"Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit."
--The Desiderata
I haven't wanted to dwell on this, but now that moving is just days away (12 or 13), I can acknowledge that a major reason I've wanted to move, besides the neighborhood, is that the husband half of the home-owners, whose house I live in, is a loud person who has become more vexatious to my spirit over time. Now I cringe even to hear him talking normally downstairs.
He means well, and often I agree with him, in theory,
but he's bombastic, and he doesn't listen.
Every summer he goes away for a couple weeks, and the house quiets, and during that time, which is now, J., the wife half of the home-owners, and I have a nice time together.
Last night she took me out for dinner. She also feels the wear and tear of the neighborhood (and wishes she could pick her house up and move it). We talked about how to do your work in hard times--and it's always hard times somewhere.
She told me she finds comfort in the "Desiderata", that string of platitudes popular in the seventies.
It was the sort of thing my mother would disdain, but so what if it is a string of platitutdes? So is the Beatitudes.
This morning, J. brought a copy of the Desiderata up, and it fits the noise and strife I'm in the midst of.
I had told J. that I don't like when people emphasize the positive to the exclusion of the negative, but I don't want to encourage the negative---suffering doesn't need encouraging!
There's a line in the Desiderata that is spot on:
"Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings"
Entropy is the law. It's going to happen anyway.
Other things need imagining to come into being and to flourish.
Later that evening I gave Mz a glass dish for banana splits that I'd bought at the store that afternoon. I want to make them for us before we both move to new places in separate neighborhoods.
I've never have made a split at home. You know, these sundaes take specialty ingredients that are unlikely to be at hand: maraschino cherries, pineapple sauce, whipped cream, etc.
"It's easy for a banana split not to exist," I said.
--The Desiderata
I haven't wanted to dwell on this, but now that moving is just days away (12 or 13), I can acknowledge that a major reason I've wanted to move, besides the neighborhood, is that the husband half of the home-owners, whose house I live in, is a loud person who has become more vexatious to my spirit over time. Now I cringe even to hear him talking normally downstairs.
He means well, and often I agree with him, in theory,
but he's bombastic, and he doesn't listen.
Every summer he goes away for a couple weeks, and the house quiets, and during that time, which is now, J., the wife half of the home-owners, and I have a nice time together.
Last night she took me out for dinner. She also feels the wear and tear of the neighborhood (and wishes she could pick her house up and move it). We talked about how to do your work in hard times--and it's always hard times somewhere.
She told me she finds comfort in the "Desiderata", that string of platitudes popular in the seventies.
It was the sort of thing my mother would disdain, but so what if it is a string of platitutdes? So is the Beatitudes.
This morning, J. brought a copy of the Desiderata up, and it fits the noise and strife I'm in the midst of.
I had told J. that I don't like when people emphasize the positive to the exclusion of the negative, but I don't want to encourage the negative---suffering doesn't need encouraging!
There's a line in the Desiderata that is spot on:
"Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings"
Entropy is the law. It's going to happen anyway.
Other things need imagining to come into being and to flourish.
Later that evening I gave Mz a glass dish for banana splits that I'd bought at the store that afternoon. I want to make them for us before we both move to new places in separate neighborhoods.
I've never have made a split at home. You know, these sundaes take specialty ingredients that are unlikely to be at hand: maraschino cherries, pineapple sauce, whipped cream, etc.
"It's easy for a banana split not to exist," I said.
