February 15, 2016 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

The world felt soft and quiet when I looked outside this morning. We had snow last night—flurries were forecast, but it was enough to cover the ground. Formless gray clouds still hugged the horizon tightly, blurring into the gray tops of leafless trees. The air had gone completely still, without even the slightest wind stirring the neighbors’ flag. All down the row of houses there was only silence. Like a child yet to wake, a young Earth pulled her comforting blankie closer around herself and settled more deeply into her slumber.
 

Row of suburban brick houses on a snowy day. 

Sometime yesterday afternoon, I had changed the image on my digital art display to a church window. I don’t know where it came from—the person who uploaded the photo simply titled it “Quiet.” The foreground is a wide expanse of dark textured floor; it leads back to a nook under a tall window, where a narrow desk sits empty, the chair pushed into a corner. Sunlight slants through the window to the right of the picture, barely illuminating the first few steps of a black staircase. An electric lamp on the desk is turned on, as if inviting a passer-by to sit and read a devotional text. There is another light that hangs from the ceiling, but it looks tiny and insignificant next to the window.
 

Flat-screen display showing a church window with a dark and quiet area beneath. 

When I sat down to write this post, I could hear birds chirping; they know spring is not far away, even though today’s monochrome landscape gave few hints of it. The weather app on my phone said “cloudy,” which was accurate enough. I would have liked to see “cloudy with brightening skies,” but I doubt I ever will, as that phrase would be too long for a busy person’s quick glance. Occasionally when the forecast calls for a dark day with a thick, heavy cloud cover, it uses the word “dreary.” I wish it wouldn’t, as that comes across to me as more of a value judgment than a weather term. Sometimes we need life’s dark spaces with their peaceful stillness, reminding us to pause and reflect, to fully appreciate the present moment of grace.

I decided last summer that it was time to bid farewell to my old kitchen canister set (shown here) because I rarely bake. After that, one of the cabinets still had a shelf with baking items such as flour, sugar, and chocolate chips, which I left alone because my daughter enjoys baking.
 

Flour, sugar, and two half-empty bags of chocolate chips on a shelf. 

My daughter moved out a few months ago, but I didn’t get around to cleaning out the shelf until yesterday. When I looked at the bags, I discovered all that stuff had gotten old and stale anyway, far past its expiration date. I should have tossed it long ago! Vigilance is the price of a clean kitchen.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

I received an email from a coworker on Tuesday with a fun word-art image about spreading happiness like jam, which gave me a smile on a dark winter afternoon. So, I decided to share it for today’s post and spread some happiness for Nurturing Thursday.
 

Word-art image that says "Happiness is like jam. You can't spread even a little without getting it on yourself." 

And, I’m happy to report that when I ate a yummy sourdough English muffin with apricot jam for my breakfast today, I did not get any jam on myself. I hope your day got off to a good start too!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

I’ve reached the age where I can expect to get the “are you still” question during routine medical visits (ladies, you know the one I mean). While there are valid reasons for that particular question, I have been noticing how insidiously the word “still” finds its way into all kinds of descriptions as people get older.

It’s commonplace to say, for instance, that she is 70 and still working; or he is 75 and still golfs regularly; or this couple are over 80 and still mentally sharp. Such language reflects a cultural expectation that people will drop out of almost every activity and go into a rapid decline soon after reaching retirement age. Indeed, the word “retire” literally means to withdraw, drop out, retreat, or be secluded or removed. Somehow we’ve built a culture that expects older folks to do little more than sit around like overripe fruit, waiting to rot.
 

Painting of grapes, some overripe, on a table with a wilting carnation.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

That storyline is long overdue for revision, given the fact that the average lifespan has increased greatly over the past century, while at the same time major advances in technology have made it possible to work and be active without need for physical strength. Bioengineering has made the repair of many degenerative conditions a routine matter, and people nowadays have access to disability services and assistive devices.

Our modern society has made reasonable progress toward clearing away many other outdated narratives, so why does that one stubbornly persist? I suspect a large part of it is that whenever we talk about older folks, we are in effect creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for our own lives. Unlike other kinds of attitudes toward groups of people, when we talk about present-day seniors we’re also setting up expectations for our future selves. Our views of old age today become our karma later.

So, we’d all do both ourselves and society a favor by being more mindful about our use of words and not describing older folks’ activities as something they are “still” doing.

Last week my husband left an electrical cord on the floor next to the basement door, apparently meaning to put it away. After it sat there for several days, I said something about it being there for a while. He picked it up, saying he wasn’t sure where it came from or where it should go. Then it ended up being put down again on the carpet next to the couch.
 

Orange electrical cord on the carpet next to the couch. 

Hmmm… that’s not what I meant! Okay, maybe the cord doesn’t have a regular place where it goes. That just means one needs to be found, or maybe it needs to be given away instead, depending on whether or not we’re likely to have a use for it.

