I have become tired of the computer. It sits there waiting to be used like an ugly toad on the kitchen counter. Its a bad news box crouching where no toad should be. It does me no good, interferes with my artwork, croaking "Use me, you fool, you'll know nothing, you'll be un-informed. I know everything. We're waiting. So c'mon, you know you can't live without me." He drools blowing slimy coffee bubbles and tracks his cigar ashes over the counter tops when I try to get away. As if this winter wasn't hard enough already.
Oh, you just try living without central heat in a winter like this, in the mountains, everything is a major effort, even finding mittens while you are shivering blue at dawn because the fire died while you were sleeping and the dogs need to go out, barking and yelping, grabbing at your bootlaces.
The fireplace is more demanding than the toad in the kitchen. "I need another bailout" he insists, ten or twenty times a day. The blaze sinks and sputters death sparks if you dare put off averting your eyes from toad's troll warts even though knowing all the while you have no choice but to steel yourself into braving the blustering whiteout loading evermore fuel to ram into its gaping yaw.
There's danger either way, one gives you panic attacks, the other burns your eyes and hands or maybe its the other way around. Note to self: Push woodburning/pellet stove plan until it is a living, breathing actuality. Note to others: The fireplace-only plan is a chilling fantasy. February whiteouts are the worst time for fantasy.
Note to computer addicts: Do you need this? You already know the truth, there will be no change you can believe in, we can only believe in ourselves. It has been that way for um, how long now? Why would we possibly think it will suddenly change? The truth is, considering the common existence of Suleman clones, it can only get worse. That's right, 6.6 billion multiplying exponentially into 1,296.6 billion in the not too distant future. Imagine mortgages for elbow room? The global New World Order will rule over a completely unmanageable and disorganized, illiquid population living in cardboard and safety pin shanties in the shadows of formerly majestic urban centers, naked and emaciated before the uncomprehending dull gaze of the ultrapriviledged viewing the remnants of humanity merely as an another desperate advertisement, perhaps an opportunity for giving, and move on.
13 comments:
Nina,
Sending you love and hugs at this time of unraveling.
We keep trying to spit it out but the taste sometimes remains in our mouths like ashes--might as well have along IV hooked up to the computer to get that constant fix--like gawking at a roadside wreck--time for a break--will my friends miss me--
Like people who think there is romance in getting a fixerupperhouse--"hey we can live in the house while we fix it--how romantic"--"Husband hacked to pieces by circular saw--film at 11"--
Like the survivalist folks wanting to live off the land and shoot people during the "uprising"--cold is cold, and wet cold is even worse--your asshole is sore because ice cold baths aren't very appetizing when it's 10 degrees and that wonderful survival food hasn't allowed you to crap in over week--ain't the boy scouts Betty--
I'll take a warm house--food in the fridge--hot showers and a warm bed any day--
"Liberation"--that blue ocean is so close but only a tease when you have no boat to get away in--are there sharks under the surface or an abundance of fish to sustain life, or both--
It's healthy to go to the window from time to time and yell "FUCK OFF"--
Jj
Nina,
Sending you some excess heat from this way.
Hope it helps.
We don't have central heating here, just one fireplace in this huge old house.
So when it gets really cold we take a teaspoon of cayenne pepper in the morning, wash it down quickly with milk.
Works really well.
Not as well as vodka, but that does not really warm one, just makes one feel warm.
It appears you are ignoring the monster in the corner.
Well done.
Miss ya Nina!!
Jj
Bad storms on the horizon today. I suppose the people aren't learning fast enough or well enough to please the natural forces.
Blog problems too, but I don't give up. Blog List having awful stalls. What its doing is kinda nutz. I try to list a blog and it signs out of blogger. ARGHHH. Ah well, better days ahead one way or another.
Sending greetings to all. Thanks for your comments and continuing visits. XO, XO
Big thanks to Stacy and Jj for the blog-out alerts! Both of you are so very thoughtful.
