Is the engineer, perhaps, not God’s right hand? The face behind the mask of Thoth? The Hermes without the give-away winged sandals? The enabler of Artists; Promethean in his accomplishments (he doesn’t have to invent the fire just make sure it gets to our kitchens before dinner). Providing we manage to undo him of politics, mind you. Reading “Solar Bones”by Mike McCormack and sponging up the summer heat I am planning to develop a newfound respect for these people I used to find overly pragmatic and fairly humourless. So petty to generalise. But I don’t get out much.
Lascaux cave painting by Mariano - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
I check the weather app, possibly the tenth time today. Am I incredulous about the temperature? Am I measuring my perfect poise by degrees? It is something I never do (unless it rains at 2 in the morning and it’s pouring into my kitchen: I’d like to know when I might be able to expect to stop bailing and can take off my wellingtons). In a day or two this heat will be over and then we have the same old again.
How I adore this heat. It is so exotic. I wouldn’t travel for it, mind you, but as it is here I take it as very special – even if it might be foreboding the Apocalypse. I am apt to call this weather portentious: it is carrying something. Maybe my grief for a bit.
Maybe I love how everybody else seems to be very fed up with it: too much of a good thing. Not enough time to acclimatise. Infrastructures haven't been built for it. Blahdiblahdiblahblah. Excuses for not being able to cope. Ha! Caught you all out! Thought you were all of a superior class, didn't you...?
Have we got an Engineer’s Day, already? Have we room for one between National Sunscreen Day, World Braille Day, Safer Internet Day, World Poetry Day, Mother's and Fathers' and Children's Days?
The engineers – while the lucky few artists take centre stage - are greatly overlooked and exploited, Solar Bones brings to my attention. (A masterpiece, indeed, the cover doesn't lie.) They are the ones who give us bridges and drains and glass-fibre networks.
Without them, I venture further afield, we wouldn’t have had Impressionism! We’d only have caves with hand paintings. No museums or undergrounds to get us there. No new Paris for Renoir and Monet to paint. No Pissarro in France without the steamer that brought him out of the Virgin Islands. If they hadn’t built factores, he would never have had paint tubes and the collapsable, portable easle (let alone the flange that creates a FLAT brush: for more expressive strokes for strokes’ sake) and none of the Impressionist orgy would ever have come off the ground (eventually) to liberate our souls. Ok, and none of this would really have come about without the labourers…. And we’re back to why we have May Day .
In any case let’s rank the engineers over the architects who pretend they can put fences up with a pad and pencil. Definitely let us put them in a league ahead of lawyers who are probably born too stupid to do anything else than point fingers at who dunnit after it all falls down on top of Humpty Dumpty, who must be a doctor for sitting on the fence all along.
I am up a large portion of the night ponderous on the lightning without thunder. My app didn't forecast this! Will my parasol be blown over and my cushions get soaked? I try to recall Fleetwood Mac, the gods of my first spouse; they seemed to her founts of eternal love and mystery. I can't say I ever listened to all her bootlegs and live recordings, or maybe not even every album they recorded, but I do recall:
Thunder only happens when it's raining.
And Lightning . . . . lights up the night.
But in two different songs. I have learned since then, that the band was not a shining example of eternal love themselves. I take the lightning as a cue to a hard and fast conclusion that's not taken me long to figure out. Checking apps is for numpties: the sky is right outside your window, at three in the morning it is time for rest, and they really never will tell you what you really need to know.
In a flash of my own I acknowledge without understanding that I am starting to see something emerge out of the unknown. It is too dark to see, so it must be that seeing that is still only believing. I know from experience it could take another seven years or so before I find a way to get to it. There is nothing to say it isn't just another swamp monster, either. Here's to hoping for something more light-footed. Who wants another dead end?
Is it why I have been practicing knots† all afternoon in the near 40 degree heat, as if I am planning to sail the seven seas or join the queue on Mt. Everest?
I set my wool aside and pick up Thomas Merton to help me bide my time in contemplation.
This is a building project (from the floor up) in Geneva Switzerland phototgraphed by Samuel Zeller@samuelzeller. I clearly am not an engineer for I cannot imagine what is being built here.
