Skip to main content

Keep Hoping Machine Running

The ball has dropped in many villages already. 2013 is in the rear window, almost.
Two years ago, when I consulted my children about what my resolutions should be their answers were pragmatic. The six year old wanted me not to nap too much (believe me, naps were low on the ground back then to start with) and the three year old wanted me to swim and go sledding and draw more.  A hectic schedule and an insomnia problem took care of the nap thing and we did do more sledding and drawing over the past two years.  However, last year I resolved not to make any resolutions, but to just keep turning towards the light.

As resolution season peaks tonight, I got inspiration from this list that Woody Guthrie made 70 years ago.  It holds up well over the years.  I think I'll make a version for myself, but I'm basing it primarily on #19... Keep Hoping Machine Running.
(Source: businessinsider.com)

I'm going to keep up the maintenance schedule on that thing.
I'm going to commit to keeping it in tune.

My resolution is to keep that hoping machine out of the ditch.

How about you?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Small Craft

I accompanied my mother-in-law to an appointment this week. On the paper, preparing her for the appointment, it invited her bring along something to read or a small craft. As soon as I heard about this invitation to bring a small craft into an otherwise austere waiting area, my mind started to do bouncing somersaults in many different directions. Googly eyes? Glue gun? Feathers? Play clay? Friendship braclets?

The words coming out of my mouth

  These days I wear a mask. I don't wear a mask all of the time, only when I am indoors or unavoidably up close with people who I don't usually interact with.  I wear one when I am ordering things, or buying things or attempting to enjoy some form of public entertainment.  I cannot rely on reading others lips. My lips are hidden. We ask each other to repeat.  We move our eyes or our whole heads to try and enunciate more clearly.  I say fewer words, more carefully chosen words behind the mask. Sometimes that is helpful, sometimes that just causes more confusion. I walked into the woods. I did not need a mask.  I only saw a few other people and they were distanced. Masks were unnecessary. After so much talking and not talking and avoiding talking out loud I am forced to examine when I speak and when I choose not to. This is not a bad thing since I can be an insufferable chatter box, just a new thing for my brain to adjust itself to. When I am not standing aro...

Bringing her back

 As the first anniversary finally passed, I exhaled.  The sadness still nibbled away at the edges, but not clawing deep into my chest like it had been with varying degrees of ferocity in the twelve months previously.  She died in early summer, so I plunged into ocean and lakes and ate fruit straight from the plant.  The grief became softer, the folk songs carried me along in the potato patch we planted in therapy. But then, I started to miss her.  The deep grief kept her so close and now as the pressure eased, so did her presence.  I held my breath and decided to be really sad this morning just to see her face.  To sit in her prescence.  My breath became jagged as I cried for her, for us.   This Taylor Swift cover  by Marc Maron broke me right open this morning.  Here's to staying broken open enough to keep your loved ones close. And then, I walked into her garden. The garden she envisionied, planted over and over and still pre...