The End of the Tether

In the darkest, meanest things
Something always, always sings.

Emerson
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Better make yourself a cup of tea, this is a long one.

I'm sorry to disappoint anyone but life is NOT just a bowl of cherries. It is a mass of threads which we weave, braid and twist into a rope, better known as a tether. And that rope connects us to our past and our future. Like Penelope we keep weaving it every day, but unlike she we don't undo it at night.

I used to know a most unpleasant woman named Mrs. Fox. It was a good name for her because she was a wily observer and harsh critic of what she considered incorrect moral activity of the teenagers around her. As far as I know she wasn't employed to do that. It was a self-appointed crusade against normal behavior. While she sat, keeping a close and suspicious eye on us she would knit. I never saw any result of her knitting, maybe she did undo it every night, but I'll bet she had special knots to record, like Madame Defarge, the names, dates and acts of all offenders. She didn't realize it but she was knitting her own tether.

I recently read an article about a man who has a strange condition that allows him to remember every single day of his life. I don't know if that's a blessing for him. I know for me it would be a curse. There are a lot of things I've done that I would like to forget but can't. On the other hand there are a lot of things I've done that I would like to remember and can't. That's one of nature's little jokes.

There's a box next to a window in my apartment which contains the threads of my career that somehow I managed to save. In that box I can find simple typed and copied programs each of which tell me I was someplace in New York on such and such a date and did a reading of someone's play. I have absolutely no memory of most of them.

Such a condition tends to make me doubt my own history. I have vivid memories of certain things. But was I really there, did I really do those things, did those things actually happen to me? Some of it seems inconceivable to me now. I feel like a stranger to myself. It seems I am not the man I was 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

Saturday afternoon I was trying to explain to someone how it was that I first started painting. I couldn't remember the year or many of the facts leading up to it. It's all there somewhere in the rope, but I've lost track of it.

I set out to write about my experiences during th six weeks I was unable to connect with the Internet and thus with my own journal, my address book, my stories and all the journals I enjoy looking into. From the moment I knew for sure and had to accept that my computer was just no good, until the new computer arrived, was a period of great transition, a period of learning and adjustment. From the despair and depression of being deprived of my friends and my ability to communicate, I turned back to reexamine other parts of my life, reading and painting, writing in my private journal. I even baked some cookies. And finally there came the moment when I was awestruck and speechless at the arrival of the new computer, given to me by the love and generosity of some of my journal friends, some of whom are reading this entry right now.,

But the resonance of those weeks is slipping thorough the cracks. I find it hard to put all the pieces in their proper places. I remember the peaks of emotion, of course, the rage, frustration and deep despair. But most of the knicky kinacky things that happened through that trip in the desert are forgotten, which is all to the good, I suppose.

The threads in our ropes are made of the easy, mundane things of life, the tasks performed, the simple acts of love, the great acts of heroism, the beautiful moments of inspiration, the fantasies of the day, the dreams of the night, plans, hopes, failures, successes, lessons learned, lessons taught, tears and laughter.

I'm 70 years old, which I also find it hard to believe, and as with many people my age and older, I'm grateful that I'm not at the end of my tether.

DB - The Vagabond
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Results of the Weekend Puzzle

KAD DVA UAFXDE IA KCYA UA IVFD IA PC.
LET THE BEAUTY WE LOVE BE WHAT WE DO.

First place Grand Prize of the Mistletoe Tiara goes to Paula of the Email Lions

The second place prize, a subscription to Pine Cone News, goes to Salemslot9 of the Blogspot Tigers.

Nice going girls.