May 1, 2022: Dirty Dishes and Lines of Demarcation

My life will always have dirty dishes. If this sink can become a place of contemplation, let me learn constancy here. Gunilla Brodde Norris

…resentment buried is not gone. It is like burying a seed: for a season it may stay hidden in the dark, but in the end, it will always grow. Beth Underdown

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that having dirty dishes likely means having had food and somewhere to put it while eating. Nonetheless, cleaning up the dirty dishes is necessary—a service rendered for a service provided. However, the lines of demarcation between slovenliness and cleanliness, between problem and no-problem, can merely be how symbols are arranged.

Humans tend to like categories. Boundary-making seems akin to clarity and clarity seems preferable to confusion. But such premise is not without its own problems. Sometimes a different clarity will come from allowing one’s vision to become blurred—think the 2-D pictures that can “pop” to 3-D only when one let’s go of what they see.

This is not to say that demarcations are bad, only to say it’s how they’re used. Used stridently, there are no shifts. Used “softly,” shifts can happen. Even then, a tree is not a bowling ball under any circumstances, but there are different ways to see both trees and bowling balls.

To rightly feel unheard is not an antecedent for resentment, it is an antecedent for not being heard. And feeling unheard is only fertile ground for the autocrat to plant their narcissistic seeds if the ground allows. That allowance is an unnecessary deal with our own devils, an impatience leading to yet another overcorrection. And overcorrections are poor examples of a solution.

There are always dirty dishes if we are lucky. There are always lines of demarcation, if we so choose. Clean the dishes as an act of respect for what we have, check the lines of demarcation as an act of respect to another.

As for folks like myself—help! I am no seer, I’m merely and unclearly finding the collapse of the known, the confusion that follows, and the reassembly of perception very unsettling. I am aware I do not want to rebuild or revisit that which doesn’t work, but it all can seem very overwhelming. Freedom to choose can create a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, especially when there are lots of choices. And when choices need to be made, I’m still learning—I hope—that to sit still and wait can be both unsettling and the best that can be done.

The Bumper-Sticker Corner: Hmm. Ahh.

You’d think COVID-19 would have promoted more respect for space. Nah…

Beware! If you tailgate me, I’ll slam on my brakes. So, drive safely!

The Story Corner: Cryptic Apocalyptic

Cattle were burning, smoke billowing from their hides. Yet they live.

It seemed too much to lose one’s mind, but it seemed too little to keep it as it was.