I have been away so long my computer is objecting to the exercise.
[Update: It died further down while in "moving on", but read on - more on that.]
Books.
I have read two books! One after the other. Fiction! I haven't felt like doing that in a long time. So books are again on the survival list. After I closed my book shop I thought I would never want to see another book, let alone read one, but ... there it is. I still love books.
Reading.
I am reading (that in itself: bonus!) a lovely one now. Thick one, non-fiction...
Oh well ... I can't help it. A seeker I shall die.
More about that later. You have missed me, right? This will be a long one. I missed this space enough.
Pencils.
I have had this urge to draw again. Bought some new soft pencils - 6B, 8B, 9B - Goodness knows I am in the mood for a bit of a soft scribble.
Change.
Change isn't always all that, but the air is clear. I can see forever at the moment.
Things are changing and, for a change, it's in a good way. Some potential excitement might be coming my way. No questions please. It's brewing in the think - pot at this stage of the game. And, and, and, being as I am essentially slow and a dreamer by nature, it might come to nothing more than it is right now: potential change.
However, that I am even contemplating such a thing is a pure miracle. I kid you not. I am feeling something.
Movies.
Not that watching movies is new, but never more so than when you get to take out 4 you haven't seen before. My grandson loves the music in movies. Finding movies with music that pleases him is such fun.
It's beautiful to be alive. I thought motherhood was greater than anything I discovered before that, and it is greater than anything before that, or after that, given all that has happened, but gran-e-time comes along and makes motherhood all the more charming. One's offspring produces a new person and all things glow.
Old Things
My computer died before I got here the first time. With a bit of luck I have an old one in not such a great state, but still working, and reviving it was easier than getting my newer more updated one to cooperate. Wouldn't it just be funny if this one lasts longer? Anyway, blog survived. I survived. All is well with the world.
MOVING ON
Where I have been, has been without television, the news, the drastic things that bother me so much, and I have to say I feel all the better for it. Knowing everything the news channels spew out isn't all that good for me. I have been spared the famous South African trial. I have just watched movies. Lots of the same movies, but movies only.
I bought three new books. I never thought I would see the day! But, I did.
Stoner, by John Williams is an extraordinary tale of a man who is sold to you as a not so extraordinary, but I found him good to be with, understood him completely and thought to myself, self, such is the way of goodness. All the remarkable stuff, surviving the banal and evil, is a private thing and unless you blow someone or something up no one thinks it's all that remarkable.
But surviving is a great thing. Surviving without making too much of a fuss about it all is especially noteworthy. I'm too much of a blabbermouth to fall into that saintly category, but without the internet, I might have just sunken into the earth one day without anyone knowing much about the event - life and all its lovely mysteries and jokes. Not true, I remember. I kept and keep journals all about the place. Notes will be found. Not necessarily read, mind you, but at least found.
I have no special line for you. The whole book is a line to be savoured. It's all important and underline worthy, only I did not underline one line in this book. It did not leave me sad. I only sighed, nodding. I know this man. I know his audience, the spectators and his opponents. A beautiful book.
The Circle, by Dave Eggers is quite thick, but the print is large, (yay). It gives one another view of the human species. It might have rocked my ship a little had I not enjoyed seeing my own ideas made manifest in it. One thought in particular came out in it. Man is jealous of G-d and is striving to be the all knowing, all seeing being that he imagines G-d is.
Man does not know G-d, perhaps only a few ever have; such a plan is bound to fail miserably, but perhaps not without some of us perishing in the stream of it all. Also, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear are like one character in the book.
"Well, Ty said, "That was about what I imagined would happen."
But, don't let me spoil it. It will change the way you look at things and especially make you think about the act of "liking" things.
The best for last.
The Better Angels of our nature : A History of Violence and Humanity. By Stephen Pinker.
It is as thick as my pinkie is long (I have big hands) and is meat for the mind. I am loving it. The writer warns one at the beginning that he is going to sell the idea of how much more peaceful mankind is these days than we imagine. I am only on page 82 (the print is smaller), but I am already sold by the conclusion. It makes me feel better about being told by psychics that I have killed people in my previous life, "in a good way," they add. It seems I killed bad people. I'm off that in this life time. I am trying to be more remarkable, like Stoner: live and let live. There are 841 pages if you don't count the notes at the back. Over a 1000 if you do. This one's going to last a bit.
As it was in the previous two books there is a thought I share. Men have a lot to answer for (my thought);
"Men in non-state societies (and they are almost always men) are deadly serious about war, not just their tactics but in their armaments. which include chemical, biological, and anti-personnel weapons."
ON THE GLOBAL FRONT
We managed to lose a big plane, all the people on it, and no one seems to know how. There we were all shaking in our boots at the visuals and the audio equipment and what all that means. So they lost it, or hid it. The mind boggles at potential stories, but let's not go there.
My interest is less global without having had news to bother me. I picked up a paper. News hounds die hard. I saw a piece by Helen Zille. "A Beautiful Project Thwarted."
"The mayor and I have often been tempted to withdraw from the Hangberg process altogether;...."
While all lament the lack of provision for the New South Africans it does seem that you can't deliver even if you really want to. At least, in my experience, that is how it seems. Then on the way home I had the radio and in one talk show - and that does seem all there is to listen to if you are me - the presenter asked for only positive comments about life in the new South Africa. Glad of this, I turned it up. There were quite a few people who called in to say how much better things were. Ordinary Joe Soaps called. Mostly Joe's, though a couple of ladies contributed.
One comment was a tad funny, if you are warped like me. Paraphrasing: Back in the day we had to walk 15 kilometers to get water or to find wood ... well the ladies did, because, of course, I am a man ... (and that means you sit about a lot while the ladies walk to find ...) and these days the water is close. And there is electricity. Very positive that the said man was grateful that the ladies didn't have to walk so far anymore.
Another was precious in its innocence. It seems that some community was given water via some piping and water meters were installed to ... ludicrously, I suppose ... charge people for their consumption. This fellow said the positive thing he had to report was that the community merely broke the meters and fixed it so that they could get the water without paying. After all, the water belongs to the people. The presenter said that breaking things was not good ... (her three dots) and the man said, no! it was indeed good. He meant it and he meant no malic by it. The meters were obviously a silly mistake and the positive news was they knew how to fix it. Now all is well with the world.
Just a thought ...
Hmm - I suppose I might ask men to think before they get excited and draw lines in the sand that need defending.
After my 82 pages of Mr. Pinker's book I am already more relaxed about the state of things. Firstly because things do seem to be better at the moment than they were, and secondly because if we are falling back into the dark ages (by accident or design or because it is written) then there is precious little I can do about it. I expect we ladies might have to go back to walking a distance to find water and sticks for the fire again, only this time for different reasons.
And, and, and, we forget the remarkable men who go to their graves. Repeating the past is inevitable. Best we can do is make sure we survive for a while in as good emotional circumstance as we can conspire to achieve, with a little privacy and a lot of freedom. And books, of course. Lots of books.
Love and Light my lovelies
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