Do Overs, Kapra, and Kurosawa

I'm trying to figure out the theme for today's post, Do Over is the GBE2 topic this week and I will work that in somehow, but I also want to post on the general topic of social media and how and why I the various forms of it that I do.  In keeping with the NaBloPoMo monthly theme of Relative, I will throw in some thoughts on that topic, too. And I will probably work in a topic I've wanted to bitch about for quite some time.  And I will do all of this while cleaning house and doing laundry.  Am I amazing, or what?

There are no do overs in life.  Sometimes we are offered the chance of doing something again, but it is never and can never be the same thing.  The context, time, our attitudes, and the experience we bring to it, whatever it may be, will have changed everything.  At the same time I sometimes wish there were such things as do overs, or at least I wish so until I realize that everything, truly everything, would change.

My favorite movie is Kapra's It's A Wonderful Life; that is closely followed by Kurosawa's Rashomon.   Both were made well before I was born. Life's "truths" have been around for ages it seems.   These movies are nothing alike on the surface, but they are both very much alike when it comes to being an movies that intimately examine perspective and "truth."  Maybe in a game of marbles there can be do overs, but nothing else in life allows it, and I wouldn't want there to be.  However that is not to say I do not have regrets.  I never, ever will say that I have no regrets.  The two people I have heard say that phrase specifically to me in private conversation are both dead.  One died of cancer he probably could have prevented, the other died without a doubt by his own hand.  Death will always be associated with, "No regrets."  It is what people say before they die, at least it is for me. 

There are things I wish that both I and others had not done or had done differently.  But I will never know what else in my life outside of that tiny, narrow window of regret might come undone.  Good things that I cherish might not have come to be on another timeline in an alternate universe.  In my lifetime thus far I have managed to do and produce good things, a few at least, that make a difference in the world.  What more could I ask for?  Nothing.

I know I will never understand what other people truly think and feel, I know I will never know truth, I know that my perspective will always differ from every other individual who has ever lived.  But this does not make me feel lonely, or wish for do overs, or a different universe.  Every day I marvel that we can communicate at all given all the differences that exist in the world.  I continue to look for what we share and not how we differ.   It is all relative.  We are all the centers of our own perceptual worlds.  The fun is in expanding from that center and in finding similarity.  Sure, I've made mistakes.  No I wouldn't want a do over.

Part Two - Tomorrow:  Do Overs and Social Media.

Free Writing About Free Writing

GBE 2 - week 32 is a 15 minute free write.  Check it out on the site, it gives the details.   But this is what I do all the time, free writing I mean.  I may have an idea to work from,  but often I just start writing and something meaningful tends to come out.  I think it just comes with practice.  Writing is soothing, energizing, and everything in between for people who have to write.  I do my best writing in the morning.  When words just seem to slide onto the page without effort and in a coherent fashion almost like the experience writers sometimes describe as "it just came to me."  I have poems descend upon me at all times of the day and night, but when essays, articles or the like flow from me as though someone inside by head is dictating the piece to me, it is usually in the morning.  It is not necessarily the very first thing I do but I think I do my best writing when I starting putting words on the page before 9 a.m.  So it is 6:30 in the evening now as I write this for the Tuesday post.  Probably won't be my best effort ever.  I just love writing and I'm trying to be more disciplined and using different types of motivations to develop the discipline needed for serious blogging and other types of writing.  Blogging gimmicks are doing the trick to some degree.  That isn't to say that the gimmicks are bad.  They aren't.  Nablopomo.  GBE 2.  These are just a couple of the blogging tools I'm employing to get me writing.  I need a voice recorder too.  I have to find an app for that for my Blackberry.  Writing ideas down isn't always practical.  And sometimes when ideas strike, I need to record them, somehow.  Discipline is good, but so are ideas.  Develop one and don't let the others get away. 

Bucket List or Dream List

Been playing around with graphics today... one of my favorite things you might have deduced by now.  I was playing with the title of this blog when I began thinking about the things I want to accomplish during this next phase of my life.  A bucket list if you will.  GBE2 had it as a weekly writing prompt last week.  And while I didn't get the post written then, I'm doing it now.  Day late and a dollar short as usual.  But what the hey, this is about fun, motivation, and peer response.  Deadlines be damned!

