perspective

Scale is weird.

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Glacier Bay, Alaska. How incredibly beautiful is that?!

So I’m starting to see the beauty in blogging ahead. It took a lot of prep before I left for my amazing trip, but having the posts just quietly post by themselves was really fantastic.

Though, it’s pretty difficult to be spontaneous and talk about what’s happening now when planning ahead, and that’s kinda the thing here, so there’s that. Still, it’s good to keep in mind for future reference.

And speaking of beauty, how gorgeous was Glacier Bay? It was difficult to believe it was July, it was coat and hat and gloves weather. Sweet, clean air with that edge of coolness to it.  Refreshing, inside and out.

We couldn’t get off the boat in Glacier Bay, and it was tough to see just how big these glaciers are. Here’s a picture with a cruise ship for scale; I’m not sure it’s the same glacier, I’d have to do some forensic time matching, as the pic above is from my phone. Which is an excellent wide-angle lens.

I think it’s the same one.

Scale is something I had much time to think about way out there, where everything is huge and we are so tiny. Where even an enormous cruise ship looks like a dot. Where you can’t judge the distance, and all you can do is take in the view.

Things can feel smaller than they are; things can feel larger than they are; and all of that is relative to something else entirely. Usually us.

See what I mean? Would you believe me if I told you there were kayakers in that shot?

So I guess what I’m saying is sometimes things really are the glacier. Sometimes they’re the cruise ship.

But mostly, almost always, they’re the kayakers.

Like my political side? Read my opinion pieces here.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

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We Know

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Thomas Buttersworth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It’s a heavy week. Even the sky feels heavy, as if it knows. We don’t have to talk about why it’s a heavy week.

Because we know.

Each morning the sun rises, whether we see it or not, onward this planet goes in its over-sized celestial waltz, and we can’t help but wonder what used-to-be-shocks await us. Merriam-Webster’s word of the day was “agita.”

It knows.

So for now we bear the weight, we resist against the weight, because it’s all that we can do. We can try to ignore the weight, to pretend it doesn’t exist, but we’ll find ourselves bending under it, the risk of snapping ever-greater with each added brick.

But we, the writers, must imagine the lightness when the weight is gone, that extra buoyancy that will feel like floating when it’s finally lifted. The artists among us must visualize that airy future and give us each a tiny piece of a weightless tomorrow.

We must continue to tell the tale of how things can be different, how they were different, how they will be different again. This weight is not forever.

We know.

For more on my thoughts about Charlottesville and rising bigotry, please read An Open Letter to My Friends of Color.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Philosophy of Snow

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So you may have heard we had a huge snowstorm here in Chicago. About 20 inches of snow fell over a day, turning cars into unrecognizable lumps, loading up the branches of trees, coating the roads nearly as quickly as they could be cleared.

I stayed in and watched it from a distance, cozy inside, the sounds of the world muffled by the snow.

But the thing I found remarkable was that there were people out in it. People jogging in the paths of the park as though it wasn’t any different than any other run; dogs frolicking with a level of glee I could see all the way from my window. People on snowshoes. Cross-country skiers.

Even one of the worst blizzards in Chicago history — officially, it is the 5th largest — didn’t stop Chicagoans who wanted to be outside. In fact, a friend sent me a pic of her very determined 4-year-old son, bundled from toe to helmet, sitting on his training-wheel-supplemented-bike on a freshly-cleared sidewalk.

It’s even in the kids.

There will always be barriers in life. There will always be snowstorms, some so heavy it seems like snowing is the new permanent weather. We can lament the snow. We can complain about it, and we certainly do. We can exchange wry smiles in the elevator, smiles that acknowledge that we know it’s there and get on with it anyway.

And sometimes, even at its darkest, even when it falls in impossible sheets, when the break comes, we can go out and play in it.

Check out  my full-length novels,  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only), and the sequel, Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) which is now available!

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