:: anne in the attic ::

Create Your Own Countdown

:: Friday, January 30, 2004 ::

What is the wisdom of the moment? William Bell said it best with "a smile can't hide a broken heart." Everywhere I turn these days, people are coping. There are those who try to keep the volume down, who cope in quiet desperation; and then there are those who cope all over themselves, it seems. Is this just something that comes with adulthood, that a person learns to recognize the pain in others? Mom? Dad? Or is this race of women and men encountering such sorrow that their predecessors could never have known? Either way, I feel it heavy in the air. Approaching storm? Perhaps the barometric pressure has us all on edge. But I think it's the times that's weighing us down. We all have the usual progression of human life to carry, that's nothing new. But we've accelerated our culture such that now it's that much more possible for many wolves to be at one's door all at once. Instant access to everything: pleasure, knowledge, information, communications, commerce, danger, disease, imminent disaster. It's all at hand. Do I sound like a doomsday prophet? I guess it's more like a theory of the melding of time to space to thought, where it feels like every moment of the past and every iota of history and fact rushes up to meet you and travels with you, your own personal internet hovering just above your head like some binary aura without a shadow. Only, it does have a shadow -- a conceptual one, which is cast only by its potential: good or evil, your choice. These days we can do everything faster, more thoroughly, to the nth degree -- and I fear that probably, eventually, somebody will. Is it really that surprising then, despite the brilliant experiences and joys our inventions have afforded us, that we are such a depressed nation? All of this from a self-confessed techie, and very possibly a flunkie in matters of the heart.

:: Anne 7:48 PM [smartass remarks] ::
...

A thin layer of snow covers the skylights of my house, muting what little light the grayish winter days have had to offer. Since the New Year, getting around has been like skating, trudging, and plowing.

As I have been coccooned and doing battle with this winter's plague of flu, my list of things to do grows in my hazy head. January is when I look toward Spring with all of my might, pushing forward, trying to avoid various seasonal ruts and such. It seems there's never room enough for the people and things I wish to experience in my small life. Reach for something, and I have to let go of something else. In order to go toward one place, I must leave another. A transitive state, simply moving. It is a hope I harbor that the choices I make will also choose me.

:: Anne 4:10 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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