Moving Right Along

Serendipity

I have become the doddering aunt who falls asleep in her mug of cider by the fire only to wake up and tell the same stories over and over again.  That's who I'd be in another place and time, anyway; in this place and time I have only my love and the cat to see me drooling on the couch, and I have the whole internet to regale with material you've seen or heard before.  I apologize for the dullness of my absentminded redundancies, but thank you for your kind attention as you smile and refill my cup.

Along those lines, today I want to share with you a story that I'm pretty sure I have told on the internet somewhere else before, just can't remember where or when, maybe even more than once.  And even if you haven't read it there, perhaps you've heard me tell this story somewhere else in person.  Keeping the tales and telling them over and over is the job of crones, and though I am not old by modern measure, at the same time childless, unmarried, no longer possessed of quite all my faculties, and walking when I walk at all with a stick and a hobble, I am indeed the very stuff of crones.  So I shall take the liberty attendant upon my status and bore you just a little longer.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived with his mother.  One day his mother called him to her and said, "My son, I have a quest for you.  You must go out into the world and find a red house with a single chimney and no windows.  The inside will be all white, and in the very center will be a star."

The boy loved his mother very much, and so he agreed and went forth into the world.  He was gone a very long time.  He searched everywhere, and he found many red houses, and many had chimneys, and most had windows but not all.  Some were even all white inside.  But none held a star.

Sad and weary, he returned home, in his mind a failure.  But he was by nature brave and honest, rapped on the door of his mother's cottage, looked her in the face, and told her he had failed.

"That's all right, my dear," she said, gathering her son in a close embrace.  "You were not to know that what you sought was here the whole time."

She went to the pantry and pulled out an apple, with a stem.

"See?" she said.  "Here is a red house with a chimney and no windows."

Then she took a knife and cut the apple, not top-to-bottom the way we normally slice apples, but straight across the middle.

"And now you can see that inside it is all white, and in the very center is a beautiful, five-pointed star."

"And that," she told her son, "is what we call 'serendipity': finding something especially pleasant where we never would have expected."

And that is how I learned the word myself many, many years ago when a pretty young teacher told this same story to one of the elementary school classes in which I was enrolled.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  And of course, Happy Thanksgiving if you are in the United States, or even if you're not.  I don't think I need to spell out for anyone how serendipity relates to either love or gratitude; I just wish you plenty of it all.

(And just so you know, I might forget and do it again.)

Raise your hand if this has happened to you or someone you know.

ME:  It's now gotten to the point where when someone tells me they hope I feel better tomorrow I actually experience performance anxiety.

HIM:  Good.  That shows you're paying attention.

Isn't that crazy?  And yes, it's my craziness not yours, so look:  I know you people, and I'm telling you all right now, don't you be apologizing for giving me performance anxiety just because you've stopped by to wish me well in the past few days.  I accept your good wishes in the spirit in which they are tendered, and thank you very much for giving a poo about me.

It's a weird thing, though, that happens to the chronically or terminally ill, and maybe it or something like it has or does happen to you.  We have good days, right?  Or good hours?  And we have bad days.  It is unfair, unreasonable, and unhealthy to expect us to pretend we are fine when we are not, and most of us won't; most of us can't most of the time.  Still, it makes us feel bad to make you feel bad.  This is because we love you, too.

So this is where the performance anxiety comes from.

Here's a view inside my head.  Playback at maximum speed, preferably looped.

"OMG, what if I don't feel better tomorrow?  OMG, I will have failed.  Again.  OMG, my to-do list is enormous and mostly filled with things I have so far failed to do though I prefer to think of them as thinks I simply haven't accomplished yet but I have to recognize that that might be stupid or denial or something and I'm supposed to be more self-aware than that, but OMG, if I don't feel better tomorrow, that's another failure, that's another thing on my to-do list I won't have accomplished, and holy crap, when did I get so freakin' narcissistic?

"AIEEEEEEEEEEE."

FYI, I do feel ever so slightly better today.  My fever is all the way down to 101°F, and I'm off the dramamine.

