this most precious

We're only a few short weeks from the end of the decade.
Time is a construct and yet somehow it matters.
Doesn't it? Does it?
If I have assigned the construct meaning, then I suppose it does.
All this to say, I have reflected and felt some deep feelings about the ending of this decade.
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I regained my freedom in so many ways, in this decade.
Became me again.
Became a new me.
I published stories and met new people and shed poisonous people.
I saw distant parts of the planet I never thought I'd see.
I was lonely and I made bad decisions and I scraped the bottom of my soul to create fiction and write about my childhood and say some true things.
I took a new job and a new 1/2 job and quit the new 1/2 job.
I learned things and forgot things.
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I sang, "I love myself" in a Ballard brewery and smiled, knowing all the while it was untrue.
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Meanwhile the world burns and sociopaths and billionaires are unashamed.
What does it all mean?
Meaning is also a construct, and the idea that my life has meaning or that existence has meaning -- well it's all a bit much for 12.43pm on a Saturday afternoon.
What means something today is friendship and a good night's rest and a completed crossword puzzle.
Dog boops and boo cuddles and laying on my couch with a good book.
What also means something is continuing to fight and giving money to the ACLU and standing on overpasses with signs.
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I don't have a cute or meaningful ending and probably, neither does life.

the consequences of truth

It's been weeks of emotional heavy lifting since losing Marguerite, realizing what she had left all of us, and then, two weeks ago, finding among her things a stack of handwritten note cards written by her mother, my great-grandmother. The cards seem to be preparation for writing a memoir--Nan noted she'd need 100,000 words--and are written in a fine, sometimes quite tiny, cursive, as though not quite giving herself permission to express what she was putting down on paper.
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Because. There is death and despair, a murder, a suicide, and many tales of abuse and alcoholism. And also wonderfully frank observations of neighbors and lovely observations of nature--a pond, wildflowers, wagon rides.
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It changes you, thinking about your relatives in this way. Staring at the black and white photographs from a hundred plus years ago, realizing that they are actual people and not quite the sainted relics we've imagined them to be. They loved and fought and hated and struggled and triumphed. My grandmother and great-grandmother are two of the strongest people I've ever known, and now, I'm realizing what all the hard times exerted and wrought on them, diamond-like.

bender