No tags yet.
Happy 4th!
Fireworks and bbq and ice cream. Or, for my brother, hot dogs with saurkraut and jalapenos. Or my parents, hamburgers and apple pie. Joe is watching Hell on Wheels and eating Ruffles with sour cream dip. I had parmesan chicken, polenta, and salad prepared by one of our chefs, the staff all eating together. Meals are part of our perks, freedom from want but also, freedom from thinking about food, buying and preparing, presenting and combining, cleaning. Spoiled to the 9th degree. So, totally dependent. How will I ever manage to put a couple meals together per day after a year?
Walked to the cemetary today, which stretched acres up a hill, the entire valley unfolded. Laid on the grass. Before and after, wrote things and stuff and words.
Tomorrow the new residents come and I will begin again. But I do not have to present myself, dressed and washed, until 5:30pm for a wine and strawberry reception, my first hello.
First, a day of work. Real work, the scary stuff. I have been walking around and around this project, getting closer, nudging it, poking it with a stick to see if it is alive and breathing. Sometimes I think it is a dragon and it will eat me. Sometimes I think it is a lamb and will just grow into a plodding sheep. But when you have walked so many circles around something, looking from every angle, just in case it might tell a different tale, sometimes you just have to leap. No parachute.
Tonight I was going to drive to Morrisville to see the fireworks. But it began raining about an hour ago, after the blue skies of afternoon. It may still clear. But I am going to take my books and computer, the beginnings of a poem, close my studio door, walk home under the dripping sky, and have a quiet evening at home. It is 8:42pm. An unknown earliness in my evenings.
Did I tell you I bought twinkle lights at the Big Lots store, $5 bucks for stars hanging around windows above my bed? I hung them today after putting together my new oscillating fan (20 parts, who knew?). So, instead of exploding gunpowder and sizzle, little white beacons under the ceiling. The sky wet and earth shaking a town away. Pajamas and tea. Wishing and dreaming. Resting up.
It's been that kind of day.
in·de·pend·ence
[indəˈpendəns/]
noun
1, the fact or state of being independent. "The US gained independence in 1776"
synonyms: self-government, self-rule, home rule, separation, self-determination, sovereignty, autonomy, freedom, liberty
"the struggle for national independence"
self-sufficiency, self-reliance, "he valued his independence"
2. freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
3. Archaic. a competency.
4. not influenced by the thought or action of others: independent research.
5. not dependent; not depending or contingent upon something else for existence, operation, etc.
6. not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence."I wanted to remain independent in old age" (self-sufficient, self-supporting, self-reliant, standing on one's own two feet)
7. free from outside control; not depending on another's authority (freethinking, free, individualistic; unconventional, maverick, bold,unconstrained, unfettered, untrammeled)
Origin
mid 17th century: from independent, partly on the pattern of French indépendance . 1630s; see independent + ence. Earlier in same sense was independency(1610s). U.S. Independence Day (July 4) recorded under that name by 1791. An Old English word for it was selfdom, "law."
