Hope Writer Challenge - Reimagine

The last topic for the @hopewriters writing challenge is Reimagine (#hopewriterlife)

Ah yes, reimagine.  What can I say?  Of course I imagined 2020 differently.

We all did.  We all of us had a rhythm and a plan for our lives that didn't involve being stuck indoors and suddenly conducting our business and entire social calendar through a video chat.

I've watched people struggle putting desks together on their own in order to try to accommodate a home office.  I've heard people ask for prayers as they set up Google classrooms for kindergartners saying "God is my only tech support".  None of us imagined the world this way, or were prepared for it when it came.

So when I reimagine 2020, I naturally start by thinking about my original plans.  I think about the way I had mundane plans for doctor visits and a few weekend plans to see friends.  And I begin to question if my plans haven't changed for the better in some ways.

I'm more aware of and focused on my neighborhood. It's becoming a community again. And I have been able to help address some needs there I might not otherwise been aware of.

And as I think about how I want this year to progress, I've been thinking about what goals, writing or otherwise, I want to accomplish.  The conclusion I've reached is that I want to be more bold.  I need to stop prepping, stop organizing the supplies and just do it.  I am skilled enough.  I am ready.  Whatever isn't perfect I'll edit and work on once I've sat down and accomplished some things.

That is my goal, to put into action some bolder plans than I might not have imagined myself doing at the start of this year.  The world has paused for a moment and I've used that pause to reflect on what I really want to achieve.  To reflect on what I really want the future to look like for myself and our world.  I hope you can all step out into a bolder better 2020 as well.  The future is what we make of it, let's make it a good one, a bold one, a better one. 

Hope Writer Challenge - Reconnect

For the sixth day of @hopewriters writing challenge (#hopewriterlife) the prompt was Reconnect.

I Reconnect is an incredibly important theme this year. As we reimagine how our 2020 will look in the future or what it may have been in a different version of itself, reconnecting is at the core of it.

As we all entered lockdown, with very different flavors and inflections based on where we lived, we all had to reimagine connection.  In isolation connection is more important than ever.  But we had to reimagine it and how to reconnect.

I have personally found myself reconnecting with old friends that live far away.  I love them dearly, but the distance often keeps our lives rather separate.  Now that all communication and connection is digital it seems easier to reconnect with friends from out of state.  It's just as easy to get an out of town friend on zoom as it is to get your close neighbor on a zoom call.

With less outside activities demanding our time, there is less competition for our focus, and more time to schedule for friends.  Time zones seem to matter less when you're in all day.  And while I don't want or expect my friends to keep their schedules open indefinitely, it has been a lovely change to reconnect with good old friends at this time.

Some of our built up rhythm will carry with us into the rest of the year even as restrictions lift.  In part because we have reimagined how we connect with one another already.  My friends and I have started a quarantine book club.  When we go back to our outside activities we may not be able to zoom call each other all the time as we have been regularly.  But we will keep up our digital bookclub.

Sometimes all you need for reconnection is a start.  As we strive to reclaim a sense of normalcy we find ourselves not just imagining, but also reinventing the way we connect.  And I think that having put so much time into reconnecting we have enriched the days and months to come, whatever they may hold.

So, find ways to reconnect in a positive way.  Call someone you care about, tell someone how special they are to you.  Have a phone or zoom call with people you miss.  Enrich the rest of your 2020 with positive and meaningful reconnections. 

Hope Writer Challenge - Restore

Today's prompt for the @hopewriters writing challenge is Restore. #hopewriterlife

I cannot tell you how words and stories may restore other people. I can only speak to my experience. I can only tell you what words do for me.

Sometimes the world is too much and the messages of doubt and fear and inadequacy overwhelm me. They begin to reinforce those intensely negative thoughts my inner critic tells me when I'm not paying too much attention. This inter critic is insidious, it won't engage when I answer back with logic because it knows it has nothing to say.

But it whispers dark fears in my ear when I am not on my guard. And sometimes it's blows land and I'm left reeling, wondering if it's right. That is the moment words are the most critical. I have to find the right ones to join my cause. Recruit the write poetry and friends to stand with me as I prepare for battle.
And for me, I must always do battle on paper. I must write.

