memories

The Pristine Forest

Walking through a pristine forest is not possible anymore. Even though I can go anywhere I want, it’s not possible to see this place as it once was. I find paths that are cut through a once-wild understory. Someone was here before me. To the left, I could step over a fallen trunk. On the right, a thornbush flourishes. There’s a bridge over the creek. Its wild water has been trained to stay tame now. The streambed is leveled out and the woods are ready for every season.

I can also travel to a remote railroad bridge. It is barren with a stone underpass cased in graffiti. The names of people, long gone, are sheltered by the tracks passing above. I laugh and imagine that they are buttressing the walls with their ink. Other names are carved into the stone that will last as long as anything.

My mind has its own paths made of persistent memories. They are reinforced by the phantoms of sad dreams and shadows of regret. I demand that my mind can solve its own dilemmas. When their patterns persist, they show me that I carry their burden anyways. They confuse the neural channels with wasteful thoughts and I grudgingly admit that more will follow. Rarely pristine, my memories should help me grow wiser but instead they make me stumble.

I look around my house and see reminders of when I had been free. Mementos fill the shelves. I wonder who I should remember and where they came from. Many are gifts of old friends’ love. I know someone took time to find them yet I’m heedless and don’t notice them as I pass from one room to the next.

There is plenty to see in my neighborhood. When I walk past the church, I see the trees that have grown tall around it. Their refuge has become its own pristine reality. I see how they too are trails that I can follow. I’m not sad about the changes I see and enjoy them as gifts from an unseen caretaker.

Cooking

From the red book…

They say I’m a good cook. I try new dishes. Just tell me the ingredients and often I can figure it out. I’m always learning.

Sometimes my mom wasn’t a very good cook when I was little. Sometimes the scrambled eggs had shell fragments. But once I grew up, I have some favorite dishes that she made. Her pot roasts had awesome carrots onions and potatoes. The chuck roast was ready to tear into and I would cover it all with gravy. I always put pepper on top.

We had a beverage we called pond scum. It was a couple different Kool-Aid packets with 7-Up. Usually, it was only for parties. Another dish we had that I loved was “beany goop” which was a casserole with different kinds of beans in it and a breaded topping.

One of my friends says that she has to follow a recipe religiously careful. I’m more flexible. I don’t think I’m a cooking heretic. I just have things I make.

The old kitchen had shiny copper titles on the wall. There was a window over the sink looking out at the field and the mountain behind it. The dinner table was off to the left and we had a lot of family dinners there. I don’t remember much specific besides my insistence that “no singing at the table” was a rule.

I get a little sad when I think of those days. We lived far away. The school bus took us in to school. I sat in the middle on the right. It let me watch the roads go by and I could stay out of the target of the mean kids.

In the winter, snow drifts piled high. I liked playing. We would lob snowballs at the trees. The weather never seemed radical back then. We got rain when we needed it and the snow was not oppressive. For some reason, I don’t remember shoveling snow. We didn’t have a sidewalk—living out in the country, there wasn’t any point.

I remember the snow cones with real snow. We would dribble maple syrup on them. It was nice.

I’m a late bloomer in my cooking. When I was in school, I didn’t cook much. I don’t remember anything to remark on. I was glad that I could eat in the cafeteria. Sometimes I have nightmares that the cafeteria would be out or that I got there too late. My cooking now might be a subconscious wish to never be late.

Letting Go

My address book grows and shrinks.

Sometimes I’m adding new contacts as I expand my social circle. At other times I’m removing people that I don’t have a connection with anymore.

Being social, it’s uncomfortable to remove people from the list. A lesser loss is when I remove a thread from my texting app. In that case, the connection is still there, but only tenuously. People that don’t have a thread going can be forgotten and the relationship that is already withering might finally die.

A sadder removal from the contacts and address book happens when someone I know has passed. When I remove them, the memories will fade, and I will think of them less and less. Perhaps, it’s a way that I can honor their memory by leaving them in the list. For special people, I might want to keep them listed as a sort of memorial.

My paper address book has six names per page. When all of the addresses aren’t valid anymore, I can take it out and discard it. It’s another way to let go of memories. The paper form is more permanent than a list in a phone but eventually the information gets out of date and people leave my life.

