Aw Diddums

Mood: No better than yesterday - I should be doing other things
Listening to: Karl Denver's Wimoweh is in my head - even the dancers are there, drat them

Something that annoys me about myself is that, when I'm disagreeing with someone's words, it's sometimes not till I take it up and start writing about it, referring back to the original statement, that I realize (1) they weren't saying what I thought they said; (2) they had a perfectly good point.

It takes the wind out of my sails and then I can't express my disagreement, and that's so disappointing...

Huff.

But because I've at least gone back and pored scarily over it, I do get a better hold on what the other person was really saying... I wonder how many people just ignore it and shuffle away, and go to the end of their lives not realizing the unplumbed depths of those unsatisfying conversations. Most likely that's the lot of those who don't want to cause any ripples or unpleasantness by taking up this issue or that. It's a little unfair on those you're being polite to.

This thought wasn't sparked off by any blogs I read today, yesterday or at any time, just in case you're wondering! No, it was an email I got a few nights ago and am still pondering. At first it disappointed me, and I determined not to answer it, but then I went back and read it again. And I saw a slant that wasn't obvious before. I think it was the fault of my expectations - I thought I would get a full agreement to something I said, but in fact it was a considered reply along the lines of "we both might feel that, but it's worth remembering..."

New angles to discuss! I like that.

I just this moment looked up my horoscope (by accident actually)... it says:

Communication of various types will be your entertainment, your nemesis, and your inspiration today. Watch the emails that come in to you - one of them has a great opportunity hidden inside. Click to find your next social highlight. A tricky conversation late in the afternoon (gulp) might throw you off your balance a bit, but the battle of wits will be fun and invigorating. Before the day is through, an inspiring song lyric, poem or even just a friend's email rant will spark a new idea.

Hmm - I like these energetic, communicative, inspirational days. Bring it on!

PS Last night I changed the template of my emergency Blogspot. It's not as wonderful as a lot of the customized templates I've seen out there, but it's less boring than the last one.

Mood: Tired but wide-awake
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'I Talk to the Trees'

I know not everyone approves of horoscopes, but I was looking at mine today. It said I had to put 100% of myself into what I was doing so that people would know I was the 'real deal' and not just bluffing my way through life.

I don't even bother to bluff much now - I am as I am, though hopefully improving.

I wonder how many people are the real deal? What's the real deal? If someone has value for someone else, it can't all be bluff?

It just got me wondering. It reminded me of my reaction to some advice I saw on the TV - that we had to prove to our employers (or potential employers) that we were peaches rather than lemons.

Reading it over, it said all I need to say on this matter and I don't need to say it all again! But maybe I'm a little too cynical about this 'real deal' thing. Being there for somebody who needs you to be (preferably from an emotional or life-saving point of view) - that's the real deal.

As for 'bluffing our way through life' - I was watching a programme about wildlife photography and people were saying (not for the first time) that when we go into a wild animal's environment, we have to expect them to react the way they do, and it's 'never the animal's fault'. If they had simply said "the jungle law applies here", I wouldn't have turned a hair, but I was irritated at all the lecturing. What I couldn't help wondering is why we're quicker to defend animals than human beings? When someone goes off the rails, is sick, tired, lost, confused, easily conned, or is generally found to be bluffing their way through life... there is so much criticism leveled at him/her. There's no talk of folk being in an environment they don't completely understand and that wasn't of their personal making. They're human beings, and as such are automatically targets for any kind of high expectation, criticism, harshness and lack of understanding that others can throw at them.

People make mistakes - like animals. We understand more than animals do of how our world is supposed to work, but not always as much as the next person. And it's not necessarily our fault.

Mood: Dreamy
Listening to: Turned off the music - ghostly song in my head: 'Miss You Nights' by Cliff Richard

In recent years I've not been listening to music as remorselessly as I once did. Some of the songs in my possession (on tape, record or CD) haven't brushed past my ears since I was in my 20s or younger. Playing these songs now makes me feel as though I'm tapping into myself as I used to be - it's a strange feeling, and curiously strengthening.

