whining

Please

/ wvfurandroot / 11 Comments

For the past couple of hours I have listened to distant thunder rumble. In a spirit of prayer, I have breathed in and out – please.

The sky darkened. A few large raindrops fell. The deluge began.

It’s a wonderful rain. It’s the kind of rain they record for those nature CDs one is supposed to listen to for calming of the spirit and mind.

I have the big white floor fan parked in front of the patio door and myself parked 6” in front of it. I am not nauseated by heat for the first time in days. I am also drinking my first cup of coffee in this house of the past 8 days.

Oh yes…there’s almost a chill in here. Almost.

To keep the heat down as much as possible in the house, I have kept lights off and appliances (especially the dryer) off. The house is very dark and I finally turned on the dragonfly lamp the better to see my coffee cup lest I dribble coffee on the keyboard.

It’s been a bad technology week and I don’t need Something Else. During a fit of heat stroke, I had a tantrum upon calling my DSL provider and what with one thing and another scissored my DSL connection. It was an accident. In the hideous heat that was yesterday, I dangled out the second floor of my window running new DSL line. While I’m very tickled at my ability to figure out how to do this (seemingly correctly), I am very ashamed of my tantrum. I seldom lose such control of my emotions and the venom I spewed all over the woman at Frontier Communications was unprovoked and undeserved. The accidental scissoring of my DSL connection was, I’m convinced, instant karma.

The rain has already slowed down. I was once told that big raindrops heralded a fast, intense storm. I hope that is not the case; otherwise this storm will prove to just make conditions worse.

Deep breath.

Please.

The sky is clearing and the rain has stopped. I can still hear distant thunder.

Please.

I cannot bear much more of this heat.

I have solaced myself by telling myself everyone used to live without air conditioning. And did so while wearing unbelievable amounts of clothes. I have consoled myself by telling myself that millions still live without air conditioning. I have chided myself for not doing yoga because it’s too hot when the practice originated in a country that is the Mother of Hot. I have read myself the riot act for my incessant whining about it. I have told myself this is the last July 25th I will spend without air conditioning.

I have had quite the conversation with My Self. When it’s all said, there is me and there is heat. We’re going to have to learn to live together – at least for another month or two.

I can still hear thunder, but the sun is shining and the fan that just a moment ago nearly chilled me is now merely circulating hot air.

I can still hear thunder.

Please.

Addendum:  My DSL connection is not fixed.  My original assessment, prior to the tantrum, was correct.  Everytime it rains, my DSL goes out.  I was no sooner ready to upload this post than it went out again.  I have a dozen or so posts sitting on the hard drive that never got uploaded due to my intermittant DSL problems.  I called Frontier, kept my emotions in check, and went through the long ugly history of my whole-house filter, line noise, and inability to reach Cyberia when it rains.

As for the rain.  It petered out and then a gentle misting replaced the storm of a few hours ago.  I’m using the time of comparative coolness to tackle laundry.  The dryer is heating the house to nearly the temperature it was prior to the rain.  I hate being a grownup.

Is it a small world? After all?

/ wvfurandroot / 7 Comments

Now and again I find myself in a daydream thinking about what people are doing while I’m thinking about what they’re doing. For example, right now I’m convinced that somewhere someone is:

  • Painting their toenails and wincing because it hurts their back to do so;
  • Standing in a line that is not moving;
  • Explaining to an officer of the law what happened;
  • Winding duct tape around something;
  • Encouraging a child to either do or not do something;
  • Trying to hold back tears;
  • Crying;
  • Begging for food;
  • Praying;
  • Cursing;
  • Singing in the shower;
  • Having an orgasm;
  • Having a heart attack;
  • Bursting with pride;
  • Suffering shame;
  • Drifting to sleep;
  • Awakening;
  • Falling in love;
  • Falling into despair;
  • Picking their nose;
  • Picking a china pattern;
  • Picking ripe tomatoes;
  • Picking a casket;
  • Entering life;
  • Exiting life.

I imagine these people oblivious to the knowledge that I’m wondering what they’re doing. And why. And how. And taking some comfort that the wheel goes round and round and round; that we endure and not endure and struggle and relax. That, viewed from a distance, there’s a symmetry and a balance to it all until peering in close to see the broken heart in juxtaposition to the joyous one; the ridiculousness of painted toes in comparison to the struggle for nutrition. There are injustices wrought by the arbitrary lines of geopolitical divides; and injustices wrought by economic gerrymandering. Injustices of opportunity and means. Injustice against the person. Injustice against the self.

It’s all silly, poignant, important, meaningless, and cruel, but most people in their last breaths think, “Oh, please. Not yet.” At least I think they do.

And if you were wondering — I’m sprawled on my couch lamenting chipped nail polish and economic injustice. I’m writing this drivel and plotting, yet again, the best way to infuse my puny little life with meaning wondering all the while if by virtue of existence it already has meaning or if that’s a pig in a poke bought in the cosmic market square on credit at an interest rate I can’t afford. I’m also thinking somewhere else someone is riding a similar thought train. I’m also thinking about how much I’d really like a taco and for It’s a Small World to quit ricocheting around my brain.

Locking Great Aunt Bertha in the Attic

/ wvfurandroot / 6 Comments

I’ve noticed the more extreme the situation, the more apt I am to use clichés.

All I can say is it is hotter’n’hell and there’s a reason Great Aunt Bertha went insane and had to be locked in the attic.

I am near tears with the misery of this heat and the indignities of menopause.

The lack of air conditioning in my life means I’m focusing on one minute at a time – what I can do to get through the next 60 seconds.

