More selections from the old box of crap treasure I stumbled upon the other day:
other than the fact that I clearly don't know how to spell receive, what's wrong with this picture?
Aw, and look how cute this is:
It's like anything else.
It gets easier with practice.
I promise.
Did you know that turkeys can actually fly?
The last couple of days in Fairfield County have been all about being routed and rerouted around washed out roads. This morning, having forded the river formerly known as my driveway, I was triumphantly just about to merge onto the Merritt. And then it happened.
The turkey.
Now, I've seen many turkeys on the side of the Merritt. Sunning. Preening. Gobbling. But this one, this one was flying.
If you could call it that.
It was low-flapping and awkward winged, head thrust forward in exertion and feet outstretched as if to prepare for a crash landing. It looked like it should be wearing a safety helmet. Just about the least graceful thing I've ever seen, I couldn't even believe this bird had managed to haul its bulk off the ground and into the air. Okay, only by about four or five feet. But still. This was nothing like the dreams of flight that I used to have on a nightly basis but that now come less and less regularly. Even as I was watching it all unfold uncomfortably close to my Jeep's grill, this flight seemed implausible. Right before my eyes yet no less gloriously farfetched.
I wish that I felt that way about the shootings at Virginia Tech. I wish it were shocking and impossible that someone could chain the doors shut and open fire, wish it were utterly astonishing instead of simply tragic. We humans are capable of unthinkable things, of inconceivable benediction and abomination.
Sometimes I feel like that girl in the fairy tale. You know the one I mean? The one who spewed venomous serpents and toads every time she opened her mouth? Why is it that when we're free to offer our best it can be so much easier to offer the worst of ourselves?
It's not unthinkable to me that I could make a series of wrong turns. It's not inconceivable that under different circumstances, unimaginable ones, I could do things that, sitting here today, seem impossible. Not that I would, not that I will. But it's not outside the realm of the possible. Any one of us could do things that leave the world a far better place, or far worse. We could but we don't; we won't but we could. To look at someone who has done the unthinkable and not identify them simply as, "nothing at all like me," might be difficult but to fail to do so is dangerous. We'll make better choices when we feel that enraged or lost or alone. Of course we will. Still, encompassing every possibility means recognizing everything as some aspect of ourselves, of my self, for better and worse.
We've got such potential to soar, to be and to do anything and everthing. And yet sometimes it seems more surprising that we ever achieve anything beautiful, more surprising that we sometimes fly, klutzy and effortful though it may be, than that we fuck it all up.
How's THAT for a heart theme?
Crap. I hate this kind of self-indulgent moaning about the state of the world. It doesn't do any damned good at all. Someone shut me the hell up already.
Okay, for all the peeps who ask for book recommendations after class. You can check out my reading list at amazon.com It's a work in progress but should keep you busy for a while.
Be careful what you ask for.
And don't say I didn't warn you.
