Random thoughts

"… by the absence of grasping, one becomes free." (The Buddha)

I feel old in the fall. The red of the trees, at the tops, makes me think of newly graying temples. Just a hint of oldness, the premonition of what it is to come. Of death.
Do you feel your joints crack in the mornings now, from the cold air? I do. They’re rusty, in the crisp mornings. Like an un-oiled old gate in the wind.
Have you ever felt like coming home, and turning the lights down or off, and lighting candles all over the house instead? Playing soft music, and living by candle light? Like in a cave? Or a temple? Just to revive the past, the old days? Sometimes electricity is such a pain. Literally!
Today, I felt in a “Christmas” mood: I wanted all Christmas- scented candles around me: pine tree, and cinnamon and apple pie, and snow! And I am wearing a beach dress. What’s Christmas like at the Tropics? I have felt wintry today. Just like the aging trees.
Have you ever felt like there is “no way to hold your head that doesn’t hurt”? I understand Johnny Cash perfectly!
I always wonder about those folks that sit at the light, despite the fact that the green light prompts them to go. What are they waiting for? What are they deciding now? Are they confused? “Hm… Too many choices: I can go right, OR left, OR, maybe, straight. Too many choices!” – they must say to themselves. Just like at the grocery store in the cereal aisle!
Have you ever wanted to bottle up the feeling in your entire body, down your spine and in your legs after a great yoga practice?! Just to drink from it later, once in a while, maybe at the office, one day, when you feel overwhelmed and suicidal!
Have you ever missed your mom so much on her birthday that it hurt? It hurts in the heart! Inside, deep, deep, inside the hearrt! I can’t even reach in there to calm it! Have you? …

Pet peeves – continued

Parking in the fire lane pisses me off, anyhow! No matter how you put it, and what reason you’d invoke, it pisses me off to see people parked there when it spells clearly “NO PARKING”. It pisses me off just about as much as people getting INTO the grocery store through the Exit door, when others are trying to get out with cartloards of stuff! Just as much! But what makes me even more mad is morbidly obese people that park in the fire lane! You watch these people and they get out of their cars in chapters: one leg first, then one half of their butt second, hold on, they forgot about the head, they need to duck, slowly, then the other half of their butt, then slowly, so that they won’t tip over, the second leg – beyond slow motion! Well, when you do that, there is no reason, trust me, to be as un-thoughtful to hold up the entire traffic! When you get out of your car (or in), in chapters, you need to understand that something needs to be done about it: something like parking all the way at the end of the parking lot, and walking yourself to the store from there! After all, that might be your one and only chance to lose an ounce! Walk, people! You need it!
Ever since I moved to the States I hear people saying “Oh, I don’t like fish with heads” or “Oh, I don’t eat chicken with bones”… Hhmmm… Since when God made chicken with no bones, and fish with no heads, I wonder?! “Oh, I don’t like fish to stare at me when I eat it”… ?!? … How can something that is dead stare at you?! Not quite sure how that works! Since when did people become so picky, and unreasonable, I wonder! I guess that’s what higher living standards do to you?! And when you do find chicken walking around without bones in their bodies, and fish swimming with no heads, please call me…
Call me selfish, but...: I understand that we live in the world of mobility, and most of us gave up the land phone lines as they slowly become obsolete! We’re now relying solely on the cells, but not all of us. Some of us need land lines, and land lines come with long distance charges! So, I don’t understand why people move across country and they still keep their cell phones with a Michigan, Ohio, California, etc number?! You’ve been here for 2 years, you bought a house and married, you’re obviously settled, right?! Change it to a local number, please! – just so your “new” friends won’t have to pay long distance charges to talk to you across the highway, in the same zip code! I think it’s the least you can do for the people that befriended you, here, in your new world (and give you both a “home” number and a “cell” one)!

Addiction or Annoying Bad Habit?!

Do you suffer from the “pick-up-the-free-magazine-or-newspaper-on-the-way-out-of-the-grocery-store-and-never-read-it” disease?! Because I do! And it’s horrible! Every once in a while , maybe once a week (too often, anyways), I pick up whatever it’s new in the newspaper stand at the grocery store, WalMart, sometimes at a restaurant too… Triad Homes, Triad Living, Real Estate Book, whatever… It’s free… And I always think: what a perfect way to go home, eat a cozy dinner of mac’n’cheese and dream over all these houses I can’t buy and all these cars I can’t have or don’t even want, really… What better way?! Just “dream” the American way, since I can’t “have” it, every minute … And you never know: maybe you WILL find the dream house; you do have some extra cash, and the neighbor woke you up last night again in the middle of a party he’s having for the fourth day in a row, and the car kind of makes a funny noise, so maybe you WILL find a new car too; and there are always new neighborhoods going up in town – who knows; we always have to stay informed, keep up with the market! Right?!
Right: and the publications end up piled up on my dining room table, or in my car, for a while, until they move to the newspaper rack, only to be dumped when they’re sooo many I can’t fit them in there anymore, and I decide they’re outdated, anyhow, so … let’s trash them! Is that sinful waste or what?! What would have happened if they didn’t end up unread in my trash can, I wonder?! Would another person who is really looking for a house/ car have picked them up and found their dream house/car in there?! Will they have gone to the Magazine Heaven, when the store replaced them instead of my dumpster?! What?!
It drives me nuts, every morning, when my trash weighs 100 lbs because it’s loaded with unread Triad Homes (I have been living in this place for 5 years now, and I have brought these pubs at home roughly every month!). I think of the waste, and I think of my back being thrown out of alignment, but yet next time when I am picking up beer at the store you know what I’ll pick up on my way out! Sinful! Pure addiction! Or just a bad, bad habit, and we all know how easy and fast THEY die! *sigh*