You see, the critic thrives on emotion and in the dark corners of your mind where logic can't illuminate it and it can loom shadowy and unopposed. If I drag that inter critic into the light and put it on paper it doesn't stand a chance. The arguments don't hold up. Spoken in dark whispers, "you are worthless" or "you're unnecessary" can be weighty and can coil around you and feel inescapable. Such sentiments prey upon your emotions.

When you put those critiques on paper and engage with the ideas, it takes a little of the weight and sting out of them. So for every dark emotional thought that I'm worthless, that I'll never be a writer and my work is rubbish, that I'm a terrible person (the worst in fact); I make the effort to find at least one argument against them. I do help people and many people rely on me for support. I am capable of many things. And even if I wasn't, every human has worth. I may not be published yet, but I'm not quitting. I am a writer and no writer is perfect, that's what drafts and editing are for. I'm not a terrible person. I'm certainly not the worst ever. Historical examples of worse people abound. And I do what I can. I'm only human but I'm not a bad one. I'm kind of a decent person actually.

Just like that the tide of emotional darkness turns. In the battle for my mind, I drag my opponents into the light and expose their poison and trickery. I defeat them with carefully planned logic and words. Healthier words, truer words, more positive words.

Half the battle is knowing that you're in it and the other half is perseverance. You do not restore yourself in an instant with a flick of your wrist like magic. Restoration is a process, a journey, a series of determined actions.

For me it is important to change the story whenever I feel overwhelmed and belittled. If I feel obligated to attend a party that will be challenging for me because certain attendees make me feel small; I change the story. I look at myself and say "you have a choice. You are choosing to attend this party because you are larger than fear. You are the Queen and you have magnanimously decided to allow your enemies to attend. Pay them no attention." I might still be anxious, but making a conscious choice to turn the story around makes me feel less trapped by circumstances. I feel less small.

Remember that your life is greatly shaped and altered by the story you craft for yourself. Do not let it be created entirely by the critic who's views are false. Make sure you combat it with truth and hope. If you struggle to find the right words, augment your story with poetry that touches your soul. You can borrow someone else's words to help lift your wings.

You are the hero of your own story. No, you cannot change what has come before but you always have a chance to decide what happens next. You can pick yourself up and go about the important process of restoring yourself, put yourself back together with hope, words and perseverance.

So find good words. 

Find great words. 

Write your own words and don't ever accept defeat. 

Imagine a better future and fight for it.

Hope Writer Challenge - Remember

Today for @hopewriters writing challenge #hopewriterlife the topic is Remember.

When we talk about remembering it is important to keep in mind that memory is not perfect. It is perfectly possible to forget something that felt momentous at the time whereas seemingly insignificant things can linger for years to come.

I find that it is almost more important to record the little things that happen. The small moments that mean so much in life because life is not a straight forward journey. For me, I'm making sure to record the little things that surprise me during this time of global pandemic. I want to remember in years to come the things that made me smile in the midst of tragedy, the moments of friendship that lightened my load and encouraged me. I want to record for posterity the things that surprised me during this time and the things that I learned.

I used this double photo (in a spinning double sided frame) for today's image because I feel it represents life both in its journey and its singular strength and beauty. There are things I wish I could forget about this time, burdens I do not wish to bear. This frame sits on my desk to remind me that life is a journey much like a spiral staircase. It's as much about going sideways and around as it is about going up. Progress in life is often accomplished by going many steps sideways before you go forward.

On the other side is a photo of two buildings from two very different ages, both beautiful. It is straight lines and reflections. These buildings tell me that strength and beauty look different in different times. Every age of your life holds a different piece of your truth. Your strength and beauty grows and changes with time reflecting your progress, your journey. You are no less strong or beautiful for having different shapes and emphases in different ages of your life. Even as you reinvent yourself, it is built upon your old strength, just as the older building is reflected in the windows of the newer one.

May this remind you, as it does me, that even if you're different from the other buildings, you are still beautiful. You are still strong. You just need to keep following your own lines. Be your own building, for that is where your strength and beauty lies. 

Remember that and it will help you through the tough days when all your steps go sideways and you cannot see the end of the winding stairs. 

Remember too, that even when nobody around you looks like you, you are strong and beautiful and that your steps will wind upwards slowly even when you can't see it.

