Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Every once in a while I find something that changes me. Often it’s a thought, an idea that will niggle its way into my consciousness and take root. Often it doesn’t last; I’m relatively sure this won’t either.
This particular change in me was brought on by my vacation. I woke up this morning at 5:40 and I decided to get up. Just me, on my own. I was tempted to go back to sleep: sleep is a rare commodity for me. But today I felt like I needed the solitude that followed me around for eleven days in Japan.
It was strange, being alone with so very many people around. An experience unique for all of its sameness – because really, aren’t we all alone? When I consider the fact that at any given moment, I am the only one who observes what I am observing from my perspective I have a profound sense of being alone in the world. When, in Japan, I took that thought one step further to realize that all the people around me have grown up and experienced the world in a foreign setting, with few of the same cultural experiences, I am taken to a new awareness altogether. I don’t believe I really lived until I had this feeling – and it’s one I truly revel in, as long as I feel safe. From what I’ve seen and how I felt, Japan has one of the safest societies on earth.
And so one of my most treasured experiences while I was there was walking countless times across the street in Shibuya, Tokyo, amidst hundreds of people crossing in every direction.
panoramic view of Shibuya crossing
Ah, the humanity.
Life-changing. For me.
And yet for so many it is simply life. Routine. They come out of the Hachiko exit where the famous statue resides on the entirely indescribable side of the train station (there are two “south” entrances on different sides of the building) and they go to work, or meet a friend, or… or… whatever. I was simply wandering around this vast part of a vast world, all alone. No one I knew knew exactly where I was at that particular moment in time.
Just like when I’m having a coffee at 5:45am, all by myself in my living room.
It may not be an historical event for anyone but me, but we all have times like these, don’t we? There are things that mean the world to just “me and me alone.” Today I had one of those events. And whether anyone else cares or not, I am recording it here for my own sake.
For my final Team Pepper post I really wanted to find something profound to write. Something to uplift and inspire. Something that people far and wide will remember for years to come. Something from my own mind, rather than words regurgitated from the world wide web. Something barfed up from my own mouth… in a delicate way. A burp almost. But tangible. Something that my readers can latch onto and hold close to their hearts.
Here it goes.
Are you ready?
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Get off the damned computer and go outside already! The internet isn’t real life! Real life exists when you get off your ass and live it!!!
There are times when I feel so much, I could almost make up my own language. Because nothing in English can describe what I feel. With an overwhelming sense of torture can beauty–real beauty–penetrate my mind to press tears at the backs of my eyes and make my ears ring and it’s like OH OH OH I can’t stand it and I have to look away. Or dance.
How can one be surrounded with such stuff and survive? And yet I’ll follow it to the ends of the earth; craving it, desiring to be close to it no matter the cost.
In that moment that I am there, before the beauty, in the music, I am most alive… and grieving that it will die. And I with it.
You know what’s weird? The fact that now the penny has been taken out of circulation in Canada, you never find a penny on the ground anymore. The last coin I came across as I was walking was a dime. Are people more likely to just leave dimes on the ground now rather than pick them up? Or was this just some unfortunate soul who didn’t realize he or she was dumping his or her change out of his or her pocket?
Grammar really makes no sense, does it? My best friend’s brother, who was on the team that wrote spell check and grammar check, tells me that with all the different rules in all the different countries on grammar, it isn’t possible to write a grammatically correct sentence. One rule will be broken unless you completely ignore all the other countries and are never read outside of your own. Interesting stuff, that.
In other news, I have the weekend off. No kids. Lovely, eh? Yet I have so much to do, it’s hard to know where to start. I’m just plowing through everything as a result. Which is good, except I keep forgetting to eat and drink. I often make myself a cup of tea and leave it to steep… for an hour. I can’t stand cold tea, or coffee, or anything else that’s supposed to be hot when it’s cold. Except pizza. And occasionally spaghetti.
Not to diminish the severity of the impact ADD has on the lives of people who truly suffer with it, but is it possible to “catch” it in times of stress? Why do I ask? Let me tell you.
In the amount of time it took me to decide what I was going to write about today, click on my dashboard and get into “Add New Post,” I came up with six more things I want to write about – the last of which is the fact that spellcheck (I guess Firefox’s version) has finally chosen to insert its ass in my subject line. Apparently “Poblano” isn’t a word. Who knew?
So yeah, the other stuff in backwards order of the idea light bulb coming on over my head are:
1. I realized I haven’t answered any of my comments today, so I wanted to apologize for that in advance of my upcoming eye drops. I’ll try to get to some before I leave for the appointment however.
2. My battery works!! It’s ALIVE!!!! And yes, it was free. 😀
3. My occupational therapist appointment went well. I’ve got to do a few exercises, mildly limit my movement for a couple of weeks, and get my laptop into a better position. Oh, and move around once in a while. OH, and check out an aqua fitness program. OH! And get a body pillow. Good call to all of those who came up with the idea when I was considering a sleeping companion.
4. I’m working on writing enough “Scenes from the Second Seat on the Right” so they’ll keep publishing while I’m gone.
5. Beta readers!! I need a few people who are serious about wanting to beta my novel. I’ll be looking to find out if it’s interesting enough to captivate my audience, notes on any inconsistencies, and I’m planning to put a note in it of my own to ask about thoughts on splitting it into two or three books. I’d like to have it read while I’m away, if I can get it ready by the time I leave. Let me know if you want a copy! I’ll take three readers for now. Please email me at bacamjoly at gmail dot com if you’re interested.
6. … And now that I’m finally at my original idea for posting today, I’ve forgotten what it is.
What do you think? Am I ready for an ADD diagnosis yet?
My blog isn’t normally about my personal schedule, but because of the community I’ve kind of built around this site, I feel obligated to let you, my friends, know what’s going on for the next little while.
First, tomorrow, I’m going to an occupational therapist to see about my bad shoulder in the morning, and to an optometrist in the afternoon. I’ll have drops in my eyes, which probably means no screen time after that since the horrid things usually affect me for at least eight hours. I hope to be able to post tomorrow before I go.
Then this Saturday will be my last “live” SoCS entry until the 20th of December. I leave for Tokyo on Saturday the 6th and will be home on the 17th. Considering I leave Japan two hours after I arrive in Canada, I’ll be pretty bagged and doubt I’ll be online again until the 18th.
What this means for you, my dear participants in One-Liner Wednesday and SoCS, is that you’ll still be able to participate in both, except I won’t be around. I’ll have the One-Liners scheduled already for the 10th and the 17th, and for SoCS I’ll either do the same or I’ll have guest-posters here to organize things. I still have to contact the three people who said they might be willing to help out, to see if they’re still “in.”
I hope to have reliable enough wifi where I’m staying that I can check in once in a while, but I don’t plan on spending too much time online.
In the meantime, as you can probably imagine, I’ll be pretty busy getting ready to leave and doing as much Christmas shopping as humanly possible so I don’t need to do too much while I’m away. Luggage space will be limited. Again, what this means is that I won’t be able to read as many blogs as I usually do, or keep up with the comments. But I’ll do my best!
For anyone wondering how I’m paying for this (I’m looking at you, Social Services), I’ve been saving for years. There’s a reason I have only one pair of shoes, have a hair cut once every three years, and am still wearing a coat that was bought for me as a Christmas gift 30 years ago – and no, that’s not an exaggeration.
Oh, and as a side note, I just got a call from Best Buy to say my laptop battery is in – let’s hope it fits!!!
