means is that one is trying to sort through someone else’s psyche and discard some annoying habit or quality that provokes or otherwise exasperates one, and keep only the “good” part or parts to cherish and foster.  We’ve all done it, even the most tolerant of us.

I’ve said that these words can be transient, but they can be transient in two senses, a positive and a negative.  The positive sense is one in which the words are uttered, accompanied by a sigh or swear words, and then shelved in the awareness that “no one is perfect, I love him/her anyway, I guess I should put up with it (after all, I have my own faults), there’s nothing I can do about it, I accept that life is just that way,” and so on and so forth.  These are the words and sentiments of those who like to think of themselves as realists, but who are perhaps even a tad optimistic in their outlook.  They think that what goes around comes around (in spite of the fact that sometimes it doesn’t, to judge by any newspaper’s headlines), and an ounce of toleration is worth a pound of bitching and griping in coming to grips with life’s unfairnesses.  These folks are the ones who by and large save at least themselves a lot of pain and emotional groping for a solution and avoid grief, because they go along their way with an amount of equanimity which sees them through the rough times and the uncertain fortunes of love and love’s qualms.  As the I Ching notes in one of its more tongue-in-cheek passages, love sends people up to the stars in joy and down to the depths of despair, and this variation in altitude is a matter of happiness or unhappiness, “left to the subjective opinion of the persons concerned.”  Since the oracle offers an opinion on almost everything else, this refusal to comment tells its own story.  Thus, having an even temper and an accepting frame of mind about life and its vagaries is decidedly an advantage.

The negative sense in which these words (“I love him/her, but…”) can be transient is that they can recur, time and time again, when what we are doing is not accepting a person’s foibles and traits, but instead have apparently forgotten in between times that these traits annoy us, and are instead complaining yet again about something which bothers us about this person.  This is what I’m referring to as “love’s complaints.”  But the source of love’s complaints goes even deeper:  it is that whereas we have fallen in love/like with a person’s “good” traits, we are trying to reject the traits which seem to us less “good.”  We are in fact loving half a person.  This puts us in the somewhat ludicrous position of the speaker in Monty Python’s song, who loves “Eric the Half a Bee,” a “hive employee” who lies “half-asleep upon my knee,” and whom the speaker is said to love “carnally…semi-carnally” (for of course it’s impossible to love something as small as a bee in any way whatsoever without making it a “half” or “semi” of something, once living, hence the crazy comedy of the song).

It’s perhaps stretching a point to suggest that making “half a person” is what we in fact risk doing when we describe someone’s characteristics to others or even in our own minds as less than satisfactory, but it’s nevertheless true that we do this.  We are not just criticizing, we are excluding.  We are saying that we only accept half of what is there, and sometimes when things go on long enough this way, we end up accepting even less than half, or rejecting the whole in an effort to attain wholeness of mind in our own psyche, where it’s often uncomfortable to exist in a half state.

So, what’s the solution?  We either end up accepting, once again, that people and life are not whole and perfect (though perhaps someone’s being constantly consistent would eventually begin to plague us as much as inconsistent imperfections), and are in fact like Andrew Marvell’s bird, “[waving in their] plumes the various light,” or we fail of humanity ourselves, variable creatures that we are.  For, humanity itself, loving and complaining as it does, seeks itself in other people, and we too have quirks and inequalities that make us less than satisfactory.  The only way not to be half a person oneself, thus, is to attempt to the best of our ability to love and accept our lovers and friends as fully as possible, because it is only then that we allow ourselves to exist in our fullest being.  This is not just moralizing and being sweet, it is a necessity of daily living, unless one would want to be constantly dissatisfied and complaining about all the adversities and unfairnesses of life, which would be grim indeed.  For, it is through extending ourselves to love not half a person or half-people, but whole people, even if we do sometimes find ourselves making “love’s complaints,” that we keep from grousing all the time, and find occasion to cherish.

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February 27, 2013 · 5:45 pm

“Misery loves company”–or, the downside of suffering alone and apart….

