I raced through this morning’s kitty chores because I knew it was another clear sky outside and therefore highly likely to give some smooth tones to work with at twilight.
Working with just one good hand though is a genuine antithesis to successfully taking care of things in a speedy fashion and one of my last achievements before I left the house was catching my pinky finger in the sliding patio door.
Boy, did it hurt!
I am sure the neighbors could have heard my profanities, as I danced around in pain clutching the throbbing pinky on my one good hand. Although in truth, at that time of the morning, they are probably still in dreamland.
As soon as I recomposed, I headed off to the south shore of the lake and arrived just in time to catch the start of twilight.
The colors were just as I imagined they would be and the fresh air and occasional call of a waking bird made the whole scene so calm and peaceful.
I have put a number of the images at the end of the blog … hope you enjoy!
As I drove home, my aching left wrist was overshadowed by the throbbing right pinky and I recalled a time when having a throbbing appendage first thing in the morning was a good thing.
And I begrudged growing old. Everything takes longer to heal and the discomfort feels more pronounced.
I remember when I was younger and playing soccer, dislocating a finger during a game (I was the goalkeeper) and we just strapped it to its neighboring finger and I played on. I’m not even sure I mentioned it when I got home.
Nowadays if I hurt something, I moan about it in a blog for the world to know. (In this case, the world consists of a half-dozen readers on a good day).
It is one of life’s simple facts, that as we age, our bodies fail us. They either deteriorate over time to where we die a fragile and broken semblance of a person we once were. Or it downright breaks and we drop to the ground suddenly with an aneurysm or a heart attack.
I remember a living room chat with my grannie, who in her late eighties came out for sunday dinner every week and she moaned about how she had reached a point where her wisdom was at its best in life and her body at its worst.
She was a very sharp minded little old lady who struggled to make the short journey from the car to the living room.
On this morning’s drive home, I mused over how obsessed we are with our bodies and how much emphasis we place on trying to sustain a certain look or image. And we do so, despite the inevitability of them falling apart on us.
Men in particular are body-obsessed. Not in themselves, but in the women they admire. Throw a hot curvy young woman into a room full of men and watch her become the center of attention and discussion. And watch the wise old lady get abandoned in the corner.
We place such emphasis on an image that is unreal, that we coerce women into reshaping themselves into an image that appeals to us.
Thankfully women can see beyond the physical of the men that are chasing them, otherwise there would be a population implosion and the human race would soon be extinct.
The real person in front of us, is never their outward appearance. They are the person inside … the mind, the character, the carer. Regardless of their outward appearance, they are the person that revolves around their mind, not their ass.
For most of us, our mind is where we live. It is the home for all our thoughts and originality that makes us a unique human being. More often than not, our mind doesn’t even know our age, our weight, our disfigurements. Our mind only knows who we truly are and what we care about.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world, if could see each other’s minds and not the shell it lives in? Honesty and caring would become center stage in how we deal with each other and sincerity would reign.
It won’t happen in my lifetime, I know, but perhaps one day humanity will transcend the physical and engage on a mind-to-mind level. (The Barbarella sex scene springs to mind.)
In the meantime, the important thing we can do is to remind ourselves to look deeper into a person and not just read the cover. People are truly interesting beings but much more so when you get to know the inner person.
… just a thought.
