October 17, 2023
Gleanings
- I learned the word, Weltschmerz this week, which in German literally translates as, “world pain.” It’s a feeling triggered by the inexplicable pains and evils of the world, when our ideals of how the world should be collide with the darkest of realities.
- Look At Me offers no such consolation, especially if you recognize anything of yourself in “Little Orphan Fanny.” Fanny is a tortoise to the end, but her only victory is having the last word.
- What a gift. This completely changed my internal rules of engagement — from expectation to empathy, from pointing the finger externally to checking in with my own self.
- The next day at work, they asked us to play Nimrod before our concert in honor of Viv. I understand the sentiment behind this, but I don’t think the people who made this decision fully thought it through?!? Like, have you ever tried to play a brass solo while you were ugly-crying?!? I prepped in the bathroom beforehand by making myself a giant scarf made of toilet paper, and you bet I needed it. I wonder what Viv would have thought of it all—I’m pretty sure she would have laughed, with a very subtle eye roll.
- Why bittersweet, I wonder, not sweetbitter? How did this compound noun come to be created in this order, putting painful first and pleasurable second?
- Does this inevitably lead to passing judgment and evaluation on people? Do I consider a seamstress less admirable or valuable than a poet? Yet, there are people who evoke admiration even though I have no desire to do what they do: Firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers.
- Jack and steam – forever linked by their common attributes of invigoration, restoration, and danger.
- Memory is wild and memory association is wilder, still. I think I will always associate Stop Making Sense with Ric and 1984, but I was really glad I got to experience it again, almost forty years later, with Chuck. And I think Ric would appreciate that, too.
- The ping of an incoming email. A friend, who ends her note with, “You are brave and good.” I hope she is right. I hope that I am brave and that I am good. I’m grateful that she can see those characteristics in me, especially on the days when I cannot.
- Now here’s a store novel that is not twee or earnest; it’s funny and mostly realistic, with mentions of working conditions of regular women, and the perils that face single women in the 30s.
- As women gather more years we become disinterested in trying to live a perfect life as defined by popular theories and philosophies. Freed from those expectations and efforts, we’ve acquired a new freedom, a stronger self-confidence and greater contentment. Instead, our passions are directed at nurturing and enjoying our relationships and friendships, at hobbies and sports and at activities – travel, theatre arts, volunteerism. Our energies are focussed on living an intentional and thoughtful life.
- This morning it’s raining and I’m inside, quiet, wishing I had my mother here to talk with, to offer her the gift or curse of this story to in a way that was loving. So much was withheld from her in her life, particularly during her childhood; she was marked by it. She was a good mother, maybe better than I deserved, because I wasn’t always much of a daughter, or at least not the daughter she might have wished for. Nearly a hundred years ago she was wrapped in a blanket and handed off to a household in Halifax where she was considered a boarder. One name was dropped and forgotten, until now.
- The thing about the plot of an ordinary life is that it’s only revealed slowly and partially even to the one living it!
