Things to do with Paper

I can’t believe how I always get screwed by pieces of damned paper. I actually like paper, I read from it and I write on it frequently. I even compost and recycle it. I have been known to pat, not quite hug, a tree. So why does paper seem to curse me on a regular basis.

I think it’s not the paper, I can’t blame something so white and simple looking. It is the people who are behind the paper. The people who love to make things complicated and nitpicky. I detest and despise people who do this. It causes so many stupid and unnecessary and pointless endless tangles and headaches. Not to mention all the trees who have been sacrificed for these people. Do they even consider the blood on their hands. Well, more like sap I suppose. I doubt it crosses their mind. Maybe once in a while when they bump into a recycling box and kick it aside out of their way.

If I wasn’t such a quiet, nice grrl I would join up one of those revolution dump-the-government groups. Though it’s not just the government. I’d have to look for one that included anyone who puts paper ahead of people. Anyone who has forgotten there is real life outside of their fancy little collections of paperclips and paper holding folders.

The group I would join is one who wants to gather all the paper people into a corral made of cardboard and give them broken staplers and dried up pens as their only method of escaping and ever seeing daylight again. Assuming they still remember what daylight (real light not the inside lightbulb kind) is. Who knows when they last looked up from their piles of paper to see the sky. Likely it was the last time it rained and their paper got dripped on by God (whatever god-like creation you choose to believe).

The biggest problem I have with these people is not that they exist. It’s the way they have of attacking at just the point where you think things will be ok, that you have it worked out at last. Suddenly they swoop down on paper airplanes and take things away from you until you offer them a form (their fancy name for paper) which never existed until now or one you already gave them but not at the right time. Or maybe you just didn’t get it from the right place or signed by the right person or whatever their excuse is for such shoddy behaviour and the abuse and destruction of forests of trees.

It seems the modern world is built on paper. If you are someone who doesn’t fit into the paper world you get screwed over regularly by those who thrive in it. As if it’s all a battle which they are winning. A battle to make the world smaller and smaller, like origami in tidy, tight folds. There really should be some kind of group for fighting back. Even if we have no hope of winning at this point. I think the paper people have created things too well for anyone to exist without their approval correctly sorted, dated and signed with several copies.

Think of the trees. Think of breathing the air without the trees. Paper people won’t notice when no one else can breathe. They will all be locked away in their own world, filing paperwork. Outside the world around them will die but it won’t change a thing. They can play together without us, they just need a good photocopier, office supplies and a huge stack of fresh paper. None of us were ever real to them anyway.

Tomorrow is Thursday

cow08

Maybe you already knew that. What will your day be like tomorrow? Maybe a little slow and dull? Maybe you have something kind of special planned? Maybe you wish you could stay at home and avoid the colder weather.

I am moving. Tonight I’m planning what I will haul down as a last car load of stuff before I become a fully fledged downtown Toronto living person. I’m not exceptionally looking forward to it.

It will be nice to have a place of my own. Though that is a bit up in the air lately. My brother has arranged for a guy to paint the hallway leading upstairs from the basement apartment and he will likely figure he can make use of my apartment to wash up, eat, poop and so on. Oh joy! I just really want some guy sharing my facilities, leaving me to clean up after him. If I wanted that I could have stayed married. On the really happy side, this is the same highly unreliable guy who never shows up when he says he will. So I will never know when he may drop by, or if he will.

I need to buy a bus pass which will take up the bit of money I have left but I am looking forward to seeing downtown Toronto again. Even if I have to look for a job while doing so.

Anyway, still a lot to do tonight. I’ve got a to-do list going. Really list-able of me! Sometimes a list is a good thing, outside of grocery shopping even.

I don’t know what will happen about the Internet connection. I will just sign up with Bell if nothing has worked out by November. But, Bell may take a week to send out the package for the DSL connection. My telephone modem may be fried, it did get hit by a shock at the same time the DSL modem from Netscape did. So, chances are it’s goose was also cooked.

