. Spinning .

It isn’t the Catholic background that has me looking to the sky for answers, I don’t think. It’s not the heavens where I seek the ones I’ve loved and lost it seems not so long ago. To God, I guess, I’ve always screamed up at the sky. But to these mortal beings, I address my messages to the wide expanse of space, feeling at the same time that they are not out there, but living new lives of their own somewhere, perhaps in China. I think maybe it’s just the separation from my little space right here, which is the only spot where I’m pretty sure they aren’t. But space of distance and the space of time are the same, or have the same effect at any rate. Out of sight, in the mind.

Being ankle-deep in it myself, I’m not the slightest bit interested in reading more about it. However, I am still plugging away at the picture framing in the barn, and my numbed-by-the-cold brain is beginning to question whether I have always been a girl or if indeed, I have frozen my Christmas balls off.

There is no Christmas tree at my house, no lovely waft of balsam or fir. If time permits, I may string up the cards I haven’t written out much less sent as yet. I’m beginning to feel the pinch of age when my feet get cramped by the cold stone floor of the shop and when I need to put on my glasses to find the house twenty feet away through the swirling snow. I cannot take the time to fire up the coal stove; a coal stove simply is not made to “fire up” but instead takes hours of patient tending and loving care to reach the point where it wll warm even just me, across the room. I won’t work in here all day, of course, because then I will have become snowed in, literally. But I will trudge through the drifts to find my way to my front door tonight and warm up and relax. Enough at least, to get online and do some Christmas shopping, and maybe write out those cards.

Today is my father’s ninety-second birthday. This is a man whose true light baby-blue eyes still sparkle when he sees me, or when we talk about my mother. They light up with a glee that few but my sisters and I can understand when he has taken something that was broken and made it work again; or saved a quarter with a coupon; hears the roaring of a revved up engine; has found the photo taken back in ’53 of me waving out the window of his brand new Oldsmobile; when together we get the tractor running; or when one of us presents him with a home-made Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. This is the man who taught me about painting houses, wiring switches and cutting tree limbs as easily as honesty, patience, love, devotion and what “til death do us part”really means in a marriage, by example more than words. He’s proud of me, I know, for going on to college and I must soothe and reassure him that it’s not his fault I didn’t take that path, way back then.

Now maybe I’m the one driving to the grocery store or to the bank so he can get around town, but he’s the one who taught me how to drive, and shop and save my money, after all. He still has more wisdom and understanding than his children, and I’m grateful that he’s still willing in his gentle way to pass it on.

Happy birthday, Dad. I love you.
Susan

Hi folks. I’m back. Just in case I scared some of you with my posting about being non-existent, please let me assure you that even if in fact I am a figment of my imagination, I still produce Spinning in that dimension.

In fact, I did write down my thoughts as quickly as I reasonably could get home and put them in some semblance of order. Even though they may not make a lot of sense, it is a theory that has been philosophically argued, and the sudden realization of its meaning hit me hard in that split second, just as does an idea for a story. But this is something that I will be taking more seriously from now on, and doing some research upon. It’s something that I’m sure we’ve all wondered about, and I, with my hard-headed sense of what’s real and what’s not, was quite taken aback at the sudden “feeling” of not being real; understanding that concept is pretty amazing.

But to fully understand it will take a lot deeper digging and I am only at the point of realizing the validity of the question—no where near arriving at an answer (which might indeed have assured me an “A” in this course). Just starting to gather thoughts that relate to the idea of space and existence. For example, Willie Nelson exists (I guess) on a parallel plane (or bus) somewhere across the country, and yet occasionally in my mind, he simultaneously is living a life that he does not know about. Think about that one.

Anyway, it’s a lot deeper than this. I may tell you about it and I may not; but I will be here to keep posting away, because that is a part of my dream.