Velvet Verbosity

I am still too sick or weak to write much.  I saw another doctor yesterday who is putting me on another round of the same antibiotic, and to be honest, given my response to it on the first round, I’m not happy with this treatment protocol.  Battling the medical system when you already feel terrible is something no one should have to go through.  When I feel better I will post more.

No doubt, this has been one tough year.  Three weeks ago I was bitten by a tick and three days later came down with symptoms in line with Lyme disease.  I was very sick, and the doctor put me on antibiotics.  Unfortunately, I am still sick.  I had a period of feeling better, but was scant on here because I was so busy catching up on all the things that got dropped when I was sick.  I had to go to the ER today and they refused to give me more antibiotics, so I am still very symptomatic.  I can only concentrate on anything for a half hour at a time, and I am extremely fatigued.  A level of fatigue that is impossible to understand without experiencing it.    I expect to be in bed a lot until I get a proper diagnosis, or until this “non” lyme thing goes away.  I will post as I can, and hope to put up the most recent round up soon.

Dear readers, you have been so good sticking with me through all the various gaps.  There’s nothing I can say except that when the going gets tough, the blog seems to be the first thing I have to drop.  On top of it all, my job is in jeapordy because of the economy, so that’s fun added to the madness!

Sigh.

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” ~Anais Nin

Love is such a misunderstood word.  We confuse it for lust, obsession, loneliness, and need.  We want it more than we give it, and the less we feel we receive it, the less we give of it.  People talk of true love and soul mates when they have yet to taste these things.  We use the word to express all of our intense desires, like “I LOVE those shoes!”, or “I LOVED that movie!”.

Poets, novelists, philosophers, and songwriters write about love.  Entire movie plot lines are built up around love.  Love is everywhere, talked about incessantly in all forms, and yet still we so often remain confused about what it really is.  Sometimes it’s easier to say what love isn’t, rather than what it is.

My pick of the week is from the Night Blogger, who someday will dedicate a novel to me and send me a first edition signed copy.  Why?  Because I LOVE her writing.

I can hear him breathe and the sound is like the ocean to me; as close as my own heartbeat. I wonder if he’ll hate me when I’m gone, or if he’ll love me more when so much time has passed that all he can remember are the perfect moments. He won’t remember in twenty years that I left him. Only that I was there.

It’s not easy. Matters of the soul never are, but this time the pain leaves me frozen inside. That last moment burns in my memory.

I brush my fingertips across his forehead and slip away.

In other words…

• For the love of cows.
  
• For the love of children.
  
• For the love of husbands and wives.
• Don’t call it love.

For those of you that are new, welcome!  And for those of you lurking, visiting, or serendipitously stumbling your way here, speak up, we’d love to hear what you have to say in 100 words.  (If you need a debriefing on the challenge, go here)  This week’s word comes from Richard Ford’s A Multitude of Sins, which I plan to curl up with right after this post.

Situation

It took me three tries this week to not land on “the” or “there”.  So let me see, dear readers, what kind of situations you can get us into.

With love,

A few nights ago I was on my way home and talking to a friend on my cell-phone.  I thought I knew my way home, but took a wrong turn and only then did I turn on my GPS.  It took me down some back roads with little traffic.  At an intersection, I came to a stop at a stop sign, and sat patiently.  Only when the guy behind me finally got fed up and honked his horn did I realize I was sitting at a stop sign, waiting for it to turn green!!

100 Word Challenge roundup will be posted by midnight.  If you haven’t submitted anything, you still have until 7 p.m. Eastern time.

“No man loves life like him that’s growing old.” ~Sophocles

He is an elegant man, tall, slender, and white like a beech tree bending gracefully over his task.  I ask him where I can find the vinegar but he doesn’t hear me.  It is then I see he is wearing a hearing aid.  I speak more loudly, move in closer but not too close.  I don’t want to give him a start.  I want him to remain graceful like he is.  He hears me at last, turns slowly toward me, blinks a couple of times and then efficiently tells me, “aisle eight”.  He is turned back to his work before I can even say thank you.

It is Saturday and the store seems full of old men today.  Or maybe it’s that I’m noticing them today.  Perhaps some yearning to understand where it is I’m headed, to find a message in the lines on their faces that yes, there is meaning, and they’ve found it.

