March 15.20

This would be a beautiful morning were it in November and were we not in the world we are now in. The snow is falling thick and white out of a grey sky onto a brown world. The pond is black and shivering. Yes, there are buds, and, yes, there are tips of daffodils and a brilliant purple star of a crocus in the front yard.

But the darkness prevails. As we all know, the darkness is internal. The light, when it comes, will be internal too.

I have not been able to upload new photos into my blog posts. WordPress tells me I have a “New Home” in which I can “learn and grow.” I don’t want someone else to decide when and how I should learn and grow and whether I need a new home. As trivial as this is in the grand scheme of things, this change is the last thing I want to deal with right now. So I have not been posting. But I think of you, dear reader, with concern.

As writers we have two obligations, I think: one is to write what is, and the other is to write what could be. It’s a delicate balance these days as we try to acknowledge what is and not get mired down in it. We do have to keep one eye on that little purple star, which is at present huddled into itself against the cold.

 

 

 

 

January 22.20

The watering hole. If you can disregard the feeling of cold mud up to your belly, you can see the attraction: an invigorating dip in melted ice and the latest gossip. What’s the word, hummingbird? What’s the tale, nightingale? (Who can forget the immortal lyrics in “Bye, Bye, Birdie”?)

I have a morning routine which involves turning on the computer as I stumble along the well-worn path from bedroom to coffeepot. When I return, hot coffee and cold cereal in hand, I click into my watering hole. Email. Blog. Then I’m fortified for the news and weather.

Yesterday was appallingly different. I settled in with cold cereal and hot coffee, yes, but the computer screen was all wrong: no Internet! Gasp!

Dear reader, can you imagine? I was without Internet all day yesterday, and I do not have television. I felt as though the entire planet had dropped away from me.

I remember life without the Internet. I even remember life without television. Back then I saw the people that mattered — friends and family — every day. Now I meet them on the Internet. I watched the birds in their mucky happy hour, and I missed my watering hole dreadfully.

 

April 12.19

APOSTROPHE TO AN APOSTROPHE

Oh, you of little ink,

preposterous to think

you’d grow to such a plague,

pestilence and nag.

Everywhere and more

you’re a digital uproar;

documents are shredded

because you’re name-imbedded;

computers gag and sputter,

bureaucracies sweat and mutter,

printers flail and spit —

you just don’t seem to fit.

With all this ID ballyhoo,

I’m boiled in an impossible stew:

oh, my little apostrophe,

how to prove that I am me?

 

If, dear reader, you have an apostrophe in your name, you know the terrors. Some computers will take it; others won’t. Sometimes it’s changed to a comma, sometimes to a period, sometimes just tossed out. Then upper case becomes lower case (e.g., O’Hern becomes Ohern or O. Hern or O,hern). Lo, your last name as documented today does not match your last name on your birth certificate. Ponderously important people behind laptops are going to look at you with suspicion. They will ask you who you REALLY are. By that time the computers will have undone you and you will have no idea.

 

Disconnections: August 20.18

The chase and the catch, continued from yesterday.

You see “In search of story” at the top of my blog.  For me, trying to write a story is like trying to enjoy a root canal. But I listen to others in an effort to learn about story. And this is what bothers me about the machines: they yield the tidy catch, thereby rendering the messy chase obsolete and attendant stories extinct.

My Grandma Mauck and her siblings would fight to the verbal death about who was born when. With them, it was all about the chase. If they’d had Smartphones to consult, our Thanksgivings might have been quieter, but I wouldn’t have learned about their internecine wars and I’d have been deluded into thinking all my relatives were rational.

My Grandma O’Hern would celebrate summer, no matter how icky hot, with a mountain of pierogi; family and chairs would appear magically and morph into a small city around the table. If they’d had iPads, would I have heard the accounts of how Baby Edna had to walk because Grandpa’s hootch rode in the baby carriage?

How can I hope to develop any story-telling abilities at this point in my life when people are nose-dived into their gadgets, and mind only the catch?

It is arguable that if I don’t know how to tell a story by now I never will. I guess I am stuck in my own messy chase, trying to catch the skill of story-telling, dodging the thumbs of the world.

 

 

Disconnections: August 19.18

Recently I posted a photo of a blissful Jack Russell (one Lulu by name) with her slimy ball. The question posed was this: which is more fun, the chase or the catch? Chasing and catching had been on my mind.

It used to be that when someone asked a question in a group the others would offer answers based on what they knew (or thought they knew). A hodgepodge formed and grew: bits of memory, stories, irrelevancies, maybe even an argument or a snippet of song. Various voices could be heard.

