Hard Pressed

After an hour and a half of perusing the news, I am both confused and depressed and have found absolutely nothing I want to write about. In the past, friends have looked at the news, found froth and looked for substance. I found depressing substance and went in search of froth, veering off from the German airbus crash to a survey of Mitzi Gaynor’s life. What is wrong with me that I can no longer stand to face the truth of the world even from a distance? I will soon be reduced to watching old romance movies, no doubt, but I can’t help but know from talking to friends and acquaintances that I’m not the only person seeking escape and perhaps nature is taking a hand as well. Perhaps there is a reason why Alzheimer’s has become an epidemic.

May I excuse myself for limiting my world view as much as possible to enable me to still have faith in this world? If I look out my window, I see beauty; and this afternoon, I’ll celebrate the marriage of a friend/employee by taking her family of 8 for dinner at our favorite Argentinian restaurant. Perhaps part of the world as we wish it to be can be preserved by the simple living out of our own lives. For me, this seems only possible if I cut myself off as much as possible from the larger world as they choose to present it in the media.

Mark Aldrich once wrote about schadenfreude, that strange but I fear too true tendency of human nature to take pleasure from the pain of others. How else can we explain our fascination with every detail of a major disaster? On one hand, we need to be informed, but if we look realistically at our own responses to the gory details, we will admit there is a certain thrill of horror mixed with relief that this happened to someone else and not to us.

In pandering to that side of ourselves, we fall in line with the the role that slasher movies, competitive and vicious reality television and internet games play in bringing our violent sides out at an ever-increasing and alarming rate. We are desensitized to the point that the reality of rape, pillage, war, tsunami, airline crashes, murder and the victimization of entire societies becomes little more than another thrill. We are so accustomed to horror in our entertainment that real horror becomes a type of entertainment as well.

This is why I disconnected my TV dish years ago and why the daily news no longer serves as my home page. My home page (ironic that a typo caused this to read “hope page” until I caught it and changed it) is now my blog and my email—things that I can control to the point where the first thing that greets my eyes every morning is not the news. Am I an ostrich, burying my head in the sand, or simply someone taking control of her own life? In the long run, I guess it just boils down to semantics, but the nice thing about a life and a blog is that if we are lucky, we have control over it, and so long as both of these facts remain true, I’m going to exercise my right, leave the news trapped in a part of the World Wide Net where I have chosen to entwine it and get my news filtered down to what inevitably seeps through to the part of the net I frequent. Controlled. Put in perspective behind the details of my own life and the life of my friends—where it would naturally be without the glut of information devices that instead of informing us about the world seem to have become our world.

Note from Judy:  Since today is the first day of  the Maestros del Artes Feria, I need to be on the road early, so I’m publishing a rewrite of an earlier piece.  I’ll write more when I get home tonight!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/ripped-from-the-headlines/

Secret Admirer

No Roses Left Inside my Gate

He didn’t leave me flowers; instead he sent a cake.
Surely, not the smartest choice that he will ever make.
The problem was, he left it inside my compound door
where the dogs could get it.  Now it is no more!
My dogs have diarrhea and I have no dessert.
Little bits of cardboard are carpeting the dirt
and grass and bricks and tiles and every patio chair—
with every bit of frosting licked from them with care.
I cannot really blame my friend for this ungodly mess.
The blame is clearly only mine, I’m driven to confess.
My friend’s a loyal reader and I’m a foolish girl.
You’ll understand more clearly if you read this URL:

https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/popsicles-and-tuberoses/

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Secret Admirers.” You return home to discover a huge flower bouquet waiting for you, no card attached. Who is it from — and why did they send it to you? (This poem is a rewrite of a much earlier post.)

Six Word Memoir:

Still losing those same twenty pounds!

Below

I’m considering replacing my Saltillo tile with this porcelain tile that won’t be affected by the salitre that is slowly eating away my old tile so I put it below a footstool to see how it would look.
I saw this fellow alongside the road at a stonecarver’s in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, and had to have him.  Here he seems to be burdened by the tremendous weight of this planter full of succulents, bending below their weight.
I had no idea they would have to dig so far below ground to build the foundations for my new doggie domain.
That handsome fellow so far below me is Morrie–always underfoot! Um, in this case, actually on my foot.
http://wheresmybackpack.com/?s=Travel+Theme+below