Does it seem to you that time is passing by unusually slow on this blog?

Why is focus such an elusive thing to me? Why do I find it so difficult to concentrate on just one thing at a time, and finish everything that I start. It seems my whole life is just one long series of starts and stops and turns. I am so pitifully, miserably, easily distracted. I have a gluttonous mind. I get bored very easily. What I want two weeks from today may be totally opposite of what I want today. Sometimes I feel like a feather in the wind…no definitive direction, no control, no purpose. A feather’s purpose is to protect a bird from the elements and to enable flight and controlled landings. But once separated from the bird, it’s just a pretty, wispy thing floating around in the air.

I remember when I was visiting Spring Mill State Park with a friend earlier this year, at times the air was so filled with wispy, feathery white seeds that it almost looked like snow. It was almost as if the air was charged with a sort of magical quality. But though they looked like feathers, and were carried about like feathers, they weren’t really feathers, but seeds.

I hate stagnation. Give me a babbling brook or a roaring waterfall any day, over a placid lake. The glassy top of a peaceful lake is a beautiful thing to behold, I just don’t feel like I have a lot in common with it…I feel much more attuned to water that is in constant motion. FRESH water. The ocean is okay, but I need more trees and grass and hills…and LIGHT, CLEAN air. The ocean’s salt is too heavy. I’m drawn to green, misty mountains, not flat, sandy, salty beaches and expansive horizons of sameness.

I hate day in and day out SAMEness. There is a part of me I think, that actually longs for the stability of sameness, while at the same time is bored to tears with it…resulting in an almost constant state of restlessness. I’m a walking, talking in-the-flesh paradox…a constant contradiction. So much so that at times, I often find it quite difficult to live with myself.

So am I a seed or a disconnected feather? Actually, the seed is disconnected too, the major difference being that the disconnectedness of the seed has a purpose and the disconnectedness of the feather does not. I guess I’m neither a seed nor a feather…just an old lady who needs to go to bed…

It’s been one of ‘those’ weekends…I feel like crap on a stick. Still, it WAS a WEEKEND, and those are sacred under any and all circumstances.

“I always loved running… it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power.  You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.”  ~Jesse Owens

“Jogging is very beneficial.  It’s good for your legs and your feet.  It’s also very good for the ground.  It makes it feel needed.”  ~Charles Schulz, Peanuts

I don’t know what brings such things on…these weird, unpredictable, creepy moods that seem to strike from out of nowhere for no logical reason whatsoever. Yesterday wasn’t a bad day in any way, shape or form. But suddenly, around 8 or 9 pm, I was just overwhelmed with a weird, extremely discomforting restless mood.

Sometimes, I feel like a hamster in a wheel. So many things I want to see, to learn, to experience. So many things I want to be. But only one short lifetime, most of which is spent doing all the things that grownups HAVE to do and so FEW of the things I really WANT to do.

I think Randi’s right…it’s the Mercury Retrograde.

As Sunday comes to a close, I’m feeling only slightly better. Perhaps because I ate a scrumptious homemade cheeseburger for supper. I sat around like a slug a good part of the day feeling sorry for myself because I missed an invitation to go trail riding in the forest, because I have a crappy $20 phone that doesn’t work half the time. I COULD have saddled up my mares and gone trail riding by myself in the weeds near our home where I USUALLY go trail riding, but it seemed more fulfilling to just stay indoors, do laundry and feel sorry for myself. Besides, it was hot outside. I didn’t even lay in the sun. I just didn’t feel like going to the effort of laying in the water. Damn Mercury.

Atticus is most assuredly the slowest learner I’ve ever rehabilitated. He has spent a good part of the last couple of days hanging in his cage on the bird feeder station pole. Today he enjoyed the company of a large clan of young robins. I wish I could have figured out how to incorporate the assistance of the group leader in teaching Atticus to hunt worms and grasshoppers for himself. He’s finally beginning to show just a hint of hunting inclinations. Today, he actually caught and ate 3 worms all by himself! It may have been more than that. I can’t be sure if he caught and ate more or if they just made a getaway and crawled out of the cage. I removed the paper towel from the bottom of his cage and replaced it with grass, and threw the worms in the grass, along with some corn. Have I mentioned that Atticus loves grass? And apparently, the Sports page of the Herald-Journal…

I have had moments here and there over the past few days where I perhaps COULD have written something, but was simply too exhausted to try. I felt too drained to come up with anything creative, valid, significant, etc., much less come up with an accompanying image. Contemplating this dilemma led to the following internal dialog on the subject of significance. Since I felt the ‘significance’ of the subsequent revelation was…uh…significant, I hereby take the lazy way out and make this interesting internal dialog today’s post:

“There’s nothing to say.”

“There’s ALWAYS something to say.”

“No. There’s NOT. Really.”

“Then why are you still talking?”

