Locked Out

Have you ever been locked out of your own house, unable to enter? Maybe it's not your fault either. The key broke off in the lock or won't turn no matter what you do. You want to bash on the door or break a window, but then you would be destroying your own property. It's frustrating, an interruption to an otherwise productive day, and undermines your confidence in things like locks and home security. Or you realize that home security just doesn't even exist.

Computer passwords are like that, too. I'm locked out of one of my own sites, using the correct user name and password. The computer gives me directions on how to get around that, and I think, what if it's not me trying to get in? Brick walls are built to keep people out. That's why people imply they are brought to a complete standstill when they run into one. So you climb over. I guess that's what the directions the computer are giving me are for.

Sometimes the opposite happens. You go to your site prepared to type in the password and the door is already open! Who's there, you wonder? Who's been looking at my stuff? Did I somehow leave the door open myself?

It reminds me to hold loosely in my hand things I call my own.

I Am Most Seriously Displeased...

I had fun writing the following, but bloggerland continues to confound me, and I have not been able to get any blog to accept my name or password. So Mr. D. Cous of the People's Republic, you wanted a snarky response!

Dear Mr. Cous,

This is your real opinion? This is your final resolve? Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Mr. Cous, that I shall even condescend to respect your opinions. I hoped to find you reasonable, but depend on it I will carry my point. Don't honor with your regard, for what it's worth, any people who try to pass Miss Austen off as a feminist. Miss Austen is a writer of comedy. Nothing more, but not the least in her accomplishments. If you cannot find it in your sensibilities to laugh out loud at the absurdities in her literature, then I take my leave of you. I am most seriously displeased!

I would agree with your assessment that this is literature suited more comfortably in the feminine sphere. Non-gentry males seem to actually like activity, while women have always centered their lives around their close relationships. However, to say disgustingly that nothing happens is a gross insult to the gentry and nobility of our culture. We pride ourselves on our ease of life and our leisure. Cannot you see that your American ideals of independence and industry are counter-cultural to our way of life where so many are economically dependent, and strive continually to move into the realm of gentry where no efforts are required? In fact, they are shunned.

Furthermore, it astonishes me that so few of you modern Americans understand the British countryside way of life, let alone the complexities of living in town. The landed estate was like the General Motors Corporation of the country. Whole communities depended on the financial success of these vast holdings. Because of the necessity of entailment laws, only one male heir could inherit the estate. That meant that the remaining children were given money and positions as recompense for not receiving any land. The male heir often found himself cash poor, and to marry for money was not only needful, but an act of selflessness, generosity, and even charity to his neighbors. Mercenary, indeed! And you, a student of economy of all people, should understand and sympathize with these measures. I would argue that as many men as women found themselves in pecuniary difficulties, and acted to prevent their own fall into degradation. There are always scoundrels, but do not lump them together with people who know what they are about: security, position and the welfare of their whole community.

It is my sincere hope that if we ever meet, my impressions of you, however prejudiced by your disgusting stubbornness regarding the highly respected Miss Austen, will be altered, and that I find you an affable and clever, although unavailable and untitled, young man. I may even condescend to give you my hand if you are suitably dressed and present yourself with some decency. Give my regards to your lovely wife.

Your's very sincerely,

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Falling in Lust

It seems that Hollywood knows nothing about love and everything about lust. It is standard fare for two attractive people to just look at one another and then fall in bed together. It's getting kind of boring to watch these lies over and over again, passed off as something "real" and "forever" and what permanent relationships are based on. You can see it coming a mile off and it's only a matter of patience before the tongues come out and they start sucking on each other's faces like Thanksgiving is eleven months off and that's the only day they get real food. I see these "heroes" doing dubiously noble things and then go from chick to chick just like a mongrel who knows no better and is just following hormones. People make love and then the first little disagreement is a huge crisis and they are tragically disappointed that maybe their love isn't the real thing after all. It never was anything more than lust. Yet they all seem so concerned about knowing who the other person has been with, and will they do it again? Of course, because they have no character, no real heroism, not even a notion of what love is. And the next time lust strikes, they are as helpless as a plucked chicken and as spineless as an octopus.

The Ideas We'll Never Use

Sometimes moments of inspiration hit and I can hardly contain the excitement and thrill of exploiting the idea that is racing through my creative veins. Sometimes they come so hard and fast that an agonizing desperation rolls over me as I realize most of them will never come to fruition--there just isn't enough time in my life to make them all happen. Quilting ideas, writing ideas, home decorating plans, gardening schemes, how to save the world brainstorms--they all pile up in my head or occasionally in written notes, waiting to bloom in a winter of busyness and higher priorities. Seeing them stagnating, gathering cob webs and dust, and losing creative momentum by the nano-second is hard, and eventually they are entombed in that bottomless file drawer called, "The Ideas I'll Never Use". But they also inspire gratitude. Think of the opposite conundrum. No ideas ever. A desert of wasteland, sere, dead, not even existent. Give me a full file drawer of never-to-be-used-ideas any time over an empty, unimaginative brain.