I still can't upload or post a link to show what else those knots are useful for. Posting evidence is dangerous to your posting privileges.
htt://s1277.photobucket.com/user/OnnoVocks/media/P1080231.jpg.html?filters=Array&sort=1&o=0
So I guess you'll just have to add ps after htt.
Maybe this knot tying exercise is related to travel something light footed rising out of the swamp looking for something Concrete poured over yellow Plywood. I personally prefer Cleats to attach my Bow Line to the Concrete firmament in case I no longer want to be where I am. This often means I just want to get off the boat and return to being a House mouse. The constant movement aboard is taxing unless reclined.
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The house I am currently cemented to has a wall in the garden which has a cleat I had to fight my annexe-builders to keep. What do you want that rusty thing for there? they groaned at my next quirk. It was too low for a washing line, too high for a cat (they are thinking of having them restricted to leashes in gardens now. The Men's Only club are hotly debating this new neighbourhood rule.) It might not look like anything you could secure a vessle to, but you don't need more than a dinghy at the ready, once the floods get serious enough and one has to paddle off ins graue hinein. However, now I have found myself a boat builder, I might consider upgrading my cleat and preparing for the real water works to come.
The saddest picture ever drawn.
I would have to agree, however ungemini it may sound, it must be that time of life, that the very thought of moving around (which it always boils down to once you leave) is not exactly on my bucket list, either. I think I might settle for one final move which is going to sound quite as decadent as anything already annoying the socks off me: (to I don't care where) to an incredibly well built abode with a simple array of modern conveniences, a reliable, fine-tuned heating system, plumbing that you would never guess was there, a library for its main feature (where you can organise over 2000 books and not just store them) and not a fence in sight. People call me difficult. I don't see why. But then I'm not an engineer and this must be an incredibly tall order, after all.
Now, I had a momentary bit of luck accessing your cunning link, and was just starting to browse through some very familiar sights (a watermill, a doggy I was only thinking the other day: might he still be in your life, and some beloved cars) when it all fell away again as if by some self-destruct, burn after reading booby trap to leave me with a blank page (no matter how often we refresh).Fascinating when that happens: now certain the next picture would have shown me a very useful knot.... So we'll try again at some unsuspecting time, real casual like...
Clearly, the rains have come down. The (three day) spell is over and the wonderful diamonds in the sky have been washed away. Some might put it sec: things are coming to a head. For mystic Meg here, that shows in such little silly petty interruptions to my flow. Up a lazy river it hardly feels like travelling.
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Here is a scaled down version that may be easier to load: htt://s1277.photobucket.com/user/OnnoVocks/media/P1080231s.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1
P.S. Just remember to add post script, you know where. Maybe this time you'll get to see the light footed thing rising from the swamp.
I spent a few years traveling the lazy Snake River, and that's where I fished River out of the River. Mal nourished, in poor health and abused he spent some time at the Vet's and eventually became the most expensive free Dog I ever had. Well worth it, he was a great companion. We then spent a few more years traveling another lazy River, but this one was much larger as was the vessel that consumed 30 Gallons of fuel per hour if you let her run. No regrets, quite the contrary, as I knew in advance that I likely wouldn't be able to at retirement age, I decided to do some of the "retirement" things while I could while in my late 30's and 40's, reasoning that it's always preferable to have loved and lost than ...
.. and speaking of joie de vivre, it's never too late to find a new thing to love that better suits ones current condition.
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The problem remains - It cannot possibly - I state boldly - be a loading issue at my end. It's not a browser thing (tried two). No amount of waiting allows photobucket to resume; no amount of trying (and slower pacing) alters anything about that.
So where does it all grind to a halt? After the blue mustang. Is that the end of the line, perhaps? I doubt you also rescued the black and not quite light footed horse out of a swamp... Did I miss something?
I find the Snake River episode with the six billion dollar River leaves a large impression upon me. Several years you say.... It must make it difficult to ever settle back down on terra firma for (semi) good. Then again new conditions make for new things
Which brings me to this riddle that follows me wherever I go. What DO you guys exactly mean? And by you two I mean my mother and you who hand me exactly the same piece of advice. It is such a big deal to me, because my mother never has handed me any other morsel! So now, I prithee, perhaps you could explain the wise old bird with your own wisdom? I can't possibly ask my mother to explain herself. She would think I was a ninny.