You remember calmer, slower days and nights, family all around you. You remember belief in a saner, more rational world. You were convinced then that people really cared about others; that they played by the rules and took their time. Those were the days when you completed tasks one after the other in logical order without panicking, and everything from Swingball to business letters was a novelty.

The world around you was pure and light and yet full of depth. It was blue sky, a summer breeze and the promise of more beyond the sunset. Life didn't seem to hurry past the way it does now. The music slowed it down - you played the same songs time after time, and they were as vibrant as they ever were.

You read all the books and believed them - about chivalry and romance, fairies at the bottom of the garden and magic rings. You judged that life would be pure gold.

In later years you wake... as though from a sleep of a hundred years. There are briars growing over everything and cobwebs in the corners. You are still looking for the gold, wondering. Things seem darker than they did before. Many of the people around you have gone - a few miles away, or an eternity. There is little that's new or original, and the dull metal of modern society is showing through the gilt.

Only the music stays the same.

Mood: Overtired but a little happier than I was
Listening to: Ghost song in my head: 'More than This' by Roxy Music

Recently I was watching something about parallel universes. There was all this talk about 'forks' in our paths - those times when we make one decision instead of another - even tiny decisions such as what we have for dinner can affect our future. I don't really see them as 'forks' - it's like a solid mass of intersecting universes. It probably makes a specific shape - if we were to stand back and look at it, it would look like one very big universe...

Just my vision of it. In any case, I made a tiny decision which caused something else to happen that could easily never have occurred...

I left the key in my desk. The removal men were coming to move it, and I took the key out of the cabinet keyhole, meaning to safeguard it myself. Mum said "they might want to take the shelves out." I hesitated, then put the key back.

Ever since, I've been kicking myself, because of course what did the removal men do but lose the key? It's a small thing to get annoyed about, but it possibly represents many of my frustrations and worries. I must learn not to listen to advice. When I take advice against my own inclination and everything goes pear-shaped, I get much more annoyed than when I do my own thing and get it wrong anyway.

Several days later and I'm still agonizing over that key. We've looked everywhere, even phoned the removal men and asked - all to no avail. I think the thing has fallen through a crack into the next universe.

That's a fork in the path I would gladly hasten back down again, but it led to something unexpected. Tonight I was watching Stepmom on my TV and checking vaguely down the side of the sofa, which had been in the van with the desk. There was a bare chance the key would be there. My searching fingers felt something hard jammed right in the corner. Pulled it out and looked at it with total disbelief. It was a silver cat brooch I lost several years ago.

It was bought by Mum at a cat show when Sharky did very well there; it was a kind of congratulations prize for me. At the time she said "you promise you will wear it, and not just leave it sitting in the box?" and I said yes. When we got home from the cat show, Mum discovered she had lost the brooch in its box - couldn't find it anywhere. She thought we had dropped it at the show, so I emailed the show manager and the hall staff - no joy.

Then Mum found it again - can't quite remember where. Possibly under the car seat.

Remembering my promise, I wore the brooch till one day I lost it. I decided it must have fallen off when I was out. And now here it was, emerging into the light from the sofa's hidden depths - slightly tarnished and smaller than I remembered. We came so close to dumping this sofa - the matching armchair was taken to the tip a few days ago. (I wonder what was lost down the sides of that?? But I mustn't think about it - that way lies madness!)

What a brooch for disappearing. I sometimes wonder if the reason it turned up on a stall table at the cat show is that the original owner lost it. Maybe it's a brooch version of The Ring, and is constantly searching for someone powerful enough to do evil in this world. So far it's stuck with me.

My purrrrecious.

I woke in the middle of last night feeling quite upset - one of those feelings everybody gets when the future seems all hollow and dark; full of loss, death, uncertainty, bad decisions and loneliness. I turned over in bed a few times, and sighed rather whimperingly, and suddenly the blank grey space just in front of me was blotted out by a cat's head. Sharky looked at me with kind green eyes, sat down, and leaned his forehead against my neck, purring gently. It wasn't coincidence - he was offering comfort and companionship. I calmed down and fell asleep, laughing at myself. I was being comforted by a cat for losing a small key. Well not just because. But it unlocked everything else.

