Lucinda Watson’s Blog

I

It is interesting to look inside of things after you have looked outside for a while.It is Sunday morning and I have read the paper and am ready to embark on the day. These days I am not as restless as I was a month ago. The rest of the world seems to have become more restless, however. I went to the mall yesterday and there were a million people: so many people you couldn’t park. The lots were full and the parking lot behavior was very bad. I was surprised to see how many people were shopping and wondered why this was happening. The unemployment rate is higher than ever yet people are out there racking up credit card debt believing they will be rescued once again by God Knows who. I think this will be our next area of weakness: the credit card debt of the unemployed in America. What an enormous mess that will create! The good news, though, is people seem more likely to smile at you and more apt to help if you need it. There is definitely a sense of better cheer out there. I hope my observations about this are accurate.

Getting along with others is very important even if it means you have to fake it. I fake it more often than I care to admit  but I would rather get along than have an impasse in my life. Sometimes the best thing you can say to yourself in the eyes of bad behavior is: “Don’t take it personally, it’s not my problem.” and walk away with a smile on your face. I am writing this now because I have noticed many times in the past year people seem to decide they can’t get along with someone else so they just drop them from their life as if they were meaningless. As if their memory or relationship is meaningless. As if their family history is meaningless. This is not a good thing as once you have stopped connecting with someone it is so easy to lose the thread which held you together in the first place. Then you lose a bit of love in your life. Everyoone needs all the love they can have so before you decide to disconnect, remember what it sounds like to pick up the phone and hear no dialtone.

I am sitting at the airport worrying as I usually do that when about to board an airplane.I pretend I am a confident flyer but I am secretly afraid of dying when I haven’t lived enough yet. I haven’t even had grandchildren!anyway as I am sitting here I am knitting to pass the time as I can knit and obsessively worry at the same time. I just checked my blackberry for messages and there is a comment on my last blog entry from “michael” which I read happily. It seems he understands the single life and appreciates what I wrote. This makes me very happy. Sometimes I think I write in too open a manner but I don’t know how else to write. There isn’t much point to writing if you don’t write your truth.

If you read “The Fountain head” in high school, please keep reading…If you have no idea who Ayn Rand was  this piece will probably have no meaning to you. For those of us who read this book page by page with  hope in our hearts, please continue. You are welcome to join me in communal life.  I read this book and felt for perhaps the first time there were others who were feeling lost in the perfunctory nature of life. The true meaning of life was contained within this book for me at 15, and is still there today. The search continues, the night is still long, the moon rises on the navy night sky and I still feel the same conviction if I keep at this process of understanding I will find an answer at the end. This hope is what keeps me dreaming  and as John Lennon said so well, “Lose your dreams and you lose your mind.” Tonight the world seems dark and without comprehension. A woman was murdered in my neighborhood. I live in a peaceful place where the biggest problem is kids having fun late at night. This woman was 75 and lived alone having been recently widowed. She was in her garden when she was found shot through the head. An act of violence that is yet unexplained. People have called me today and said I should lock my doors. I should be careful. They said they hoped I used an alarm on my house. Surprisingly to me, I feel little fear. I used to be so afraid of the dark I would make my husband check the house often yet he would patiently arise from our warm bed and descend to the first floor of our house where some frightening person awaited him while I sat perched on the edge of the bed listening for his cry of alarm . I don’t know where that fear has gone and I wonder if it has gone too far. Maybe it would be better if I cared more about what might happen to me, but I feel confident in the protection of the universe. I believe I will be protected from all evil and people will want to love me not kill me. I wonder if this is how the murdered woman felt.

I am afraid of love more than death. I am afraid of loving someone so much I can’t imagine life without them. I am afraid of confessing this love to my beloved and seeing it is not returned. I imagine weighing my love on an enormous scale seeing it tipped out of balance by the power of this love. I feel fear so intense I will do anything to avoid it  including flight, lies and  seclusion.Seclusion is the first and the last resort in my life. Seclusion promises no pain and a certain amount of safety.Love is so painful and yet, so necessary. Without love you can never feel as if  you are alive. This is my quest these days. I have no talisman, no special potion to take for anxiety, only a dachshund to remind me of laughter and the promise of the morning light to soften my pillow and lighten my dreams. I am looking for the reason why love has escaped me and I am designing a net rather like a butterfly catcher to help me find it now. I will wear a suit of khaki and white and shoes of the softest leather. I will walk softly in search of my desire and  leave no footprints. Who knows what may happen.