True Bling

I watched “The Sound of Music” tonight for the first time in a long time. 

I saw it at Wal-Mart among various other titles I might have bought, but something told me to buy “The Sound of Music.”  I have fond memories of watching it when TV was still cool enough to show things like “The Wizard of Oz,” “Ben Hur,” and of course “The Sound of Music” once a year.  I don’t know about y’all, but that was a big deal in my family.  We REFUSED to miss any of these films the one night a year they came on because we didn’t have a VCR until I was nearly in high school.  As an adult I’ve looked on it simply as nostalgia.  A breath of fresh air for my polluted adult attitude. 

But tonight, “Aidelwiess” in particular made me rather misty.  I never get misty at movies.  But something struck me about all of it and I didn’t know why until a few scenes later at the ball Captain Von Trapp throws right before Maria leaves for the convent again.  In the scene, Maria and the captain dance an old Austrian folk dance.  And nostalgia grew into something like regret. 

Why aren’t folk dances appreciated anymore?  Why does everyone feel the need to booty dance and grab-ass at a party?  Yes, it’s true that people still do folk dances and ballroom dancing, etc.  But not MOST people.  We don’t grow up learning these dances and the folk songs and stories that used to keep the whole of humanity from spiraling off the deep end of despair. 

There’s such beauty in these things.  Real beauty.  Not what we think of as beauty today:  the glitz and glam of false airbrushed beauty.  The whole “ooohhh shiny” mentality has never set well with me.  Shiny has no substance.  All it does is reflect something back that we like to think we are, but aren’t.  What we are lies in folk dances, beautiful melodies (like “Aidelwiess”) with simple lyrics that say nothing of sorrow or how messed up or angry the singer is or how they’d rather be bumping booties with the ho up the block. “Aidelweiss” is a song about a flower.  A flower, people.  And it nearly made me cry.

Don’t get me wrong, though.  I’m all for freedom of expression and my ideas and thoughts are generally fairly liberal and always open-minded.  Yes, I love Tool and The Afghan Whigs and The Beastie Boys.  But all this needs to be balanced with something purer.  Everyone needs to try to find their innocence again – or at least some part of it.  Like gemstones or precious metals, innocence is rare and it should be treasured even if you only take it out for special occasions.

I've Been a Sad Little Blogger

It's been a very long time since I posted mainly because life has gotten considerably more difficult in the past year or so. With a tanked economy, folks like me who weren't doing that great before everything went spiraling downward have only experienced more difficulties.

The month after my last blog, I was told that I quit by my employer because they knew I had just finished a certificate for medical transcription and panicked, thinking that I would just up and leave. I told them I would give them more than sufficient notice, but they didn't believe me and just went ahead and hired my replacement before I found a new job. And they made sure I wouldn't receive unemployment by putting on my separation notice that I had quit.

It took me a month to find a new job. I loved my new job at a medical office. I made good money and had great insurance and worked with incredible people. But then the economy tanked. I had ALMOST caught up from a month of ZERO income when they laid me off. At least I got unemployment benefits.

It took me four months to find my current job. It's okay, but there are no benefits and I only get paid once a month.

For these reasons and being trapped in two houses in a row that I am not comfortable in (places I rented out of desperation and not because I liked them), my more precious pursuits (writing, blogging, music, being outdoors, etc.) fell tragically to the wayside.

But I've gotten a number of signs lately that suggest several things:

1. I need to start blogging again - I'm so flattered that I've gotten so many comments on my last post recently. A post from nearly two years ago. Reckon the net is not as silent to my thoughts as I had assumed.

2. I need to start a website for unpublished writers - not the usual that is either all about publishing or all about submissions, but a site that focuses on the pursuit of writing. I've got a million ideas for this site. All I need is to play with GoDaddy once I can spare the cash for the domain.

3. Once the site is established and if a following develops, I'd like to start an online writing course that would offer several free lessons and a full course that I would offer for VERY cheap because I know we writers aren't known for our golden bath tubs. The only problem with this is that folks tend to give little credibility to writers who haven't published. But I think it's great to get advice from writers who are learning themselves. We'll see.

4. I need to try to get published. This will involve me learning how to write a short story. I suck at short stories. I want to tell the whole story, so I thrive on novels. But short stories are what gets you published to start out. I need to learn how to write essays or articles too.

In any case, thank you commenters for spurring me to this point of blogging again. I have missed it very much. I've already got some ideas for future blogs, so y'all should be hearing from me again soon.

I Feel More Alive Today Despite This

I had a mix tape of Ryan Adams songs playing in the car while I drove around town today. I thought about how he used to be so much more down to earth in both his music and his public life. He’s kind of spiraled through the world of the famous and beautiful and it seems to have left him dizzy.

While I was listening to the music and enjoying the drive (for the first time in a while), I drove by a large chunk of property that had apparently sprouted a forest of “Auction” signs. It made me immediately angry because most of my town’s beauty has been entirely undermined and nearly destroyed by commerce and industry.

Then I had a thought of how our country (and maybe the rest of the world) has been so corrupted by money and consumerism. Men are busy trying to be God and women are trying to be Mother Nature, then selling and therefore forgetting what they’re trying to emulate. We’re busy recreating the world instead of living in it as it is. This is the root of everything that’s wrong with the world today. Money makes us buy and sell things that are no longer precious to us. We spend trillions of dollars every day trying to adapt the world to us as opposed adapting ourselves to the nature of the planet. And all this makes us lose contact with the ground and the very atmosphere.

What the hell happened? Why do we have this insatiable drive to become masters of everything. Why can no one be content with just being a student of everything? This lust for lordship has even infected those that would ordinarily bring us back to ourselves (like Ryan Adams). I shudder to think how much farther we can take ourselves from the basic joy of being a resident on the planet.