“Okay, I mean I’ve nothing SIGNIFICANT to say.”

“EVERYthing you say is significant.”

“Huh?”

“Words have creative power. They create pictures in the mind, they stir emotions. They can validate or destroy. Words create our realities and contribute greatly to the realities of others. You KNOW this.”

“Wonderful. So now I’m reminded that it’s really that much MORE important that I say something significant.”

“EVERYthing you say is significant.”

“What if I just don’t FEEL like saying ANYthing at all?”

“The voice of silence can be louder than words.
Silence is significant.
Everything is significant.
Sometimes, what you HEAR when there’s nothing to hear is even more significant that what hasn’t been said.
Sometimes, even nothing is significant.”

Look closely at today’s image. There’s something very ‘significant’ in the picture that can be easily overlooked. Do you see it?

I wonder what it would be like to fly through the air and be carried by the winds to new places unknown. I wonder what it would be like to just enjoy this one moment…no memory of yesterday, no worries of tomorrow. I wonder what it would be like to be content to simply be what I was created to be…nothing more, nothing less…

If your day was an empty canvas, a blank slate, even an old wall…and you were encouraged to create your own picture upon your own day, what would it look like at the end of that day? Would you paint what was or would you paint what is? Would you paint what you thought it SHOULD be? Would you paint what you hoped it would be? Would you paint what you believed it could be? Would you paint at all?

XBoxes and PlayStations have only one virtue that I can see: their potential bribery value.

Atticus is the most cantankerous baby mockingbird I’ve ever had to care for. Hands down. There must be a message in this somewhere…

I took in some sun in the pool today.  My feet were swarmed by a legion of angry ants when I inadvertently stepped on their mound while cleaning my pool. Well EXCUSE me. Take note for future reference: you cannot kill a legion of ants by flooding their hill with a strong, disruptive water flow. I BLASTED that hill until it was nothing but mud colored liquid. 3 mins later after the ground had soaked up the puddle, it was swarmed with frantic ants again. Oh well, at least I was able to give them something to keep them busy for the rest of the afternoon.

I gathered up all my art supplies in preparation for receiving my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project 2011. I think I’m going to work my way through another sketchbook diary with the assistance of exercises in old book by Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain…hands down one of the best books on drawing (if not THE best book) that I’ve ever seen.

The picture I had planned to post for Day 6 has disappeared. I think I might have accidentally overwritten it. Thus, my opening statement sounds a bit out of place and confusing, but I’m leaving it there anyway so you can use your imagination as to what it might have been. I will use Day 7′s picture for both days, as the event that this picture marks is quite worthy of covering 2 days!

I zonked out on the sofa before I had a chance to finish and post this entry, so now it’s actually…

DAY 7
I took the kids to church this morning because my pastor left a message on the phone telling me to have them there today. Keke, my granddaughter, was supposed to go to church with her other grandmother, but found out at 11pm last night she could stay and go with us. I didn’t really want to get up and drive to Greenville this morning, but I did. We were a bit late, but we went anyway. Just before the message, Pastor Ron had everyone clear out the first 10 rows so that all the teens in the building could sit there instead, because his message was especially geared toward them this morning. Turned out there was more teens than those 10 rows could hold, so they had to clear out more. Keke asked me, “Do WE have to go down there?” and I said yes. Even though they were at the back of the line of kids heading in that direction, somehow MY 2 grandkids ended up on the FRONT row. And BOY was the message for them! He ended with an altar call, or invitation, or whatever you want to call it, and my 2 grandkids were the FIRST to go up! I was in the balcony screaming…not hollering mind you…SCREAMING, and crying. I hugged both the strangers on either side of me and said, “My kids are down there!.” And that made the strangers cry too. And to top it all off, they were serving up BBQ ribs (Keke’s FAVORITE) for lunch in the church cafe where we ate after the service. Keke told me she cried more at the altar this morning than she ever had in her life.

Over 5 hours later and I’m still speechless in the afterglow. I’m realistic enough to know that they will not magically become perfect teenagers just because of this morning. But I have enough faith to believe that whatever transpired between them and their God this morning was real, and it will make a difference in the course of their lives.

There were only two other notable events for today:
1] I went to the grocery store today so I wouldn’t have to tomorrow night, and
2] this ornery cuss of a bird, Atticus FINALLY decided at his last meal today, to start opening his mouth for his food so I no longer have to wrestle with him to feed him. He can fly now, kinda sort of. Problem is, he can’t fly well. Plus, in the wild, the parents will stay with their babies for the first couple of weeks after fledging to teach them how to hunt for food, to supplement their diet and to protect them. Atticus’s parents presume their family is gone now, so Atticus will have to stay in MY care much longer than either he or I would really care for him to. As if I really NEEDED yet one more rebellious teen to contend with around here. Oh well, at least TWO of them made me proud today. I might take this BIRD to the altar next Sunday…