This morning is an ugly, rainy, windy (and in some locations) snowy and slushy day.  We’re due for one, right?  I mean, in the area I’m writing from, we’ve had three days or so of sunshiny though chilly weather, when even if it wasn’t particularly nice to go outside, it was pleasant to look through the window at sunbeams dancing across old snow mounds, dirty though they were.  So, you’d think I’d face a seasonably rotten day with equanimity, wouldn’t you?  Only, it’s been almost a week now since I’ve posted, and I have been feeling worse and worse every day because I’ve been stalling and kibbutzing and trying to get around it somehow, anyhow, reading book after book and having little or nothing to contribute about any of them.  It’s as if the weather gods had said to me, “Okay, you don’t appreciate it and make use of it when we send you good weather, so here’s what you deserve for goofing off!  Something more in line with your frame of mind!”  The most I could pat myself on the back for was that I hadn’t brought anyone else’s mood down measurably, at least not as far as I knew.

I had placed a call to a friend the other day, and not finding him in had left a message that was short, informative, and as cheerful as I could make it under the circumstances of not having anything really good to share that would distinguish it.  I like to say happy things to my friends, as do we all, but sometimes we just don’t have the umph! or the good news to do so, and it’s a toss-up amongst whether or not we will be good friends and say what is really on our minds (sad parts and all, in true honesty), support their possible down moods, or whether we will go all sweetness-and-light and try to pretend that nothing is wrong.  You notice, of course, that it sometimes seems to be a choice between being honest and being supportive of someone else’s good mood, or at least that’s the way some people interpret it when they quote John Ray’s nostrum “Misery loves company.”  For, here’s the thing:  we don’t really bring anyone else’s mood down by telling them how lousy we’re feeling, at least not if they are true and good friends.  The fly-by-nights we can do without.  In actual fact, it makes someone feel needed and helpful to be able to reassure us that the good weather will come again, that we are not alone, that they too are feeling overcome by the weather, the neighbors, the political climate, the gods.  It’s just that we need to take turns, and touch base with each other too when we are both feeling lousy, not shutting ourselves off to suffer alone and apart when the impulse is to do so, but instead making contact with our part of the human community and letting it know what we’re going through.

Luckily, today I got a call back from my friend, and he was having a bad day today, as was I, and even though I would have much preferred to hear that his day was good, “misery loves company” was true in the sense that I was very, very glad to hear from my friend in spite of his down mood.  Because, after all, it was an honest tribute to my sharing what I could share, which was my certainty that this bad weather can’t last forever, that my friend’s sunny mood will once again return, and that his quips and witticisms will once again resurface to brighten the sad times I have when I’m alone and apart in my suffering.  And that’s why misery loves company–it doesn’t matter so much whether the company is able to be reassuring or is feeling low as well, though a lift is always nice; just the knowledge that two are commiserating instead of one standing alone is a real help, and after all, there are people all over this area who are experiencing the same sort of day as we are, and they too may encounter me and we may share sad soul sayings and perspectives, thus broadening the community of people fighting against a lousy day.  So if you are having a lousy day today, or bad weather, or bad luck, don’t crawl into a hole and lick your wounds:  share your troubles with a friend and give him or her the opportunity to brighten things up for you–by doing so, you may be making that person’s day brighter too!

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February 20, 2013 · 5:39 pm

A Depressed (and Possibly Depressing) Midwinter Post, and How Not to Become Morose (I Write As If I Knew!)….

I know, it’s perfectly obvious, trite and sentimentally established and boring, even.  It’s midwinter.  The sun comes out for a few hours now and then in the temperate zone, and then gives up the ghost and retreats.  People are mostly bundled up; even though they may feel too warmly dressed for the particular day, they don’t want to be caught out later without adequate coverage, so they overdo it and take the chance of getting a cold from being too warmly dressed for the occasion.  My favorite iced coffee isn’t an option right now, because I’m not one of those hardy souls who drink it in all weathers, so I have to go for hot coffee or cocoa, just to keep warm.  People on the bus are all bundled up too, and for some reason are carrying more heavy burdens than they do in warmer weather, God knows why.  Or, maybe it’s just that we all look like a bunch of overburdened bears or hippopotami, or other ungainly animals, wrapped up as we are and carrying what we have to carry.

