“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” ~ Tom Robbins, from Still Life with Woodpecker

Saturday snippets  . . .

Saturday afternoon, rainy and cold, 46 degrees.

Well, here is what’s been happening in the ongoing saga of non-functioning laptop. On Sunday last, I decided to bite the bullet and completely reset my laptop in an attempt to fix the script errors and all of the other stuff that’s been making posting well nigh impossible without pulling out my hair. I’ve spent the days since reloading the stuff that was deleted in the reset, finishing updates, etc. At first, it looked promising that things had been fixed, and then not so much.

I’m still trying to work out the bugs, and that New Year’s post that I began over two weeks ago (really? that long?) is still unfinished. I decided to post the following quote by Tom Robbins just to let you know that yes, I’m still here, but no, I haven’t fixed my laptop or my internal dysfunctions to allow for regular posting.

I’m trying. Truly I am.

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How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding—escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience—maybe those people, people who won’t talk to rednecks, or if they’re rednecks won’t talk to intellectuals, people who’re afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jacklet humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar’s Hell. Some folks hide, and some folk’s seek, and seeking, when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren’t afraid to look and won’t turn tail should they find it—and if they never do, they’ll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of Earth’s sweet gas.

~ Tom Robbins, from Still Life with Woodpecker

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Music by Flora Cash, “You’re Somebody Else”

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“You ask ‘What is life?’ That is the same as asking ‘What is a carrot?’ A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more.” ~ Anton Chekhov, letter to his wife, Olga Knipper Chekhov (April 20, 1904)

"Moon Landscape" by Max Beckmann (1925)

“It is true when you are by yourself and you think about life, it is always sad. All that excitement and so on has a way of suddenly leaving you, and it’s as though, in the silence, somebody called your name, and you heard your name for the first time.” ~ Katherine Mansfield, from “At the Bay”

Tuesday, late afternoon. Sunny, hot and humid, pending thunderstorms.

So I relented and turned on the air conditioners. Hate doing that. My power bill hates me doing that, but it’s just too darned humid. Ah, the weather in Hampton Roads, formerly known as Tidewater. Old Norfolkians still refer to it as Tidewater.

Spring, spring, spring . . . SUMMER NOW . . . no wait, spring, spring . . .

I’m fairly certain that I just got a spider bite on my arm while I was outside clipping fresh Rosemary for the house. The mock orange is in bloom, and it makes a lovely spray with the Rosemary, not to mention it smells heavenly.

I’ve been wondering where Corey is, as in exactly where that ship is located in the Atlantic, as it’s been past the predicted time for him to arrive in Florida. Turns out the ship has been rerouted . . . to Norfolk. I wonder when he was going to tell me or if he was just planning to surprise me. I cannot tell you how happy this news makes me. I have a big, stupid grin on my face at the moment, and I think that my face might crack from this rare facial gesture.

Ah, well.

Oh magical text update: The ship tied up at the Norfolk yard this morning. Sneaky bugger.

Ooh, more magical text updates. He’s home until Friday!

“The universe is in us.” ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist

In an interview with Time magazine, astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked the following question: “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” Here is his answer.