As a present to you for giving a poo and for reading all the way through this, here's another link from my file of people who have been accomplishing things while I've been occupied as a sickly, self-involved, couch wart:

Mandyleigh Storm is an Australian lass who has come out with her very first solo CD.  I found out about this because her husband Gary used one of my fonts somewhere on the wrapper.  I am not only very happy to hear about people using and enjoying my fonts, but I was excited for Mandyleigh, who has a wonderful, strong, seriously rockin' voice.  Production values seem pretty damn fine over my computer, and you can listen to the entire album just by visiting her website and not surfing away.  You can also buy the CD or just any MP3s you particularly like at SellaBand.

And when I tell you I hope you like it, I hope you won't feel any pressure.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.

_____

Don't forget!  You have only about thirteen hours left in which to enter my Third Annual NaBloPoMo Midway Contest (give or take a few minutes)!  (Now that's pressure.)

When Shakespeare spoke of "fortune's buffets," I don't think this is quite what he meant, but I'll take it with thanks anyway.

Today for Love Thursday, I wish to share with you the best fortune cookie fortune I ever got.  Behold:

In case you can't read it, the fortune says, "Let hatred turn into friendship because of your existence."

I was given the cookie containing this fortune at China Buffet in Lowell.  I can't remember exactly which month it was.  Perhaps it was May, but maybe it was June.  My true love and I had gone to see the latest Jackie Chan movie at the Showcase Theater in Lowell, because it has stadium seating and some movies are just way more fun to see that way.  Lord of the Rings movies, for example.  Harry Potter.  Blade.  You get the idea.  When we visit this theater, we always try to catch the first screening of the day in order to spend the least money and encounter the fewest crowds.  Afterward we usually want lunch, and this time it was only natural that we should want some permutation of Chinese food.

As I have mentioned recently, I have some residual reading issues even now, eight months after having my big fat brain tumor removed.  Back then, these issue were more numerous and more pronounced.  I read this fortune cookie fortune and did not understand it.  It was complete gibberish to me.  I even remember laughing at it, assuming the problem wasn't in my head but in a translation error.

My true love frowned.  "That's actually really good," he said.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I tucked the fortune into my wallet anyway, and what do you know?  It never did make its way into the recycling box.

In fact one day, I don't know how long after that, I read it again and understood it perfectly.  And that's when I decided to tape it to my desk.

I've kept it because I love the sentiment, of course, but I have also kept it because it taught me something.  Naturally, I also very much enjoyed that particular movie date with my true love, and don't mind having a souvenir.

I've photographed it for you here with my tiny cast metal sculpture of Ganesh, my favorite Hindu deity, and a nearly empty bottle of lens cleaner.  My understanding of Ganesh is that he is the god of problem solving.  As I recall, he has an elephant's head because his father accidentally cut off his original head.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  I hope you can see how this all relates to love, but if not, perhaps look again another day and maybe it will all come clear.

***

The title of this post derives tortuously from Hamlet, by William Shakespear, Act III, Scene III:

A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks...

Love Potato No. 9

For Love Thursday, esteemed correspondent Michelle Fabio of Bleeding Espresso often posts photographs of heart-shaped things -- heart-shaped clouds, tomatoes, strawberries, etc.  When I found this delightfully odd-looking Yukon gold potato at Hutchins Farm in September, I had an idea that I could use it similarly (before cooking and eating it of course).

Naturally, I had to share the fun.  "Say hello to your home fries for this morning," I told my true love.

You must understand that I did not present the potato to him as a handful of starchy heart shape.  No, I flipped the tuber over and marched it up his arm.

He laughed.

"You understand why I had to buy this," I said.

"Oh, yeah!" he replied.  "Swing 'em around on a stick, baby!"

Oh.  Perhaps we were not on the same page about this after all.

Never mind.  It was delicious.

Happy Love Thursday.  Remember to play with your food.

No promises.

Well, it's that time of year again, time to contemplate whether or not to once more enter the vortex of madness that is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo).  I realize that I'm starting late, that this year some extra-crazy people have endeavored to make every month National Blog Posting Month.  There've been assigned themes and everything.

I'm so not doing that.

I'm not a slave to tradition.  I do love doing this -- or trying to do this -- specifically in November.  NaBloPoMo is, in case you didn't already know, kind of a spin-off on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), an arguably even crazier endeavor in which many people -- more than you'd think, and yes me, too, once -- try to write an entire novel during the month of November.  One of the points of putting that exercise in November, according to the founders, according to my best memory, is that writers are big on procrastinating and making excuses, so even though many people's calendars are thoroughly clogged by elaborate family obligations in November, that can all either be just another excuse or it can be an opportunity for us to prove to ourselves that we are serious.

