Shocking

Re-reading Future Shock by Toffler, I know I made a mistake when I threw it in the trash as rubbish back in the early 70's.  It was all the rage back then, so I read it.                                                             I read it, laughed with derision and tossed it.

Let me tell you, I made a mistake.

That book was a winner.

I am now living in the world of shock that Toffler discribed, a world where change is so rapid I can scarce hang on.  The human body has only so much ability to respond to rapid changes, and when changes speed up, we begin to scramble.  If the speed continues or continues to build, we begin falling off the tracks.  Shock.

Toffler also described the internet long before it arrived for us........he described a new kind of human creature that he terms "modular man"......someone "plugged in" to many many other beings, but on a limited scope that allows us to interact (on a modular scale) to many many many other people.
Probably none would attend our weddings and funerals because we are not relating as whole persons, but rather as just pieces of ourselves.  Still and all, it is "connect".

I'm glad I found a copy to re-read.



Do you find our present is more wearing than our past?

Thanks for checking in....on a modular level,
Riverwatch

Stars in our Sky

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away,

The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hoping you get to watch the meteor shower tonight,

and have a star filled day,

Riverwatch

Funerals, Fly-bys and Fiasco's

Funerals, Fly-bys and Fiasco's

A decade or so ago, I became "unfulfilled" going out with a small group of my older-than-me-friends on lunch dates that turned into funeral chats.
I was trying to decide about retirement and they were planning their deaths!
This does not work for me! I thought.
Gotta hang with the less depressing people who are plotting retirement, not death.

I should not have worried about maybe hurting their feelings by opting out of lunch.
One by one they died, or faded away in some other fashion.
Not one of them remains on the scene.
I was hardest hit by Ellen's death.  She was the one I was closest to, and THERE WAS NO FUNERAL.
Ellen had said to us that she wasn't having a funeral....and I thought she was kidding!

Her death hit me hard, because.....there was not a way provided to grieve in community for her.

Oh, I grieved privately, but when I would talk with anybody about Ellen it was one on one and I had to initiate the conversation "out of the blue".  We never even went out to lunch together as friends to cry  in our soup that Ellen was gone.
One of the group dismissed my scattered wool gathering by saying, "Oh, Ellen was such a plaintive woman."
I puzzeled over the word plaintive for days, weeks, months....and years.  Damn it!  Give me a story about Ellen that goes with plaintive!  What does plaintive mean?

I almost bought a little doll that looked like Ellen to stand on my dresser to remind me of her and how important her friendship was to me.  I didn't buy the doll.  It was a money thing.  Is that sad or what that grieving has its monetary limits for some people!
I tenderly put "Ellen" back on the store shelf, saying a whispered choked up, heart felt good-bye to her.

Of course I do not blame Ellen for axeing her own funeral.  She was, after all, a plaintive woman.

I don't like funerals either.

How horrid that I am now thinking of my own future funeral.  And yours!

Mostly mine.

It's odd my thoughts have turned to a subject I  am not real interested in  since my funeral will not be for me.

It won't be for me.

It will be for those left behind.

And speaking of those left behind......  Janie just told me of a funeral she went to for someone on her husband's side of the family.
It was only the second funeral within that family group Janie has attended and apparently the first funeral fiasco had taught them nothing!

Janie said the entire family is unchurched, and completely incompetetent about the whole grieving and burying thing.

However, that family does have one pagan cult member (not that there's anything wrong with being a pagan)  who was interested in certain strange rituals....so that fueled a family fight at the cemetery.  Which struggle went well with the misting rain that was wrecking havoc with the Fed-Ex box of ashes flown in that very day from Oregon.
"My god, they are burying Grandma in a Fed-Ex Box!"
There was no one in charge, but several opinionated attendees.
Apparently the children who were present stood on lawn chairs, the better to see the cemetery drama.
The entire farewell took place under the weepy sky, no overhead shelter.

There was no pastor present to help unify the attendees who were "done with" each other for long-standing reasons.

Apparently the funeral itself was a reason to grieve.
Individuals left that funeral angry...jaded.....disappointed.....or relieved.......
but certainly not uplifted, nor strengthened individually or as a group.


Birth.  Marriage.  Death.  Life's great events.  Meant to be shared, both joy and grief, in community.

Is your community in place and working well for those you will leave behind?

I wonder, if we look down on a departure for us that has materialized into a fiasco, will we laugh or weep?
Either way I doubt any of us, having lived to be old, will be stunned by what we see at our departure gate.


Probably plaintively yours, (whatever that means)

Riverwatch

Is Time Speeding Up?

Hello,

Well, regardless of its title, this little short vid is not about How Long Can You Live.

It is about How Long Does It Feel Like You Are Living & Why.

Hope you like it....if you are not too rushed to view it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LyCC6jjcx8

Hoping you are having a fun day!  Thanks for dropping in.
Riverwatch

My Garden is a Zen Garden

Peace.
Tranquility.
The desert.

I love the desert for its tranquility.  Especially in the heat of the day, or even the cool of the night.  I was just out this morning before dawn and saw a lump on my sidewalk.   I flipped open my flashlight and the lump awakened to a mighty confused flight and hit my house wall.  A scrambling self-correction and the huge bird was off into the dark sky, tranquility restored here on the ground.

So it is with my garden.  It didn't start out to be a Zen garden, but it is nothing but!
Traces of hope can be felt gently escaping its desert environment.
Soil ammendment has been only mildly successful, allowing only the asparagus to soldier on in the heat.
All else is desert, level, tranquil, a retreat for lizards.  You know....the Zen thing.
Not even birds bother it.  Why should they?  They love the rook, another microclimate for life.

I love my Zen Garden.  I would rake it and take a picture of it for you, but why should I?  I just don't want you to see.  It's a Zen thing.
 I want your happiness, not your pity....so....no pictures.

Peace.
Tranquility.
Dehydration.
The desert.

It's a Zen thing.

Makes me sleepy just to think about it.
Sipping water,
Being glad you visited,

Riverwatch