I did yesterday go for a bit of a walk after getting off the bus and running some admittedly enjoyment-filled errands and having lunch (I can’t pretend that there weren’t some bright spots in the day).  But the walk was marred (it’s winter, and I’m complaining) by the necessity to cross the street not just to get where I was going, but once, twice, thrice, four, five, I can’t remember how many times because the merchants and the homeowners had with only indifferent success or attention cleared their sidewalks of the snow.  Imagine it, the weather had even depressed them to the extent that they weren’t much concerned about being sued in case of falling accident by all the pedestrians who were keeping me company trying to get back and forth on the snowy sidewalks.

But do you know what really bothers me?  I’m reading about five or six different books all at the same time now, yet not one of them inspires me enough for me to write a post on it.  Oh, maybe by the time I’m finished, I’ll be ready to write, but it’s hard enough even to keep reading.  My feet are propped up on the footrest of my lounge chair with a heating pad under them for comfort, and I have a cup of coffee close at hand, and I’ve done what I can to make phone contact with those at a distance who might be interested in how I’m doing (for of course, all winter complaining is self-centered).  And though it doesn’t make me feel better, there are many others who are worse off than I am, and who are having harder times right now and complaining about it less.  But not even their good example makes me want to stop kvetching and whinging about what is wrong with the day.  So, I ask myself (or was asking myself a good half hour ago, before I started this post), “What is the best way not to become morose when everything in the day itself seems to be militating against a cheerful attitude?”

At the risk of sounding extremely self-involved and egotistical (and egoistical, which is a different though just as noxious a thing), I must confess that I got the idea to re-read something I had enjoyed, not just something I’d enjoyed reading of someone else’s, but something of my own that I had enjoyed writing for you.  You, if you are honest, will admit that nothing quite makes you as cheerful as the sense of a job well done, and when it’s your own job, that sense is especially strong.  Oh, a good dose of Shakespeare or Milton would no doubt improve my psychic or moral outlook, but since it’s my rather more minor and less stately daily weather spirits which need lifting, I decided to be a bit less grand.

And that is all this is, really, some quite insignificant advice which I have to share with you, now that I have gone to my “read blog” function on this site and have looked back through the archives and pondered some of my previous offerings with an open mind.  I’ve said to myself about some of these offerings, “This is not bad.  Surely a person able to come up with this will eventually get her act together and come up with something which might entertain or enlighten a reader or two.”  And that’s what I really want to pass along today to you, my advice that if you really want to get your mid-winter blahs to go away so that you can continue to work profitably, you not only preach to yourself the sermon about good models to be derived from other writers, including those whose blogs you follow, but also look back over your own work for the high points of what you’ve done before.  I can attest to the fact that those of you at least whom I follow will find much there to make your own spirits rise and to continue to inspire your other readers.  And somehow, we will all of us get through this cold/rainy/snowy/glum/dim/lackluster winter together, by reference to what we have all achieved together, which is a writing and reading sense of community.

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January 17, 2013 · 5:53 pm

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” –Anais Nin

There are many different kinds of friendships one makes in life, not the least of which is the kind made with the authors of our favorite books, though we may never meet them or exchange a word with them.  As Wentworth Dillon, the Earl of Roscommon said, “Choose an author as you choose a friend.”  One might equally well reverse the equation and say, “Choose a friend as you choose an author.”  Then, there’s the more remote, hail-fellow-well-met kind of human friendship and goodwill which Sam Walter Foss had in mind when he said “Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”  And there’s a connection between these two ideas, if you’ll grant me the time to expound upon it.

Perhaps, however, the most significant idea which I want to put before you today is that from Anaïs Nin’s Diary, in which she says (as I quoted in the title of my post), “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”  Each friend we meet is thus an opportunity to extend ourselves further into the human equation (if I may use so dry and mathematical a figure for so “moist” and fulsome a reality).  Whether we are meeting a friend of the mind through a book or a friend of the heart in a café or private home, or whether our friend is the result of some combination of an intellectual and emotional friendship, we are witnessing and participating in the birth of a new world, and this new world causes us to grow and develop human characteristics that were perhaps formerly shut off from us, as we had never encountered the need or the use for them in ourselves or others.