Letting go of people can be solidified by a funeral or ceremony. For a few friends that I lost track of over the years, I found out later that they’ve passed on. It makes me sad that I didn’t find out until years later.

I don’t want to let go of people with the same attitude that I have when I’m throwing away a dried-up pen. I think people deserve more consideration than that which is part of why ghosting seems malevolent to me. However, putting a piece of paper in the trash and removing the information from my phone can be just as easy.

Letting go is a transition that can take many forms. Loss is a part of the human condition and having fond memories of someone can make the loss feel meaningful.

Spring 2018 random notes

I ordered the book Homecoming by John Bradshaw tonight. I checked http://finderscheapers.com for prices, but pretty much ignored that website. It listed two used bookstore services I have accounts with, http://alibris.com and http://abebooks.com Alibris lost the sale because their checkout screen failed. Amazon, I avoid on principle.

I conjured up some one-time-use credit card numbers. They’re great for online purchases because they put a (lower) limit on the risk from bad people stealing my information from a vendor’s databases. It comes from Bank of America’s “ShopSafe” which is a service on their online banking site.

I got a long, relaxing nap this afternoon/evening. I woke up at 7:05 which was a little late for some events I wanted to go to that started at 7. I could have gone late, but I chose not to.

I really like my new sofa. The old one was tore up by my cats. I’d had it for years. I have been having trouble with back pain sitting on the old one so I needed to take action. Thanks mom!

I’ve got to the Y three days in a row which is a big accomplishment for me.

I made an appointment for Friday with the nurse with my cardiologist. I am concerned how badly winded I got moving the furniture with my dad. It shows that blood pressure might be an wishful explanation of my cardiac condition. I was upset the cardiologist had let my blood pressure be dangerously high for months while he said it was ok. I canceled my last appointment in March when I finally forced the issue. At that time, he told me my goal level was quite below those levels. Right now it is quite consistently a good number. It’s in the universally recommended range so I’m happier…. Also that I’m only taking one medication instead of the 2+ that I’d been taking until March.

There’s an famous-ish song Dragostea din tei that had a viral video that made it famous. Back when I first learned about the song, I found a musician Craig Anstey https://www.youtube.com/user/Canstey84 on youtube that had done a cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFonM543atg of it. I have a copy of his cover that I have for making a mix tape (BQM XVII). It’s not a literal translation of the lyrics, but its text is well known.

My last cousin is engaged. The wedding is Sept. 15. We’ll all be packing up and going to Louisiana for the festivities. Of the 15 in our generation I’ll be the only one not married and it is most likely going to stay that way. There’s also been only 2 divorces among us which is a point of pride for me — of the 6 pairs of married aunts and uncles, they have a combined 300+ years married.

On the most recent royal wedding in Great Britain I liked that the officiator of the wedding said “I proclaim them man and wife.” I don’t think “proclaim” is used much (at least it sounds more elevated than the language I remember from my family’s weddings.)

I was able to run the media for my church this week. I had someone behind me helping my confidence. There were a couple of places where he suggested I black the screen that I didn’t notice on my own. The social media feed was a little messy to turn off, but I remembered the right way to do that so it was not broken for long.

I guess I’ve typed enough….

The world is big, but it isn’t so big that we can’t hurt it

A green thought bubble
I’m binding my poetry into books. I’ve got two books so far of 300 poems. My books of the next 300 will be done soon. I’m working all day tomorrow, so it’ll have to wait until I get home. I love my velobind machine.

I had forgotten that back in 2011, when I would write a poem, I might write a one page meditation about the poem.

Reading them again is like meeting myself a second time. Some feelings are the same, some are less familiar.

One quote I found:

“The world is big, but it isn’t so big that we can’t hurt it.”

All of the shouting about climate change misses the point. We’re hurting our planet. The exact mechanism doesn’t really matter.

Animals are suffering. Plants are suffering. The oceans are suffering. The land is suffering. The air is suffering. People are suffering.

The planet is suffering and we’re to blame.

Memories

Recently, Pandora put on one of my feeds “Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart.

I hadn’t heard the song for a long time and after hearing it a few times, I decided I wanted more like it.

I created a Year of the Cat channel and have been rewarded with a lot of nostalgia.

With my tablet playing it, I get all of the late 70s music I could ever ask for.

Some of it is pretty awful, but I get a lot of nice memories from the non-awful stuff.