MRE and Me...

Dust hangs low today...It is very fine, it is barely noticeable, but the skin feels like it is covered with a fine talc. It is almost like graphite as it seems to have that kind of feel. However, I am sure it is more corrosive.

New Years day, and I wonder what this year will bring. Although, seem to not want to think about it too much.

I think the diet versions of Pepsi and Coke seem to be better overseas...Less carbonated.

Today someone said that they hoped all my dreams came true... I am not sure what the hell that meant? It seems so strange to hear something like that. I couldn't take it in any meaningful sense. I don;t even have any "dreams". Just contentment is all I want.

11.11.11

In Europe it is "Remembrance Day" already, for us in the USA it is Veterans day, but the date is the same..Somehow, the celebrations in Europe are more somber...Not so much a day for sales and BBQs, but really a remembrance day with speeches and quiet memorials. Each country commemorates its war dead in its own way. The picture is of a German military cemetery near Heidelberg.

Poem for Today

Not Better

A beautiful child,

Dancing in the sun,

Golden and fawn hair,

Alternating as she spins,

Moving and jumping to a musician.

I saw her on a summer walk,

In a city park –

It was years ago.

She started clapping, and laughing,

Tiny clumps of hands patting together.

Her parents stood behind,

Watching her, but seeing something different,

They were embracing.

It was a scene of so much love,

Like being washed in warm suds,

Full of safety, or something like contentment.

Whatever it was,

I wanted that feeling,

I remember suddenly feeling very bad,

Getting mad thoughts –

Thinking I had nothing .

Nothing that could make me as happy as they were.

All the money I’ve made since then,

It doesn’t make me feel better.

August 2010

Beaurocracy

I feel disowned by the service sometimes...The rules made at one level may have drastic consequences for those lower down the totem pole...

In the Horatio Hornblower stories, about a heroic sailor in the British Navy, he serves his country diligently, at risk of life and limb. But when he returns from duty he is cast aside, and made to wait for months and months on end for his next assignment on half pay...I feel like this sometimes...Although I do not have the heroic litany of deeds behind me...

Just that the wt. of administration is a faceless, unsensing mask, saying things like "Your message is important to us.."


July 2010

Poem for Today

Walls

I try to think of nothing,
I am desperate to make the days pass quickly,
But for no reason,
I want each day to race to its end,
In a hurry to get somewhere that I don't know.

Feeling that life is sucked out of me,
Empty hard plastic walls,
Like a used syringe,
Graduated, dry and hollow.

Full of something useful once,
But for one time use only.

June 2010

Simple Things...

Had a visit from a friend over the weekend. It was nice to walk the streets with him. Just chatting and stopping off for a drink. We ate and talked. I made him a cup of coffee in my small rooms and just the act of preparing a simple snack for someone...I felt a goodness and delight in it.

Many of us are disconnected geographically from family, and it is the other people that we come to know that sort of become like a family. We cross tracks with people, sometimes temporarily...But we have to keep ourselves open to meeting others and learning from each person.

Poem for Today

Learn

All this teaching,
I sat there listening for years,
And I have learned nothing...

I can't help my grief,
Or help my lover.

I share her pain,
But she is alone,
And she puts me outside her world.

May 2010