Sunshine by Proxy

Attila and I have had a busy week. We both worked as paid labour every day, which is a necessary evil in modern life, one we are fortunate to experience only because the alternative is destitution.

Attila is working today. During the winter he works only part of Saturday, but when spring arrives, bringing with it the seasonal residents, he works almost the whole day Saturday. We have now entered long-Saturday season.

On Thursday and Friday a fellow brought loads of wood with brush attached, from trees he felled on his urban back yard. Attila spent both evenings, after work and until it was dark, removing the branches and burning them, and sectioning the wood for this winter’s fuel supply. It was a nice mixture of pine and maple. The pine makes excellent kindling and the maple excellent firewood. We have ordered next winter’s firewood, and it will be delivered when the load limits come off the township roads. It feels soooo good to know there will be enough fuel to keep our masonry heater going strong all next winter.

I spent the evening last night catching up with bills and bringing order to chaos on my desk. I am doing all the little things that get passed by when one is too busy to pay attention to day-to-day life, like recharge my Kobo.

This morning there is laundry in the washing machine, in the dryer and on the bed neatly folded as I work my way through several weeks worth of neglected domestic duties. There are dishes to wash, floors to sweep and surfaces with my name written on them that are in dire need of dusting. I mean that quite literally, my name is written in the dust. And then there is the issue that the removable drive that stores my daily files is full, which means I really need to move everything on there to a removable drive with more memory. The files are important so this must be done with care, I’m not sure I’m feeling quite careful enough today!

My emotions are beginning to return to a conscious level as I adjust to having some time off work, like today. My emotional state goes underground when I must appease adversarial, unbalanced humans; my feelings return to the surface only when the pressure has passed.

This go round, the emotions that are popping up are primarily pleasurable. I find I am enjoying my friends and loved ones, the colour of the spring foliage, the antics of the birds perched on the deck railing and just about anything that catches my eye or my ear, with renewed intensity. Despite the constant rain I am experiencing sunshine by proxy. How cool is that!

Worldly Distractions

Weather

13 °C
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.2 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: 13.0°C
Dewpoint: 12.5°C
Humidity: 97 %
Wind: SSE 15 km/h

Quote

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;”
Alexander Pope
1688 – 1744

Note

Eloise to Abelard

“Published in 1717, Eloisa to Abelard is a poem by Alexander Pope (1688–1744). It is an Ovidian heroic epistle inspired by the 12th-century story of Héloïse’s illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal vengeance her family exacts when they castrate him, even though the lovers had married.
After the assault, and even though they have a child, Abélard enters a monastery and bids Eloisa do the same. She is tortured by the separation, and by her unwilling vow of silence — arguably a symbolic castration — a vow she takes with her eyes fixed on Abélard instead of on the Christian cross.
Years later, she reads Abélard’s Historia Calamitatum (History of my Misfortunes), originally a letter of consolation sent to a friend, and her passion for him reawakens. This leads to the exchange of four letters between them, in which they explore the nature of human and divine love in an effort to make sense of their personal tragedy, their incompatible male and female perspectives making the dialogue painful for both.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloisa_to_Abelard