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?

 

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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

Connections: February 11.17

Behold the pile of tweets

monument eloquent

meatless bleached detritus

of impulse inelegant.

Opinion calcified

to sharp excrescent knurl

and, lo, the lurid truth:

not a single pearl.

More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.

Connections

Connections: April 6

Ah, the family album!

Many the portrait there

of ceiling, forehead, elbow,

thumb and derriere.

Amalgam anatomy

knee to nape to phalange

snippet of this and glimpse of that

ultimate jigsaw challenge.

A museum of half-told riddles

they ratify this posit:

they’re not as much fun in the hard drive

as in a shoebox in the closet.

Connections