We are uncomfortable
in this world
not made for us.
Divine providence?
Grand design?
Or just another
cosmic punch line?
life
Stores Reopen Today!
Here in Ohio, non-essential retail stores reopen today! I have been in a depressed funk this past week, so I plan to go out and try to cheer myself up. I know I want to go to the bookstore (bookstores, how I have missed you!) and probably Goodwill. Don’t worry, I will be cautious and try to maintain my distance from others, but I need to feel a bit of normalcy return to my life!
Honestly, I think I likely already had coronavirus a couple months ago anyhow, although I would need to be tested for the antibodies to know for sure. Of course, I have heard reports that you might be able to get it more than once, so still doesn’t hurt to be careful.
Hair salons reopen at the end of the week I think, and it will feel good to get my hair cut again. Funny how you miss little things like that when you can’t do them for a while.
What is going on where you live? Are you still under lockdown? Are things slowly opening back up? Do you plan to go back to normal activity if they do reopen?
Poetry – Life Stages
Dolls ponies kickball screaming bruise
childhood
Boys angst shame body confusion
teenage
Marriage work pretending big loss
twenties
Health Pain Drugs Homebody Silence
thirties
forties? fifties? sixties?
yet to come
I Need a Break
This is just a short note to let all my blog readers know that I need to take a break for a week or so. I’m feeling a bit burned out and things are stressful in my personal life right now (I had to take my husband to the ER yesterday because his back gave out entirely, it sucked to have to do so with the fear of the pandemic going on!)
So, if you notice I’m not posting, don’t worry, I’ll be back 🙂 If you believe in prayer or good vibes or anything like that, feel free to send them my way. I need all the help I can get right now lol.
Poetry – Nihilism in 3 Acts
Act 1. I don’t know if being alive matters.
Act 2. I don’t know if this world matters.
Act 3. I don’t know if me being alive in this world matters.Â
Poetry – God as a Fish
Do you know how I
picture God myself?
As one single fish,
enormous,
creative,
scattering millions
of lucky little accidents
like caviar –
deep in his dark sea
caverns,
each tiny black marble
waiting their turn
to wash up
on life’s sandy
shore.
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Wanting to Be Special
Do you feel “special”? Do you long to feel special? It seems to me that people strive so hard to be special, to be exceptional. Ordinary is for losers…or at least that is the message we seem to get from society.
I’ll admit that I share this obsession. Maybe part of my problem started with being an overachiever in grade school. I always had to be the fastest, the best in my class. I went to all the gifted programs and was praised for exceptionally high standardized test scores. I was highly competitive and a horribly sore loser…something I still struggle with to some extent lol.
The problem is that when you are told all the time growing up how “exceptional” you are, it sets you up for unrealistic expectations in the real world. In the real world, it isn’t always the smartest, the most talented, or the hardest working that succeed, and that is a bitter pill to swallow.
From my experience, the ones most likely to succeed are the ones that have wealth and powerful families behind them. Yes, some people do manage to crack the glass ceiling alone by sheer luck or being at the right place at the right time, but the majority at the top of any enterprise are generally those with connections the rest of us could only dream of.
Of course, you can focus on the feel-good, conciliatory message that “everyone is special”, which is undoubtedly true in some ways, but when I hear that, I always think about Dash from the Incredibles asking, “If everyone is special, is that really just a way of saying that nobody is special?”
Poetry – Make It Up As We Go
You read
faster
than I can
turn the page,
so I’ve
learned how
to make up the story
as we go.
A Few Random Life Thoughts/Happenings
- The grief from losing my kitty is starting to ease a little bit. Still a big loss, but I’m trying to focus on the future and how to bring more good things into my life right now because it feels like I could really use some good things.
- Tonight I’m attending a poetry class at the library. The idea of the class is to use everyday castoff materials (like old ads, receipts, junk mail, etc.) as inspiration to create poetry. Thought it sounded fun and I could use the social connections right now.
- I’m seriously thinking about auditioning for a part in a local theatre production soon. It makes me nervous as I haven’t done anything like that since school, but I feel I need to grow and add a little excitement to my life. I don’t even want a big role or anything, I just want to be a part of something fun and creative.
- Just a thought, but I noticed something recently I wanted to share. It seems to me that when people share their darker thoughts and feelings straight out in essay form, prose, or spoken word, they are often sort of subtly shamed and told to cheer up in one way or another, which I find interesting, because when those same dark thoughts/feelings are shared in artistic forms like poetry/art, I’ve never seen people react in the same way by telling them to simply focus on the positive or cheer up. It makes me think that our darker thoughts and feelings are only really acceptable to many when slightly masked in some sort of art form. Why is that?
Maranda Russell 