Ok, here goes:

• Number one on the list is definitely to get the book on healing MSbP abuse done and spend a while on marketing it.  
• The Gene Stratton-Porter biography is high priority too after MSbP book.
• A month of wearing wool sweaters, eating oatmeal, and writing in a stone cottage on an island (Hebrides - maybe Skye) just off the Scottish coast has always been a dream.  
• Touring through the desolate wilderness of Patagonia in South America.
• Spending a week in Paris with time spent between the Musée du Louvre  and the Museo de Orsay. 
• Redeveloping my relationship with my husband so that we are best friends again.    
• Having a garden again.
• Making bread again.
• Getting up to 400 plus as my regular score in Scrabble®.  

This is fun because I'm making it fun.  It isn't a list of things I've failed to do as yet, it is a list of things I still dream about doing.  I'm glad I'm still dreaming!  What do you dream about doing now that you are done nesting?

Discovering the Truth About Christmas Treats

I miss the taste of the sweet treats of the season.  I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in May of this year, so this is the first Christmas season without sugar.    Sigh.

I'm lucky though, I can control the disease with diet and exercise and Metformin.  I don't have to do the daily blood tests.

I've learned to stop and appreciate the beauty of the treats under glass in bakeries, to breathe in and delight in the memories and emotions that rich scents of cinnamon, almond, clove, fruit evokes.  This lack has made me appreciate the real treats when I find them.  It is almost like a game.  I ask myself,  " If I could freely eat a few, select sweet treats, would this be one of them?" 

To my surprise, I find myself usually answering,  "No." 

If the tempting item is in a bag, I remind myself it is not fresh.  And fresh, straight from the oven, still gooey and steaming is the only way to eat most treats such as cookies.  I walked down the isle in overstock and remainder grocery I go to at least once a month, a store that saves my budget and me from despair, with all the baking goods to get a great deal on cans of evaporated milk, and walked right past the boxes of brownie and cake mixes with their ingredient lists of over 15 items including preservatives and fillers and multiple forms of second class sweeteners. No problem.  If I were to indulge, it would and indulgence with something homemade with love and real true ingredients.  In the grocery near my home, I walk in and the sweet smell is overpowering.  It is cloying in its overabundance, and there is something missing.  The scent of spices, butter, nutmeats and simmering fruit is absent.  There is just the smell of white flour and sugar.  This, too, I can forgo.

The piles of candy everywhere brighten with red, white, and gold wrappings.  But I can decorate with strings of popcorn and cranberries and shiny baubles;  I don't need gold boxes of chocolates,  and bowls of red and green candies.

I am pretty sure I can figure out how to make a fruit cake that is filled with the heady richness of freshly ground spices, healthy fruit and nuts and a tiny bit of honey and just enough Stevia to add some sweetness without bitterness so as delight guests and allow my own indulgence once or twice.  I am sorting through my recipes and looking for recipes I can modify so as to be able to make plates of treats to give away without exposing myself to dangerous temptation.  Many recipes I remember from my childhood were simple ones that I can adapt to use a sweetener that is natural, and with a lower glycemic index than the "white death" soaked cookies we too often think of as "Christmas cookies."  Chocolate (dyed green) and white (dyed red) cookie doughs rolled into flat sheets then layered and rolled and sliced to make pinwheel cookies were always on my mother's Christmas sideboard.  She also made almond flavored butter cookies shaped into tiny crescents with a clove stuck in each one.  Regular plain and simple cookies can be decorated with chopped fruits, nuts such as almonds that can be tinted into festive colors.   I will include clementines on the trays, and nuts, just like they did in the days of the Nutcracker. 

I will make Christmas trays of goodies for family and friends, and if so moved to do so, I may sample one bite from each type on different days, and I will allow myself to roll the tastes around, over my tongue, savor the real, true sweetness of home made delicacies without artificial anything while sharing the Holidays with the real, true sweet things in life: my family and friends.