Edit, February 11: He did find a use for it, so perhaps my complaint was a bit premature!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

This time of year, many folks in the Northern Hemisphere start feeling like we’ve had enough of winter and are counting the days till spring. But rather than grumbling, we should enjoy and try to make the best of each day instead, even if there happens to be snow in it! So I decided that this word-art image would make a good Nurturing Thursday post.
 

Word-art image that says "Don't count the days. Make the days count." -Muhammad Ali 

This morning I glanced out the window at some flurries and thought about how soft and pretty they looked, and how easy they were to appreciate from the comfortable warmth indoors! When we take the time to look around, there’s always something to turn ordinary days into “days that count.” Wishing all my readers a joyful week full of great days too!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

I had a phone conversation with my dad earlier this week and mentioned that I enjoy blogging. He asked whether I’d been trying to find a literary agent and get my writing published. I said no, and then the conversation moved on to other topics. But I was surprised by the intensity of my gut reaction, which was along the lines of, “No, I don’t need to beg any agents or publishers to validate my writing. I am so totally over that!”

Given that I hadn’t actually submitted any manuscripts to literary agents in a very long time, and not much even then, I wondered why such feelings had popped up all of a sudden. Way back when the Internet Age began, I got involved with online creative writing groups and posted stories to their lists. Many of their members dreamed of being traditionally successful published authors, and they polished their works with great care before submitting to agents.

One guy sold a novel and was thrilled—until the publisher chopped up the story beyond recognition in the editing, while randomly adding the word “Sex” to the title. After he had a few local book-signing appearances, his poor abused novel mercifully expired, going to its literary graveyard with no second printing.
 

Graveyard with green grass and flowers around a fresh grave.

(photo credit: publicdomainpictures.net)
 

After that I didn’t give much thought to conventional book publishing—well, at least not consciously. Something must have been going on beneath the surface, though, or I wouldn’t have reacted to my dad’s question as I did. I ruminated for a while over what it might have been, and finally I put it in the general category of sorting the what-comes-next uncertainty.

That is to say, like many of us, I’ve had my job for years and it is well suited to my temperament and skills; but in today’s fast-paced world, people don’t expect to keep the same job forever. As a result, we’re left feeling unsettled about not having a better idea of what comes next. A lot of subconscious processing goes on as we try to work through all the complicated factors involved, which include cultural views of success.

So, I’d guess that my “so totally over that” reaction meant I had been subconsciously considering whether I might want to be a traditionally published author in the future—or, perhaps, whether I still had much interest in conventional notions of success carried over from many years ago, in general. Apparently, without even being aware of it, I already had answered that question in the negative. I’ll take that as the voice of my intuition offering wise guidance!

While I was tidying a kitchen drawer that holds instruction manuals for appliances, I found a small cookbook that came with the microwave in 2002, entitled “Great Meals From Your Microwave Oven.” After it went in the drawer with the microwave’s instruction manual, it never saw the light of day again because my family just uses the microwave for reheating leftovers and for packaged microwavable snacks, such as popcorn. We’ve never cooked dinner in the microwave.
 

Small cookbook with the title "Great Meals From Your Microwave Oven." 

So, there’s not much point to keeping the cookbook, is there?

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

I am writing this post on a desktop computer where the background images are a collection of landscapes with paths, which change automatically from one to another every few minutes. My husband found them last year. They’ve been very good for my soul, inviting me to go for refreshing imaginary walks along those peaceful paths, rather than just sitting in my chair focused entirely on producing words on a white screen.

I’ve also found myself drawn to similar images when I look through the online gallery for the digital art display I got for Christmas. At present, I have it set to display a wooden bridge or walkway leading to a beach, with palm trees and other tropical plants on both sides. This picture makes me feel almost as if I could step into the frame and be somewhere far away on a magical adventure.
 

Digital art display on my dining room wall, showing a wooden walkway leading to a beach. 

We have many stories like that in our culture—the Narnia books and the Myst game come to mind. These familiar stories speak to a truth that our ancestors knew long ago, when they put on animal masks and danced with the tribe’s guardian spirits. Our world really does feel more magical when we surround ourselves with bright, fanciful images that call us to explore it!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

When I was a young woman learning to live on my own, my mom bought me a new (1985) copy of her trusty favorite cookbook “Joy of Cooking.” I kept it all these years, and when my daughter went away to college I bought her a new copy too. I thought there might be some recipes she liked in it. But of course, my daughter’s generation would rather look up recipes online than use old-fashioned cookbooks. So she brought her copy home and left it in my kitchen with the older one.
 

An old "Joy of Cooking" next to a newer one. 

To be honest, I haven’t used the cookbook in a long time because I generally cook simple dinners, and my husband and I have given up eating desserts. There’s certainly no reason for me to keep two copies! So, it’s high time for the 1985 version, which has less content anyway, to go bye-bye.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!