I failed at NaNoWriMo the one time I tried it, mostly because I really didn't have anything to put down but a rough concept and a hundred other people's stories.  I have not yet failed at NaBloPoMo, and this might be the year I do fail at it, but I've decided to commit to at least trying one more time anyway.

I've been so sick and so tired, and no I don't care to discuss it in any more detail than I may volunteer at any given moment.  More importantly, when I tell you this, you must understand that I am not whining.  It bears repeating that I am still the luckiest woman alive.  Not so many sick people in the world have it as easy as I do for now.  Not so many unemployed people too sick and tired to work a paying job reliably are embraced snugly in a cozy blanket of other people's love and sacrifice.

When I mention how sick or tired I feel or have felt, you must understand that I am just stating my state.  It's not to evoke a reaction.  I don't need to be cooed over or bucked up.  I usually mention it because there's something else I want to tell you, and I just think you need this information in order to understand everything else I'm trying to tell you, for example, how it can be wondrous to have a perfectly bland, ordinary meal in a store cafeteria.

Honestly, my state right now is one of personal failure on almost every level.

I hear you.  I hear you (those of you not thinking you wish I'd quite whining, that is) reflexively thinking, "Oh, poor baby.  You can't help it; you're sick."  Well, maybe.  What is true is that next month I may be better or worse for more or fewer days at a time, and no one can predict this, and there is not a thing anyone can do for me medically at this time that will change that.

What I can try to do for myself, what I can always at least try to do for myself and what NaBloPoMo has helped me do for myself before, is exercise.  This silly, trivial pursuit, a month of daily blogging practice, somehow has had the power to help revive me emotionally and mentally before; why not see if it can do so again?  What have I got to lose but myself?

You can see how this would put me in a Cartesian kind of mood.

   

Or maybe you can't.  Allow me to explain.

I suck at geometry; it's true.  And I don't believe in god(s).  And I didn't have time to read all the class assignments when I was at UCLA.  So honestly, there isn't a lot about Descartes that I either feel or understand.  However, I do remember from the history of science class that I took during my second semester our professor telling us that Descartes was a habitual late riser, someone who breakfasted in bed and worked while he did so until past noon every day.  Apocryphal or no, I have no idea.  But that little factoid created and has since held a warm spot in my heart for Descartes.  As you might imagine, it particularly resonates with me now.

I also love the expression "Cogito ergo sum" ("I think therefore I am").  I love its simple arrogance, the absolute certainty that something like this can be so just because we say so.  Actually I love it as much as I love the sharply contrasting myth of Vishnu dreaming us all while having a nice long nap with a lotus in his belly at the bottom of some lake.

But I digress.

I made the above graphics by thieving copies of presumably public domain art around the internet.  The image on the left shows Rene Descartes not in bed but still managing to scrawl out some of his daily output in some nice looking threads and a well-appointed room.  The image on the right is taken from Descartes' Essai sur l'homme.  I never read the Essai sur l'homme and probably won't get around to it any time soon, so I have no idea what this illustration means -- and thus felt free to crop it beyond all sense or logic just to make a cool graphic.  (Don't you hate it when designers do stuff like that?  I do, too.  See above notes re personal failure for an indication where my rationalization for this act would go if I could be bothered to make one.)

Obviously the logo on each graphic, "Bloggo Ergo Sum," is a joke (maybe) meant to translate as "I blog therefore I am." I'm wondering how true that is going to prove to be for me this year.

Naturally, I also mean to share these images freely with any NaBloPoMo participant who might wish to use either instead of one of the far more chic, less nerdy official offerings created by Mrs. Kennedy.  Copy them, use them, edit them and then use them, whatever.  Go hog wild.

Getting back to me, though -- ah, me -- yes, I'm going to try this, but I make no guarantees.  I don't guarantee that I Will Succeed.  I do not guarantee the victory of courage or determination over sloth.  Likewise I make no promises about the quality of whatever content I may offer.  Perhaps you will be treated to thirty consecutive, captionless pictures of Sam the cat and/or different vegetables that I like and happen to have on hand.  I don't know.  We will see.  Or I will see.  (I don't have high expectations of being able to hold an audience in thrall.)

And at the end, I will be more or less myself.