Sunday, January 1st, 2017 =—> -2˚C / +28˚F & “Partly Cloudy” (& Dark) @6:51 pm in Atlantic Canada —> -2˚C / +27˚F & darker @ 9:09 pm. — Life gets complicated —
“As above – so below?” This clearing sky was overhead at 4:25 pm today. I won’t say “Ya gotta love smart phones-” with their time stamping each photo because they also load the photos up with meta data that can tell the wrong people where you were and when – Who are the wrong people? Probably anybody who wants to know where you were and what you were doing — Be they crooks thinking they’d like to find your ‘stuff’ unguarded or government types who believe they have a right to control everything you think, say and do. God did not put them here to control you. God did not create ‘The Great Unwashed’ to be kept down and manipulated by them that believe they have superior genes – or superior brain power – or superior anything. Those that crave ‘superiority’ are trying to overcompensate for their feelings of inferiority. ( “Schnarr!” )
— It snowed a lot more than I thought it did overnight. There must have been six inches of light fluffy snow on top of extremely slippery ice when I got out there – The snow plows packed a ridge about two and a half feet high and six to eight feet wide at the street end of the driveway. On my baddest days I think they just might be out to kill me – Piling up more snow than I should shovel at my age (especially since all the guys in my family die of heart attacks) – and allowing their fascist buddies to build all the planned obsolescence they want into their snow blowers and other energy-saving / life-prolonging devices. The French have made it a crime to knowingly build planned obsolescence into anything. — France has also made it illegal for employers to force their employees to read and/or answer email outside of their working hours. And a while back it made the news that the French passed a law that said that supermarkets better not throw away food they could give away to the less fortunate in their communities. Viva la France! I have more and more admiration and respect for the country a yogi friend told me I lived in during a recent past life. I was an artist and drew portraits in pencil on the streets of Paris to avoid starving … That makes sense.
This was Cathi’s ‘Zen Corner’ yesterday afternoon – I grabbed the camera because the sun backlit the windows in such a way that made it look like the designs created by the finger shaped bubbles / air pockets were an attempt to tell the colourful glass hanging ornament that nature understood its swirls – By the time I got the camera the magic was gone. There might be just a hint of what it had been in this photo.
— My arthritis is acting up. { “ouch-” } It feels like several iron bars are on fire where my spine and the back of my rib-cage should be. This is not a pleasant sensation. I sometimes have trouble breathing because I’m trying to move my posture slightly to one side of the other and sub-consciously hold my breath when the pain really gets searing.
— After dealing with the above mentioned mini – mountain ridge of slightly heavy packed snow I got the feeling I should stop and rest and catch my breath, rather than push through the pain and tempt fate. I turned and started walking toward the porch, but the ‘committee’ was there en force – having a nice New Year’s Day dinner with what had to be a dozen of their closest friends, their kids – and a couple look-outs on guard – I paused and had an attempted conversation with Saint Francis, remembering the details of the photo I have as the header image for this blog. I also remembered having dinner before I was eight years old, in the duplex we lived in back in the fifties in Connecticut. My father was happier than usual, singing songs at the table I later realized were part of his routine when he was drunk. We got more than halfway through dinner with him in his happy mood. I’m going to guess I was eight years old and my sister Sharon was six – dad grinned and asked us how we liked eating Bambi – didn’t he taste good? My sister shrieked and ran away. I wanted to throw up and get poor dead Bambi out of my system. My father was stunned, then turned almost violently angry, screaming at my sister to get back at the table and finish eating. — Was this the first big trauma in my descent into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? No – I remember being younger, maybe five or six myself, trying to get to sleep with “God Dammit, Dottie!” and the rest of a very scary tirade echoing and repeating endlessly in my battered little consciousness. I also remember calmly watching a parade of ghosts streaming through the air in my bedroom. There was nothing threatening about them. I knew I was awake. But when I told my parents they insisted on explaining that I’d been dreaming and demanded that I get back into bed and go back to sleep. I had a couple of conversations with angels and departed relatives in that bedroom. It’s confusing to know you were wide awake and could remember every word your great-grandfather told you while he explained that ‘somebody important’ where he was thought I would make a really good writer when I grew up – and said that if I chose to change my fate and agree to that – certain things in the future I expected would be changed, probably for the better – and asked if that’s what I wanted. I said yes and felt good about that – wanted to share the news with my parents, who screamed and threatened to ‘tan my hide’ if I didn’t get back into bed and forget about running out to tell them about every dream I ever had.
4:45 pm – Sun going down somewhere west of here – We walked the dog around 8 pm and discovered the street wasn’t as dangerously slippery as it was a couple nights ago. Snow packed down by quite a few tires running over it is a lot less slippery than ice.
— And that’s a couple snapshots of life on the first day of 2017?
— Almost every night we walk the dog up and back on this road, and lately, almost every night we discover that a couple more sets of holiday lights have gone dark. We really enjoyed the very cobalt blue string of LED lights in one tree up the street a bit- but now that’s gone dark too. I was thinking earlier that it would be nice to look into the future and see a time when less stressed to the limit people put up festive lights for the winter and kept them up and glowing until spring. Maybe the reason we originally started that will be lost on future generations. But haven’t we been told that ‘Christmas’ probably does not coincide with the actual date of the Christ Child’s birth? – But was adopted from the time of a raucous Roman solstice celebration dedicated to alcohol consumption and debauchery? I like the idea that we are closest to the Positive Spiritual center of the universe at this time of year. I appreciate the quiet and the sense of Love and other Miraculous stuff in the air – So if the aches and pains would just go away, I could sit back and smile at the whole of Creation and think, ‘Yeah – Life can be good.’ and forget about asking why humans have degenerated into doing everything they can to make each other miserable.
Not the best lighted shot, but the flash would have scared them away – And this is what we see most of the time, they are shy and have reason to be a bit skittish around humans – A couple deer munching on oats on the hill – twelve feet from our porch window.
— And last night – even as I listened to a call-in radio show where people with obvious schnarr agendae called in to talk about what they believe 2017 might have in store for everyone ( or, in their minds SHOULD have in store for everyone ) – I got the feeling that something positive had just happened and things will be just a little better this year than they were in 2016 –
— Fingers crossed ( in hope )
~~~~~ Jim
