Blog Carnival: The Webs We Weave

Peanut Butter...

Does not make me think of jelly. Or rather, I guess it does because it makes me think how much I despise jelly...or jam...or preserves. What the heck's the difference anyways? Why not eat fruit whole and fresh? What's with grinding it up and adding sugar and syrupy crap? Or drying it out. I will never understand dried fruit. Oh good, now I chew on leathery fruit devoid of most nutrients. Excellent.

It's true that a fruit's nutrients often lie within the skin, so if you go skinless, you're not getting the full effect. Not that other things should not go skinless, like chicken, at least as a food. Skinless alive might be problematic. There are hairless things though...

Hairless dogs, rats, cats, guinea pigs...


They feel like velvet, which is NOT a flattering look on anyone unless she or he is under the age of six. Crushed velvet is reserved for those under the age of three and the early 90s trends.

Was crimped hair part of the early 90s? If not, then my father tortured me unnecessarily. Unnecessary---un meaning not, and necesse, or indispensable. Originally ne (not) plus cedere, meaning to go away or withdraw. Similar to the Spanish cerrar, to close, I guess. Or maybe I'm just connecting nonexistent threads.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1832


The Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse, 1888

Oh the web she wove.

I'm hungry.
I think I'll have my fuji apple and peanut butter.

Now go check out the other Blog Carnival participants!

Farin' On The West Winds Of Erin

Instinctively Woman
The Photo Maestro 

I think, therefore I think I am.

How do you think? Odd question, perhaps. I don't mean how do you think, as in what synapses are used and how the brain functions. I mean, what do your thoughts look like? Are they musical, colorful, completely abstract, surreal, in words, etc?

I think in pictures, with words thrown in from time to time, swirling backwards down the drain like water in the southern hemisphere. The words are usually in a serif font and mirrored. I'm not sure why, but maybe it has to do with the fact that I can read mirror image text easily and write it as well. I don't know what this means other than my talents are wasting away.

My thoughts are pictures, very distinct, mobile pictures. The thoughts freeze in place, but then move on and walk out of the frame of my mind, as if I have a movie camera up there watching inside my head. Scenes take place, finish, and step offstage. Thoughts that I have a hard time recalling are backstage, lurking behind the curtains. I can feel them there, but I can't see them well enough to figure out what they are. I am almost in my own head, seeing the thoughts pan out, and moving around to find answers when my view is obstructed.

Sometimes my thoughts are mixed with sound. Often I hear narration to my current thoughts while I...think. What's odd is that the voice is not mine, at least not recognizably so. I can recall voice pitch and intonation quite as well, so memories include both moving pictures and sound.

I wonder if the way we think has to do with how we learn best? I learn best by doing. Experience learning. I must wrap my own two hands around a problem in order to figure it out and fully comprehend it. Otherwise, I might only see the answer and the route to get to the answer. I'm a sponge, but I have to sit in the pan of water for a while.


image by charles lloyd

Más Pillow Book Para Vosotros

Busy weekend. I tried out rock-climbing for the first time and LOVED it. It's a rush to feel like you can't reach the next foot/handhold and then stretching that little bit extra to make it. I definitely will be going out again.



Also finished up a complex accounting problem (well, complex for my level) and managed to get it right! So hooray for that. Anyone out there doing the Canine Classic in Boulder on April 18th? Let me know, because I'd love to meet up! T.S. and I will be there with our game faces on!

Things that bring (happy) tears to my eyes:
*The Office wedding scene.
*When T.S. lays his head on me and thumps his tail.
*Random cards in the mail from friends.
*The Man in the Moon's end scenes.

Songs that I can't stop listening to:
*Sleepyhead.
*Fake Plastic Trees.
*We Only Come Out at Night.
*Disintegration.
*Robots (live version I saw @ Red Rocks).

Things that distract me:
*Math problems.
*Dust and dirt...must clean!
*Snoring.
*Intentions...what I meant to do before I previously became distracted.

I'm currently re-watching my Everwood dvds. Such a good show, and set in Colorado!

BLOG CARNIVAL: Scenic Scribbles: The Environment of Writing

Levels of Consciousness

I started a hike up Royal Arch and thought of the levels of the flatirons, the makeup of its paths. I thought about these levels and how they were like levels of consciousness or being.

