A Mind Is A Terrible Thing, Except When It’s Wasted

Another long week of overtime hours, of me being left to my own designs for extended lengths of time.  The latest trash barrel art project is finished, the early garden is in, the housework is caught up,  I’m done shooting colored balls at each other on the computer, and I’m more content to sit and groove on the dawning warmth of Spring rather than go our for another walk, and munch on kettle corn with Holly.  So I’m drifting a bit between pondering and musing over many a thing, a sort of lonely craft at sea, lulled by the rocking waves of time passing and endless blue skies.  Questions keep forming, rolling around in the ol’ brain, lots of digging and delving, and few answers, but some days, I’m not really looking for those, I’m more focused on the long pauses in between the questions.

I’ve been wondering why I follow the news and current events, especially politics, so intently.  Sure, I appreciate the information-it satisfies both my thirst for knowledge and my morbid curiosity.  I tend to view news with a dash of bleeding heart liberal and a splash of George Carlin, so there’s some balance in my approach to it.  Sometimes, though, the news simply enrages me, and if there is a tragedy in there, too, I get a massive overload to my humanity circuit, and I trip a breaker, and have to shut down for a while.  I’m not sure if news following provides me with happiness or just gives me something else to do to waste time.  Surely, there are more prolific things I could be doing.  And too much of current events are downright frightening or plainly negative.  They leave me on a search for sunshine in the gloom wherever I can find it.

That leads, randomly, to be sure, to another musing of mine.  Do other people find themselves surrounded by negativity and sometimes grow weary of trying to counteract it?  Even if I pry myself from the daily onslaught of bad news, I find it can be a challenge to escape the effects of the bad juju and discontent.  It hangs in the air, an atmospheric negative ion, and I spend a considerable amount of energy repelling, reversing my magnetic field.  I haven’t quite descended into brooding yet, no.  I think I’m looking more for a touch of escapism.  I feel the ever-present hot breath of seething anger amongst the masses, I feel painful throes from the aching hearts of the suffering.  I long for a place that isn’t being crushed by desperation. 

On that note, I’ve been wondering why I stay in America.  The easy answer is the same as why I stay in my hometown-because of my bond with it.  Regardless of what outsiders (and more than a few locals) say about Ambridge, there are fantastic people here.  Many care deeply about this town, its sense of heritage, of tradition, of history.  It comes with the territory.  It’s familiar, it’s sanctuary, my favorite port in any storm.  I have weathered out countless catastrophes, personal and global, in this town.  I could broaden that to include America, to some extent.  My roots are deeply sank.  Perhaps too deep.  The truth is I know I could find the same elements in other parts of the world, plus many more, surely.  I could probably find a place where I could see Joe more, where he only has to toil away at one job, a place I where I could walk quiet country lanes for hours, a place I could have a simple, comfortable home adorned with all my curiosities.  Sometimes, I daydream about what it would be like to breathe different air.  Perhaps America itself is starting to lose some of its allure, its magic.

This country is being mismanaged badly.  When a baseball player tells a fib about lying in court about whether or not he did this or that, there are endless hearings over it, and he faces prison time.  When a financial giant steals billions from the people, then blackmails the Treasury into coughing up hundreds of billions more, they get the money, and no one ever even faces a trial on it.  Something seems a bit askew.  Everyone involved in politics screams at each other, like a schoolyard full of naughty children, saying wretched things and demanding everyone play the game their way.  Each side pouts and stomps its feet and holds its breath.  No one who makes any sense can get through.  And on top of that, we have a bad parent on playground duty.  He should learn to discipline with a firmer hand, to be stern instead of trying to be each child’s very best friend.  Both sides need to be punished severely, sent to their rooms with sore bottoms and snotty noses from the crying.  Really, as a 20 year veteran of parenting, I’m appalled at the state of our government.  I do love America, and I love my home, and I love the beauty of it all, but how it’s being run scares me more than it should.  I should be able to watch the news, to follow politics, without cringing inside all the time.  It should be a sideshow, an occasional distraction.  But, if someone doesn’t pay attention to the action behind the scenes, the government gets away with far too much, and has for far too long.  I think we should stop voting for all politicians, and just nominate and vote for random good people we all know in our lives.  I guess I don’t have an answer for why I stay here.  I will ponder it more, and likely do nothing more, because as an artsy type, I excel at procrastination, and often react only when panic is called for.

I’ve been wondering whether I could realistically write my own Bible, purely for entertainment’s sake.  I spit out a quick bit of one for a great friend, and, I must say, I enjoyed doing it immensely.  Though longer tales have never been my strong point, a Bible is more a collection of really short stories interspersed with moral codes of conduct.  I’m pretty sure I could do that.  I see I work far better under the pressure of deadlines, even if they are not altogether serious.  Said friend issued a “commandment” to pen a creation myth by sundown of one day, and I took it upon myself to be thus commanded.  I produced.  It was refreshing to be motivated, to be given a true direction, besides my meandering rambles.  Maybe this friend could collaborate with me, give me a framework and a deadline for each chapter, and perhaps write it with me.  I think after a few thousand years a new Bible may be just what the world needs.

Sometimes, secretly, I think I look forward to senility, not quite the full-blown devastation of Alzheimer’s, or the severity of advanced dementia, but a mild touch of senility, when I forget what era it is and regress to the 1980s, or when no one expects me to take care of everything, remember anything, or change my clothes every day.  Until then, I suppose I must continue my valiant quest for answers to vague questions of little import and other mysteries of the universe.  I’m sure my reward will be long stretches of time in the Spring sunshine, and the smell of hyacinth on the wind, and all the happy I can feast on.  So much to contemplate these days…

Be at peace, my friends,
Tanya