Tweets for the Tweet

It may have come to your attention, and I do not know just how you might have missed it during the marathon presidential primary campaign season, the actual presidential candidate pre-election face-off, all the post-election recriminations, soul searching, abounding coulda-woulda-shouldas, that our soon to be inaugurated president tweets. And he tweets a lot, it seems.
I don’t know if it is inherent in the nature of a tweet to be a sudden, gut inspired emotional welling out on any topic, which at the precise moment, is about to have your undivided attention, the next 140 characters of your life and be irretrievably shared by one’s followers and whomever else follows your followers retweets. It can all be very social media confusing.
I propose that we all take a moment and give the snarkiness a little time to pass, let thought and reason, somewhat, regain control. After all, none of our basic attitudes are going to change in the brief respite and we are less liable to have one of those, “Oops, did I just really say that out loud.”, unless that indeed was the intended purpose in the first place.
Then, to quote the once famous Rosanna Rosanna Danna, “Nevermind.”

Connotations

In the only language that I sometimes consider myself semi-fluent, English, there are few words that do not carry the excess baggage of connotation. It is becoming increasingly more difficult, perhaps because the extra effort is being made, to not marginalize perspective readers of our words. I know we are most always trying to make a statement from a particular viewpoint but losing the reader due to a particular connotation of a certain word sort of defeats the purpose unless you are only preaching to the choir or actually meant to inflame.
A case in point. I think that we could all generally agree that an assembly, an audience, a throng and a mob could effectively describe a bunch of people gathered together. Where the difference lays, and I can never figure out if it should be lays or lies even when it is explained to me, is as I see it the intent which one wishes to convey.
I imagine that an assembly can embrace all the other three options in varying degrees. An audience could equally do so but with the possibility of a bad outcome in one of the cases. A throng likewise. And a mob. A mob is just the other three most likely tending toward a less than desired outcome.

And my dilemma. Trump supporters. Individually they could easily fit into anyone of the categories on any given day following any given tweet or rally. We will have to wait and see. After all we all have to live together and I could be pleasantly surprised and find myself wrong, yet another time.

I Read the Fake News Today, Oh Boy

In the aftermath of what may just turn out to be our most divisive election season, upcoming inauguration and the next four years of making America great again, it is becoming increasingly difficult to delve past present day headlines in the search of substance to feed an ever increasing hunger for information on what has happened, why it happened and what may happen next without having to slog through the ever present partisan opinions, cherry-picked facts/studies/polls/statistics and mean-spirited rhetoric of both the defeated and the mandate claimants. I would hate to have my fallback position be, “It is what it is.”

Choices Again

Choices. It always comes down to choices.

Early on in life they are made in our stead. Eventually we make our own, sometimes prematurely, sometimes not soon enough, often to the chagrin of our parents and many more times in silent abnegation, if you had to look that word up, fear not so did I, just so when it popped into my head as an appropriate word, it indeed meant what I thought it might.

No matter the choice there are always consequences, if you have darker tendencies or outcomes, if you are a middle-of-the-roader. I am not quite sure what an optimist’s take on the matter is, as I have never much been one and I do not at the moment have the energy or inclination to search out just what the correct word may be. We just hope that nothing, too serious, comes back to bite us in the ass. As there is no full length mirror in my home I can not easily look and see just how many scars I may have back there. Women, and I do not wish in any way to denigrate, another word I had to look up, any here, might try to pass them off as “stretch marks” but we both, I think, know the truth. It seems to be different for our tongues as I am sure that all those scars are easily camouflaged within the cellular structure, but the fake smiles and lack of words at the time are probably a dead giveaway that the choice of silence over having your head and mouth explode in a serious rant resulting in words that can never be retracted but will probably result in an awkward apology further down the road.

 

Word of the Day

Indignity

I do not know where ideas come from. Sometimes they are associated with the first emotion upon rising into a new day, the first thought, noticing that the ache with which we went to sleep with last night has not gotten lost in our dreams but sadly has returned to nag for another day. Sometimes louder, sometimes not but nonetheless there.

Usually the definition of the “word” is googled to find if I do indeed have a grasp on the meaning of the word. That learned I then google again to find what other people may have had to say on the subject. To say the least I am surprised how current some of the content can be no matter how dated the quote, yet I think what we ourselves think matters most. Maybe it was the Nora Ephron documentary that I watched last night. And I, at least today, can think of nothing more pressing than the indignity of aging.

We all do it no matter the lengths we may go to give the appearance that time does not affect us. That extra weight that seems to have miraculously appeared due to our being just a little less active than we used to be or that second helping of pie, ahhhh pie, at the holiday table. A pound a year. Elasticity has abandoned our skin. A small wrinkle here, a nest of them there and whole folds of flesh that have glacially moved from one place to collect in another. Hair thins soon to appear in ones and twos in the oddest but most visible parts of the body. And thousands of other little changes over which we have no control. Therein lies the indignity. And soon it will be upon us all. There will be no going gentle into that good night. And you, Kid, get off of my lawn.

Words Revisited

Time. So precious, yet so ignored.
Hurriedly skimming the words to get the gist, unmindful of intended nuance. Words chosen for their description and effect or perhaps not. So glibly can they fall from mind, to keyboard, to page. Words for words sake, writing to hear ourselves read.
Rereading after a time to cull more than the gist, the missed subtlety, the lure which draws us in. The bait. The alone seeking the alone for company, companionship and physical connection. The hidden barbs of disappointment can so easily tear and scar. The battles fought, the war stories told, the memories fondly replayed in age. The comrades of youth lost and remembered.
Catch and release.

The Comute

It is always just from here to there and back again.

The need to be someplace else, to trade time for the means to live. The road ever unfurling ahead, small sections both revealed and hidden by curve and dip of surrounding landscape. Views concentrated through windshield and rear view mirrors. Speed and anticipated reaction time dictate the necessary focus and yet the mind, at times, drifts with the moment.

The roadway, cyclically bracketed by farm fields, giving way to small village centers and larger towns in soft morning light, the shadows of dusk and quieting folds of full night. Preparing for the day and later unwinding from its effects. Breathe in, breathe out.