Hope Writer Challenge - Reimagine 2020 - Rewrite

Hope Writer's hosted an Instagram writing challenge to reimagine 2020.  The challenge had a different topic every day for a week. And the first day's topic was Rewrite.  I wrote about all of this on Instagram on my profile @madderhattery, but I'd like to repost the writing here because I think we need more words of hope these days.

Reimagine 2020 - Rewrites

Spring Blossoms in Chicago - photo by The Madder Hatter

As part of the Hope Writer's challenge I'm talking about Rewrites today.

As much as we may wish to change the things that have already happened, we cannot.  What we can do is take this unprecedented turn of affairs, this global pandemic, and use it to rewrite our lives.

Everywhere I look I see neighbors meeting and growing closer during this new distance.  Being stuck at home has forced us to look closer at our communities and see the very real things going on in our own backyards.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in the rhythm of our daily lives that we don't ask ourselves if it's the right rhythm.  This forced pause has caused us to look inward.  We can't run from our thoughts and doubts when they are the only company we keep.  So I think it's time we face them.

It's time to take the giant blank slate of our future and reimagine it.  How often have you heard someone shout down your dreams because they couldn't ever be?  It's just the way the world is.  Yet, here we are living in a world nobody had imagined.  It tells you something; some of the largest most unavoidable things about modern life are entirely arbitrary.  And not only can we change them, we can change a lot of them all at once in the course of a few weeks.

So take up your life and examine it.  Listen in the quiet for what you've always known you wanted and use this pause to start fighting for it.  The future can be rewritten, no matter what course it was on before.  Take a moment to learn from your fear and anger what it is your heart really wants.

Don't put off that project, career change, or dream.  Start down that path today.  Nobody can say what the future will bring, but it certainly won't hold the things you didn't bother to fight for.

You are the author of your future.  Pick up your pen today and remember that coming together (even when that means staying apart), is what makes us stronger.  Remember that there is always something you can do to help both yourself and someone else.  And remember that every single one of us will help shape the future.   So make it a good one.   Make it a beautiful one.  Make it a loving, accepting and hopeful one.  Join me and rewrite a better future for all of us.

A Whole Tree of Spring Blossoms in Chicago photo by the Madder Hatter 

I wrote those words about the global pandemic just a few weeks ago, but I think they take on new relevance now considering the racism and injustice we've all seen this last week.  Even reconsidering it all I want to leave you with the same words.  

Join me and rewrite a better future for all of us.

Winter Without Happiness

Happiness was my lover before the dark times.  Together we laughed through carefree, barefoot days and her hair sparkled in the dappled, spring sunlight.  Our lives were tangled up in the soft intimacy of quiet comfort, secure in each other and our places in the world.  Every activity, no matter how mundane, was made more beautiful with Happiness in my heart and by my side.  We felt certain our days would carry on as blissfully as the summer roses unfolded in the mornings.

Photo via Flickr "roses" by Samantha Forsberg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Autumn brought with it a hint of the dark times to come but we bundled warmly and laughed in the crisp winds that playfully threw up leaves for us to dance in.  Happiness found beauty in the smallest things and the bite of the rain on a sharp edge of the wind simply reminded her she was alive.

Photo via Flickr "autumn and you" by cherry-vn licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

The dark times descended with a powerful suddenness that was inescapable.  Brooding clouds swept low with the same fateful thunderous wind that tore Happiness and I asunder.  Straining to reach each other and being dragged off by the dark, roaring winds of change, our hands, the last things to be torn from one another, our lonely, empty hands, haunted my memories.

Dragged reluctantly into a private war I fought many lonely, cold and dark battles.  I walked barren paths without companionship and the warmth of hope.  I had lost Happiness to the vast, lingering darkness.  What hope was left for me?  I wished for her sake she had found someone to share her days with and all the while I resigned myself to the lonely gloom being my continued lot in life.  I was a prisoner of the darkness and there was no hope of escape.  Memories of Happiness would float unbidden to my mind in the small hours of the lonely morning.  Bitter loss accompanied the heartbreaking longing I felt for Happiness.  I had once found perfect and beautiful ease in her company and the loss tightened my chest with memories of the dreadful, inescapable moment when I lost everything for which I cared.

