Ssshhht...he can hear you!

I am up writing this when I know I will regret it tomorrow, but while I will be drowsy tomorrow I am wide awake right now.  A leaden headache has finally lifted off and blown away, after a day of probability problems and the Konjunktiv Irrealis (do I need to say more).  

We finished the day with a walk in the milky fog of and English November afternoon.  The kids all needed airing and I needed to gain some territory.  Eventually, J. caught up with me and, tugging on my sleeve, reassured me “You are doing everything right, mom!

”Was I talking out loud...?

Solace

On grey wings’ journeys

My pace engages

When dark the early hour

Comes

In desperate hollows’

Warm embrace

Light’s brave gleam

So quickly fades

Where no breeze

The air can stir

A gentle tread

No baring finds 

Solace breaks the

Mournful silence

With her silken robes

Of changing hues

(Anna E. Jordan)

Does anyone see...

....what's wrong with this news blurp that makes it into all types of media and from there into the way we think, talk and make decisions?

"India is the world's top steriliser of women, and efforts to rein in population growth have been described as the most draconian after China. Indian birth rates fell in recent decades, but population growth remains among the world's fastest. 

Sterilisation is popular because it is cheap and effective, and sidesteps cultural resistance to and problems with distribution of other types of contraception in rural areas." 

(Reuters)

Smiles

Living every day as if it counts.  Making the best out of every moment.  Seeing the bright side, the silver lining, the glass half full...!  

Best to figure out how to get good at that over time.  

It's either that of a really fat midlife crisis.  

And who wants that...?!

Not just Anything

After another round of who done what (and who didn't) around the house, I lost my calm.

All that boring stuff about getting the trash to the curb on time, emptying the dishwasher, not leaving food out over night and smelly socks throughout the house, sometimes makes me want to leave and join the Bedouins.

What would happen to the trash and the socks then, I wonder...?  

Instead it's the weekend and this nonsense keeps  creeping up on us and making me fester with arrrgh.

J., now nine, came over to me after M. had left with a huff.  "What happened?" he wanted to know and I told him that I had lost my calm and that his dad didn't really do anything.

"You mean 'anything' both ways, right?"

Hm.

Glass Clear

Often it feels like I am skipping alongside a clamoring digger.  My squeaky voice not even as much as a chirp against the monstrous roar of our time.  And it is true, the marvels of this generation have mostly passed me by.  It seems that I lost eye contact somewhere around the third to last bend...right around when Twitter entered news broadcasating and when Facebook became the new schoolyard of the 21st century.  

It’s been a while now, but I decided to join neitherTwitter nor Facebook.  With the help of my dear friend Susan, I did however add my soliloquy to those of other bloggers, simply because it cut down on the amount of illegible notes I left on napkins, notebook borders and phone pads.  

Being an admitted technoskeptic, I nevertheless try to understand the underlying momentum of an innovation.  Twitter did indeed come in handy when demonstrators where being rounded up and gunned down across the Maghreb during the Arab Spring.  What happened in Tiananmen Square in 1994, when the Chinese military clamped down on pro-democracy protesters and ushered in another quarter century of icy censorship and political persecution seems much less likely now thanks to social media.  

I also do realise that kids need hide away places where they can meet, chat and act stupid.  But nonetheless I am really really happy, that my kids don’t use Facebook for that.  

All in all, despite an occasional oncoming of geriatric helplessness, I feel more stable where I stand.  I prefer not to follow every whim, because more often than not, they have turned out to be nothing but variations of the old (and rarely improved) theme.  

Online banking may be quicker when it works, but the time one ends up spending securing accounts and figuring out problems that crop up outweighs the weekly walk to the local bank counter.  

Credit cards do come in handy - especially when one travels - but usually we end up spending more than we should and leave a pathetic trail of bad habits visible to a much wider world than we would wish.  

But then, I had to realise that people seem to like being transparent at times.  In fact, in seems that soul stripping (and all other forms) has reached a new level of popularity!    

This, however, also seems nothing but a variation on an old ritual in the old world:  confession.  So nothing new really, despite all the hype.  

Just more money and energies spent