Hummingwolf at Home

Sometimes you need to remind yourself that the existence of a trap directly in your path doesn't mean you need to fall into it. The fact that someone is staying in the trap--voluntarily--when you see a way for them to escape, staying because for them the trap feels like the only home they've ever known, does not mean you need to go into the trap. They may decorate the trap with lace curtains and designer vases full of flowers, but the trap is still a trap and there is still no need for you to submit to it. If someone you care about is in the trap, by all means you should visit with them and speak to them; but you should always make sure that you are speaking to them from the outside of the trap they are caught in. Also make sure to remember that, once they have been shown how to escape from the trap, you are not responsible for ensuring that they do in fact escape. The choice remains with them and, sometimes, people simply are too afraid to live in freedom.

(This note to myself has been cryptic, I suppose, but other people can probably apply it to situations other than the ones I have in mind.)

If Spring isn't here yet, she's lurking around the corner, crouched under a tree, giggling into her hand. She'll be out of hiding soon. She can't help herself: she wants to show off her green dress and the pretty flowers in her hair.

I hadn't been out of the house since Thursday, resting and trying to recover from this everlasting infection. Today a craving for potato chips drove me out of the house to walk about a mile total. Old lady Winter is tiring of keeping little Spring in check, but that's okay. Winter may have the chance to show off a little more of her icy artwork before going into retirement, but she can retire secure in the knowledge that she has done her work well. (Tomorrow's predicted high: 61 degrees. Tuesday: Chance of rain mixed with snow. Chances of more snow Friday & Saturday. Yep, the seasons' struggle may go on a while.)

There's something I want to say, but I haven't found the words yet. Do you ever have times when you need to find the words of others before you can uncover your own? I've been devouring words as well as I can, but my diet still seems to be deficient in something. I want to tell you what something isn't like and what it is like because I can't say what it is. But there still need to be more words before I can do even that.

Some visitors had a conversation in the dining room of the type I love to share, but I was too tired to say more than a feeble hello. "Tired" is my main descriptive word right now. The main sound effect is "thud." At least I'm coughing less. Many afterimages are superimposed on anything I look at, which distracts me too much when trying to read. Oh, but sleep would be a good thing.

Crocuses have popped up beside the sidewalk out front. The trees are glowing gold in late afternoon sun, bare branches against a sky of pale blue fading to paler pinkish-gold. A bag of potato chips is waiting for me to start munching. Celtic music is on NPR. Life could be worse.

You ever have one of those days when you feel you're on the verge of some Great Insight into your life but instead your train of thought gets derailed by "Should I go to the grocery store tomorrow, or should I wait till Tuesday?" And then you find yourself humming the 'Til Tuesday song "Voices Carry" and wondering why the fridge door is open and you're standing there with a plum in your hand? Yeah, this is one of those days.

I don't need a Great Insight right now, really, if it's too much trouble. I'd settle for a little insight. Or a sustained train of thought. Or a bottle of grapefruit juice.

There's one situation taking too much of my brainspace. I need to stop worrying so much about something I don't control. Problem is, while I don't control things, I do have influence. It's the influence of a small movement in a chaotic system, a butterfly who knows that one flap of its wings may or may not cause a distant hurricane. The butterfly needs not to let herself be paralyzed by the thought, needs to take care of herself and fly where it's best for her to go without listening to anyone who tries to blame her for the weather.

Store tomorrow, then. Must remember to buy toothpaste.

Really haven't been writing much here lately, have I? It's probably a good idea to update, if for no other reason than future reference or in case anyone ever wants an explanation of why I haven't been updating.

Incredibly tired. For those keeping track: While I've been having trouble sleeping for the last year or so, I've been especially insomniac since this year's summer solstice. No particular reason that I know of, that's just the way things have been working out.

So between sleep dep and last week's infection (haven't seen a doctor yet--they canceled my appointment and rescheduled for later this week), I'm kinda brain-fried and exhausted at the moment. Managed to walk a mile yesterday and two and a half today anyway, but my mental processes aren't in such good shape. There have been myriad idea fragments floating through my consciousness like bits of DNA or RNA or something in some primordial soup, but they all sank beneath the surface again when they discovered the mental environment was inhospitable to sustained thought. And the metaphor in the previous sentence is your semi-intelligent babble for the night. I'm crispy.

