Mid Saturday and nothing much has been accomplished. I had little planned for the weekend other than adding a lining to the spare room curtains. The sheers are too sheer for the comfort of my Darling who uses the room as a dressing room due to his early rising for work and courtesy for me. My parents also stay in the room when visiting so the curtains need to be addressed. I spent the morning dallying with Baby Boy and watching TV, not exactly productive. This evening we will head out for Sushi at the new Sushi joint in our little town. You know it's going in mainstream when there are more than three Sushi places in a 10 mile radius. Still no all you can eat sushi so we aren't as regular patrons as we would like to be.

The rain reminds me of my first year here. After so many temperate years in CA moving to the Midwest was jarring. The rain was constant that spring and my initial delight soon wained and I was left feeling worn down like the flowers in the garden beneath my window, bent over in submission to the constant downpour. While April showers might bring May flowers it may also portend other unpleasantness (think storms, toppled trees, and flooding).

I recently chatted on the phone with a friend from my sunny adopted home and she, having grown up not far from my real hometown, professed to missing the rain. I on the other hand could think of nothing but how much I wished I could stand in the SoCal sunshine. I also had occasion to speak with a former co-worker from CA yesterday, no coincidence I am sure. It isn't as though I was blissfully happy there after all my life was destroyed and then rebuilt during my tenure out west. I like the new life way better than the old despite the rain, pain and withdrawal. At least I have the safety of my home, warm and loving, healing even.

I am missing something. I miss talking to people. Not the passing interchange with acquaintances, or the exchange of daily activities, but the conversations about issues, science, current events, life, philosophy something, anything of interest. I find myself bored out of my mind. Nothing holds my interest for long. I surf the net looking for interesting articles but after absorbing all I can from the references I am left enriched but alone. I wish I could talk to someone who is interested in things, anything. Even though I can't always picture what he is talking about I love it when My Darling explains what he is doing at his job. At least it is interesting, it forces me to think and that is becoming a rarity. My brain feels like it is in stand-by. I run on auto pilot, which is not successful mind you thus my current problems, yet I can not excite myself to any more participation in this world. My Darling and my Baby Boy are the only people with whom I feel engaged. Even the rest of my family feels distant.

Baby boy holds my interest down to the tiniest detail. I sit and watch when he is not aware of my attention. They are incredible creatures. We are incredible creatures, capable of so much yet mired so completely in the morass of our cultures. No matter how far back you look into literature and history you see the same enlightenment and the same destructive tendencies. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I found the origin of this statement on Wiki "an epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Gu�pes (�The Wasps�). Literally �The more it changes, the more it�s the same thing.� It seems supported on a large scale, like Newtonian physics explains the macroscopic world. The you look at Budda's take on the subject and the opposite is proposed "Everything changes, nothing stays the same". From moment to moment the only constant is change. For many years I had one word displayed on my wall, "change". This concept is also true. If you look at the much smaller scale like Einsteins Quantum Physics, change is constant and so much of the world is elusive. You see so much and yet you see so little of what the world, the universe presents. Nothing changes, we all spend our whole lives discovering what we are, without ever knowing what we are. Some cling to religion and faith, others to knowledge and reason, still others flail in the dark chasing nothing but a feeling of pleasure. For all it occupies our time it is nothing. This life of impermanence should lend itself to more compassion, more kindness, more empathy with our fellow man, instead there is isolation, delusion and pain, for those who know, for we who struggle and for those condemned (or freed) to live without thought for all that tortures me.

These words are more rightfully found in the musings of the young and ideal not from one who should just know and accept, it is not human nature to live by ones ideals. It isn't normal to listen to another persons perspective and give it weight enough for consideration of it's appeal. It is uncommon to find someone who will eagerly abandon their "opinion" when another, more valid, insight is presented. The world is both black and white and shades of gray. With color around the edges just to make it more interesting.

This is what happens when you leave me alone on a Saturday afternoon. The rest of the house breathes in sweet slumber and I struggle and twist with my thoughts.

Maybe I need to watch another movie, blanket my mind with nothing. There are two ways out of this swamp, physical activity and distraction, in courtesy to the folks I might disturb with activity I will be off to distract myself with visual stimulation.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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