Monday, April 10, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Monday, January 16, 2017
My new key to dread locks
I have dreads. Not the kind that get your hair in a twist. The kind that get your panties in a twist.
I pretty much dread just about everything. Sometimes the dread serves a purpose: alerts me to danger, say, or helps me prepare a strategy for dealing with a difficult situation. But mostly dread taints the pleasure I might otherwise feel in life.
Recently a new mantra has been helping me: I tell myself that the only way to get to the other side of a dreaded event is to get through it. It almost makes it possible to anticipate the dreaded thing with eagerness.
It’s like the Bear Hunt solution:
“We're going to catch a big one. / What a beautiful day! / We're not scared. / Oh-oh! Grass! / Long, wavy grass. / We can't go over it. / We can't go under it. / Oh, no! / We've got to go through it!”
I pretty much dread just about everything. Sometimes the dread serves a purpose: alerts me to danger, say, or helps me prepare a strategy for dealing with a difficult situation. But mostly dread taints the pleasure I might otherwise feel in life.
Recently a new mantra has been helping me: I tell myself that the only way to get to the other side of a dreaded event is to get through it. It almost makes it possible to anticipate the dreaded thing with eagerness.
It’s like the Bear Hunt solution:
“We're going to catch a big one. / What a beautiful day! / We're not scared. / Oh-oh! Grass! / Long, wavy grass. / We can't go over it. / We can't go under it. / Oh, no! / We've got to go through it!”
So when I see a pickle ahead, I try to look past the pickle to the relish.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Analyze this. No, don't
Last night I dreamed that I had decided to dispense with the litter box and fill the entire bathroom with cat litter six inches deep. So there I was wading through stinking clay pellets with my scoop, stepping on turds as I tried to fish out others to flush down the toilet.
What does THAT mean?
Well, according to the edreaminterpretation, “To dream of kitty litter, or a cat litter box, suggests bad luck and misfortune ahead for you. It may also relate to the dreamer’s feelings of guilt or shame.” And “Litter in dreams can alert us to a disorderly mess, a spiritual problem not properly thought through.”
As if living with a room full of litter and cat excreta wasn’t bad enough!
Monday, January 2, 2017
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Charice is right!
Great advice from Charice, in Richard Russo's Everybody's Fool:
"You gotta stop worrying so much about being wrong."
"You gotta stop worrying so much about being wrong."
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Effectively invisible
Penelope Lively describes the invisibility of a certain age in Spiderweb:
“A woman in late middle age is the most neutral figure of all … She poses no sexual threat nor challenge. For young men, she is of so little interest as to be effectively invisible. For women younger than herself, she is a comforting reminder that they have not themselves got that far yet, thanks be. For those around her age, she is a reassurance: we are not alone.”
But I believe she gets the benefits wrong:
“Accordingly all three groups are reasonably well disposed, the defences are down, an overture will be accepted with equanimity and in some quarters with enthusiasm.”
“A woman in late middle age is the most neutral figure of all … She poses no sexual threat nor challenge. For young men, she is of so little interest as to be effectively invisible. For women younger than herself, she is a comforting reminder that they have not themselves got that far yet, thanks be. For those around her age, she is a reassurance: we are not alone.”
But I believe she gets the benefits wrong:
“Accordingly all three groups are reasonably well disposed, the defences are down, an overture will be accepted with equanimity and in some quarters with enthusiasm.”
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