Snail slime

Please, please, my sisters. Rarely anymore do I fall victim to advertisements for younger looking skin in a week, pink up your cheeks, wipe away the signs of aging.

I fell this week.  I bought a jar of snail slime.  Advertised on Facebook, recommended by no one, and bought by me.  The directions on the jar were in Chinese so I have no way of telling how I’m supposed to apply this but I imagine it says—smear some of this crap on your face every morning.

No telling what’s in this jar—high levels of grime, slime, petrochemicals and melamine.  Hope I don’t glow in the dark.

Holy shit!  Will I grow a shell, will I propel myself on little slimy feet ?  Will I slip in my own slime trail?  Will I rename myself S. Cargot?

Only time will tell.  When I wake up tomorrow morning looking like an ingenue, I will tell you.  If I don’t, my silence will say all.

This is an African giant snail.  Maybe I should get one and let him walk all over my face.

Reaping the whirlwind

“”In physics, the arc of a swinging pendulum diminishes over time. That has been my perhaps too-comfortable view of American history: that the swing of our political pendulum would always slow and find an equilibrium closer to a more perfect union.”—Howard Fineman

I read everything I could read about the massacre in Pittsburgh.  I suppose I was looking for comfort.  But these are not comfortable times.

I thought back to a podcast with Hannah Arendt.  Her famous quote remember “the banality of evil.”  Certainly we like to think of our monsters as bigger than life, more powerful, more Hollywood.  But they aren’t, are they?  How banal is Caesar Sayoc?  Dull as tarnished silver until he took up bomb making.

They are sad lonely men, some bright like the unibomber, some looking for redemption through a technicolor moment, some wrapped up in dark wed fantasies—“they are killing our people.”  Whoever “our people”  are.

My realization yesterday that I was naive about the capacity for evil, for hate in our communities, has morphed this morning into the sense that the constant onslaught of shit pouring out of my Facebook and my TV has anesthetized me against the reality of our circumstances.  We spend a lot of time (well Rob does) yelling at our devices thinking, perhaps, that that’s enough.  Not so.

We need to look at our communities and I mean really look.  Who are our neighbors?  What do they think?  Can I listen to them and they to me?  Can diversity of opinion be tolerated?

This isn’t about diversity of opinion is it?  This is about a super heated frying pan loaded with grease.  The most superheated elements among us will ignite.

I worked for many years with young men who were full of hate and despair.  They would draw me pictures of themselves with their hair on fire.  Nobody can think rationally with their hair on fire.  These were kids who had no center, who were all impulse and no control.  Their futures would seem to me to be finding an alternate source of control.  Something or someone who could harness their energy.

I read this morning about Roger Ailes and company and how they would talk about “riling up the crazies.”  Well, they have. They have “sow(ed) the wind, and shall  reap the whirlwind.”  The whirlwind isn’t particularly discriminating.  It can sweep us all up.

I don’t know how these thoughts will  help clarify anything for me or for you.  I just don’t know.

 

The coming rains

A warm rain is falling today with a breeze to back it up.  I love when Indian summer turns liquid.

Someone captured this image before the rain started.  I am so glad she did.  There will be light again at the end of the rains.  There will be blue skies, sunshine, and gold trees.

Weeds

It’s dank and chill in the garden today.  It’s time to cut back the clematis, the roses, the helianthemum.  The crocosmia that has  established itself and more, is now a unwelcome guest and will need to be pulled out by the bulbs.  Perennial poppies, too, have run amok and need to be moved or discarded.  Pink geraniums are no longer welcome in my beds.  They seem to feel that it is their garden and have grown under and around sweet little varietals that I cherish.  Perennial geraniums are greedy buggers and they have to move on.

Other plants have not flourished where I’ve put them:  the rosemary, the variegated sage, the sweet yellow iris, so demur, so elegant, need to be moved.  The azalea with the amazing fragrance did not bloom this year.  I will have to check that out.  Is something nibbling it’s roots, are the huge old cedars drinking all the water saving the glory for themselves?  I will dig for evidence.

Plants communicate like plants do—they grow, they don’t grow, they wither, they disappear. It’s pretty simple.  They can’t flourish where they are put.  They can only flourish where they want to be.  They’re fussy.  Like children.  Like husbands.

Everything has it’s own opinion—grow, don’t grow, likes sun, oh, oh, too much sun, too little sun, not enough compost, too wet, too dry, prefers a pot, prefers lots of space.  What the hell?  Weeds are the only plants that are easy.  They are happy anywhere.  Maybe I should cultivate weeds.