Pre-dawn
Up in the morning before the sun lends its light to the ground. Up and immediately needing. Pre-dawn is a time of instant demands. Survival instincts kick in, and as I trudge up the hill, breathing out visible puffs in the dark, I think of bears. In the dark, I am both vulnerable and cloaked in cover. Sheltered, but wary. The mountain above me hides, and in the pre-dawn hours, I can only know that what's not visible, isn't there.


Awakening
Moving up beyond a man-made path, I am enveloped in tree branches, weighted by snow. The sun begins to share its light with the ground. I've left pre-dawn and arrived at awakening. My senses seek experience. They reach out, grasping onto the rough edges of consciousness. This is a place past immediacy. I can touch the base of the flatirons and feel the dripping ice slide down the rock. Here is a time of noticing and acting on stimuli rather than only needs. My boots fall through the snow, each step sinking down til compacted snow stops it. And up I go.


Curious Activity
Higher still I climb, and the branches dwindle. Light seeps into the trees and bounces right back off the snow, blinding me. The sun holds onto its power even through the haze. Here I question. Here I want answers. How is the snow here so much softer and moist than that of the lower levels? What bird made tracks the size of peanuts in the snow? And what plants besides pine and ivy last all winter? My thoughts scatter from one to another, only landing long enough to take a mental picture.


Surreal
The town below is not real. It's too far away to connect to, and therefore only exists as a picture. The landscape is merely a backdrop to this rock, like evening is for night. Changeable in a moment, but not definable at any time. It's an incoherent sigh of relief. Exhalation frozen in the air. Such silence calms me after a day of curious activity. Thoughts from the day gel and stick in my mind. These are the things to ponder in sleep. Here is where you drift, hoping to stay for good, but knowing it is impossible.


Descent
It's a long way down. Usually, down is much easier than up, but when snow's involved, down becomes literal, and I try not to fall. Descent is the time the sun disappears: when thoughts become only of sleep so that the body and mind have no choice but to obey.

"Every moment of light and dark is a miracle."

Walt Whitman

 

I often wonder about these in between moments, these discrete miracles. What is the single moment that night becomes day. Weather reports say: Sunrise 6:49 a.m, but at what moment does dark become light, light back to dark. What moment does a mountain grow? These are environmental Pinter moments. A communication passes silently, but it's up to us to notice and understand it.

Now go read the other Blog Carnival participants!

http://farinonthewestwindsoferin.blogspot.com/

http://erinbery.blogspot.com/

Babies on the brain (it's not what you think)...

Well. Maybe it's what you think. This post is not meant to offend any of my awesome friends with children or with ones on the way. It's only my view of my life in comparison.

A few nights ago, I woke up (mentally woke up, not physically) and realized I was having a dream that I was in labor. Scary, right? It wasn't. Perhaps it's because I knew I was in the middle of a dream, so it wasn't real, but who knows. So I woke up, completely calm, but feeling my insides trying to escape. Somehow I knew that I was giving birth. But then I woke up the rest of the way and the entire scenario dissipated. I'm sure more was going on, but I never remember the sleeping parts.

I think I had this dream because I know so many people right now who are pregnant. Two of my cousins (one for the 2nd time and one on her first!), my sassy roomie from KSU, my dear FOXFIRE sister, an adorable pixie from film class, and my CO conspirator's cousin. Not to mention my friends from school who already have a kid, and of course my ridiculously cute goddaughter :-).

If they aren't pregnant, they are married, and if they aren't married, they are engaged to be married. They being at least 90% of the people I associate with. And most of these people are about my age. What I find so odd is that I'm not really in that phase yet, and it's not really what I think about. Yes, I have a long-term boyfriend whom I am crazy about, and yes, it's nice to think about getting engaged or married or what-have-you (I am a sap, I admit it!), but aside from living in the same state as my significant other again, that is not my focus.

Some people just want a family, and that is their main goal in life. That is certainly an admirable goal, and I am not knocking it in the least. I just have never been the one to say that yes, I want a husband and yes I want kids and yes I want a house, etc. I didn't think like that as a kid, I didn't as a young adult, and I don't as an adult now. My goals are career-oriented. Almost everything I do is to better my future career. Right now I'm working on an accounting degree so that I can combine that with my editing and freelance writing to build a way for me to work on my own schedule, in my way and enjoy my life. Right now I know I will never be truly satisfied going to an office every day, though that could change if I were to work for a company that is in line with my own beliefs (ie a horse farm, rescue, or animal publication). But even then, I'm not sure I can throw myself into that kind of work. I'm happy to work 80 hours a week on something I love, but I'd need it to be outside or with animals, not stuck at a desk. Who knows though. If it's my own making, I might be all right with it.

