A Healing Hand Materializes Out of the Fog in Everyday Ramblings

A stop along a self-directed public art tour in the fog we did this morning in Lake Oswego south of here. Mostly our walk was through residential streets that were quiet and full of trees. The hand sculpture is actually made up of smaller hands.

It was much more relaxed and less scenic in a human suffering sort of way than we get when we walk the river loop and I enjoyed it.

Earlier I went to the gym for the first time since just before Christmas. That felt great. After the disruption and adjustment of the holidays and hearing aids I am finally settling back into a routine, just at the point where the motivation for a lot of determined resolution makers is flagging. Though there were more people than usual at the gym.

And luxury of luxuries, Mrs. Sherlock stopped at my grocery on the way home and we both did our shopping. Coming back the fog was lifting a bit up on our ridge but was still heavy down on the river, which made for some atmospheric and moody vistas.

Every hour I am away from work the better I feel.

I figured out how to listen to my favorite classical music show through my hearing aids this evening.

Mrs. Sherlock asked her phone where the closest of a particular chain of bakeries was and not only did it tell us, it told us how to get there, where to turn and how far. It knew where we were.

When I think about the technology my mother, who was born 104 years ago grew up with and what we have now, it is a very specific kind of useful magic.

We do live these luxurious lives but we also need to reckon with the results of climate change.

We didn’t have a Women’s March here today or I would have gone.

I feel so frustrated by so much that is going on right now I have days here where getting out in the street feels like the only thing to do, getting out there and staying out there until things change.

But I can’t do that in any meaningful way though until I retire. I become eligible for Medicare in 5 months. But not my full pension benefits until another year passes.

I was telling someone at work about some of my employment frustration this week and she was trying to shush me, saying I needed to be careful or I would get fired. My boss did tell me in writing yesterday that even though he will be taking responsibilities away from my job portfolio he is not going to touch my pay. I sure as heck hope so.

As I get closer to these milestone dates the less I care. I care about the fact that there are people with medieval mindsets being appointed to our government that feel like it is a crime against nature that women should work outside the home.

Like, oh say, Robert Patterson the Acting Associate Commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

I truly admire people that speak out and speak up about what is happening, the insanity of it.

It seems to me we could all use a healing hand.

It is sad to hear that we lost Mary Oliver this week. Complicated as my relationship to her work has been over the years she had this amazing fearless quality of being open to the mysteries of life in all its forms.

I hope that now she has a few more answers as she passes from this wild precious life to the next.

Last updated January 21, 2019