Life and Love and Other Things

I have been trying to write of other things than my own problems. I don't want this blog to be a whining moaning list of things to complain about. I don't want it to be a pity party for me. I don't want it to be about me, specifically.

I want it to be about life in general. Politics, social media, diet, religion, education, children and grandchildren -- all the things that make up the array of things we grapple with from day to day. That's what I want.

For now, I can't seem to think beyond my own life-box. 

I'm stuck and I can't seem to move beyond these limitations.

Someday I will, I'm sure. 

Someday, I'll live again, love again, have opinions again, and I'll re-find my writer's voice.

Someday.

That day isn't yet.

I have many beginnings of ideas, thoughts, concepts to discuss. A recent facebook discussion inspired an article about the education system. But it remains unwritten, as headaches and busy-ness and the visitation of the demon build up walls faster than I can build windows. 

And forget about doors! There's no time for doors. 

The important thing is to keep a little light coming into this thick and sturdy box.

Why keep writing, then?

Well, that is the best way to poke holes in the wall and let a little light in.

Also, there may be someone out there that needs to read something like this.

Someone who needs to know there can be light in darkness.

Someone who needs to know that tears can cleanse as well as burn.

Someone who needs to know how someone else navigates the pitfalls of an empty life.

Someone who needs to know about hope, and choices, and giving up.

Someone who needs to know that, in spite of it all, there remains life, and love, and other things.

They keep coming, and we can't stop it

The damn tornadoes, that's what I'm talking about. Out in Oklahoma, throughout the whole region, they just keep coming.
And there's not a damned thing anyone can do to stop them, or avoid them, or do anything but stand by helplessly while Mother Nature runs her vacuum.
Afterwards, yes, we CAN, and should, and DO rush in to help. It's what we'd hope for, were we the victims.
And we could indeed be the victims, anywhere, any time, any one of us.

Tornadoes are less a regional phenomenon than some disasters. Hurricanes hit shorelines, floods occur near rivers, mudslides are usually in hill country (slide implying gravity), forest fires happen in forests.
Tornadoes, like earthquakes, can happen anywhere.
Therefore, they can happen to you.

Now, they do have preferred playgrounds, like the Great Plains for tornadoes and the San Andreas in California, but they can happen anywhere.

The one advantage in the Plains is that usually one can see (if one is looking) from miles away and hopefully take shelter before the twister gets to you.

Last night, because of heavy rains, many, many people could not see because of the heavy rains and the preternatural darkness of the storm. Many, many people are today still shaking, still fearful, and still looking for loved ones. I hope that everyone locates one another, and that losses stay low. I wish that no one would die in these horrific storms, but that has already happened, and there's nothing I can do to change it.

I wish I could.

I haven't had a close encounter with a twister, although members of my family have. Heck, I have a brother in Kansas. My sister played tag with one last spring.(She won.)A long time ago, one collapsed my grandfather's barn. Then there was the Thanksgiving tornado, mid 90s. I went outside because it was so hot and humid, and heard the trains about a mile away, cane inside and said, "It's still and sticky, and I heard a train. Think we should hide?"
A tornado took down a garage and damaged some trees approximately a mile away.

I still shake at the memory.
The Menace that roars out of the night.
Out of the nowhere.

I can't help you, Oklahoma. Not in the preventive, sheltering, protecting ways you are so in need of.
I wish I could.
I will do what I can to help afterwards, but it will never be enough. It can never be enough.
And there's always going to be guilt that I can be so grateful it wasn't me or mine, and I feel bad about that, too.

Because I know it could have been.
May someday be.
It's good to know you will understand, if that time ever comes.

But for now, I think we would all like to put this into the past.

We are trying to help do just that.

Another Good-Bye

Dick Clark died today.
Davy Jones died a few weeks ago.
Mike Wallace.
Whitney Houston.
Thomas Kinkade.
Before that, someone else.

Of course, people die every day, just as people are born every day. Deaths of celebrities really have small meaning in the real lives of real people, except that they give us pause. A pause to remember a time in our lives when they were that important, perhaps, or just a pause to acknowledge that, hey, they did something with their lives. They made multiple lives better, somehow.

Of course their contributions are no greater than the lives of a grandfather succumbing to age -- Alzheimer has already stolen his mind and heart. The loss of a celebrity has less meaning than the loss of a young bald woman leaving behind children and one more clue in the fight against cancer. No celebrity death touches that of a  death in utero.

2012 has already had more than its share of celebrity deaths, or so it seems.

2012 is supposed to be the end of the world, according to ancient Mayans. They even predicted an exact date, in spite of our completely incompatible calendars and the many changes we've made to ours over the years.

There's a theory that the end of the world could be the end of the world as we know it.

As our artists and entertainers and informers die off, one by one, we know there may be something to that. The leaders of one of the greatest eras of entertainment are dying off, and We Who Made Them Great must mourn, and know that it will be our turn, one turn sooner than we'd thought.

New year, new day, new blah blah

The truth is, every day is a new year from 365 days ago (or 366, next year.) Every new day is an opportunity for a new life. And most days, this new start is wasted.

It's not really anyone's fault. Try as we might to start a new life, a new attitude, the old life hangs on. We are tangled up with our pasts, and they hold and are unwilling to let go.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are things in our pasts we'd like to hold onto. Maybe even go back to. So in a way, it's only fair that even though we can't hold therm, they can, and do, hold us.

I hope this year will be better, for all of us. Too many people I know have had bad times this last year.
Most of them have had good friends  to help them get through.
If they had no past, they would not have had those friends.

So, as we vow our new beginnings, it's not enough to turn our backs to our past. We need to let our pasts 'have our back'.

Tomorrow started yesterday.