In essence, we become a new person in relation to our new friend.  A new human quadrant or area, the area of the Venn diagram formed by the overlapping of the two circles (us and our friend) now exists in the world, and it is, one hopes, for the enriching of the overall human being, that being spoken of in the quote which above mentions being “a friend to man,” in the general category of humankind.  For, as the interior growth we experience causes us to be able to understand other people better, so it is that “tout comprendre, tout pardonner,” as the French say, or “to understand all is to forgive all.”  Though possibly forgiving “all” is a bit much to imagine, the sentence is generous and tolerant and conveys quite adequately the sense of latitude it’s meant to.  And it is through our understanding of our own dilemmas that we come to understand those of our fellows and vice versa.  That is, often in looking for the solution to a personal conundrum, we can find illumination in the situation of a friend and how he or she has handled something, just as surely as if we had received advice from them given from the heart.

Those of you, both friends and acquaintances, who have been following my column for some time and have been wondering just what this possibly preachy or in some other manner showy little disquisition on another aspect of friendship has to do with creative writing will now get your answer:  for it is one of the main ways we create characters, through the employment of our pictures of ourselves and others, that shows that we have a true connection with the human equation, as I previously called it, always assuming that we have created well and truly.  That is that we imagine:  we imagine beings, sometimes partially like ourselves, sometimes partially like our friends, to inhabit our worlds.  Even our villains must be drawn from this pool in order not to be just stock “flat” figures, but to have body and life.  We must be able to imagine their internal struggles too, just as we do those of the more positive characters.  So now, we have come full circle in our examination of this view of friendship, back to the point where I started, selecting books as we do friends:  for even our favorite authors supply us with models we can use for our characters, to be followed in a rough way, not slavishly, an idea I’m sure you will find a truism entirely, since so many famous writers have commented upon the influences on and sources of their works.  Make sure that you too select both your friends and your favorite writers by a revised sort of Golden Rule:  as you would want them to select you:  because they sincerely admire/respect/want to imitate well your being with their own.  My preachment is over, and for those of you who may be pondering what brought it on this time, it is the effect of reading about a serious quarrel between two fiction writers in a letter written by another (memoir) writer, and wondering how they all came to be friends in the first place.  And no, I won’t tell who it is, chances are you’ve not heard of them, and I’m feeling foolish now that I have!  But there may be a day when I have to create some rather silly villains, and I’m saving up a non-specific, very generalized, and non-libelous set of characters, and you can guess whom they’re based upon.

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January 16, 2013 · 3:49 pm

This is a meta-post–do you know what your browser is?

Hello again, folks!  This is a short meta-post.  “Meta-” in this context means, “beyond, transcending, situated behind.”  Which is to say, this is just a short post to test whether or not the Google Chrome browser works differently on my site than the Internet Explorer one.  That’s all!  Really quite simple!  I’ll be back to post again later this week, I hope tomorrow, on a literary topic or with an essay in hand.  Ta-ta!

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January 15, 2013 · 5:26 pm

“There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.”–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, my post takes off (at least, I hope  it will fly) from the topic of manners to a general discussion of the best ways of doing things.  Doing things, that is, so as to be not only understood but also loved and valued by those around us, and not only appreciated for our best qualities but also forgiven for our worst.  And it all starts with a little exemplum or fable told to my brother and myself by our mother when we were small.  Not that I am necessarily an example of the best way of doing things, though I often aspire in that direction, but that these things are usually best inculcated when people are young and just learning their first steps of behavior in social settings (and what are any of our settings but social settings, since we are social beings first and foremost, as we have been often told by social scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and the like?).  Here’s how the story goes:

There was once a very rich and fashionable hostess who loved to give extravagant dinner parties and afternoon teas alike.  Everyone who was anyone came to her parties, and had the time of their lives, even though the parties were somewhat formal and even occasionally a bit stuffy.  They discussed her behind her back with a great deal of indulgence for this formal, stuffy quality, loving it too because they loved her.

At a certain party, when a host of literary lights were in attendance, one guest in especial was watching our hostess and her arrangements, a society page writer who lived just on the edge of penury, but who was usually asked as a particular act of kindness toward the hostess’s cousin, who was a good friend of his.  In looking around the table, he noted who was there, what was served, and made mental notes of the sparkling conversation, planning his column carefully for the next day, and modestly determined to give the hostess as good a write-up as possible, in exchange for tolerating his humble presence at her party.