Mood: Deep in thought
Listening to: Nothing

Have found myself thinking lately of the things people sometimes say - "people think this about me; they want that from me; the kind of person who believes in 'x' is always a'y' sort of person." And I wonder, are they right? They sound so sure they know. How do they know? How many people do they know so well that they can come to such solid conclusions?

I read two different blog posts today (neither of them on blogs I comment on). I respected the viewpoints of both bloggers, but had certain doubts when they said "people think this" - and it just so happened I didn't. I can't be alone. Am I a wonderful, intelligent individual who is one of the very few people not thinking the things the bloggers think everybody is thinking but shouldn't think? Would love to believe it, but no!

Reading one of those blogs, I do hold a few of the theories listed as mistaken, but I'm not the kind of person they imagine thinks those things - I'm hopeful but not optimistic, let alone overly optimistic; which means I think those thoughts but don't believe them 100%. If that makes any sense.

I'm sorry if this all sounds vague - it doesn't really matter what the topics were that I was reading about today; I just came away thinking "they are nice people but they sound so sure they know what goes through the heads of others - and that's falling at the first fence. We're all 'thinking' things at each other - 'people don't understand me but I understand them.'"

Hmm.

More and more I take comfort from being able to retire into my shell, murmuring "don't mind me - I know nothing." I feel less and less that I know anything.

When I'm angry, I'm more likely to say "but this is so, and that is what they're all like." But even as I say it, I know I'm over-generalizing. I'm only saying it with such confidence because I feel the need to strike out.

We all need to strike out at times, so perhaps I stumbled across both bloggers at such moments. I should take my own advice and stop believing that the bloggers believed in their own words 100% and that they 'definitely think x, y and z'... even though they said they did. They will probably be seeing things from a different perspective tomorrow!

Moving on to other things...

I was trying to take photos of the sky in my back garden, and fired off several shots. I could see them come up on the LCD panel at the back - this one was too pale, but the next OK, and so on. Going back inside, I turned the camera off, then turned round at the door and saw one last shot I wanted. So I turned the camera back on. 'No CF card', it blinked.

I couldn't understand it at all! It's supposed to tell me that BEFORE I take any pictures. Usually it does. So why didn't it do that today? Fortunately there was still a little light left, and the clouds I liked were still somewhere in the vicinity, so I took a deep breath, fetched the CF card, and went back outside to take more pictures.

I can't decide now whether to read Gemini or Taurus horoscopes! I keep flicking back and forth between the two. My Taurus one says:

There's an entertaining fight going on between your more cautious, conservative side and your more outrageous and radical side today. The two of them will be battling it out all day, vying for dominance. But not to worry - it will be a win-win situation for you. Either way, you will enjoy a varied day full of activities and unexpected adventures. Just when you start settling down, your spontaneous side will kick in and get you back on your feet again.

My spontaneous side? My CF card, you mean. (Blows steam through her nose, and kicks up the dust).

Mood: More musing
Listening to: Waily tinnitus

Life flows through your hands like water, and it's impossible to hold onto any of it. I endeavour to assimilate all my thoughts and experiences, and in one sense they become a part of me, but in another they are lost from view.

It's like roaming a dark attic, playing a torch over the bags and boxes assembled there. You highlight the items that please or surprise you, and pass quickly over anything with more negative associations.

If you read a brilliant blog post, you might feel it should change the world simply because it's there and has been written. You might link to it; send your friends and family to read it; talk to the blogger who wrote it... but then what? It could be that everybody you know agrees, and says "yes, that was a jolly good blog post," or (more likely) says nothing at all. And life goes on as usual.

It slips your own mind, and tomorrow you're raving about somebody else's post; a news article; a TV programme; a book; a picture; a cartoon; a letter in a magazine. Or you're staring vaguely at the leaves stirring on a tree, thinking about nothing much at all.

The fact that I keep those 'things' in my attic, I suppose, speaks volumes. Sometimes I get them out again and dust them off. Always, they colour my thoughts and affect my choices.

