No words.

Absence

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.

~ Pablo Neruda


There are lots of words but I don't want to say any of my own tonight.

Cheers,
Harriet.

All I know is that my curtains would match the couch.

Source: brollieboy.blogspot.com on Pinterest

I love this painting by "Umbrella Head", and it prompted the thought that this was really less about looking outward towards a myriad of other people, and more about looking in at ourselves.  Maybe it reveals some of my own insecurities, and the desire to keep the curtains closed.

We all have these layers and complexities, odd little humans that we are.  We fight and struggle and love and hate and fear things all day, throughout the various systems that we interact within.  What are my windows?  What would someone see, and when do I open the shades to let others in?  How many are staged, and how many are the ugly little face, two rows up, second from the left? 

Unanswered questions to ponder.

Cheers,
Harriet.

Happiness, deconstructed.

Source: facebook.com via Melody on Pinterest

Does anyone really ever get to choose to be happy?  I know that there is a lot of "fake it 'til you make it" talk running around the world, but I'm not sure if I believe it.  I have played that game, and have lost multiple times with multiple situations, ranging from silly issues such as, "I won't let that bitchy Walmart sales clerk with the condescending attitude and power-trippy behavior because they wield a scanner get me down", to the more serious: "He does love me; he has just forgotten."  I have tricked and mixed up myself more than once, and here's the deal... pretending doesn't really work.  I have decided the only way to be happy is to be happy.  Period.  And that can't, and won't, always happen.

Why are we so obsessed with feeling happy?

Obviously, it feels good.  It would be nice to live on a little pink, fuzzy cloud of euphoria all of the time, in some ways.  You'd get to smile a lot, and your eyes might start twinkling for no apparent reason.  It seems as if half the books I read are absolutely dreary tales, but the other half involve a lot of eye twinklers.  Apparently, this is a Key to Success.  Imagine Dumbledore, or Little House on the Prairie's "Pa", without twinkles.  It just wouldn't ever happen.

We all want to feel as if we are in control.  If we master the art of happiness, then we find that we're okay.  We have decided something, and it happened.  Poof!  Magical contentment.  "I made it so, so it is so."  Do we really think we're so omnisciently powerful as to bend the beams of the universe to always come out positively in our general direction? I think we all need to get over ourselves, and acknowledge that part of our humanness is to feel sad sometimes.  Things are not always going to work out.  It's not a character flaw.  Acknowledging this reality does not make us drama kings and queens.  It makes us real.

Voltaire was just trying to feel better about losing control.  Poor schmuck.

Cheers,
Harriet.

The Start.

Does anyone start a blog just for fun, or is does it indicate the middle of a crisis state?  I have been curious about this for some time, as the only times I've cracked open a journal - in real life or online world - is when the proverbial shit has hit the fan.  I know that there are "interest" blogs, on mundane things like shoes or jobs, and there are "travel" blogs, where there is some jet-set traveler taking off to fantastic parts of the world that most of us will never seen and who somehow manage to do this without having a real job.  There are "angst" blogs, that include a lot of zit-popping teenagers with lol and wtf and <3 <3 <3, and there are "insane mom" blogs, with people posting pinterest-inspired items that they either a) never really do, or b) do, but are so wrapped up in creating matching-toilet-paper-monogrammed-towel-holder/pencil-sharpener-basket-lollipop-wall-art that they've morphed out of reality and into the land of make-something-from-anything-and-include-a-polka-dot or two.

I really don't want to be any of those.

I don't know yet what this will become.  I don't know yet who I'm going to become, and considering I'm forty, that's a little weird to be typing.  I thought I had all of the answers at eighteen, twenty-six, and thirty-two, but I've discovered all of those answers were wildly inconsistenly wrong and now I'm up a creek into the mid-life crisis land of figuring it all out again.  I guess it's what we do, we aging Gen X'ers.  We underachieve and overthink.  However, I'm tired of that.  I'm busting out.

Cheers,
Harriet.