Photo via Flickr "darkest path" by Mrs Janet R licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

Somehow, amidst threats of still worse ends, I was released from my captivity.  I cared not that I was free; life was wearisome without Happiness.  Aimless wandering down tangled and dark paths seemed to lead further into the darkness.  My loneliness and lack of hope were complete.  I trudged on with tearful footfalls amidst the overgrown, winding way.  The fates were nudging me forward to better days though the overgrowth served to hide the gradually lightening skies from my view.  Hopeless and weary I moved with unnoticing and heavy tread through leaves that Happiness, had she the misfortune to walk this road, might have found beauty in.


Suddenly, it seemed so suddenly, my path ended in a town I no longer recognized as home.  Did it feel familiar because I had been here before or because all days were tinged with a familiar bleak and weary tint?  I cared not.  Tales wound through town of a worn out, empty husk of a person who had wandered through the darkness so long they no longer remembered the light.  One such tale reached Happiness.  She mourned for this broken soul and something began to glimmer in her mind, the first hint of hope that it might be me.  If the darkness could relinquish one soul it could relinquish me.

Photo via Flickr "roses" by PHOTOPHANATIC1 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

In a way my inner darkness was a spectacle.  Intriguing and self-contained it was a safe danger that drew spectators with its mystery.  Slowly pieces of my tale circulated in swirling dark eddies through town.  A poor soul, parted from Happiness, doomed to walk a weary world alone.  The story of my loss finally reached her and a whispered name of who I used to be.  The wind brought it to her ear.  The wind also whispered to me, Happiness, was all it said.  But somehow I knew that she was in reach.  I began to weep; all the tears I had not dared to feel in my loneliness and all the hopes I barely dared to believe could no longer be contained.  I shed my black mantle and walked haltingly to stand in the sunlight.  I will look for Happiness again.  And ever since Happiness heard my name, she has been running through the streets trying to find me.

Photo "Spring" by Madder Hatter licensed under CC BY 2.0 

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.” Hafiz of Persia

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This short story was inspired by the quote from Hafiz of Persia “Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”

It struck me suddenly that I've grown up thinking of Happiness as a teasing woodland spirit who is ever fleeing from your grasp, at her best, and at her worst, as never showing her face so that you doubt her existence.  I loved the idea of Happiness actively seeking you out.  This beautiful quote immediately reminded me of parted lovers and thus this story of parting and longing and hopeful reunion was born.

Photo via Flickr "Italian roses" by Steve Batch UK licensed under CC BY 2.0 

It is not for me to write about the reunion.  This is because you and I, we are each of us the protagonist, and the story of our separation from Happiness may be similar, but the story of our reunion with Happiness will be as unique as we are.  All I know is that Happiness is trying to find you and it is up to you to step outside into the sunlight and write your own reunion story.

Mending a Heart of Glass

So what do you do with a life when your heart lies in shattered piles of glass on the ground?

You cry.

Broken things need to be cared for, grieved over.  You can't pretend the trauma didn't happen, you can't push it down and just carry on.  You have to take the sad, broken things out of the pile at the back of your closet and bring them tenderly into soft morning light and grieve over them.  You need to weep for your pain, for your broken dreams, for yourself.

It's now June, nine months after I wrote about the wreckage that was once my heart and how it was first broken into a million jagged pieces of shattered dreams. (In the post When a Glass Heart Shatters).  And I think it is no coincidence that nine months after this accident I'm ready to revisit this topic and give an answer.  Nine months, the amount of time it takes for a baby to be born with a new heart, or, as I see it, the amount of time it takes for a broken heart to be reborn new.

But a new heart is not reborn without work.  At first you cannot even begin this work.  You must live from one moment to the next.  Trying to do otherwise is overwhelming.  In my other post I spoke about instinctively knowing that forwards and backwards were not options.  After a shattering the past is too painful.  There is no going back.  After a shattering the person you were and the life you had are broken and will never be the same again.  Thinking about the past only reminds you of how painful and broken you are in comparison to the whole person you used to be and your reality cuts you all the deeper.  The future is also too terrifying to contemplate; filled with unknowns and consequences that you know must arise from your shattering, but you do not have the courage to think about at first.  Instinctively you know that you can only change directions, but with the sudden way that all your old plans shattered, all new things feel unsafe.

