Changes -especially the ones that occur without one's knowledge - can be unsettling. (Which is why it is good to find a good resolution between one's thinking and one's feelings.) For example, last week I was not able to use my Surface tablet for a few days ". . .because we are updating". Once 'update time had passed, I blithely resumed usage, feeling a bit smug and relieved regarding this updating process in that it requires NO input from me.
Checking email, I was alerted - the way 'Sister Mary Elephant' may have 'alerted' me decades ago - that I had "notifications waiting for me on Facebook". (Sister: "You're 'Rice Bank for the starving children in India was supposed to have been turned in on Friday. Today is Monday!") Just when your mind is moving toward a more sensitive, accepting approach, your heart can go into 'attack mode' from people like that.
Obediently, trepedatiously, I proceeded to Facebook STAT by selecting a message from a writing group on Linked In. Once there, that message was interrupted by a warning from Linked In regarding changes they had made in their policies which were still awaiting my approval. Compliant by nature and the fear instilled in me by the good Sisters, I raced over to Linked In to address their policy changes.
Mind you, the only reason I turned the tablet on that day was to better understand the greeting card program I used (merrily/productively) on my old PC so that I could make birthday cards for two of our grandpeeps and work on the photo album that is a special birthday gift for one of them. Changes, then, had graduated from 'unsettling' - for me - to my 'bête noire'.
(Entre nous, I'd really love to become a good writer. They say good writers make associations where others would not. The following could be one such association!)
It was with unusual comfort - if not amusement - that I witnessed an extremely dramatic response to change in the insect kingdom yesterday. As a rule, insects rate with criminals, psychopaths and Marat de Sade on my list of heinous things that demand caution and avoidance at all costs.
Backing up (Called a "Flashback" in the world of real, grownup writers. My pulse is quickening.), during one of my sporadic exercises of 're-doing', I had included painting the deck trunk, used to store cushions for wicker deck sundries I've collected at random flea market outings. By necessity - it was the only remaining exterior paint, I first dragged my - I thought empty - victim/subject on a bald spot of the lawn. (In that the remaining spray color was green, my husband might just mow any inadvertent 'spills'.)
Having completed the four sides, done in that tricky 'wind-blown' style that can only be achieved by the witless practice of spraying paint while ocean breezes contrive to preclude solid coverage, I switched weaponry, snatching up my brush, a can and what seemed to be the perfect volume of metallic copper - the majority of which had transformed metal 'succulent containers' into works worthy of their majestic, miniature agape specimens.. Anxious to conclude this painting ordeal, I lifted the cushion trunk's massive lid and, armed with my metallic 'coat-of-copper-scale' outfit (that wind) and the tools of the determined artisan, I was suddenly frozen-in-time by the miasmic drama unfolding - as on cue - before my eyes. A farrago of fauna (in all developmental stages) was frenetically engaged in an exodus, of impressive size and proportion.
These 'creatures - with and minus extremities for locomotion - were nevertheless scampering, colliding, rapidly escaping in a 'Fosse-esque, fast-forward movement OUT of/away from the unexpected, imposed confinement of their previously peaceful 'lounge-around' due to the forced, torrents of some unknown liquid substance which had not only destroyed the peace but also evacuated the very ambient air of their environment, replacing the latter with a pungent, life-sucking blanket of invisible fumes.
Staring, copper-toned and confused at this dispersion for a minute, I finally realized that my subject had been NOT a deserted tenement but a 'compound' teeming - seconds ago - with LIFE; busy, NOT still. Now, having succumbed to this furtive ambush, it was fleeing - drugged and disorderly - forming a diaspora of dying insects whose final actions would be akin to the final scenes on the Titanic: "Charles, have you seen the children?", "Go, Martha.", "But Pop Harold is so old, he should go, Charles.", "Is that you, Mummy? Is this a game?", "Move it, kid. Game's over. You lost." "You made her cry, you, you. . .", "Like the man said, Martha. Swim. I'm taking my chances with old Harold, here.".
And I laughed. Then, feeling the scene, trying to make sense of it all, - "Why am I standing ln the lawn at dusk holding a tin lf copper paint?" "Why am I staring at this pathetic circus of doomed bugs? What was I doing? Oh, yes. Right. Changing the colors on the deck. . ." And then I cried. Poor things. . .
Change is a bitch. But we all go through it. I thought of how we get through what we are going to have tl get through. Some changes are times of bloom; some of decay. Change is. And it is an 'it'. Things lead up to 'it'. Consequences follow 'it'. The changes and lead-ins are 'its'. But the consequences. They can involve 'whos' - a person, a couple, a nation, a bug, even. A WHO. Well, a 'who' gets thought of, treated with, remembered out if respect. Why? "All God's Chillun Got Wings".
Later, Lorane. . . .
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