Word of the Week - 136

With thanks to Plaisanter's Flickriver site.

Word of the Week:  MUCILAGE

These are days, it seems, to think about what exactly IS the glue that holds us together, either to maintain a congruity with self or a plural binding of one to another.  There is something, beyond gravity, centripetal force, magnets, chewing gum or baling wire, that stops us from dissolving into fragments.  Its forms are as numerous as are we who rely on its existence.

At its most exalted it is sticky and honey-sweet, with names like optimism, kindness, beauty and love.  It is scent, known to transport us in memory to other realms and times, or words, as used by poets to translate, impossibly, the ineffable into language.  It is color or form that jars the heart.  It is magic, mostly unintentional, the product of man or nature simply bringing forth what must be brought.

It is experiences shared, even if known in solitude.  It is recognition of me in you.  It is music, sounds raised in thanksgiving or lament.  Perhaps beyond all else it is music.

If I understand anything of the universe, it is this:  we are not meant to be divided nor to seek or invent ways that make us unalike.  We survive with each other, it is how we will thrive.  Our hands reach out to comfort.  With vocabulary we soothe and support.  In the rock-hard moments we remind one another that there are softer times.

We are the glue, aided by the wonders amid which we sometimes flounder, wonders which lift our spirits, replenish our hope.  There is no wonder too small or obscure to be considered medicinally adhesive.  It only requires - demands - the ability to illuminate what has been dimmed.  Circumstances have been known to abandon us in dark caves and haunted houses of the mind.  For me, the image of a rose, bodies of water from a puddle to a fountain, canal, river or ocean, the thought and, one hopes, the taste of dark chocolate, works of art, a hummingbird outside the window, the voice of a loved one or even sight of their name reconnect me to frightened and lost parts of myself.  They secure me to a greater circle where light prevails.

This is a gummy business and we serve as human fly paper to one another.  As we abide, fastened, we joke, we sing, we listen, we doze.  Our thoughts may wander but we, it is hoped, do not.  We are tethered for the long ride.  That is what's real.  Anything else is the illusion.

ABOUT TIME is about kindness and love and impossible things. What could be better?

"We're all traveling through time together every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride."  Tim, from ABOUT TIME

Actors Domhnall Gleeson and Bil Nighy in time-travel mode.

It's not that I was in ill humor when we sat down to watch ABOUT TIME last night.  The cooler days had stalked off, leaving us with temperatures heading up the thermometer (the old, analog kind) and I could feel my energy waning.  Then the mango slices had to be rescued from the floor, washed and eyeballed (yes, it IS that kind of a home) while the cranky voices in my head found fault with things that don't even exist.  All that evaporated with this story, for which I now have great affection, introducing us to kind, loving people who live quirky lives in quiet ways and have tea on the beach next to their Cornwall home every day no matter what the weather.  You may more easily find yourself swallowed by this Richard Curtis work if you remember the phrase, "the willing suspension of disbelief."  It is fiction, possibly fairy tale, taken as such, taken as antidote to millennial  cynicism, narcissism, rejection of magic as one of the impossible things that happens.

By the movie's end I was refreshed, restored and reminded that the high and happy road is never a wrong choice.  Happiness IS a choice.  Uninvited, it will not likely come and sit by your side for ever and ever.  Make room for it, expect it and set out the trail of cake (not bread) crumbs to lure it closer.  Life is about what we do in spite of everything.  It may be a test, we can't be sure.  Pretend that it is.  ABOUT TIME offers us a map, one that may take us where we want to go.  It charmed me, lifted me out of the doldrums, if that is what they were, by my ears.  Perhaps I could watch clips of this every night instead of the news.

small

Your comments to my previous post churned up further thoughts and feelings about feelings, how sometimes I've come to be turned around like the blindfolded, spinning portion of Pin The Tail on the Donkey.

I have, at moments throughout my life, become small with myself: small in spirit, in forgiveness, in compassion. I have been mean and miserly yet also aware that such treatment of one's self might lead to being small with others, an intolerable notion.

We are here, I believe, to enrich, beautify and ease each others' lives by whatever means we can access. (As I write this, it feels familiar, as though I have said it before. I must need to be reminded.) To do so requires that we find our larger (or as a friend describes it, our BIG "S") selves, regardless of how unfamiliar that aspect may be. There is no place for small or narrow.

On this date in history, objects and events of large and expanded natures have been noted. In 1613, it is said that Gallileo may have unknowingly viewed the undiscovered planet Neptune. I choose to count that. Then in 1887 in Fort Keogh, Montana, the world's largest snowflakes were reported, being 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. That definitely registers on the not-small-o-meter.

Here's to more, bigger, kinder, softer; to patient, attentive, indulgent, gentle; to the wider view, the higher road. We do deserve it.

Lyndon Street Neighbors

A short update on the stair walking - 17 out of 19 days, and off to climb when I've finished typing. A day of fatigue after the show on Sept. 28 and one day of 103 degree temperature caused me to allow myself a little slack. I cannot say if it was my best idea, but it was what I could manage and I am back.

What I have found - there is a precedent, so I shouldn't be surprised - as I wobble down and up the stairs, probably creating an alarming image of unsteadiness, which is not really true for while there is wobble there is also steadiness, is the number of neighbors who have asked if they could help me, did I need a hand. In each case I've said that this is practice I have to do but so appreciated their kindness, the fact that they asked. On that first day, one neighbor was just waiting at the top of the steps and helped me manage that last increment.

Nearly two years ago my son was acutely ill and his recovery took months, during which time our building manager and many of our neighbors helped carry packages up the stairs (it was Christmas), helped me bring groceries from the car - my mobility was greater in those days - and took trash to the bin. Our apartment is built around a courtyard and kindness poured from both floors, every door. Younger tenants simply came and took the grocery bags, and our manager told me just to leave anything that needed to be trown out on the balcony where he would see it as he made his evening rounds. I thanked each for every act of kindness and eventually posted a collective letter of appreciation by the mailboxes. I don't know what I would have done without them.

Today I received e-mail which spoke of our currently uncertain times and how we have strength we may have forgotten, the strength of being there for each other. I am grateful to live among people who notice, who pay attention, who act, who care. While none of them may ever read this, it gives me the opportunity to say thank you all over again and to re-examine the difference that can be made by a single hand extended in kindness and support.