So until you are strong enough to face anything else, you live only in the now.  Only living in this exact moment.  That is how you survive until you are strong enough to face new things and the implications of the shattering you lived through.  And you must keep crying.  You must grieve for all your pains, all your losses.  You must grieve in many different ways and you must allow yourself to feel as hurt as you are, pushing it down and pretending you are not hurt will not aid in your healing. 

Then slowly with determination not to allow yourself to die in a heap in the gutter you pick yourself up.  You stagger, you trudge one foot at time away.  Anywhere.  Just away from the wreckage.  Maybe you go right, maybe you double back to the wreckage and go left.  Maybe you fall a few feet away and cry.  But every time you slowly pick yourself up and trudge one step further.  You cling to family and friends for support.  The ones that stick by you are the ones you cherish as true friends.  Throughout this process of healing you will need them all the more.

And slowly in your stumbling steps you live in the moment and find that you notice things around you.  It may be a funny shaped crack in the pavement, or a brightly coloured leaf that has caught your eye.  You may notice a broken sign or a beautifully exuberant dog.  Noticing the broken things will touch on your pain and gently, ever so gently you will start to think about those wounds and heal.  Noticing the bright, beautiful and living things will slowly remind you of the beauty that can still be found in your world and you will gently begin to heal.  Always in noticing and gentle reflection there is healing.

One day, after who knows how many months of grieving and living in the moment, your staggering steps will find a hint of a path.  Just the beginning of one.  You allow the love of family and friends to sustain you and you let them gently guide you towards a straighter path, pushing you gently towards something that almost looks like progress.  It doesn't always look brave and big.  Progress can be as small as admitting that your past is staying in the past.  Progress can be admitting that you need to continue to stagger away from the wreck.  Progress could be finding a flower growing from a crack in the sidewalk and letting yourself believe that there can be hope in a sea of despair.  Or perhaps you just admit that you are still looking for answers, a way forward and you don't have them yet.

Looking eventually leads towards finding.

In September I decided I would curl up by the wreckage and wait for answers.  That was as brave as my looking was capable of being at that time.  I was waiting for God, for direction, for an answer for a start and a path.  My path had shattered.  I felt alone.  But out of a stubborn determination not to let my brokenness consume me I got up and moved one step.  Determination, and the love of family, and friends (and a few animals), kept me putting one foot in front of the other.

I admitted that my past was broken, that I was different.  I found that I could still find a sad beauty in the world and I left the glass shards of my heart in the back corner of my mind until I was strong enough to deal with them.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't wake up one day and find myself strong enough to do it.  I needed prodding and coaxing to even start.  The friends who care about me have pushed me closer to the pile of shards.  And some days I did a bit of clean up.  Some days I honestly sat on the curb by the glass shards and sobbed, grieving the injuries and the events that led me to this state.  Grieving for the wounds and the losses I've sustained.  Slowly there were days where I was finally able to make halting progress of consolidation and tidying.  I was starting to work on myself.  I went to therapy, saw a doctor, started caring for myself, for my physical, mental and emotional well-being.

And I personally think that God must have been listening to my silent cry in September because I think he sent me the people I needed in my life in order for me survive it.  He sent the right friends to be there for me.  He sent steadfast friends who knew the depths of my pain.  He sent me people to support me, cry with me, lift me up and love me.

Lastly, he sent me an artist.  I didn't know I needed one until he arrived.  God sent me an artist who saw all the broken pieces of my heart lying hopeless in the gutter and still found beauty in them.  And so I sat beside my heap of jagged, broken pieces of heart and I decided to grieve the injuries done to them and finally start to straighten up the mess.

When my artist would see a new wound I would see a sadness in his face that finally allowed me to feel as though I could openly grieve the deepest cuts.  I couldn't always see the beauty in my brokenness that he saw, but I was tired of avoiding the scene of the gutter and leaving that mess hanging around to loom over me and shadow my days.  So, slowly, ever so slowly, I picked up small pieces of jagged glass flung far out into the street and I grieved over them and put them in the main pile, consolidating.  One piece of glass at a time I tried to straighten up the carnage of my broken heart and dreams.