I am feeling more and more out of place in this frickin' world every day--Juli and I were discussing it today just flopped in a couple of living room chairs (no, it's not a "Great Room" as the realtors and decorators like to say--it's a freakin' living room)--
Gloomy kids riding the roller coaster of sugar and aspartame due to their intake of all sorts of crap food--zombie nation at all ages--just take a pill--
before you think it, no, not in a funk--just happy to be able to see things clearly and run the other way--ah, heck with running--think I'll just walk and sit on a log at the first opportunity--
I feel like I'm the observer that just wanders--very entertaining in a train wreck sort of way--As I sit on my log a squirrel and bird join me, maybe a dog too--we look at each other and just start laughing at the absurdity of it all--squirrels have an excellent sense of humor by the way--
I just have no attachment to that which is spinning out of control around me--in the eye of the twister standing still where it's calm--gonna put my ruby slippers on and click them three times and see where my home really is--
Jj
Jj, that's a very good argument why you should do a blog. Not only is your writing worthy, your sideswipes are amusing and common throughout humanity.
Why do you not do it? I am curious.
Just have not been moved to do so--
I'm just writing what comes off the keyboard--It almost always comes from what you folks have written--but a cross section of the blogs (Nina, Les, Su, Michael, etc)--even though it may not appear that way at times--it's like I'm not writing it--No mystical force, or maybe there is--One of those things I would take away from if I tried to label or analyze it--
I am getting better at recognizing when it's me writing something and you never see those attempted posts because I delete them--I just know when it's "flowing" and that's when I post it--
I even stopped wondering who "this one" is for or if someone will think I am aiming at them with some kind of sarcastic wit--or witless sarcasm--
Jj
I spent some of the summer and all of autumn helping my father build a straw-bale workshop, into which we installed a large wood-stove for heat. Now, straw bales are a fantastic insulator, so the plan was to warm the structure up with the wood-stove and then finish the plastering on the inside during the winter (it takes two weeks for the mud to dry, but of course just a day for it to freeze solid and spall off the wall.)
It turns out old-style wood-stoves don't heat a structure nearly as well as one might think. In our case that just means work on the workshop takes a breather until spring (well, maybe if my dad's leukemia hadn't come back, we wouldn't have put things on hiatus, but that's another story.) In your case, though ... I can only imagine how shitty that must be.
Stay strong, Nina. We love you.
Oh gosh, I guess I sounded pretty frayed. Well, okay, I am frayed. But when I go really "out there" in fraysville, its historically been on a much greater level than this. This is all very bearable and filled with lots of silver linings.
Psychegram, sending healing thoughts to Daddy. Congratulations to you both for even undertaking haybale architecture. Spring soon come. I hope you will keep us up to date on the progress of the workshop and your Dad's condition.
Hugs.
Yeah, you sounded in a bad way ... and while I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle a little support never hurt anyone, not you and certainly not my Dad. And thanks for the prayer, every little bit helps and when it comes to this sort of thing, it really is the thought that counts :)
That strawbale structure was the first thing I've ever built. Maybe the last, who knows? Or maybe I'll get a summer job with a strawbale outfit. We'll see....
-big hug-
-Matt
I am fascinated with haybale structures. Its hot stuff in the southwest USA where they call it "straw bale". The works I've seen are smooth and free form mostly, where people inbed shrines into the walls and use unfinished lodgepole for supports.
A book you and your Dad could get into together is Southwest Style, be careul not to eat the pages its so yummy. Amazon has it cheaper than a few others I found, although its in some libraries in the decorating section.
Using the book's search feature with "straw bale" I found the exact examples I wanted you to see!
Example:page 32 …into the straw. Chicken wire sewn tight to the bales…
page 89 ... rooms 8 1) 4`c ; VM of straw bales, the chapel in Carol An…
page 138 …in summer while protecting the u' r straw bales fro…
page 140 …exterior, Jim and Noël sewed lathing to the straw bales…
page 144 …cloister out of straw- bales and adobe. "For me, straw…
page 147 ... BELOW LEFT: Desk in Carol's straw-bate bale studio.
page 149 …a friend. The nicho was built into the straw bales.
After checking out the book about 10 times, I got so into the shrines it produced the series Dogs of the Desert which featured all my neighbors dogs, most in little shrines, the shrines of course are Mexican/adobe inspired rooted in their colorful religion. The rest of the book is equally as interersting, but the straw bale work is well, incredible. Great photos.
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