There are days when truly, all I want is to stay home and knit. Then I remember that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for." Today, however, is one of those days. I'm one of those people who needs to be alone every now and again - really alone. No phones, no email, no neighbors, no friends, no family. I consider it to be a re-charging of my mental battery. I've been like this since I was very young - probably because my parents worked in our family-owned business and when not in school I was left at home to care for myself. In those days (the early 60's) parents worried less about pedophiles roaming neighborhoods and internet chat rooms. There was no internet, no cable tv, no satellite radio; newspapers didn't sensationalize every little misstep by philandering politicians, tv news broadcasts never made any overt reference to sexual misconduct, and forget nudity on tv -- while I prefer the frank truth, I sometimes miss the innocence.
When I started college in 1971, one of my very first classes was a literature class focusing on good versus evil. One of the required textbooks was called "Tales of Innocence and of Experience." The title itself poses an implicit question: are innocence and experience mutually exclusive? are they opposites? Can you have experience and yet still have innocence?
Back to wishing I were home, just me and the dog. I've got too much going on, it seems, and I need to step back. My life is so cluttered, I just want some time to empty my brain a bit and clean up/purge/organize. And yet, with that thought, I think about how much I have -- and how little so many others have. I saw a tv report yesterday on the 2nd anniversary of Katrina's destruction. So many people in New Orleans and small towns in Mississippi have nothing still, after two years! No homes, no possessions other than the barest necessities. So I become ashamed of my embarrassment of riches. How lucky I am.
And now it is time to get back to work. Thank you, Lord, for all you've enabled me to achieve.
