The more elegant the communication capabilities get, the more precarious. Something goes wrong and poof, everything you were doing goes into a puff of 1's and 0's liberated forever into the ether, and you are summarily cut off from that connection. Google makes it very hard, I will testify, to impersonate yourself without the right password, and if you muff the chance to change it properly, you are sorely penalized. I got my password straightened out this morning, finally!
So here I am back again, after lo these many months, and it's nearly Christmas! The red ribbon is on the light post and the motley assortment of ornament boxes are being dug out of hidey places all over the house and lined up in the upstairs hallway. We will not use all these ornaments this year because we will buy a small live, balled, arborvitae (Thuga) that can later be put in a certain place on the front yard. We will hike the tub up on a jerry-rigged platform and keep the root ball damp. It will look very festive for a short time, and then go back out to its more natural environment and it will be sempervirens from then on. I promised M that we will have a huge tree again next year -- one that will support ALL the ornaments. M is more of a nut about Christmas Trees than I am, and that's saying something!
No, I am not ready. In this paradigm, Being Ready is something from the past. The problem seems to be getting ready to get ready. Absent the necessities of things like getting the kids ready in time for the school bus, or getting to work on time, or being ready for a swarm of people to come in the door for an event, it gets very easy to get up in the morning and not get dressed until afternoon! Well, we do have the ornaments out.
Being ready is really an exquisitely delicate state, when I think about it. It's like the moment when something thrown straight up in the air is dead still just before it begins to fall down. It's something that is so precious you would like to sustain it -- all the outcome is directly ahead and nothing will be the same again. If there is a lot hanging on the outcome, it can be a nanosecond full of fear as well as anticipation. What if it doesn't work out well?
But another thing that can happen is that you may draw back from readiness. You are not ready to be ready. You are too tired to gather up the results. You are not ready to find out what the change might be that happens. Not knowing is better than knowing. A whole flood of new puzzles will come in and demand your time and mind and engagement. So nice to keep the bathrobe on.
John Keats. 1795–1821
Ode on Melancholy
NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Keats knew something about lethe -- and so do many of us. A trap that is pleasant in that it is not demanding -- just accomodating. But it's near the River Styx. Not a happy place.
Well, I had better get dressed now.
Green Thumb