Cleaning up such an accident is more of a journey than a task.  It involves grief, and pain and it's a long painstaking process.  And when a heart has broken in such a dramatic fashion your body builds knots of emotional walls around it to try to prevent the damage from spreading.  So, you have to spend time carefully unraveling the knots of distrust, broken promises and other hastily constructed emotional walls in order to even come close enough to start cleaning up the scene of the accident.  This process is painful, but it is necessary for healing.

Some days you make real progress, you find a way to take three steps forward; you deliberately pull down small portions of the walls you worked so hard to build.  But there are also days where the emotional pain is too much and you kick pieces of your heart further into the gutter in frustration, despair and black misery.

But sitting beside me, bending down to reach into the gutter, not shying away from the dirt, jagged edges and misery is the artist that was sent to me.   Every time I fell he picked me up.  He grieved with me.  He took the broken pieces of my heart that I kicked into a corner.  He gathered them up gently and he told me that light shines through the cracks where the heart has been broken before.

He helped me go searching for words I could speak to my fear.  We embarked on a journey together; going through the Artist's Way which has taught me enough to be the subject of many future posts.  For now, however, it is worth mentioning that it is teaching me to practice gentle self-care and to speak back against the dark, doubting thoughts of fear in my mind.

My artist helped me find my words for safety by always being a safe place for my emotions to rest and by searching with me for the right words to fight back against the darkness.  I found them in an unexpected place.  Alongside my Artist, I had the privilege of hearing a Mayan Tribal Elder speak at a Cocoa Ceremony where she spoke about the tribulations of her people.  She said "We do not admit that we were conquered.  We were invaded, yes, but not conquered.  They may have tried to kill us.  They buried us.  But they didn't know they were planting seeds."  The moment I heard these words I began to cry.  These were the words I had been searching for to bring the piece of hope I couldn't find on my own.

How does one live in a world where bad things happen, where you know they can happen at any time to you, and still feel safe?  Here is where I find safety.  That whatever bad things may come, whether or not they kill me, they will only be planting seeds.  I may not be the same after.  But I will grow back, I will be stronger.  I am unstoppable.  And in this lies my safety.

On this journey, my Artist helped me notice the beautiful things.  As time went on he kept showing me the beautiful things in life, in the little moments as well as the big ones.  Every time I saw beauty in the world I would discover a small piece of my heart that wasn't completely broken.  The mess in the gutter was less daunting.  And slowly, he helped me gather all the pieces together with love.  He melted the broken pieces of my heart back together and he added new material, new glass, and my heart is now encased in this protective case of new glass that has no memory of fragility and is therefore stronger than ever.  And the cracks in the old pieces of my heart shine with the tenderness of empathy that brokenness pours into a heart.

I am old and new.  No, you cannot undo the brokenness, but you can decide what happens next.  I have found a seed at the bottom of the shattered heap and with the heat from a forge I have brought forth a tiny plant, my heart a Phoenix rising from the wreckage.  And my new heart, born with work and patience was given so much love by friends and family that I can never adequately express my gratitude to those who gave it.

When a Glass Heart Shatters

In September I asked this question and I meant everything that follows.  I'm posting it now because I think a lot of people go through life shatterings and feel alone and don't know what to do about it.  So, here is what I lived through:

What do you do with your life when your heart has been shattered into thousands of jagged pieces of broken glass?  All of them crumbled into a glittering heap of broken dreams that were once shiny and new, now lying flat on their faces in the road tarnished by dirt and no longer reflecting hope.

Some people have advised gathering all these jagged pieces of your heart together, picking them up and continuing down the same path you were on before.  I've looked at all their sharp edges and balked.  Gathering them up will only cut up my hands.

There is no mending of broken glass.  It's broken, it can't be put back together, picking up the fragments is dangerous to the safety of the rest of me.  I don't need to bleed from other places while I try hopelessly to salvage broken portions of my heart.

