Deeper in Debt
Posted by FunkyPlaid | Filed under Home/Hearth, Musing, Personal, Scotland
Another year on and one more closer to about halfway through, if you live with that sort of temporal consciousness, which I do. I can’t really believe it. Just yesterday I was a dreamy-minded tot wandering the aisles of Toys R Us, trying to find that elusive Blue Snaggletooth Star Wars figure. My grandmother sure did a great job of catering to my fantastic whims, and I walked out with the AD&D Monster Manual instead. Now, I’m a dreamy-minded sub-adult with the emotional aptitude of a tot and the humor to match. It was probably all the hot monster chicks in that wonderful, awe-inspiring book.
I never thought I’d be here, where I am now, doing the things that I’m doing. I suppose very few of us ever really do. But I’m really damned stubborn, as any of my friends (and enemies) will tell you, and through all these years gone by, getting here has all been a matter of repeatedly saying that I wanted and needed to do this. And I cannot live with the idea of not following through on the things I promise to do, for me or anyone else. Of course there are thank-you cards unwritten within the desk and borrowed CDs forgotten in a storage unit box somewhere in Novato. But the big promises are very, very important to me. And who uses CDs anymore, besides? (Though I may never forgive myself for not yet organizing my digital photo collection into the Perfect Taxonomy for the Ages, which I promised to myself many years ago, and the pictures keep getting added.)
The number-one reason that I want to be a man of my word (dreamy-minded or not) is because of the amazing people whom I know. I want to make good on the things that I promise because I feel gifted beyond belief to be accepted, tolerated, respected, liked, empathized with, smirked at, appreciated, or included by so many of the world’s most beautiful people. How did this happen? I’m self-focused a lot of the time, and I’m insecure all of the time. My heart is in two places and I can’t always decide which idiom to use with all of the switching continents this past decade. I forget to tell many whom I love that I love them, instead telling them what I love. I forget to do the dishes sometimes, even though I (near-horrifically) adore doing them. But I want to give back all of the time. I want to contribute.
Tags: beltane, birthday, Career, distance, friends, games, horses, Melancholy, play, Scotland, standing stones, thanks, Work
A Night to Remember
Posted by FunkyPlaid | Filed under History, Musing, Scotland
These ides of April, this night of nights is infamous for many reasons, not the least of which is triggered, Pavlovian-like, for many of us by the fluttering loss of so many hard-earned dollars to a government that hardly proves its worth. It is not the only sense of loss in common memory on this day. America, freshly having won the fight to remain congealed against the potent vinegar of Davis and Lee’s Confederacy, lost perhaps the most worthy statesman and gentleman to ever have held the title of Commander-in-Chief. It was a different time then, but I have often thought that if I were ever brave enough to fight for my country, old Abe is likely the only man I would have followed into death. And a Republican, no less.
What a thing to say, indeed. Which qualities make a follower unto death out of one who loves life so acutely? Principle, vision, or honesty, perhaps? On this very same night, 119 years before Lincoln became the first U.S. President to be killed by another’s hand, many thousands of men were ready to follow another charismatic leader into the withering fire of cannon and musket for all of these reasons and maybe none at all. On the eve of the Battle of Culloden, some five-thousand Jacobite soldiers from all over Scotland – and many from other countries – were directed to undertake a clandestine, nine-mile march through thicket and wood in order to surprise the commander of the British army at his camp in Auldearn, on the Inverness-shire coast. Ironically, it was also that British commander’s birthday, this 15th of April, and he and his men enjoyed cheese and brandy whilst singing songs of triumph in anticipation of a bloody battle that was to come the next day.
Tags: Abe Lincoln, anniversaries, Cameron, Culloden, Cumberland, disasters, distress, History, Ismay, Jacobites, leaders, Lord George Murray, night march, parallels, Stanley Lord, Titanic
