Weakened by the Week

It has been a really weird week. I expected the boys back Tuesday but then the house was not done and then there was that storm that blew in and dropped snow on our place and all the roads around and so that delayed things. And so I am still here, alone. Sitting here, listening to Pandora and various public radio shows at a distractingly loud volume to detract my thoughts from being alone.

I have made things, I have cooked meals, I have worked steadily. But I still have more free time than the previous 4.75 years and some of it has been spent right here, in front of the screen, clicking, reading, seeking. Finding some pretty dismal stuff. Pinterest claiming images for their own, the evil-doer of the internets now when a few months ago they were lauded as The Best Thing Ever at AltSummit. People publicly annoucing the spilt of their marriage and the terrible things that are then said. Other people saying marriage should never end even if someone is beating the shit out of them.

What the fuck happened to you, Internets? It is so naive to say that, I know. But jesus, it is like civility, humane behavior, privacy ... out the window. The last few days I feel like showering the guck off. And mainly because I have had the time to click through links, read, seek.

I remember a few months back searching an old friend and I came up with his dad's obituary. A CHP officer off-duty killed on the road by some teens driving illegally in the family minivan. The comments underneath were horrific. People who did not know my friend, his father, his loss ... the things they said burned my eyes and heart and I prayed he never saw that page. Never.

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I am looking forward to their return more than I can say. This world, this online one, it not one to live in. So rough.

A bright spot in my lonely week, one far removed from the screen. Lunch prepared by my lovely upstairs neighbour. 90 next month. She made me German saurkraut and sausage and crispy potatoes and we talked for hours over a properly dressed table about aging and hospice and Germany and immigration and violence and dissociation and the definition of cooperative living. And I felt much more real than I ever do here.


I did my hair proper to visit her. Because she deserved properly done hair. Call me a dreamer but I wish the whole Internets would stop, do their hair, sit down with someone who is almost 90 and survived the Holocaust and listen and shut the fuck up.

As I will right now. Some calming images of my home because now I am all het up.



M upstairs also introduced me to the publication The Sun, a magazine of really lovely print writing. Reading it reminded me of when blog reading was inspiring, ad free and clearly written to be read, not inflame, defame, destroy, wound.

Though this current issue (not up online yet) shattered a part of me. The piece Underneath the Armor of the young Marines in Afganistan, in and out of battle gear. 20 year old battle hardened warriors when out of gear look like... 20 years olds.

How I wish this world could be so different, so much better, so less saddening.....