And the rambling got a hold of me there...

In any case, I don't know many people who are as career-driven as I am. I want to work, and I don't mind it feeling like work, but I want it to matter. Everyone I know is still figuring things out or in a completely different mode than I am in, which is not a bad thing at all, it's simply that I know very few around me who are fighting the same fight, so to speak. I know what I want, I know that there are dozens of outlets for what I want, and I'm going to hunt these outlets down until I make my kill. There's a terrible metaphor for you.

Ooohhh...today should be terrible metaphor day!

Or possibly ADD day, since clearly I can't keep on track.

Regardless, I think my mode is so clear to me right now that it's difficult for me to answer questions about the future, family, "settling down," etc. I simply don't have the brain capacity for that right now. I have career-mode tunnel vision, and the future is comprised of me creating a career that I can happily live with, and until I get to that point, I can't see outside my tunnel (horrible metaphor number two).


image by Emma Bell-Scott

*I am currently craving a hot plate of good ol' mac and cheese. Too bad I don't have any!

Additions to my Pillow Book

Things that empower me:
*Unifying with Toby's 1200 pounds as we move around the ring.
*Solving a math problem using logic.
*Having someone ask me for help.
*The thought of survival; I am here, I am doing this, and I am happy.

Things that curl my toes:
*Sour lemon sorbet.
*Hot sand, hot sun, and a condensation covered drink.
*Pressure on my collarbone.

Things I want to fix:
*Disorganized kitchen pantries.
*Friends in pain.
*Unprecedented inequality.

Things I need regularly:
*Exhaustion.
*Blatant shows of affection.
*Chocolate...texture rich and decadent.
*New challenges.

Things I wish I were, but am not:
*Always honest (particularly with myself).
*Humorous.
*Superwoman...cape, tights, and all.
*Modern.


image by positively present

I often feel I've lived before,
Sheltered from the rain.
I recall the prick of every drop,
But nothing of the pain.

Adaptability

Oops. It's been over a month since my last post! I can legitimately blame it on being busy (excuses, excuses).

For those of you who don't know, I've started school (again). I'm working on an Associates in Accounting so that I can take advanced courses in the future and possibly become an enrolled agent or take the CPA (possibly). I am also taking these classes with the thought of starting my own business (likely animal or publishing-related) one day.

So now I am working full-time, going to school full-time, keeping up with my half-marathon training, conditioning Toby, writing, taking care of my pups, and attempting to be social now and then. So if I don't respond to contacts right away, gently remind me again that you're still around.

And on to the topic at hand...

It amazes me how adaptable we are. Our bodies are constantly adapting to accommodate environmental, physical, and mental changes occurring every day. We adapt without meaning to, often without wanting to. Why are so many of us resistant to change when change is an ongoing process that is inescapable? Perhaps it's the predictability we want to avoid...at least the predictability of change, like knowing you have to go grocery shopping but wanting to avoid it. Of course, then you go hungry.

What do we do when we don't/can't adapt? What does this do to our creativity? Do we have to adapt to everything? Doesn't something constant define us more than something changeable? I'm honestly not sure. I want need must but can't adapt to contentedness in the moment. Not to say I'm never happy, but I get restless in my perpetual state of now.

It's odd when you dread something, only to realize you're used to it, and you wonder when that adaptation occurred. Yes, it was surely a gradual process, but when was that moment when your body and mind unified in thought and breathed out an agreement of change. The body/mind adapt and then make this change (which, at this point, is not longer a change but is now a constant) normal.

I will say that adaptation is the process of making the irregular, regular; turning a change into a constant. Adaptation is a cater-cousin defamiliarization. Though defamiliarization makes the normal appear strange, adaptation finds the strange and studies it to make it ordinary. I don't believe the two to be opposites, though they may seem that way. Both observe oddity to better understand its source.



image courtesy of Flickr and Mr. Cousins