Identify what is most important )0( Eliminate everything else
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. Dr. Paul Farmer
The suffering of others is not alleviated when no one knows about it.
There is no one right way to live. Daniel Quinn Ishmael
The only thing that you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right sort of people.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

things I learned today

I try to learn something new every day, whether I want to or not.  Truth is that I could not avoid leaning new stuff if I tried.

So.  Today.

People will lie to you until they have exhausted every other choice but to tell you the truth.

You...speaking of women here...can have a man for a friend.  I think. 

You cannot eat homemade sweet potato salad, bell peppers, celery and a soft drink and avoid having a soundtrack from your lower intestinal tract for the rest of the day.

You can take a risk and turn the furnace on and only double the utility bill.  Yay!  Oh, I cannot help myself, just yay!!!!!!

You can give away the last of your money, manage well enough for the following week and find out that the person used it to improve her health.

If I do not visit the laundromat tomorrow I will not have any big girl panties to pull up in an emergency.


I am working on the crazy and the lazy parts of myself that do not want to do the work, whatever that is.  My therapist asked me a few weeks back what I would do if I could do anything and I told her that I would just stay home.  Did not even have to think about it.

Right on the heels of that she asked me where I would live if I could live anywhere.  I said Wyoming.  Just like that and it only took a moment to realize that I would like to live in the middle of actual nowhere.  I have notions, probably exotic, probably most of which are myth-based, about living there, a flat lander, a loner.  A Wyomingite.  No close neighbors, no regular mail delivery.  Am I a hermit just below my skin?  If you scratch the surface, do I not run and hide in a cave?  If you search me out, do I not send my friends, the bears, after you?  Maybe.

Needing to plan and stockpile whatever I needed, not just in the snowbound half of the year, but pretty much all the time.  Animals for which to care, warm bodies and cute antics and living creatures who need me and like me and, aside from our joint survival, ask nothing else from me, nothing unreasonable.

All that blessed time alone.  I can work, although not the work I am doing now very easily, but it could be done.  That is why the goddess gave us satellites.  I could sleep and paint and write and create and craft on my own schedule.  Technology exists so that I can break my isolation whenever I liked.  In the summer the boys could spend time with me in my wilderness.

I guess I could do all of that here, and still be able to shop for fresh vegetables and see the boys every month.  I could have that if I craft it right.  I could get a cat and hunker down for the cold months to come.  Long and selfish four-day weekends for those weeks and weeks.  Have the boys come for a week during Christmas break.  I have all the stuff I need and could drag some of it out and paint a bit.

I bet that if I think about this, that I could be a Wyomingite right here, in non-Wyoming.

2 comments:

  1. Why live in Wyoming when you can come here to sunny Queensland in Australia? You would love it I am sure. We could find you a quiet little place at the beach where you could contemplate how beautiful our coast is and just relax and enjoy the scenery.

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  2. My actual, although unattainable, place to live is Australia. I sometimes have dreams about being on on a higher part of the land, my little house behind me, just looking out at the water.

    So interesting that you would suggest much the same thing. And, even more interesting is that Wyoming's Devil's Tower is so similar, at least in fame, as Uluru. Weird. And, I had to look it up to make sure of the spelling. :)

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