Over the last few years, I've sort of put a fence around my heart.  Caution tape and orange plastic fences around the scene of the accident.  Head on collision, lots of broken glass all in a heap.  Every so often on weekends, I stop by to marvel at the wreckage.  Even less often I come prepared with gloves and tweezers and I stoop down close to the pile.  I'll gather up two pieces of glass and glue them together and then leave them off to the side.  Maybe one day they'll function again, but I don't hold my breath.  There is one chunk of my heart still functioning and I've left it in there for examination by experts at the scene.

When these experts are on shift they do detective work and try to figure out where things went wrong and I more or less give the whole thing a really wide berth.  I don't walk the same path anymore.  I don't do the same things.  I've essentially left my heart in it's crumbled little pile and carried on with the one chunk I have left.

What's the point of picking up the pieces?  The world isn't what we want it to be.  It's not our bloody oyster.  It's the way it is.  Cold, impersonal, brutal and real.  It doesn't care if your heart gets involved in a twenty car pile up on the freeway, or is beaten with a bat, or gets thrown against a wall at the end of a relationship.  Whether you've lost someone, lost a dream, lost a whole life, lost all hope, it makes no difference.  The world is just the way it is and stumbling around brokenly carrying bloody handfuls of shattered glass isn't going to change that.

No, you can't just go on.  You'll never be the same.  Even if you miraculously managed to piece together your heart and glue it together with a billion uneven fractures into a whole heart you wouldn't be the same.  Even if you gathered every tiny sliver of glass up and not a single piece was left lying in the street you wouldn't be the same.  You would always have the scars, the fractures that were just a little bit weaker, the chance you could shatter again more easily, and the memory.  Even if you melted all of your glass fragments down and reformed them again you would remember that once they laid shattered in a heap, alone, broken, hopeless in a gutter.  And you would feel more fragile for it.

So knowing this, knowing all of this and looking at the sad pile of broken glass on the ground that used to belong to me, what do I do?  Solitude is calling to me but it offers no respite.  It calls in the way that solitude calls to a wounded animal.  It wants me to slink off to a solitary place and hope for a peaceful death.  My wounds, however, are not fatal.  They are of the marring variety, the sort that almost make you wish you'd died but leave you unmercifully in a state of sadly altered life.

Never.

The word that caused this shattering with a single blow.  It's finality gripping and crushing and harsh.

So where do you go from here?  Part of my life has ended violently, shattered and gone.  I see it lying there hopelessly fractured.  How can there be a forward now?  My cat nature tells me that I cannot go either forward or back.  That leaves me left and right.  But both options seem hopeless when faced with the jagged remains of what used to be a heart and the dreams that are gone forever.

Maybe I will lie here, curled up near the scene of the crime and wait for an answer on what comes next.  I hope God is listening because he is also involved in this wreck.  But I have lost hope that he will answer.

So, what do I do? 

If you want to know what I did with my life and my heart in the months that followed, the continuation post: Mending a Heart of Glass, will be posted soon.

Welcome Sweet Shrouding Fog of Unknown Futures

Goodnight World,

Rest in the peaceful shroud of unknown tomorrows.  May the languid winds of unformed futures gently smooth your weary brow.  Too long have you worried over the unnamed monsters of the morrow; turning desperately this way and that to thwart them.  Morning's harsh light may part the mist and reveal to you the fearful outlines of Scylla and Charybdis.  But here, now, in these final hours of rest welcome the sweet shrouding fog of unknown futures.  Scylla's slashing teeth cannot steal your slumber from you.  Neither can Charybdis change your course this final night of sightless sleep.  Inevitable fate awaits you, World, one man, or even many being powerless to change it.  Fate, ah The Fates, there is no room for fear in the unfamiliar future they have fixed for you.  Mist will rise, the shroud will part and tomorrow you will stride forth boldly into the fray, the fight, the future.  Tomorrow, deeds having been done, the course of the future will unfurl before you in all its fury.  Scylla and Charybdis will greet you and the terrible consequences of the course set before you will be plain to see.  Tonight, embrace the twilight of unrevealed tribulations.  Lay fear aside, thank all the stars that you were not born into Cassandra's curse and gather the dusk around you in the final slumber in the blissfully unknown future ahead of you.

