Sunday, March 28, 2010

"Rescue" IF March 26/2010




From the quote: "Hope is the expectation that something outside of ourselves, that something or someone external is going to come to our rescue and we will live happily ever after." - Dr. Robert Anthony.

This image popped to mind immediately I read. Dr. Anthony's quote, and I wondered what sort of people he knew, to prompt such a definition.

Folks I have known over the years express hope very differently from his idea - from the young woman hoping for a certain someone's attention, dressing carefully and shining with energy whenever they come into view, or a farmer anxiously watching the skies and walking his fields after sowing fields and tending the earth... People I know step out to meet the future actively, not sitting with hands folded waiting for something outside of themselves to effect a rescue.

In my experience, what we add to the day, to our lives, that of those around us and the society we are part of, that is what will rescue us when we are truly beyond our own efforts, as in the image above, the swimmer's one hand reaches for help, the other has already grown to be part of the environment that he reaches out to.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

IF March 12, 2010 "subterranean"

From the quote: "The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises." - Sigmund Freud.
Eyes closed, unaware of doing so, we pluck thoughts in passing to contemplate and act on.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

March 10, 2010 - Remembering

I have to call my Grandmother.

Same urge as ever, sometimes followed by the thought - soon, just as soon as I finish this or that, find a moment, catch my breath or get the kids out the door to school... Same strong feeling as any time these last 25 years. I'm still not used to the idea that she can't come to the phone right now. That's how it feels. She just can't get to the phone right now.

Driving by her house today, the highway took me by so quickly, crammed in between transport trucks and hurrying commuters in a cloud of dust under a press of fog so thick I nearly missed the spot beside the highway where her little yellow house sits quietly.

The car zoomed by, but my thoughts made the exit, parked on the gravel driveway beside the house and went knocking on the kitchen door in the back. I just want to give her one more hug. Just one more. And I'm still on the doorstep, squeezed between the old aluminum storm door and the wooden back door. One hug overweight.

colour version soon