An example of how out of it (what is it anyway?) I currently am: Late last night I asked the folks sitting on the back porch beneath my bedroom window if they could please chat somewhere else so I could sleep. The guys were very polite, apologized profusely, so that worked out okay. But I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not either of the men sitting at the table lives in this house. No clue. Can't tell you if the guy who just walked out of the bathroom is a tenant or a guest either.

Song on my Launchcast station as I typed those last few lines: The Divine Comedy, "Through a Long & Sleepless Night."

Since I'm here babbling anyway, may as well mention that I've been signed into my alternate Yahoo address and listening to the Hummingwolf launchcast station linked above. If anyone's interested in what I've been hearing tonight, here's a ( playlist. )

If the rest of the record labels ever reach an agreement with Yahoo, my Launch station could be dangerous. Or possibly hopelessly "adult alternative," I'm not sure which.

Will try to get a good night's sleep in a little bit. Wish me luck!

Preparation has a lot to do with how well one handles things. Did you do your homework? Then, ideally, you will be prepared to do well on this test. Unless you find out you picked up the wrong text at the college bookstore, you're in the wrong class and have done preparatory work that would have helped someone else but is completely and utterly useless to you.

My early life trained me well to live by directing vast amounts of energy toward intellectual pursuits, avoiding people much of the time because I'd figured out early on that most people would hurt and betray me given half a chance. Then I ended up with an illness that drains my energy, leaves me unable to concentrate on the things I trained myself to do for so long--but somehow I ended with more and more wonderful friends than I would have thought possible when I was younger. I don't have a clue how to make a life out of this. Somebody with a completely different background would have no problem with it, I'm sure.



On an unrelated note, whatever happened to Toni Childs? And why is an album called House of Hope one of the most depressing albums in my collection?

In A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman has this quote about eighteenth century culinary habits:( PETA would *not* approve. )

That whole passage is just begging to be made into a metaphor.

On a different note, here's a bit about chocolate:

"What food do you crave? Ask the question with enough smoldering emphasis on the last word, and the answer is bound to be chocolate. It was first used by the Indians of Central and South America. The Aztecs called it xocoatl ("chocolate"), declared it a gift from their white-bearded god of wisdom and knowledge, Quetzalcoatl, and served it as a drink to members of the court--only rulers and soldiers could be trusted with the power it conveyed. The Toltecs honored the divine drink by staging rituals in which they sacrificed chocolate-colored dogs. Itzá human-sacrifice victims were sometimes given a mug of chocolate to sanctify their journey."

Right then. I shall now go in search of the wisdom of chocolate. If I am a goose, let it be a sanctified Goose!

that sometimes we can look at a situation objectively and see why a certain course of action would be a Really Incredibly Bad Idea, yet still want to pursue that course anyway? You can enumerate all the obvious ways in which it would damage you or someone you love, you can trace in your mind's eye the trajectory of each fragment of the metaphorical bullet you want to shoot out and see each metaphorical organ that would be punctured; and still you want to carry out the Really Incredibly Bad Idea, consequences be damned. Why is that? It's so clearly contra-survival, you wouldn't think the propensity to be so foolish would survive in the species after all these countless generations. What is up with that?

Oh, maybe it's just me. Maybe nobody else out there ever gets these deep irrepressible longings for something they know is bad for them.

::briefly ponders world history::

Nope, not just me.

I asked a while back: "Do you ever get the urge to rend the fabric of reality and use the tattered rags to dust your living room?" This morning, reality seems to be rending its own fabric, but it's not leaving rags behind--the rags are simply turning into more dust. How does reality do that?


This post has been brought to you by caffeine deprivation and the number 36.

So I made the mistake of indulging in some examination of my life this week. I really wish I hadn't done that--you'd think I'd know better by now. Whenever I really think about where my life's been going, everything that anyone around me says or does touches on a vast web of insecurities, thereby alerting the spider of self-pity that it's time to truss me up, slice open my chest, rip out my still-beating heart and cut it into little pieces to be dried in the sun for use in cheap maracas to be sold to heat-dazed tourists, all of whom are having much more fun than I am, even the ones suffering from Montezuma's Revenge.

Sorry, that metaphor ran away from me somewhere north of Guadalajara.