I took it as a small consolation of hers, at the time, when she declared it isn't about who you love or who has loved you but what you love. At first I felt it was a cop out, but then I came to see there was something praisworthy and powerfully creative (if fairly austere) in loving without being loved in return. Ok. I can manage that, I promised myself. Years of practice, now time to perfect it (so no more snivelling). But still, now what?
I am not sure I know what to understand by "thing".
It can't be a hobby surely? Although I refuse to call anything I do a hobby, I have about a million of them already. Would I be able to find a new and more appropriate one?
It can't be a place or even a house because, travel was off the agenda and I can't see myself ever getting attached to bricks and mortar (or even an ark).
Now I might get sentimental about a dog, but that is hardly a thing, either. And the hassle of keeping one around here (where people WILL interfere) is not making it an attractive option at the moment.
I remember a boyfriend in Barcelona who never tired of telling the story how he fell madly in love with his first car (a Renault 5), and although I've named my Blue Dakini, I am not sure I love her with all my heart.
What I might have to concentrate more on is perhaps that I could actually go and FIND something new. I may not have ever done that, yet. Allowing rather for things to find me. But that would be my mother's fault! She always said (aha! another morsel, after all): when in doubt don't do anything. And Thomasina happens to be my proverbial middle name!
Wouldn't it be funny if you meant bridge or a bookclub.
Needless to say, I get it totally, if you mean to say: one makes one's own joy and living is about doing precisely that, and nothing much else is required. Find a field, chew on a straw, and watch the cloud elephants and zebras go by!
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htt://oi1277.photobucket.com/albums/y487/OnnoVocks/P1080231s.jpg?t=1564191882 the light footed thing from the swamp.
River, retired from the river enjoying any bit of water he could find.
Guess I'm learning how to beat their restrictions, it took some doing though. Link wheels are a problem for some websites and the site hosting these images is part of one I built years ago but didn't build it to attack, I built it to defend.
Bridge or a book club? That would be funny, especially since that would be the last thing I would think of.
Freedom is taken not granted, if you want something, pursue it, but adapt to the situation. I used to have 10 acres with a creek and Cabin, but when I could no longer physically take care of it, I sold it and bought a 1962-3? 38ft. Chris-Craft Roamer knowing that it too would eventually become to much for me to maintain. I then switched to a 1973 Opel GT, and the 1994 Bluestang convertible. Now I'm down to 'Pewters and Mopeds. Possessions weigh you down, they end up owning you; at least that's what it feels like to me anyway. Anyhoo, that's how I ended up doing some things in reverse of how everyone else said they would do it. So that would be my advice; do the things you really want while you still can, not when considered appropriate by others.
I could never fall in love with a Car, ..ever. It's just a machine and I can always build or buy a new one, .. well I once could anyway.
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Goes to show Steemit is totally superfluous or entirely works a treat on a way that saves electricity one way at least: I woke up to the balloon hanging over my head. Lightbulb moment: THAT had to be the thing rising from the swamp. I had at that point still not read the title of that photo! (let alone this reply). Which in and of itself is a peculiar miss of something printed loud and clear.
In fact, it took my interfering Google "desktop" collection of images telling me where I've been to show me. A "spread" I totally ignore as a factory setting I do not require: but reading "the cards" thus anyway for a change, I am handed a free bit of fortune telling. Abort the search. Apparently what I am looking for WILL lie somewhere amongst all that I already know=posess in excess. Time to burn more and petrify less.
Also that same old: time to trust yourself, even if nobody else does.
Don't forget as a woman you seriously (still in this day and age) have a lot of lost expectation for yourself to make up for. There is a woman in the harsh North Cascades living (by herself) on a bit more that 10 acres Lynx Vilden and another ultra liberated Barbara in the Kimberly Region in the Australian outback. Inspiring and cautionary series with the trusty Ben Fogle, whom I cannot help but always imagine infront of his cosy fireplace in some English country house. (Probably not quite contentedly, judging by insane filmography).