On my way out to the car, a largish man leans his stomach over the handle of the cart, leaning on it for support more than pushing it.  The cart is full of cheap bottles of soda and I imagine him sitting down to a dinner of microwaved meatloaf and a glass of iced pop in front of the television.  Later he will fall asleep in his chair with a blue light flickering across his face and his stained t-shirt.

Driving home there is a light drizzle.  Not enough for the delayed wiper setting, but enough that I have to manually send them swiping every few minutes.  It is near dusk.  I drive past a robust old man with an unruly white and gray beard that billows like a storm cloud around his face.  He is walking in this gray drizzle and yet seems not to notice.  He strides along, piercing the drizzle with his dark-eyed squint, carrying his round belly and that mass of hair like he means it.

Two brothers resisting age, fighting it with all their might.  The regimen of vitamins, maniacal exercise and pretending they’re still in the game long past their prime.  Resisting settling in or down they achieve little but looking restless and never quite satisfied with the Now.

He stands softly in line, thoughtful and adorably rumpled. His soft black hair, his gentle smile, remind me of someone very dear to me.   My heart takes a deep breath as I remember slender fingers brushing hair from my face, dark eyes meeting mine and a relentless, invisible electric current.

Moments later, a woman pulls up next to me in the parking lot. She has the same shabby-sharp blond haircut and the same longish turned up nose as another person from my memory. The resemblance is so startling, so very close, that I keep staring, keep double-taking until it reaches that point of awkwardness where she notices I am staring, stealing glances. She shoots me a warning look.  Embarrassed, I avert my eyes.

In the short space of a few minutes I am reminded of two people from the same point in my past, and all the rest of the way home I am remembering a place where time stood still, or at least moved a little differently on our little piece of the planet. The memories are not visual, but visceral. My cells seem to pop open, filling me out completely, stretching and shining in my skin and for the rest of the evening I am radiant, just radiant.

This piece is newly edited but written some time ago.  Image “Radiance” from Digital Blasphemies Gallery

Internet, I’m home.  Actually, not really.  I didn’t realize how hard blogging was going to be without internet at home, ugh!  When I’m at work with internet access I just don’t have time, and then I’m too wiped to pop into a cafe for an hour or so of blogging.  I cut back all my expenses in anticipation of making a major geographical move in late Spring.  I’m looking at New Mexico, Oregon, Colorado, and California.  Florida is in the list too, but very low down there.  Any of these will be MAJOR moves for me and Alba on so many levels, but it’s time.  The area I live in is high expense and low pay and I’ve never really liked it but stayed for the kids.    Turns out Alba is ready for a move, and Poe is striking out on his own, so now is the time.  I hope I won’t be too spotty with my posts, but so far it’s looking like it might be that way.  I don’t plan to disappear entirely, but I have a lot to do.  Resumes, job-hunting, house-hunting, looking at schools, cleaning out my house of any and all debris I don’t want to haul cross-country with us, notifications, telling my family I’m going to be thousands of miles away…

But enough about me and Myself.  Let’s get to the round up.My pick of the week is I, Rodius.  I like this piece for it’s lightness, humor, and compassion.

I have a friend. She likes to use the phrase, “Me myself personally,” as in, “me myself personally, I can’t abide a know-it-all.” Or, “I never watch that kind of movie, me myself personally.” Given my history of deep disdain for other people’s grammatical mistakes, superfluity, and other personal quirks, it should irritate the hell out of me. But some part of me finds it to be a charming iteration of self, a progressive statement of being, a declaration of individual value, tripled. And I like it. I applaud her, and her joyfully repetitive celebration of herself. Me. Myself. Personally.

In other words…

• Aurora Lee explores self.
• Fragility of self.
  
• Self love, or lack thereof.
  
• Sick of selves.
  
• There’s a hobo living in my railroad car!
• Finding self in family.

For those of you that are new, welcome!  And for those of you lurking, visiting, or serendipitously stumbling your way here, speak up, we’d love to hear what you have to say in 100 words.  (If you need a debriefing on the challenge, go here)  Earlier this week I picked up a lovely book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and I haven’t been able to put it down, it’s just so positively delicious and heart-wrenching.  This week’s word:

Love

That’s the word my finger landed on.  Such a common, overused, misunderstood word.  Do your best to think outside the box and play with this one.

With love,