Owlet, Owl, Owlet

On a wall of my house is a picture of three owls, a hand-embroidered creation in a small blue IKEA frame. My mom would develop artistic obsessions — one of these, in the early 1970s, was embroidery — and she stitched this picture during that phase.

One of my friends observed that the three owls resemble a mother and her two kids. Whether that was Mom’s conscious, or subconscious, choice, I don’t know. But she did tend to find things that had a “mom & babies” theme. Even when I was in my 50s, Mom seemed to view me as “her baby” in some ways. I suppose that is not that unusual among parents and adult children, no matter how old they are.

In this particular picture, the “mama owl” (if you do indeed perceive her that way) is in the middle, encircled by a hollow in the trunk of a leafy tree. She and my sister (the owlet to our left) are huddling together, heads & shoulders side by side.

Whereas the other owlet, eyes a bit off-kilter, is peering towards them from her perch on a nearby branch to the right. One guess “whooo” that quirky owlet represents in this scenario!

* A group of Owls is known, curiously enough, as a Parliament. We will revisit this at a future point.

The Fog

Many people, I suppose, have experienced what it is to be standing onstage behind a thick, weighty velvet curtain. So, imagine what it feels like to tug on the ropes of the curtain’s edge, doing your very best to open it up… and it just…won’t… move….  

That’s one way that I can describe chemo brain. Or brain fog. Or short-term memory issues.  

Or sometimes it feels like that dream where you’re stuck to the ground; no matter how you try, you just can’t extricate your feet from that enveloping mud.

*to be continued…

Vocabulary

I like the “unlimited” feeling of writing; in the sense that you can’t run out of words. Although the “right” word loves to escape my short-term memory.

Hopefully I won’t deplete my supply of words or ideas. It’s ridiculously easy to derail my train of thought, however. I wonder how many times each day (or each paragraph) I lose track of what I was planning to do, or say?

If you Google how many words are in the English language, the count stood at 171,146 (currently in use) and 47,156 (obsolete words). Thank you, BBC News, for that 2018 statistic! So I’ve got many words still waiting their turn to be used.

Writing (blogging in this case) is an art with a practically endless well of raw materials from which to use your creative license! I love that.

Do something that you love to do… why not?

“Do work that you love, and then you’ll never work a day in your life.” — Confucius. Or Mark Twain. Or somebody else.

Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work — this is a gift of God.
(Ecclesiastes 5:19)

2020, part XVII

So strange today, walking into one of our public libraries to pick up books that I had reserved online.

When you enter the lobby, you are greeted by a library assistant and have to respond to a few covid screening questions; of course, that’s no surprise at all during 2020. I reply to their queries and proceed into the building, reflecting that we are all entrusting strangers to tell the truth about their health (and how careful, or careless, they have been). And of course, they are also trusting me not to be a germ-spreader.

I don’t know how risky it is to touch a book in the library, compared to a product on a grocery store shelf. But the library’s rules are their rules. And it’s all part of the great unknown that has become our “new normal.”

It feels as if I’m visiting the books and they are imprisoned. Indeed, most of our city’s library branches have been closed since the spring, and the books have been inaccessible during that long, long summer.

Although I’ve snuck into the building in November and can see shelf after shelf of my treasured Dewey Decimal friends, there is an impermeable divide between us. A few volumes are displayed on a shelf or a cart, just within my grasp. But the stacks behind them are blocked off by crowd-control non-velvet ropes. I cannot even reach out and peruse the covers by myself, to see whether I want to read something from New Nonfiction.

“May I help you?” offers a passing library employee from the other side of the crowd-control barrier. I accept her help and arbitrarily judge a book by its cover: How to Teach Philosophy to Your Dog, by Anthony McGowan. Randomly putting the book under my arm, I walk up to the Lucite-blocked checkout desk to claim my reserved volumes.

I feel wistful as I step away and depart the building, unable to adopt the remaining books from their deserted stacks. They remain incarcerated behind the barrier, hopefully awaiting the next visitor to their holy ground.

A New(er) Blog. Why not?

Because it’s fun. And a creative outlet. And cheaper than therapy.

Who and what is behind this contribution to the Blog Universe?

  • I want to share some thoughts about random things. It’s so unfortunate when people go through life believing that they are “the only one” who has a given thought, and they don’t quite fit in with the “normal” people, and they never “find their tribe.” Since this is one of my struggles, I’m going to take advantage of Cyberspace (does anybody still use that word?) and put my random thoughts out there, dagnabbit.
  • Maybe if this blog is out there in the aforementioned Cyberspace, I’ll become more organized about writing on a regular basis. Cool.
  • If my posts succeed in encouraging anybody — if you laugh, nod in understanding because you can relate, or look at anything whatsoever from a different angle — mission accomplished!