JOURNAL ARCHIVES BIOGRAPHY LINKS PHOTOGRAPHY POETRY
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When
I was a wee girl I watched a scary movie. It was
not a horror film, but a story based on an actual
event. The story was based on the trials faced by
a man stranded in the Arctic wilderness, alone and
hunted by natural predators. He eventually succeeded
in fighting his way back to civilization. I was so
frightened during the movie that my mother removed
me from the living room and sat me outside on the
back step, by myself, to calm me down. Although I
remember little of the actual story the feelings,
of abandonment and threat and the struggle to survive,
are still vivid.
Struggles are not always so sensational as those portrayed in the movie. Often they are quite ordinary in appearance, and carry little or no meaning for those outside the immediate context of events. The small struggles are the foundation of human culture, and thereby human life itself. In this big “global” world of ours, the small struggles are lost in the endless thundering roar of the public voice, the smoke and the mirrors of the popular view. Lately I have been dealing with quite a few small, invisible struggles that make up the stuff of life, my life. Unlike the movie, the challenges I face are not life threatening, are of little interest or consequence to anyone save myself, and are unlikely to meet a neatly packaged ending. What I believe is that, in meeting my own challenges with integrity and love, I am making the world a better place. There will be no movie, there will be no accolades, but if there is an entity such as a God, Goddess or Universe, that entity will accept my contributions. That is the best, and that is all, I can do as a member of my species, a dweller on the planet earth and a small life form in the galaxy. Mist agrees with all this. Her current struggle is to, once again, convince the humans in her life to set a proper fire at a decent hour! With love and determination, she sits in front of the fireplace from time to time over the course of the day, casting meaningful looks in my direction! I know Mist, I know. You want a fire. You want the warm golden glow to fill the room so that you can commandeer my chair and stretch out in the luxurious warmth of it all. As I tell myself, I tell Mist, things do not always work out the way we want them to, but may be working out as much as we need them to. Mist is not buying into any of this philosophical meandering. She wants a fire. The snow is beginning to disappear in earnest now. Patches of brown grass can be seen in the yard. After a brief period of sunny and relatively warm days (10 C), we woke up to a cold rain this morning. It is not white, and need not be shoveled. At this point we ask for no more! My modest genealogy book is well under way now as the process of editing and pruning the data and references, based on the first draft, is all but complete. Next comes the writing of the data report and then on to an introductory chapter, charts and diagrams and an appendices of scanned documents. I am growing somewhat tired of the project, but since there are a few relatives interested in the final result I shall carry on. No picture today, as I am having a real issue with batteries for the digital camera. The newest batteries I own are a few years old (NIMH rechargeable) and hold a charge for only a few images and a couple of downloads onto the computer. I have a half a dozen older batteries, but they aren’t any better at holding a charge. I admit to being a highly inefficient battery charger, not my vocation at all. Hmmm… I seem to be flagging a bit on all my projects just now. Must be the “almost the end but not quite the end of winter blahs”! |
RECIPES :: Cast Wordly
Distractions
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