Ellemental

• On stormy days, my grandmother will look up at the sky and say “If you can see blue the size of a man’s britches, it’s going to clear up.” I’m 37 years old and I have NO IDEA what the hell she’s talking about. I know what blue is, and understand what man’s britches are, but putting it all together just confounds me. Where is the man standing while I’m measuring his britches? Is he close? Far away? Isn’t this something one needs to know?

  I hate that saying. It’s like my own personal koan that’s been bothering me for 30+ years.

• The elevator dreams are back.
• For the next 12 weeks, my life will revolve around the professional certification test I’m taking in December. I have a giant textbook, some notebooks, pens and highlighters that go EVERYWHERE with me. Just for nostalgia’s sake I put them all in a bookbag and I carry it with one strap over one shoulder, just like the good old days.
• I still check in on a blog that hasn’t been updated since July, 2003. It’s one of the very first blogs I ever encountered, and it’s the one that inspired me to start my own. Even though I feel like an idiot checking back, I can’t help myself.

Posts from the Past
I love to look back at posts from years past. I like to remember where I was at this time a year ago, or two, or four. To me, that’s the beauty of an online diary. I could never keep up with a paper and pencil diary. I’m just too lazy. But the online thing works. Sometimes when I look back it makes me smile, other times I feel a little touch of melancholy.

September 2004
I admire autumm. In all of her busy-ness – her rush toward wrapping everything up before the snow – she’s beautiful. It’s not the shy cuteness of spring, or the showy, in-your-face pageantry of summer, or the sharp elegance of winter. She’s just who she is. She’ll give you the bluest skies and the fluffiest clouds. She’ll allow you air warm enough to go coatless, but often she’ll blow a little cold breeze on your neck just to let you know that she’s in charge. She’s making the decisions. And she’s decided that it’s time to put away the swim suits and get in those last couple barbeques. You can bitch and moan like you did as a kid and your mom was calling you to come inside, but it won’t make a difference. She won’t punish you for whining, but she won’t bend, either. She might give you 5 more minutes on the swingset, but you will be coming in soon and putting on your warm jammies and settling in for the night.

September 2002
She comes skimming through rays of violet, she can wade in a drop of dew,
she don’t come, I don’t follow, waits backstage while I sing to you.

She can dance a Cajun rhythm, jump like a Willys in 4 wheel drive,
she’s a summer love for spring, fall, and winter, she can make happy any man alive.
-Sugar Magnolia, Grateful Dead

I want to be a muse. I want to be the one whose hair reminds an artist of a warm safe place where as a child they’d hide. I want to be the figure on the other side of a busy street who makes fleeting eye contact and momentarily causes that feeling of “home” and “rightness” before disappearing forever.

What I really want is to connect. A deep connection. I want to inspire, and I want to BE inspired. I fear I’ve lost that. In so many little ways I wall myself off, probably to defend myself against the bad stuff in relationships (not just with men…with everyone)…I strive to avoid conflict, I strive to not offend or be offended. I’ve chosen a safe, middle ground stance when dealing with everyone I know, and because of that, I have indeed avoided conflict and pain and hurt feelings…the lowest of the lows. Unfortunately, I’ve also missed the highest of the highs. Sure, I’ve avoided conflict, but I’ve done it by chosing to be alone. duh. Is there a point where it’s too late to turn back and join the rest of the world again? I wonder if those old eccentric town hermits that used to scare me so much as a child once felt the same way I do right now and just couldn’t make the jump off the loner path.

Note to anyone who actually read through the whole thing and is wondering if I ever did make the jump off the loner path - I did.

Sunflowers always remind me of fall.
It’s almost time for the local farm show, where neighbors take their best looking sunflowers, chocolate cakes, quilts, and giant pumpkins for judging. I never have anything to be judged (until they start judging dust bunnies), but that never stops me from walking up and down the aisles, oohing and ahhing over cucumbers and whittled wood.

My life here is pretty darned good.

I live in a small town. The local news covers a wide area of mostly rural towns. There isn’t a lot of crime to report (yay for low crime!). It seems, though, that fairly often (like every few months) there will be a news report about someone who has barricaded themselves in their home and have to be coaxed out by the police.

Is this some kind of trend? Are people barricading themselves in their homes all across the United States?

oh man.

The local news just ran a short story about a community that is financially helping a neighbor who has to travel 2 hours away for cancer treatment.

They showed a neighbor saying “We want to pitch in because he needs to travel back and forth several times a week. The price of gas is killing him.”

Then he realized that he just said “…is killing him…” about a man who is receiving treatment for a life-threatening disease and stammered and stumbled and obviously felt like an insensitive nincompoop as he tried to find another phrase.

Did the news REALLY have to air that?

oooo… I’m STILL cringing.