Dita Parker

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Into the woods

Spring! Jumping the gun since 2014, because it came early, just like it did last year. I don't mind, oh not at all. Since we didn't have much of a winter, might as well get started on the next season. I've been soaking up the light during the day and marveling at the skies, the Milky Way and the constellations every clear, cool evening. You don't need NASA or ESA or any other SA to travel into space, I managed to catch the Galilean moons, with frickin' binoculars! The week before last the sun kept breaking through the darkness, the solar storm painting the sky with colors we don't often get to see in these southern parts of the Thule.

The streets and roads are dusty, all the sand and gravel the city has sown to keep us upright on the slippery pavements still waiting to be washed off and brushed aside. You can't take a longer walk without coming back with a cough and the taste and feel of sandblasted teeth. So I head for the forest, so very thankful we live on the fringe of a sizable one. It's still not very fragrant, my green cathedral, but it is coming to life, migratory birds catching up with the locals, squirrels and hares shedding their winter coats and colors, the first brave flowers lifting their chins to the spring chill.

Chloe the cat loves all the action outside our windows. She's growing fast, as babies do, and she's turned out to be quite a gentle soul, even when excited. She had no scruples first toying with then catching and swiftly eating a moth that had the misfortune of ending up indoors with the firewood, but she is always careful with us and if I've gotten a scratch or two, well, that's what you get for being a slow cumbersome human and not a fast flexible feline. She gets up with the birds, as babies do, and I'm wondering OK dreading whether we'll sleep at all around Midsummer. Must remember to clear calendar on and around Midsummer, just in case.

Not that far off, summer in this hemisphere. Well, it ain't, just count the weeks! We have no grand plans this year, we did quite a tour in 2014. We're saving up for something we hope to do next winter. We've also been putting off a family trip to the States, quite content to play host to people visiting us, that it's grown into a big production, way too big. So many people to visit, family and friends, so many places to see, new sceneries and old favorites. Anybody know the winning numbers to the lottery? Whichever lottery. Willing to share, by any chance? We have no problem traveling on a budget, you keep the rest, deal? OK, you know where to find me!

But where have I hidden my books? I almost hid the whole blog when Google kindly, curtly, and using very vague language, terms and conditions informed me that my at times sexually explicit self is uninvited to the Blogger party. OK. Their party, their guest list, got it, thanks.

And I get what they're trying to do, what they've been doing for years, but their latest move reminds me of a 11th or was it 12th century Pope who sent out Crusaders to purge a city, or was it a citadel. They asked him how would they know the Christians from the infidels. "Kill them all," the Pope said. "God will sort them out."


      All my pretty ones?
      Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
      What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
      At one fell swoop?

A lot of balanced, healthy, and much-needed!, sex-positive material was about to become invisible, blogs and people trying to do exactly what Google is trying to do except I'm no longer sure Google knows what they're doing and who elected them sheriff anyway and yeah their party their choice but have they thought this through come on OK my frustration is showing but seriously. And then they took it back. Asshat waving, admitted that perhaps sex, sexuality, nudity, and pictures and talk thereof, are a part of human existence and the human experience and personal expression, and not always in some sordid, pathological or exploitative way.

I have no faith they would have been a wise, discerning judge. I think they would have been more along the lines of that 11th or was it 12th century Pope, just to be on the safe side. Let someone else sort us out. So I got ready to  take my at times sexually explicit self somewhere else. But then they took it back. And you know what I felt? Relief? In part, sure. But I also felt...effete. I was getting ready to leave the party and what do they do? Open the open bar! Where are you going? Stay, have a drink, have two, look at all the lovely people here, don't you want to stay and chat? And I felt like saying no. Like saying that I'm exhausted and ready to go home, that I don't want your drinks, I don't know what's in them, that I can no longer stomach all the double-dealing on the dance floor, the backbiting in the ladies', all the bullshit, that this party was supposed to be fun, not another battlefield, I'm all stocked up on those and that's where I'm needed, and if you need me, you know where to find me.

Haven't stopped feeling that way since, which I guess is all the evidence you or I need that maybe it's closing time, time for the parting glass. Not a farewell-forever glass, I'm not going anywhere, but a closing-this-den toast. And relocating where, when? I'm not sure. I think I need some more forages in the forest before I decide, then perhaps some more stargazing, if it's not too cloudy. (I caught the solar eclipse through a haze, the sun morphing into a crescent moon. Magic.)

Those woods and mother nature, the skies and the universe, they show you the true perspective of things. At least that's what they've shown me. I want to look and listen closer still, see and hear what they are trying to teach me. Don't know exactly what I expect to find but I do know what I see and feel, stepping into the woods or lifting my chin to the spring chill and the constellations, knowing I'm made of the same stuff they are: serenity and simplicity, urgency and infinity; elated and solemn at the same time. Filled with a sense of wonder. A sense of wonder. Magic.

[F]rom so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.  (C. Darwin)