I changed the sound associated with receiving new mail. The new sound resonates like the spooky tone produced by rubbing the rim of a crystal glass. When I'm not expecting it, receiving new e-mail really catches me off-guard. It's a minute detail in my rather dull life style, but a real change for a hermit where ambiance is all I got. I like it. If for no other reason than that it's different than the traditional beeping sound I've grown to tolerate for the last eighteen years. Idiot! Why am I always the last to know?
It's snowing this morning for the first time in a few years. Snow happens on a very infrequent and sporadic basis here on the coastal plains. Maybe because of our proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. There has to be enough snow to stick to the ground and cover everything up. Currently, there are still too many little objects like sticks and fallen leaves sticking up through what's accumulated, to say that we've gotten more than a dusting. It's still coming down fairly steady. The satellite images show more clouds down in the south where it's coming from, and they're headed our way. The moisture for the snow comes from the Gulf of Mexico, and the cold temperatures come from Canada.
Those two necessary ingredients occasionally meet here on the coastal plains, but everything has to be just right for it to be a winter wonderland. Otherwise, the winter colors are just drab, and irritably and associatively cool. Old people like me have to wear a lotta clothes even when it's mild, because I'm surrounded by uninviting browns and blacks that inevitably remind me it's supposed to be cold this time of the year, whether it actually is cold or not. The snow, like rain, is heaven's blessings. It covers the same old/same old up with shimmering crystals. Yahooooo!
I just opened my front door and looked outside again. Earlier, I had scattered some table salt on the deck I use for an entrance. I didn't think I had put that much salt down, but it really cleared the snow off. The last time it snowed I didn't do anything, and when it stopped snowing and froze hard that night, the snow became so hard and solid that I couldn't scrape it off with a flat-bladed shovel. Now, of course, I feel just brilliant for looking ahead.
As a hardened, inured miser, how could I not think about the treated lumber I used to build my outside decks and the stairs that lead from one to the other? It got soaked from the rain before it turned to snow. Tonight, it's gonna freeze solid because the temps are going to drop fifteen degrees below freezing. I'm thinking about the wear and tear.
Granted, despite the natural course of entropy, I'm pretty sure the decks and even the stairs will survive longer than me. So, what's the point of concerning myself with that? A saying I might have coined points out that a rich man is merely the janitor of his possessions. No matter how few possessions he can learn to live without.
I turned on the TV to watch a little of the inauguration proceedings. I can't watch for long or I get mushy. I can't wait for the inauguration to be over with and Obama sworn in and behind closed doors. I'll be shocked if somebody don't try to assassinate him before he can take the oath and make his acceptance speech. I knew this fear may seem irrational in a way. I'm relatively sure all that can be done is being done, but I've had enough of offensive and violent politics in my life. If somebody successfully hurts him, the political angst of the last couple of decades would just go on and on. Meanwhile, our country and the world is going very, very broke. Broke people get angry. More violence heaped upon the violence that preceded it. I just want this whole deal to be a walk in the park, and get on with the business of living.
I don't think it's all that great a privilege to live longer than four score and ten. I remember too much. I've heard the same stories too many times. I don't believe any of them any more with enough faith to delude myself. At least when I was younger I could fool myself into thinking some new proposition was gonna change the wicked ways of the world, but that's just bullshit, man, whatta drag!
On the other hand, the world carrying on the way it does day in and day out is sort of comical. The joke is on us. What we consider to be civilization amounts to no more than castles in the air. A few bombs, nuclear or no, will take care of that. Building and destroying monuments to ourselves seems to take up most of civilization's time and efforts. I'm reduced to either laughing hysterically or weeping deep pools of woe. I done both, several times, already this morning. I seem to drift with the way the wind blows. Like a snowflake. Like a million trillion snowflakes all shaping themselves like humans do, but in a different way.
I know this is the greatest day in my own life. It may be one of the greatest days in the world for all time. I'm glad I've lived long enough to reach the end of one cycle and the bejinning of another. Who can say that the world I was raised to believe would always be there for me, did not end upon the arrival of 2001 as prophesied? I may not live out the day, but if I can just survive until tomorrow, I will have made it to the other side. Selah
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