A lively chase would have been run.

Now the response to a question in a group is silence. Eyes are down, thumbs fly. In half a trice there’s an answer. The catch is caught. Quick, straightforward, efficient. Also sterile.

I think this is not merely the grumping of an old curmudgeon; I think this is the plaintive cry of the writer. What is lost if memory isn’t tapped, stories aren’t told, if no one is wrong, when the path goes straight to the answer, no detours and no curves and no dead ends?

I accord technology the wonder due it, but I’m uncertain about what happens when we don’t dive into our own personal data banks and goofy lives to try to find answers. I’ve been dismayed at how often people dive into their clouds instead.

I grant there’s a place in life for efficiency.  Sometimes the best way is the fast way. But I think the writer in me wants the chase and feels rebuffed in some way by the mere catch.

There’s another part to this. Another post, another day.

 

Disconnections: June 1.18

I still haven’t figured out how to remedy this problem inserting photos in my posts. I haven’t yet turned to the folks at WordPress because I don’t even know how to ask the questions. I am darkly frustrated by the not-knowing.

Usually when I am frustrated I turn to my beloved outlets of baking or gardening or drawing or playing the piano or — I must admit — housecleaning. Doing is the antidote to stewing. But now I have something called CPPD. It goes nicely with my HHT, don’t you think, dear reader? If I live long enough, I’ll be a whole bowl of alphabet soup.

Many old people have CPPD but without symptoms. I have symptoms. To quote myself, PHOO. CPPD is incurable, its damage irreversible. Mine is deemed “erosive” because of the bone damage. How scary is that? Bone erosion? Now I cannot use my hands as I used to. This is as deep a disconnection as I can imagine. My hands have connected me to freshly baked cookies and fresh herbs and Bach Inventions and sketchbooks and fitted sheets tight on the mattress.

Taken with the osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, the CPPD gives me the image of a swarm of microscopic ants with my skeleton the picnic lunch.

When technology beats me up, when I hear of yet another school shooting or another holiday from truth, I want to grab a shovel or a spatula and DO something. Will the ants leave me anything with which to DO?

 

Connections: January 2.18

On New Year’s Eve I stood in awe at my back door. The last of 2017 blazed white and stark: sun on snow. Blinding and beautiful. Demanding. Not to be ignored.

“Do you have a lesson for me, 2017?” I asked.

I listened. Nothing. But in the listening, ironically, I saw. The air danced with tiny prisms, minute shards of ice twinkling. Was 2017 winking at me?

Maybe the lessons of 2017 don’t come until 2018.  Maybe never.

But still the imperious, taunting beauty. Isn’t it trying to say something?

I got a camera for Christmas. I was so excited! But the memory card got nothing. I tried it back in my old camera. Still nothing. “Why are there no pictures?” I asked my cameras, old and new. They, like the old year, answered nothing.

That’s a lot of Nothing with which to end a year. Or with which to begin a year.

But the beauty is constant. Radiant and sparkling. Cold and soulless. I cannot show you, dear reader, and I cannot seem to hear what it is saying. It has sealed the old year and encases the new, tight-lipped. I meander from door to window, wishing I could take a picture. Wishing I were 6 so I’d have the problem-solving skills I need for this digital world. But I’m not and I don’t.

So for now some good coffee, a comfy robe, a blog post. A thank-you to all who have left a friendly note here. A determined turning-to, armed with chocolate, so to smite the Nothings.

 

Connections

 

Connections: August 3.17

 This won’t fit into your pocket

and it won’t put you on to the ‘net

but there are so many places you can’t drop it

and it doesn’t mind getting wet.

It doesn’t compete with today

and its digital glossy chronology

but holds to a steady display

of yesterday’s hand-wrought technology.

In gilded and courtly demeanor

it sniffs in aloof pantomime

though a smartphone is somewhat leaner

it’s unmoved by the passing of time.

 

 

Thanks yet again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.

Connections

 

Connections: May 22.17

Many the bedtime this has seen

and one day might see again

but who knows how the tucking-in

will be technified by then?

Connections

Connections: May 20.17

Cog and wheel

wire and spring

precise, confluent

mindless thing.

Sterile, tidy,

engineered

no surprises

nothing feared.

True to function

whole and part

metal head

plastic heart.

Unencumbered

all-efficient

never messy

work proficient.

Do I envy

mindlessness?

Sometimes no

sometimes yes.

Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.

Connections