I want time to sit and
read, take a nap and snack. Basically, I want to be in kindergarten. Anon.
I woke up this morning and found myself stumbling around
the bedroom like as if I was coming off a bit of a bender – I wasn’t.
I wasn’t dizzy (although I do have blond genes), and I
wasn’t groggy from sleep or struggling to wake up. I was fully awake as I clambered
out of bed, but as I made my way to the wash room I found my equilibrium was
anything but equilibriating!
That happens every so often. The body wakes up but the
inner ear stays in bed and – voila – we find ourselves schlepping off into the
world like Godzilla through Tokyo. It’s not a pretty sight (although it can be
downright comical).
Fortunately, our house is small enough I can cruise along
using walls, furniture, and countertops like any self-respecting toddler my
age, and so life is as safe and sane as I make it (for whatever that’s worth).
That seems to be the way 2019 has started off for me. It
isn’t a bad year (yet); I don’t expect to see it improve or get worse as it
progresses, and yet it just seems a bit “off” to my sensor array.
For instance, it is January, but we haven’t had any snow come
down in our corner of the world. That’s not a bad thing (being snow-averse, as
I am), and yet I know the lack of snow will have an impact on the forests all
around us. I fear for what it will mean when fire season returns. I can’t do
anything about that, so I don’t fret; I simply plan to be careful when out and
about. I will make every effort to minimize sparks wherever I go.
Actually, that sounds like good advice for life. We should
all go through life minimizing the sparks we fling off here there and
everywhere. In the Saint Francis prayer, we ask God to make us instruments of
peace. That sounds good on the face of it, but then at some point we have to
deal with people and situations that bring out that same feeling one gets when
fingernails are scratched down those proverbial blackboards (that people have
heard of but never use anymore).
White boards. Ugh. What’s the fun in those?
I have fond memories of taking the erasers out after class
to pound them along the bricks at Whittier Elementary in Seattle. The cloud of
chalk-dust blowing up as those felt blocks whacked into one another, or tumbled
onto the asphalt playground outside the Janitor’s entrance. That was life; that
was living. There was pride to be had in restoring those erasers to as black as
black could be. Black meant they were clean, and that we had done our job. But
now-a-days: Blecht!
Now we have color-coded “dry-erase” markers. Erasers are
still made of felt, but there’s hardly anything to beat out of them. You bang
them together and you might, if you’re lucky, get a little pufflet of a
piffle-cloud – totally incapable of causing even a flea to sneeze. What a
waste!
But, that’s the world we live in. It is so safe and sane
it’s hard to feel a great sense of accomplishment getting to the end of the day
alive. Having been bubble-wrapped, there are no bruises to point out; no scars witnessing
to the day’s battles.
Well, blackboards are a thing of the past. No doubt when
schools introduced them generations ago, teachers grumbled, too, about having
to toss out their granite tablets and designer chisels.
But, that’s progress; that’s nothing to grouse about
(really). The same goes with being at peace with the world. It is so easy to
fight everything that comes around until one realizes the world’s not here to fulfill
our every whim. There IS a center to the universe, but I am neither he, nor
she, nor it.
All I need to do to be at peace is to realize that fact
and, further, to see to it I keep MY fingernails off the chalkboard of life.
The less dust I raise, the better off we will all be.
And that’s the way I see it as I stumble ‘round this
morning here in this, our valley.
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