Last Monday I changed the screensaver on my PC. For a while a marquee scrolled across it in a shocking pink, proclaiming that "Diddums is working hard." Then I changed it to "Diddums is moving house." That stayed there for months, till I got bored with all the unfulfilled suspense, so I switched the screensaver to a random slide show of my pictures.

Having spent so much time recently on my wallpapers and fractals, I was half expecting those to show up in a bombastic display of glittering talent. Instead, I received bits and pieces of my life from the dustiest corners of my attic, such as:

• a photo of Thor (my cat who died) curled up with a client's dog;
• a pair of bears with their heads together;
• a bunch of bruins we entered in a teddy bear show;
• a wall of cat show rosettes (long since taken down);
• other people's cats;
• the view from my house after a snowstorm;
• a shot of the river during a sunny summer walk with Thundercloud;
• a weird dragon picture of mine;
• fuzzy NASA photo of a nebula (playfully phased up out of the blackness of my desktop);
• one of my all-time favourite wallpapers - Endless Blue by Digital Blasphemy.

Snips and snaps from my past and present, with treasures discovered along the way. Each one shows up for five seconds then is gone, replaced by the next in line. A constant string of images and impressions which might return periodically, or perhaps never.

Story of my life.

Mood: Musing
Listening to: Nothing

The world isn't black and white, and there isn't always a perfect solution to problems, just as there isn't always someone to blame - not even yourself.

That annoys me.

I want everything to be neat, logical and fair - but it's not.

It could be that we're all just part of the colour spectrum - we make a grand light show. Or we're the cells of a larger organism - maybe a giant rhubarb that grows ponderously in space. When I see the repeated patterns and shifting hues of fractal art, I can't help but wonder...

Mood: Vacant
Listening to: Ghostly song in my head: 'Chances' by Air Supply

Funny old life - sometimes there's so much going on in my mind that I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. At those times I feel I'm living and not just existing, but probably it's just my imagination.

At Mum's today, I was trying to tell her something about bin collection schedules, and why fortnightly uplifts are well-meaning but probably don't work, and kept floating off in a vague kind of way. In an older woman it would be taken as senility - for all I know, that's what it is!

I have been reading a collection of English essays - the book was in my 'discard' pile but it has given me far too much food for thought to be discarded just yet. It nearly went in the charity shop bag along with Humphry Clinker and Pamela, but I stopped to flick through it just in case there was anything interesting. My eye was caught by Leigh Hunt's half-hearted attempts to get up on cold mornings, followed by drowsy musings on the delights of sleep. Having read that, I went back to the beginning and read the rest of the assorted essays, and since then I've been good for nothing. Mind wandering all over the place.

I should have listened to the decluttering expert's advice not to flick through books to see if I want to keep them, but I was about to say this was irrefutable proof that one should be very sure before discarding anything. Sometimes it kickstarts something that you might never have got involved in otherwise.

I read the essays in such a receptive frame of mind that I was prepared to accept almost anything these wise men said, but I found here and there that I was taking a slight dislike to this writer or that - and sometimes I would initially be beguiled by the smart confidence of the words, and begin by nodding, and slowly the nodding would turn into a puzzled shake of the head, and I wouldn't quite know why. I did that to Aldous Huxley. I didn't like his habit of coining a slick phrase such as 'modernity-snobbery' and repeating it over and over. There was a lot of generalization going on there, too. I keep saying to myself "but everything's a generalization up to a point - even if I say that I like coffee, I'm generalizing because there are some varieties of coffee I probably wouldn't like at all. And sometimes I love coffee while other times I'm a bit nauseated by the thought of it - actually probably only once or twice in my life when I wasn't well, but still..."

Yet some generalizations are more noticeable than others. It not that I disagreed with everything he said, I just felt there was something falling by the wayside. Some essential truth.

I need to think about it more - my mind is still pottering vaguely about, poking a stick under roots and going 'ah ha!' now and then, then promptly forgetting the quick flash of illumination.

Which reminds me of a centipede I saw today - it was running away from the hospital building site as hard as it could, which unfortunately means it was headed for the busy roundabout. Poor wee creature. Maybe it just stepped down in the gutter and hid in a crack, then went back to the field. That's what I prefer to think.

