Posts tagged with “personal”
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The Corner of my Room That Does not Exist

In the morning I wake up with the wreckage of yesterday, all my yesterdays, around me.

In one corner of my mind, a dusty corner, I can see a place where its tidy, there is just enough, rather than an overabundance. I've cleared away the burdens, the tasks to be done, the responsibilities I didn't ask for, the promises I thought I owed to myself. Life in that corner is uncluttered. Each morning I set about completing things, continuing things and there is nothing holding me back, nothing to feel trapped by or disappointed about myself.

But, I don't live in that corner. I step carefully in the room where I can't really see the corners and I avoid hurting myself. Physically, by stepping carefully around the floor and the obstacle course I've created. Mentally, by keeping everything, as much as I can, safe with me in this room. Its not who I am, its who I have become.

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Silent Purple Skies and Soap Bubbles

Sleep gets in the way
before I've hardly started
time is quicksilver.

I wrote this haiku this morning.

I often feel so many things, people, etc take over the time you have, the need for sleep being just one more of those. I love the time I am immersed in something. Learning something, sorting out something tangled, or reading a book with a good, deep story. There are always interruptions. Sleep is at least from myself, my body and brain needing physical care. Still, I resent it, a divider of days. "You can't stay up all night". But I can and I have. That early morning time before most people are awake, when the sky is a dark purple and the birds are warming up for the day. It's wonderful. It's quiet and a bit chilly and private. Only seconds, maybe minutes and then there is a sound in the house. Someone else is awake and its gone. That little bit of time, outside the world, family and things to do. It's something that is still fully mine. But it pops like a soap bubble and is gone.

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Grey Rocking

Disengaging with narcistic people as a way of protecting yourself. Not great for relationships with immediate family over the long haul. In the end, you lose track of yourself due to ignoring yourself.

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Ruined Diaries by Rain

I began writing my own journals/ diaries as a kid in the early 1970's. There are at least eight books, most of them full of my thoughts, blabs, and so on. As I have moved from place to place along my life the books became collected in a plastic container with a lot of photos I'd taken from trips to BC, visiting my Aunt Emma and wandering around Vancouver, staying at hostels and hotels. Travelling on the Greyhound bus, which doesn't have that cross Canada route any longer. Family and cat photos too. the odd hand written page about this and that. Ephemera collected from my adventures.

I had seen the box, less than a year ago, stuck in the garage where my brother had put it. I didn't move it into the house, mostly because I live in one room and didn't have space for it. Of course, not every decision made due to laziness, indecision, etc. is not always the best choice. Earlier this year my brother began clearing out everything from the garage. He found the garage was infested with mice and rats from the past tenants leaving a lot of garbage in it, outside of the garbage put out in the regular pick up. I noticed the lid of my container was cracked, it wasn't before. But, again I put off doing much about it because I didn't want to figure out what to do with it. I looked at getting a new container for it, but didn't get one. So it sat outside in rain and I thought it was safe with another box on top of it to block water and it was under the roof of the garage, outside.

Today, my Mom opened it and found the water has gotten in. Mostly everything is damaged, some of it is ruined and it really stinks! I can see fungus/ mold on it. I can still smell it, even though I've washed my hands several times, changed clothes and left all of it out in the laundry room.

The plan is to sort through the photos and pick out what to keep. Most are ruined, all the ink/colour washed away from the paper. Some of them still have an image left in the centre. So, a few I have saved so far. Some (not many) are untouched by water. Ironically, most of them are from my wedding and I don't really care about them as much. There are a lot of them which were dripping wet still and hugely stink. I will try to sort them today. But, I have little hope for them.

I think I will bring my scanner out, hook it up to my laptop and scan all the old journals. Better than retyping them, I would have my original hand written pages, just made digital and less mildew and moldy. Then, sadly, I will throw away all those pages and books I've kept for so long.

The next thing is what to do with all those scanned pages. I guess I can post them here, as images with dates. That will make this a really long/ old blog. I think the earlies pages are from before the 1970's. One nice thing about scanning them is being able to see my penmanship over the years too. Retyping them can't do that. Plus, retyping them would mean guessing what some of them are. Instead of leaving it as original to figure out more than just once. Handwriting isn't as reliable as type, but its far more personal and artsy.

Anyway, that's what I will be doing over the next few weeks. I think it will be sad to dispose of the old journals themselves. All those originals. Some of them I still remember who gave me the blank journal or where I bought them from. I guess I can add that to the notes as I scan and post them.

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The Dull Women's Club

I joined the Dull Women's Club, on Facebook.

When asked what I thought dull meant, I wrote: Simple, plain, normal, sane. Able to appreciate the smaller things in life, if not the better things.

This is what I wrote as my self introduction:

I'm excessively dull. Sometimes the highlight of my day is finding my backscratcher to get rid of an itch on my back. I live in Ontario, the small city of Barrie. At the end of this year I will be 60. I live with my Mother, who is now 80. I collect books, more than I can actually read. I make ASCII art. I have been a writer and editor online for years. I used to crochet and sew. I'm divorced with no children. I drink coffee. I couldn't find a photo of myself though I have easily a thousand photos I've taken of old farm houses around Ontario. I'm a volunteer with Ontario Barn Preservation, writing the newsletter, etc.

A later comment about growing foot size as we get older:

I think everything you don't want to grow, grows as you get older. Things you wish would grow, like getting just a bit taller, don't grow. I started wearing men's shoes because I could get the same size (more or less) by number but they were wider and longer than women's shoes. Once upon a time I was a size 6, now I'm a 10. Not a 10 in the way I'd like to be a 10, just the dull way of having bigger feet.