Cold-drunken Hoars, drop frosty icicle diamonds in the grassy ditch Marcela: itching to go walkabout, January 17, 2019
Image and Poetry: Please share without plagiarizing. Thank you.
Diamonds’n Hoars
17 Thursday Jan 2019
Monthly Archives: January 2019
Ageing is Not an Act of Violence
12 Saturday Jan 2019
I really, really dislike the language in the so-called “how hard did aging hit you challenge,” currently making the rounds on FB. It asks us to post (y)our first ever profile picture and the most recent one. It’s actually an interesting little game, except for the abysmal language and all of the assumptions and implications inherent in it.
Unless, like some folks I have loved, we die (too) young, ageing is one of the most natural and normal, not to mention unavoidable processes, known to human kind, and using this kind of language to describe it, is just another sad, sad example of how we create false ideals, ridiculous, unrealistic expectations and concepts of youth and beauty, by virtue of the very words we use to talk about them, or the ‘loss’ of them, as if they are to be grieved, as opposed to accrued experience and wisdom celebrated.
Ageing does not hit people, and saying so implies (rather explicitly), that it is a violent act or event, which in turn implies (rather explicitly), that it ought to be avoided at all costs. And while violence is certainly at least partly responsible for some of the visible signs of ageing on my person, the markings on my face and body, the lines, the furrows, the lumps and bumps, are the stories of my life, and I am loathe to describe them as having been “hit” by ageing.
My other beef with this particular FB ‘game,’ is that it generates comments such as: ‘you haven’t changed a bit,’ you still look the same’ and similar bla blabbidy bla, and I call BULLSHIT!
I, and everyone I know and have seen engage with this, do not look the same as I/they did even a few years ago, and if we haven’t changed, inside or out, we’re doing it wrong, life that is, or getting botox-ed to death.
It’s thoughtless, mindless bullshit like this that makes me want to leave the e-world altogether, but since it is one of the only ways I ever engage with some folks I would truly miss, I chose to qualify my own participation with this lil’ bitty rant.
The picture with the spiky red hair was taken in approximately 2009, the other one two weeks-ish, ago. I have had a million and one good, bad, ugly and indifferent experiences since then. I have had at least 12 hair styles and as many hair colours, I have gained and lost and gained and lost at least 50 lbs altogether in that time, and I have enjoyed and suffered many happy and brutally painful times in the 10 years between these two photos, and it shows; as it should.
PLEASE: STOP treating getting older as if it were a disease. PLEASE: let’s try to understand that getting older, really does bring more than just ‘a loss of youth,’ and ‘diminishing’ beauty, it is the only way in which to truly know, appreciate, accept, and love yourself, and by direct extension, to know, appreciate, accept, and love, anyone else.
The devil-chick is my actual original FB profile photo. That, has also changed, in that I am just MORE her as I age, and there is little to nothing graceful about it. As it should be, for me.
Peace,
~Marcela. 
January 12, 2019
Images and writing: All Rights Reserved.
Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under Commentaries: On what matters to me, Rants & Other Musings: Unfiltered-Raw
First, Conquer Self.
06 Sunday Jan 2019
As I watch the squalls bend the fir and cedar behemoths surrounding this house,
see the lake pound the log booms, docks and boathouse into the most bizarre angles,
I am struck by the thought that while I yearn for straightforward, low-maintenance,
I repeatedly choose complicated, convoluted, even, for that thing we call home.
As I navigate flying tree limbs and floods driving the scary highway for the umpteen-millionth time,
curse the road-warriors recklessly passing logging trucks to beat all of us to the same place by 2 minutes,
I am struck by the thought that while beautiful; this place, metaphorically and realistically speaking,
is so far away from the peace and solitude I so desperately crave, that it is indeed, its antithesis.
As I gaze upon my storied-face, decorated with the lines and ridges of a life well enjoyed, and suffered,
pick up electronic and figurative stylus, to scribe chapter six in the book of my nine(teen) lives,
I am struck by the thought that while spectacular in appearance at first glance, like the lake it abuts,
below the immediate surface of this home, looms the deepest dark of high-maintenance and very little peace.
As I rest on this, the final day before the next enormous learning curve in the profession I hate to love,
play many games of solitaire and look out upon the best vista eVer from my beloved, flannel bedecked bed,
I am struck by the thought that while I am as restless a spirit as the scary-wild weather patterns of late,
I am urgently compelled to settle into, a life of less (everything), in order to enjoy, a life of more, me.
And as the gusts move on and we dodge the next wind-storm-blackout-bullet,
so I dodge my own impulsive need to bust the next big move,
and I cancel the viewing of a beautiful, beautifully low maintenance
domicile, in another community.
And I whisper to self: patience Grasshopper-Queen, patience!
One big move at a time! For while we know, you and I, that you
‘can deal,’ with more, it is not an advisable choice at this this juncture.
For to simplify, to conquer the goal of less,
requires a practice of restraint. So do not obfuscate, with more.
First, conquer self.
January 06, 2019
Image & writing: All Rights Reserved.
Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under Life Lessons & Stories, Poetry