Everything went along just fine, until the very end of the main course, when the salad was served (European style, instead of before the meal, American style).  Aswim in a sea of positive emotions and not a little of wine, the writer looked down to discover that there was a huge fat worm in his salad!  What to do, what to do?  At the very next moment, while he was pondering his dilemma, he noticed that the hostess, with a carefully disguised expression of horror on her face, had noticed exactly the same thing, the worm in his salad.  Their glances crossed.  He hesitated only a second.  Heroically, he pronged a fork into exactly the bite of salad with the worm, placed it in his mouth, and chewed and swallowed.  He was rewarded the next minute by the hostess’s warm and glowing smile radiating down the table and bathing him in its effulgent glow.  It all seemed worth it, though the worm had tasted a little bittersweet.

He really had reason to think it was worth it, however, six months later, when the hostess passed away and left him as her only heir.  And he never told a soul what it was all about, though many people speculated that he had been an autumn romance of hers, or that she had left him money in exchange for his article about her dinner parties as a whole, which really wasn’t even a probable motive.

Now, one might feel that in the telling this story appealed too much to a child’s (nearly innate) “get-rich-quick-by-being-a-suck” tendency, except for the manner in which the story was told.  For my mother was quick to point out that it was only good manners not to tell, and that ordinarily no one could expect to be left potloads of money in exchange for merely obeying the dictates of good manners.  In vain I pointed out that the writer could merely have surreptitiously lifted the worm out onto the table or floor; yet I too was cognizant of his magnanimity in actually eating the worm and thus hiding it from all eyes.

And perhaps here’s the lesson (I always cozy up to a good moral):  when we find a fault, while pointing it out may be meritorious in the sense of keeping to exactitude, sometimes hiding a fault (in someone else) is far more honorable, and may have unexpected and not-to-be-calculated-upon benefits besides.  These benefits extend not only from others to us (in which case they appreciate us more because we hang fire and don’t criticize them for qualities or acts which perhaps they can’t help), but from us to us ourselves (in which case we learn to judge ourselves more generously as well, knowing that we held our fire).  As Shakespeare’s Portia from “The Merchant of Venice” has it, “The quality of mercy is not strained….”  And that’s my post for today.

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January 11, 2013 · 7:54 pm

“Believe one who has proved it. Believe an expert.”–Virgil

Yesterday, I wrote a short post to let my readers know that I was experiencing some trouble with my site, and that I wasn’t sure of the ramifications or the extent of the time necessary for corrections.  Just now, after I sat like a nervous “biddie” (“broody”) hen over my computer all morning, my “view by country” stats were back up, and I once more was able to see the fascinating places that my readers come from, and how many of you are from each country, and I was also able to stop worrying about other forms of impending blogsite doom that might be in the works.

This post today is a small and totally inadequate “thank-you” to those “19 Happiness Engineers” who’ve been working so hard behind the scenes to restore order to a gazillion people’s websites on all sorts of different issues.  They were rapid to respond, and didn’t ask me to do anything I was unable to understand, which isn’t always the case when computer gurus give me instructions, due to the fact that I don’t always use the correct lingo to describe my difficulties, and they speak the language perfectly.  Hence the title of my post, from Publius Vergilius Maro, otherwise known as Virgil:  “Believe one who has proved it.  Believe an expert.”  I followed their instructions, and lo and behold!  things are working perfectly again!  Assuming that all continues to go well, I’ll be writing another literary or “essay” post again soon, on one of my standard topics.  And thanks to all those who have continued to be patient with my site, whether experts or readers and fellow bloggers.  We all need these humbling lessons of help from our fellows now and then, and I’m just glad mine was of so gentle a nature.  See you soon!

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January 11, 2013 · 12:54 am

A spot of trouble here, folks! And a sincere hope that it’s nothing serious!

Early this morning, when I got on my site to check my stats, I found that my stats by country were showing the circular icon rotating around and around.  After a few hours of perplexity, I contacted the helpful folks at WordPress.com support, and got a gratifying and nearly immediate response about re-setting my browser, complete with instructions that were copious and detailed.  I followed the instructions, but continued to have difficulties with my site, some of which I can only describe to those at WordPress.com, who are trying to help everyone as best they can, as I understand it.