When I left the house this morning, it was 80 degrees at 8:45 a.m. It was 94 when I left work. Besides hot, the area around me is water logged and continues to be under threat of violent thunderstorms. These storms rundle through with great crashes of thunder and lightening. The temperature drops 10 to 15 degrees and then ratchets right back up, more humid than ever. The weather people mutter about stalled fronts and whatnot.

Gills would come in handy about now. I don’t know the biomechanics of such, but I’m certain the body’s processing of a cup of water or so to every breath must entail some wear and tear on the lungs. More than likely, it increases body temperature.

It is only June. This sort of meteorological nightmare shouldn’t emerge until late July or August. If I try to imagine a whole summer of this, I may start screaming and never stop. 60 seconds of life at a time in this heat is all I can manage.

According to all manner of happiness experts, one moment at a time is the best way to live life under any circumstance. I am whining one moment at a time. This is probably not what they meant.

Periodically, I stop to cogitate on how for most of history folks lived without air conditioning and how for a good couple hundred years they did so while wearing a lot of clothes. I keep telling myself I should be thankful that I can strip down to bare skin while refreshing the Weather Channel website in hopes that an updated forecast promising unseasonably cool temperatures will appear.

When my grandmother went through menopause, air conditioning was unheard of and she was forced by societal norms to wear a heap of clothes – bras and girdles and hosiery and slips and gloves and all manner of layers of fabric. In the era before hers, long sleeves and long skirts were de rigueur.

Novels and stories abound about women locked in attics because they went insane and their people had to do something with them. While I don’t know for certain that menopausal women wearing a lot of clothes went crazy and had to be locked in the attic lest they run through town naked and raving was ever a norm, the idea doesn’t seem too far fetched. I do wonder where they got the energy to run.

The big white floor fan and the ceiling fans are the only reason I haven’t been locked in an attic. Well, that and the fact that I don’t have an attic and there’s nobody here to witness my madness.

Thunder has moved into the neighborhood while I wrote this. The temperature inside the house has decreased by a degree or so. I can feel the air freshening. Perhaps, I won’t wake in a pool of sweat later in the night and, even better, maybe I’ll sleep through the night. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the storm that drives the stalled front out of here.

For the next 60 seconds, I will hope and focus on the maybes.

Maiden Mother Crone (The Arrival)

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments
Maiden Mother Crone

I have taken dozens of photos, scrapped hundreds of words, and pulled on my hair. I cannot capture the images and I cannot find the words to describe what I’m seeing, but my Maiden Mother Crone triptych is in my possession. And it is phenomenal.

I’m nearly speechless with awe.

I began blathering about this last year when my friend, the art historian aka The Bitch Across the Hall, snagged some student work. I threatened to steal hers, but as the conversation with the artist, Melissa McCloud, progressed, I found myself commissioning my own set. I fretted for some time trying to figure out how to pay for them only to receive the news that Dr. B.A.T.H. was giving them to me for my 50th birthday.

Melissa McCloud

My 50th birthday, all around, was an occasion that kept me in happy yet overwhelmed tears. The significance of the triptych to my turning 50 is so apparent to me that I’m puzzled when I have to explain it to people.

The average of menopause in this country is 50 and I’m right on track. Menopause is sometimes referred to as the crone stage of life. I’m still mothering my son, albeit in quite different ways, but the hallmarks of motherhood are passing. I’m entering, mostly gleeful, the crone stage.

Here it is Easter weekend. I have in no way marked Easter in the Christian tradition or Ostara in the pagan tradition. I have sat around wiggling my nose hoping to end up with a bunch of completed projects without putting in the time and effort.

It wasn’t working.

I forced myself to pick up the camera and try again. It was an insult to the artist and to my friend not to acknowledge this triptych. In moving about the house trying to capture their beauty, I’m slowly gathering steam.

The Working Drawing

The three women are carved balsa wood. Layers of balsa were glued together (laminated), cut and carved. At my request, they were heavily textured and stained the same color as my woodwork and most of my furniture. I wanted them to slide into this house like they’d always been here and to appear as if they’d organically grown with the barn on this hillside. And they have.

Carved front and back.

There’s no place in this house they wouldn’t be perfect. My struggle is to find the right place where I can see them often and touch them often. They beg for touch. (Besides which, I never get the opportunity to fondle a well-endowed set of breasts.)

Some years ago, I whined and pleaded my way into another piece of art featuring the torsos of three women (Artist: Sherri Weeks.) The multimedia piece has hung in my study for several years now and I never tire of looking at it. In anticipation of the Maiden Mother Crone arrival, I have been preparing the study for installation which has involved a thorough gutting, cleaning, wall repair, dithering about color, and the application of 8 million coats of paint. I have whined.

I have also stalled.

The Other Women

My plan was to install the triptych under the painting and on top the bookcases that serve as a credenza. The one trio of women would mirror the other.

For some weeks I worked feverishly on the study and other weeks not so much. The closer I got to finishing, the more my energy levels waned and then I got zapped by Carlos the Cruddy Cold (who may turn into Boris Bronchitis).

The camera is just inadequate.

Without the ceremony they deserve, I picked up the triptych on Friday. My inertia deepened when I couldn’t get them to photograph well, I couldn’t describe them to my satisfaction, and I couldn’t find the energy to finish the damn study.

Frankly, I’m tired of the chaos of the study project. I want nothing more than to sit in there gazing adoringly at my six women.

Winter is over, the triptych is here and I feel ambition welling akin to the swelling of the branches that will result in leaves and flowers on the plants in my as yet neglected garden.

The women whisper to me to get on with the next stage. The earth has turned, the sun has returned, and the time has come.

The women must be listened to.