My Mom is a bit sad about my leaving. I can tell cause she’s driving me crazy with double checking my life. We are going to play cards now that she has just come back from her swim at the hotel behind the house here. I am going to miss this town. It is pretty nice for a small town. How weird it will be to be part of a city again. I hope I can get over the transplanted feeling quickly and I really hope I don’t feel like the cow among stick figure girls too.

I may see if the budget can stretch for a couple of day passes for the TTC. Then I could take my digital camera and me to the Eatons Centre and the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum). I know I am going to feel really strange and out of place for awhile. I’m going to miss a car too. How nice it is to just go out to the driveway and turn on the ignition and drive away. Waiting for the bus just won’t compare. For one thing it’s much less anonymous to be in a car than on the bus. I think that bothers me more than waiting for the bus.

Some people might take that as good inspiration for losing weight. I may just buy a vat of ice cream and let myself pretend I’m skinnier than I think I am.

Life goes on. See you later. Someday over the rainbow….

Living in a Big Blue Bottle

bottle

Wouldn’t it be kind of funny if we lived in a big bottle? Here we are on this big blue and green planet, in this sparkling solar system, tucked away in what we consider a universe which has no beginning and no ending. But, how funny it would be if we were totally wrong. Maybe, in reality, we are just part of some kid’s snowglobe or some message in a bottle which some castaway threw off the beach hoping it would wash ashore and be found. What if all we really are is some common form of bacteria on a dingy piece of paper folded up inside a bottle slowing sinking into an enormous ocean in space?

How would that change your life?

Why should it. Does it matter if we are nothing but a speck of junk in someone’s snowglobe or bottle.

Sometimes I just get these odd thoughts. As if I want to know more than I can ever know. As a kid I wanted to have all knowledge and thought it was really unfair when my Mother explained I could never know everything. For a day or two I decided I would break the rules on that and be the first person to know everything. I made a few lists of things I would have to learn. As my lists grew too long and I kept adding more details and topics I began to understand that I could never know everything, I just didn’t have enough time to do it all. Not that I couldn’t learn as much as I could. I have the space for rent upstairs in my brain. It’s not the amount of knowledge, it’s the time it would take to absorb it.

So, I abandoned that lofty goal. It never left my mind though. I still cross points of my list when I learn something new. Even if it’s impossible to know it all I will at least know a lot.

Have you ever filled out one of those online profiles for some community or dating site and felt you just didn’t have enough to say about yourself when it came to writing down your interests? I used to keep a list handy on my desktop, in a file. Just cause I didn’t want to feel that way; or forget any of the things I wanted to include. I like being a person with many interests. Each one is like a Brownie badge for things I have learned.

I wonder about people who fill their interests with TV shows and little else. Doesn’t that seem just a bit shallow? Surely, they have other interests but just don’t consider them interesting enough. I hope that is the case. It does seem sad if people, having evolved so far in their evolution, have now fallen flat and stopped doing new things, choosing to plaster themselves in front of a TV and wait to be entertained. There should be so many other things which interest people. Not watching or waiting, but doing. Creating is a good way to go. If people can create something, whether it’s a good photograph or a good dinner, that’s something they can do at least. Not everyone can be a Leonardo Devinci, Picaso or Einstein. It’s not necessary for everyone to be famous. Just to be mentally active and alive in the world.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a rambling monologue. Good for putting people to sleep or giving their birds something to read.

I tried to perform surgery on my finger today it seems. I dug leeks out of the garden then cut my finger a little deeply while I was cutting the tops and roots from the leeks. It’s not still bleeding but I can see pink stuff under the dirt still stuck in there. Nice to know I’m still pink inside. Sometimes I feel so old and creaky and worn in. Not worn out, that’s a different kind of worn. I’m just worn in, like a pair of shoes that have finally stopped rubbing your feet the wrong way.