Now, where was I...?

Gosh knows. I wish the move was over and done with. Though Mum showed me some lovely glass 'uplighter' shades she bought for my sitting room - there are two main lights, currently shaded by old white Chinese lanterns. I said to her "I have to get something better than those if we're letting the house," and she agreed. So she appeared today with those pretty glass uplighters and I was enraptured. I stared at them for a long moment, rather regretfully, then said "I think I'm moving back in!"

But I can't stay just because I fell in love with the new lightshades.

I gave one of my pet clients a cuddly toy cat (from my thinned-down collection) and she nicknamed it 'Fat White'. Today I got an email from her with the subject heading 'Fat White' and I thought "what - am I to go and feed it, or did it go and die or something...?"

Recent events have made me quite twitchy.

Thankfully it was just to let me know it's well settled in and has found a cosy corner out of the light of the window. The same client got herself a trolley too - I suspect I'm not the only crazy person, but sometimes I think I'm helping to make other people even crazier than they were to start with. Makes for a better world, I think.

Fractals. Yes, fractals - meant to send one to Caedes today, which I was rather proud of, but I just look at it and don't do anything. Maybe later. Made some little worlds today. Quite pleased with them. My LunarCell plugin (by Flaming Pear) was involved with the surface detail, but wasn't responsible for them in their entireties - I tried to do as much as possible on my own. Might put a little one up here. Just before I get some sleep. See my planet - this is where I live. Good night.

Mood: Pensive
Listening to: Nothing

One of Mum's friends lives not far from me, and she's very sweet. (That's a word I don't often use, about anybody or anything!) Whenever something sad happens in my life, she sends a small sympathy gift - and it works. Mostly because I haven't been sitting around thinking "what are people going to send me this time?" It comes out of the blue.

She sent a small pot of spring flowers when Thor died - and a year later it's still blooming. There's a hyacinth, a couple of small narcissi and something that's like a primula (I'm not much of a botanist). Primula it probably is. Even that's still alive.

She also sent something when Fusspot died - I think it was a bit of 'sympathy tablet', long since demolished. It's not the item itself that helps, it's the thought behind it, especially when it wasn't expected. And of course, whenever I see the pot of flowers, I think of Thor, and I also think of our friend (let's call her Joy, as she does seem to like in spreading a little of it around if possible). Two thoughts melded together in one pot.

The decluttering book I was reading said (quite sensibly) that you might have an item or two around the house that you are still getting good use out of, but if they remind you of a sad or annoying event for whatever reason, then it's not good feng shui. You would be well advised to give those items away and (if necessary) replace them with items that don't have those specific associations.

I know what she means about the sudden 'dip' in your morale - for instance, if I look at an old paperback that's all tattered and sellotaped up the spine, I remember the day I argued with Mum (as a teenager) and she tore up the book I was reading (that one) and pitched it in the bin.

The only problem there is, there's no dip in morale when I look at the book - I'm more inclined to smile a little. I can't even remember what the row was about, and I've long since filed the incident under 'stroppy teenagers and their overstressed mothers'.

The principle works for other things, though - when you catch sight of this object or that, you are reminded of stuff you don't want to be reminded about. There's a bear in my collection I connect with Thor's death. The bear was beside him on the sofa at the time, and got a little messed up in the process. Now, every time I catch the bear's eye, there's a little mournful something there that seems to say "'t'ain't right." I'm convinced she's depressed! I even caught her eye the day I sent Fusspot to the vet, and it gave me a little shiver... but probably it's just me looking at her and remembering.

That's the sort of thing we're supposed to rehome. The bear could be washed and given a nice dress or sweater, then sent somewhere where she no longer has those mournful associations. On the other hand, we shared something that night... and who else experienced it with me, apart from Sharky himself?

Pulling myself out of this gloomy train of thought... looking at the pot of flowers from Joy always reminds me of Thor - but it also reminds me of her kindness, and the spring, and the sun, and the earth, and the cool, fresh air and ongoing life, all mixed up together - and my spirit rises rather than takes a dip. It's amazingly good feng shui.