The problem is that they are suddenly in the news, in the sense that there are numerous additions and changes being made which could benefit everyone, but which are costing some people money, of which I don’t have a lot to contribute at this point.  Therefore, their support page announces now that they will help people in the order in which they come, subscribers to the WordPress.org and the paid upgrade subscribers first.  I do have ambitions eventually to be able and to find it necessary to purchase more space, but cannot do so now, and therefore I’m in a waiting line to be helped with my problems.  This post is not intended as criticism; I’m just letting my readers know that if they don’t hear from me immediately, or if the site suddenly goes down, I’m here on the other side still trying to get the site back up, to the best of my not-very-computer-literate abilities.  And I hope and trust that as usual the guru folks at WordPress.com will be able to help me in that eventuality, as they have done many times in the past.

If all is well, I hope to publish again in the next day or two; if I hit a snag or delay, it may take a little longer.  Here’s to success on all our parts, and thanks for reading so far.  It makes the pain of becoming slowly more computer-literate all worthwhile.

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January 2, 2013 · 7:39 pm

Finality is only another word for the movement’s natural ending, and every ending contains the seeds of a new beginning.

We are still in the depths of a winter in the temperate zone, and it’s cold, and nothing is growing much outside in the snow/freezing rain/or at the very least, frigid temperatures.  But let’s release the organic metaphor that governs many a mode of thought for the moment, and say that though each finality is a sort of natural ending of some movement or other (whatever sort of growth or development the movement might be), each ending contains the seeds of a new beginning.  Seeds are stored up in the frozen ground beneath our feet, waiting for the sun to come out on days when the temperature likewise is gentle and mild, and though we can’t see the seeds right now, and though it seems as if spring will never come, short of some universal catastrophe, we know that it will.

I’m taking comfort in this particular organic metaphor right now because I’m finding it very hard to continue my self-appointed tasks of reading and writing, and am spending a fair amount of time staring at the wall or out the window, not even daring to daydream overmuch because I don’t want to be “caught” (even by myself) wasting time.  So, my mind is frozen; motionless; and yes, you guessed it, I’m typing it all out here in my post in an effort to “start a hare” from the underbrush and get on with my work.  (I like that particular metaphor of “starting (startling) a hare from the underbrush” even though I would never shoot a rabbit or be caught with a gun looking for rabbits to shoot unless I were starving, because when one is out walking and a rabbit or squirrel or other small animal pops up nearly underfoot and rushes away, one oneself is equally startled by the suddenness of the encounter, and loses track of the–in this case obsessive–thoughts one is going through in one’s mind.  Though of course whether the THOUGHTS are going through one’s mind, or one is going through the thoughts IN one’s mind is a matter for brain specialists and metaphysicians to contemplate.)  There’s a freshness to sudden encounters of the rabbit or chipmunk kind, as the tiny being leaps away from one’s own bumbling footsteps and seeks a safer haven; and one feels a part of the small life in the sense that then one’s heart begins to beat more swiftly in reaction, one’s face may flush, one may stumble, or feel a sudden rush of exhilaration at the presence of another life so near at hand and so rapid.

Now, you are perhaps tempted to point out to me that if I am indeed “frozen” and “motionless” in inspiration when it comes to impetus for reading and writing, my two favorite mental activities, that I AM in fact “starving,” and would perhaps have done well to bring a “gun” along in case I should, while typing this post, see a small furry shape dart from beneath my feet and try to get away from me.  But even though I am omnivorous and not solely a vegetarian, I’m looking to track the life bounding away without actually hunting it, because of course those other small forms of life are hunters, too, and they are “hunting” those seeds and pods and vesicles of life that remain in the trees, bushes, and ground over the winter.  It’s simple:  one life leads to another.  I start the hare by accident, perhaps, but then I peer ahead of it to see where it’s bounding, hoping to discover some seeds or shoots that I can bring indoors and attempt to “sprout” for my own projects.  And there’s probably the tail end of this particular metaphor, since I can think of nothing else to do with it at this point.  Whatever “seeds of a new beginning” I happen to find will require patience from me, because nothing happens overnight, and after potting something you have to wait while it sits in a warm windowsill or under a grow lamp, stretching itself upward slowly.  So, here’s the “sprout” I found while sitting at my desk and trying to think of something to post about on this second day of January, 2013.  But really, you and I know that I wasn’t sitting at my desk at all, I was out in a snowy field , following tiny tracks with perplexity and some confusion because I didn’t see anything to connect them with, when suddenly up popped a rabbit or squirrel, running, perhaps, for a bed of early crocuses which they’ve been nibbling at before.  Here’s my “crocus bulb” for you–I hope it will help you start a few hares or chipmunks too!

