Going Inkless

Common belief holds that what you do at the new year sets the pattern for the year ahead.  This is why people throw parties to welcome the new year, why they try to spend New Year's Eve with the ones they love, and why some are determined to make that midnight kiss happen.  There are superstitions about wearing new clothes, starting off debt-free, and generally declaring your intent to be a better you starting January 1.  New Year's Day is a time of omens for the coming year.  Everyone hopes that good luck on the first day will presage good luck through the year. And we really needed that hope in 2017. It's pretty well accepted that 2016 sucked.  Whether you were saddened by the many deaths of beloved celebrities, shocked by various disasters and humanitarian crises, or disgusted by political developments, chances are you've had a rough time lately. I was a little overwhelmed by the politics, myself, which is part of the reason I fell off posting to this b...

     In the staff lounge on Thursday, I ate my lunch quickly, scanning my smart phone and reading articles I don't remember.  When I had done with that, I looked at the clock.  With some 20 minutes of break time left, I considered returning to my desk early.  While I usually take a walk, I just didn't feel up to it, and I only wanted to get back to my work and finish out the day.  Such "dedication" is frowned upon for non-exempt employees, so after a bit of waffling, I put on my jacket and headed out after all.  A few steps out, the urge to keep walking took over.  Suddenly, I wanted to go as far and as fast as my feet would carry me, to walk until I couldn't anymore - to nowhere in particular.  A few steps more, and I couldn't stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks.  The transformation was abrupt and unexpected.      That morning, my daughter's dog Freya had gone on her last trip to the vet.  She had been ...

     A long, bitter winter has a way of pushing things to their breaking point.  This winter has been one of the harshest on record in the United States, sending snow and ice storms into even the normally balmy southern states.  Where we live, there has been a pattern cycling between arctic temperatures and heavy snowfall and back again throughout the past three months.  Every time it warms to 20 degrees or so (-7C), we get another blanket of snow before diving back toward zero (-18C) again.  We have had our occasional, isolated above-freezing days when icicles grow and meltwater collects on sidewalks only to become a dangerous sheet of ice with the following cold snap.  The sun beats on snowbanks by day, pushing fingers into the less hard-packed edges.  Then, cold winds turn the work into a natural masterpiece like frozen surf- beautiful, but sharp and unforgiving if you fall.  Water will seep into cracks and pores when it warms, strain...

     There is buried treasure in my house.  It lies in cardboard boxes and plastic bags deep within the basement, deposited there when I moved in nearly 20 years ago and layered over with newer boxes and bags.  The contents of these containers vary, sometimes notes or photographs, sometimes old letters or artifacts from my childhood- the kinds of things you don't just throw away.  As a collection, it's nowhere near complete.  There was more than enough chaos in my life before I came to rest here to ensure that pieces were lost along the way.  You may not be able to throw these sacred relics away, but you have to be prepared to accept that they will drift out of reach of their own accord.  And I have been prepared for that fact of life for some time now.  Long ago, I had resolved myself to the loss of my daughter's baby picture, the one taken at the hospital when she was only hours old.  It was only a thing, just a paper image of a m...

     The pot of horrors would be bubbling on the stove all morning, neck and giblets, looking like a witches' cauldron leftover from Halloween.  Giblets.  It was a comical, almost friendly name, no doubt invented to deceive us into thinking they might not be as terrible a concept for food.  That bubbling pot meant gravy would be eaten at your own risk, but it would be made as Grandma always had, and her mother before her, and before that, in the days when no food was wasted however unappetizing.      There was a table full of vegetables to chop for stuffing, mashed potatoes, and other side dishes, not to mention a tray to snack on that we didn't bother to call crudité.  Thanksgiving was bigger than everyday, more special, but it was humble, too.  We always helped in the kitchen.  Before the meal preparation was more fun than dish washing after.  I suppose it always is, but when the holiday means more than the usual eight...

     Everything washes away.  Entropy is worked into the fabric of the universe.  That's not just a philosophical concept, either, but a scientific fact.  Physicists tell us that there will not only be a day when everything we know of the world is gone, but the universe itself will dissolve into aimless, drifting particles.  The good news is that before that day, we may have entropy pulling things apart, but we also have a tendency for things to come together.  There are forces at work that take up disassembled bits and reconstruct new things from them, recycling the world over and over.  Today's mountaintop may one day be part of the ocean floor, or the other way around.  Last year's flowers may feed this year's sprouts- if they weren't converted to butter by some helpful cow.      It goes without saying that humans play a role in this continual reshuffling of the deck.  We all have an urge to build.  Putting ...

I rarely wear any jewelry but my wedding ring, a simple thing composed of slender gold bands and tiny diamond chips (two of which have been missing since year one.) It just doesn't occur to me to put any on. Though I do have a small collection of jewelry, mostly inherited or gifts, they spend most of the time jumbled in boxes on the dresser. However, a short while ago, when I learned my uncle had been taken to the hospital with heart problems, I decided to wear a particular necklace and it's been with me ever since. Like most of my collection, it has little material value. A plain metal pendant strung on a waxed cord, it bears a single rune, uruz , for strength. My sister gave it to me years ago when I was going through some difficult changes, saying it seemed appropriate and that it suited me. Since then, it comes out of the box every now and then when I need a little boost to carry me through. My uncle's illness was one more discordant note in my world in recent ...

The thing about coming to rest in a house with a history of being everybody's temporary haven is you have to be ready to have people pass through your life on their way to better things.

I dream of dogs. Often. Their presence in my dreams is a reflection of their presence in my life. They've been with me since the start, as regular a part of my family as a sister, a mother, a grandmother. In fact, because my father's truck driving job frequently took him away from home for days or weeks at a time, I've actually logged more days with a dog at my side than a dad. To put it in their way of seeing things, dogs are part of my pack, and my world feels unbalanced without them. I know this bond has been a natural habit for humankind since cavemen first took wolf pups into their den. We are both social animals. On that primal level, we think alike. We share our lives. We work together. We comfort each other. We are family. Many have weighed in on the subject of this ancient association. Here in modern times when the connection results in a pet relationship more often than a working relationship, the opinions often fall in the extremes. On one side, t...

There's a tone of harvest's richness and abundance that ripens in late summer, growing fat and gold until one day you realize you've slipped into autumn. I think it's always been my favourite season. This is the breathing space between the summer's frenzied activity and the hectic winter holidays. The air is cooling and filled with the scents of ripe apples and dying leaves. Where green ruled the view, now all is flame and gold, and a papery rustle accompanies each crisp gust of wind. It's time to dig out the sweaters, to see the new patterns and promise in another school year, to plan costumes and fun for Halloween. But autumn, for all its joys, cannot be separated from the principles of death and loss. We recognize that the world around us is dying, drying out, moving from summer's blush to winter's shroud. Through all the celebrations of the season, we feel that ancient wheel turn. Autumn is a time to contemplate the darkness. In the world ...

We all go through our lives collecting regrets. We note our mistakes, the bad choices we make, the people we hurt. We remember things we wish we hadn't done and the opportunities that passed us by. We can't help it. It's a curse of self-awareness that we tend to look back and analyze. For me, regrets are most often the lost relationships, either absence of contact or distance from those who were once close and constant parts of my life. Rarely are these the sort of explosive, dramatic separations that drive the plots of movies and novels. They are a more muted loss, wherein you just wake one day to the realization that you've drifted from where you thought you were. The landscape has changed and things are merely not as they were. Maybe your busy lives have distracted you both and suddenly, you have completely lost each other in the crowd. It happens more often than you'd think. What lucky soul among us can say they still share the heartfelt camaraderie ...