Needing to Talk in Everyday Ramblings

My favorite azalea color, taken yesterday. I got another picture this morning in the dawn light with the big pink rhododendron behind it on my way back from the garden. My world is full of color and light. I put the tomato and sweet pepper starts out in the cold frame Thursday morning. Tomorrow one of my League friends (and students) is taking me to buy a few more plants now that we are finally past our last frost.

About a year after the pandemic started the powers that be closed our main historic library for renovations. We passed a big bond issue some years ago and they are making major improvements across the whole system, but this is my closest library. I haven’t been there in three years, ordering e-books from them instead.

Last month I read a poem to my class that they were interested in, and we were wondering if the story the poem told was part of a greater story, so I went online and there is no e-book, but there is an actual book from the University of Pittsburgh press. with the poem in it. I decided to put a hold on it to give me an excuse to actually go to the library. I got a notification it was in a few days ago.

Yesterday I started looking for my library card. Oops. I am still having trouble finding things from the great displacement last year. I thought I knew where it was but nope. Anyway, they were lovely at the library this morning, most eager to be of a assistance and not only did I get the book, I got a new library card with a tag I can put on my keychain so I don’t even have to get the actual card out.

Speaking of the great displacement and the sunlight we are experiencing. I noticed a few weeks ago when we had a break in the rain when the morning light was pouring in that when I looked out through the windows over the patio well there was a handprint on one of them. It was kind of creepy, a big handprint on a window above my head. I thought it was outside.

This morning the light was at a slightly different angle, and I saw there were two handprints. Man hands. These are double glazed windows. (There was also a slug trail; don’t get me started on the slugs.) I went out and cleaned the window. The man handprints were still there. It must have been the floor guys. They placed my washer and dryer there when they started the floor replacement. It’s been a year, but I am still finding strange new things. And not finding them, as the case might be. Anyway, the handprints (and slug trail) are now gone.

My cardiology nurse practitioner put me on a new drug that I started about three weeks ago. It gives me a slight headache, like an ice cream headache when I go from being inactive to active and I am adapting but it has this funny effect where my body thinks I need caffeine. So, I am craving caffeine more than usual. The good news is that the drug works. I haven’t had any chest pain since I started on it. That is a huge relief. Long may it be effective.

Thursday was our first truly beautiful warm day, and I ended up being 20 minutes late to coffee with the guys because every disabled person in the city it seems was out and about and using the bus system.

When I walked into the room they were talking with great intensity about American Presidential politics. I was like, wait what??? We don’t talk about politics. One of Walt’s friends, a serious young man, an artist, who Walt met while he was visiting prisons was saying he didn’t agree with Walt’s political views and couldn’t vote for Biden.

Walt managed to guide the conversation to a more positive plane within the next half hour as we got to talking about things we knew about or were doing to make the world a better place right here, right now. I can’t speak for everyone but as I stayed after for a board meeting, I know most of us were feeling a lot better about the state of humanity afterwards. It was kind of magical.

Clearly, we need to talk. We all need to talk about all this news we are absorbing, the politics, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the student protests, the Trump trials. These are complicated, thorny, fraught things and it helps to talk them through to find some way to be with them, and the discomfort they engender.

I hope we all can find someone to talk these things through with. As we find new rhythms and ways to be after all the disruption of the last four years.

Last updated May 12, 2024