And THAT is how anger (entrapement/impotence, futile aspirations, pride?!) turns you into stone so that you don't even remember to LOOK UP. And THAT is the wake up call my mother tried to give me gently (utterly chained to her own radiator) and what more could she add? AND that is what retiring young at heart does for you: it liberates you by degrees (of cars and boats and cabins).
Defence is something I spent years on (something I was doing while you were retiring) but had to let that go. I saw how resistance is futile and stealth allows you to be ahead of everything and then what? There you stand on the corner of every street, well aware of the lamp, waiting for them to pile into the chemist's shop and realise they are being watched (over). True they can't hurt you back (always upset for being "caught out" and reminded of themselves) but game over. Defence turned out to be offence after all. Retreat actually even more so (because you are showing them you are okay and implying in their rabbit caught in headlght eyes they are not. You weren't meaning to, but that's interconnection for you. We are like trees in a forest. One big happy little family.)
So we are left with your true morsel of wisdom: Freedom is taken.
One takes one's head and turns it up.
It would be superflous to add that hot air balloons are my mother's only romantic fantasy. And if it hadn't been for her wish to be an owl rather than a person I would have grown into a person intimidated by owls. And so we find our teachers.
An odd parallell, is that the balloon scene in the film "Enduring Love" frequently kept passing through my mind this year. (Haven't seen the film since it came out). I'll have to get cracking on decoding that one....
Is River still paddling with you? My mother always warns me: dogs tie you down. (So? Aint going nowhere anyway.) But the world traveller River might testify to the contrary - for all your (pecunary) limitations you hardly feel taken hostage by your pet. Just adequately domesticated perhaps, with a bath, an amble and a scrambled egg on time? Dogs do wonders on that front for the ageing. Hence my weighing up the pros and cons.
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Unfortunately River passed away in 2010 after being good company for 7 years. I never knew his true age, but the U of Mn, Vet estimated he was about 1.5 years old when I found him in the Snake river. He had webbed feet and was a powerful swimmer which allowed him to cross rivers where most dogs wouldn't. When I had him in my boat I headed for the shore where the locals told me he had been in the neighborhood for weeks, going from house to house looking for food. They also said they were hoping someone would take him that weekend to which I replied that, with that information, the dog had just found a new home.
No regrets, but I won't take in another Dog at this time. It worked out great in the woods, where River could do what he wanted (usually right behind me), same with the river shores, but living in a townhouse or apartment it would require walks at least 3-4 times a day. Taking care of Kids, Dogs, or an elderly Parent in my case, does weigh you down, these are things you don't walk away from so I agree that your Mother was right about that one. If I had someone to take over when I am temporarily unavailable for walks, it would be different. That being said; I liked my Cars, Boats and sizzling hot motoscoots, ..but I loved that Dog.
Though I'm not familiar with that Movie, I look forward to the decoding, that is if you are willing to share your findings. Are returning themes like Balloons and Owls truly random or odd? My Owl must be on an extended vacation, then again, I don't get out much these days ...
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Enduring Love is odd (freaky character) and put me off ever wanting to get in a hot air balloon - unlike my mother whom I probably ought to gift a trip as yet, for her birthday (if not ON her birthday, considering it's November then). And I am no friend of owls. Since I am a housemouse.
It might not be so random and odd, indeed, that what you try to move away from (either of my elderly parents before I find myself in the position you are in and I swore I never would be) will continue to haunt you till you've cracked the code (which is sure to be about freedom).
I have put in my notes to self for a future life that all dogs need two parents. It sure as hell doesn't work for kids to just have the one. Why would you want less for your dog? You are perfectly sensible about not having a dog in any urban setting. I tried with totally the wrong breed (border collie) and I don't think it did Fern or me any favours. Still, I like to blame that failure on there being too many uncooperative sheep in our family. Never get a dog when three out of four don't really like dogs (and the most obvious pack leader - a hulking father - is not game at all.) All great tips to keep up on a post-it . (Been working on a piece involving Alzheimer's).
We live and we learn. But do we ever learn to let life just live?
Finally, corresponding to that ever growing urge to possess or consume less: in researching what this new dog of mine could best be fed on, I became terribly disheartened in the whole project. Okay, so being a diehard organic fishytarian doesn't help sort that problem out; but the culinary market for dogs is just MAD!
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