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December 31, 2012 · 11:20 pm

“I was going to buy a copy of ‘The Power of Positive Thinking,’ and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?”–Ronnie Shakes

For some of us, indeed, for many more of us than can easily afford to acknowledge it without further loss of equanimity at least and happiness at most, this is a very sad time of year.   In fact, it’s no time of year at all, it’s the end of the year, and the New Year, with all its happiness derived in part from alcoholic bubbles and party snacks hasn’t started yet (or at least, it’s a few hours off in some parts of the globe, only a few hours old and hence not really fully underway in other parts of the globe).  So what do we do?  We rush out, buy the aforesaid snacks and alcohol, and then sit around waiting for time to start our eager consumption of what is supposed to signal a celebration of ringing out the old and ringing in the new.  We may even think of a New Year’s resolution or two, but then we tell ourselves that after all, that’s for the first of the year (tomorrow) and shouldn’t cloud our enjoyment of the last day of this year, when we hope to really “tie one on” and watch the bright lights go up around our neighborhoods, or watch a good movie and have a good cry, or go to the local neighborhood party and wear a funny hat and embrace people under the mistletoe for the last time this season.

And we ask ourselves, “What would really make me happy this year?  What would I like to achieve, or have, or have happen to me?”  It’s not in fact that we can’t think of things, for we of course can.  It’s rather that the things we think of are far too often not commensurable with the same sorts of things that can be achieved or had or experienced if we make a “realistic” New Year’s resolution.  For we all know what those things are.  I can work a little harder each day, or I can vow to lose 30 pounds by the end of the year, or I can save up a few extra dollars in order to get something I really want, but for which I will have to deprive myself of other things I need or want.  In short, everything we can realistically get takes a lot of effort, a constant push or pull or force exerted on our own moral inertia to accomplish.  So, often we decide, “Why should I?  I’ll worry about it tomorrow.  I’ll start on it two days from now.  Next week, when I’ve cleaned up the mess from this party I’m supposed to be having, will be time enough to begin.”  And in short, we put it off and sooner or later it simply slips to the back of the mental cupboard with all of the other things we once hoped to do and have and be.  Aren’t we a real mess?

Do I have an answer for this dilemma?  No, I do not, but I can tell you that I for one would rather “dream dreams” and “have visions” than place myself mentally in that “realistic” framework which we assume when we set about to do things “for real.”  I would rather not set goals, but would like to huggle-muggle willy-nilly toward what I want, one day sighing and one day crying, and another day laughing for joy because it seems that the sun is shining on my aspiration.  That way, when I reach next New Year’s Eve and I have only a bit of success to show, or a pittance of my desired amount saved up, or have only taken off ten pounds, I will know that I did it easily rather than arduously, and thus I participated in the glee of childhood we all once used to have, when we were unaware of how hard adults often had to strive to gain for us our “power of positive thinking” and to keep us happy and healthy.  Yes, I’m saying that I want something to happen easily and without effort, that I’m tired of the “no pain, no gain” morality, that at the very least I want to be self-deceived about something that will make me happy rather than deluded about something that makes me sad in the end.  Play along with me, won’t you?  Be giddy and happy all you like this New Year’s Eve, but don’t come down hard on yourself on January 1 or 2 or even 3 and tell yourself that it’s time to get “back to reality.”  Reality as we know it is hard enough:  let’s live in the happiness bubble for as long as possible this year, at least when it comes to achievements and goals and our own personal gifts of living happily.  Who knows, maybe those “dreams” and “visions” are a little closer than we know!  Happy New Year!

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