The Lazy Luddite

Despite that fact that I have always declared myself to be a Luddite, it would seem that I am a bit too lazy to be a really good one.  I do have moments where I consider defenestration to be the only real solution to my technological woes.  And of course, stomping on things can be truly satisfying.  But I always seem to stop just short of this truly Luddite action and carry on using, though slightly grudgingly, all the most modern sorts of technology I claim to hate.  I have thought about it and I think the reason is honestly that I am too lazy to be a good Luddite.

Throwing your laptop out the window might be satisfying for a few minutes.  Then the realization of all the things you have to do over will slowly sink in.  What about all those photos I put on it?  I don't have them saved elsewhere because that requires more technology and effort and time.  And all those random documents I have on it.  Variations of CVs and resumes that I really don't want to have to recreate.  I would die of sheer boredom.  Then there is the fact that killing off your current technological device just means you'll have to replace it with another one.  As much as the old device irritates you at least you know how it works.  New devices have all these complicated features that don't work the way that logic would dictate they should.  I suppose what I'm really saying is that I hate change more than I hate technology.  I could reasonably adopt the saying "change is bad, new is terrifying" as my personal motto.

Nice little phone minding its own business.  Suddenly senses that it is being followed.

That's really the problem with technology.  They never leave things alone.  They "improve" all the things that worked until they don't work anymore, until they become the least logical way of doing things, and make your life more complicated.  At the same time the real problems never seem to be fixed or worked on.  It seems like the masters and makers of the technology change things simply for the sake of creating change and that is the epitome of evil as far as I am concerned.  So, in this way I am truly a Luddite.  I see technological advances as challenging my way of life and I resent them.  I like the old way.  I understand it.  I do not want it to change.

Heart pounding the phone runs.  It trips on a curb and falls.  Then it sees its attacker and screams.

Perhaps you are wondering why all of a sudden I felt a need to rant about technology.  What precipitated this outburst, you ask yourself?  My phone.  My nice, easy, uncomplicated phone decided that it had worked for too many years.  It decided it was done working and that it needed to die, quite suddenly, in the middle of the night dragging me into yet another clash with technology.  I suppose it is rather fitting that my phone chose to die here in Leeds, that my technological struggle takes place here in this city.  You see, Leeds is located in what used to be the West Riding of Yorkshire, which along with Lancashire, saw the largest disturbances from the Luddite movement.  So it really is fitting that my old ways are being challenged here.

Incoming call from Hammer de Muerte.  A proud moment for a true Luddite.

So, being that I hate technology and change so much, and seeing that I think that technology is pretty much magic, see my thoughts on flash drives, the question is really this... why don't I seize this opportunity to really turn Luddite and do my convictions proud?  Because it requires too much work, that's why.  As much as I complain about the way technology ruins my life, it really has to be said that it makes many things easier.  For instance, I do prefer actually writing with a pen in my hand.  I find it easier to think that way.  But who has the time to hand write essays and then type them out later?  I barely had time for all the reading I had to do as it was.  Typing out essays as I went and using flash drives was the lazy option.  When it came down to it I preferred to spend less time writing and rewriting by hand, be a bit lazy and sleep a bit more.  Have you ever met a college/university student who got enough sleep?  I haven't.  Of course, this doesn't mean that I don't write by hand.  I do keep a hand-written journal.  On occasion I scribble down random story ideas and whatnot and I absolutely adore writing in this way, with real pen and paper.  It just feels better.

But wait.  What is that?  The Luddite begins to tremble in fear.

The same can be said for communication.  I prefer writing and receiving real letters to emails, but emails are so much faster.  I do still write letters but I write less of them because it is easier to email and get responses faster.  Then too you can write one email and send it to everyone.  Rewriting the same letter over and over again can get tiring.  Then of course, if you want to discuss instant communication, phones are even better.  I never really loved talking on the phone but it simply cannot be avoided.  It is the quickest way to organize things and provides instant communication despite distance.  My mistrust of technology is slowly being overcome by my real laziness.  I like convenient things.  If one phone call can sort out all necessary plans I prefer it to ten emails back and forth.  And if I can stay in touch with family and friends on multiple continents by suffering through a little technology, then it is worth it.  A smart phone can do all of these things and more you say?  Hmm.  It doesn't mean I like technology, or even trust it, but it would seem that I will continue using it.

Is that a smartphone? Oh God the horror!

I am the worst Luddite ever.