AN ATTIC VIEW

The Wars of Roses~View from Downstairs

 

Once this attic was empty, but entire lives are stored up there now. When we arrived here, 30 years ago, the house was completely empty. At closing, my husband requested that nothing be left behind, and nothing was, so we began with a blank slate. Now, thirty ++ years later, the whole thing is jammed. First, came a set of rustic oak chairs from our Tennessee sojourn and a few end tables. Then, in rapid succession came my grandmother’s stuff—the sad remains that the early bird relatives had deemed unimportant—and then came my mother’s boxes and trunks when she entered a nursing home—and next came his mother’s many photo albums, a huge collection going back into the 1930’s, after she too ended up in “incarcerated”. Sadly, we can’t recognize more than half the people who are posed there, giving us tight New England smiles in those old pictures pictures. 

Now all of it gathers dust. Some important boxes filled with memorabilia I would LOVE to find  have vanished—gone without a trace when I went back to locate them later. Perhaps they’ve fallen into some Twilight Zone like void that may exist in the upper stories of houses. My husband suggests they've fallen into the same inter-dimensional crease where the lost socks go.

 

We’ve thought of cleaning it, of sorting through, of discarding most and preserving the few things that might still have some interest and/or value to the next generation. Then summer comes again and we abandon the place for another six months. Next winter, we think, next spring, but somehow it never happens.  Our stuff is there, too. A host of coffee mugs emblazoned with the names of once famous and now dead Tech companies, untouched boxes of tractor-feed paper, and woolen tartan skirts made in Scotland made for 70 lb H.S. girl, as well as jackets and note books from 5^th and 6^th Form English school days—“O” level tide-pool biology and “A” level European History, adjacent to my husband’s brightly colored slacks purchased for 1970’s casual Fridays.     

There is a solar bicyclist who no longer pedals, a strobe light from the Roaring Sixties, a trunk full of 78 records (Big Band, Classical, Jazz) which belonged to my mother, and a bust which my brother-in-law picked out of some East Village trash heap back before gentrification had driven out the artists. My huband's gun club trophies are parked on a rickety bookcase.

Deeper in, there are my own manuscripts--a rejection pile--that all writers back in the day accumulated--pages thumbed through and smelling of cigarette smoke. (We went broke mailing the stuff to agents/publishers and then having it sent back via SASE.)  I even have a collection of dreary literary criticism from the 1920's simply because they they  had my Grandfather Liddle's signature inside them, and I couldn't bear to throw them away.

 

 

 

~~Juliet Waldron
http://bookswelove.net/authors/Waldron-Juliet
http://www.julietwaldron.com

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

 

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

Setting The Clock

The task of changing clocks tonight set me to thinking about how, as  I grow older, each day seems to just race by. I remember Granny Liddle telling me, somewhere around my eighth or ninth year when I was hopping about, wishing aloud for Christmas to come, “Don’t wish your life away.” In childhood, that’s exactly what everyone does. We impatiently wait for summer to arrive to get out of school, we wait for Christmas, for Halloween, for the State Fair, for our birthday, for that new movie.  

 

I’ve done a little looking up via what my Uncle Richard used to call “Mr. Google” regarding this business of our perception of time, and the latest ideas indicate that we’re, all of us, a collection of internal clocks. Interestingly, different parts of the brain govern different pieces of perception—a distributed system of cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia--and all these must coordinate results with one another.  Even way down at the cellular level our bodies are running little programs, as Cell A gives instructions to Cell B next door about what—chemically--ought to happen next.  

 

“Time” for you and me is essentially a series of experiences which the brain organizes in a way that makes sense.  According to neuroscientist David Eagleman:

When our brains receive new information, it doesn’t necessarily come in the proper order. This information needs to be reorganized and presented to us in a form we understand. When familiar information is processed, this doesn’t take much time at all. New information, however, is a bit slower and makes time feel elongated.

In short, an oldie like myself pretty much knows what to expect from their daily routine and doesn’t pay much attention as we go through it. We’re on automatic pilot. To a child, however, all sorts of experiences register as “new,” and consequently, a lot of activity goes on as the brain sorts and structures all this fresh information.  

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-time-perception-how-to-make-your-days-longer

If you do something new every day, it will slow the passage of time a bit. One of the pieces I read suggested sky-diving as a cure for that feeling of life zooming past, but I think I’ll pass. With my luck, the shute wouldn’t open.

Another idea about this curious feeling that time is now speeding past is suggested by Paul Janet, a 19^th Century philosopher. He proposed that with the passage of time, a single year becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of a life. The first week you’re alive is, therefore, the “longest.” It's all acceleration (a.k.a. downhill) from there.

To put it another way, each year only represents a smaller and smaller portion of your life.  At 71, a year only represents 1.41% of the total. Hit the link below and check out the fascinating interactive graphic which illustrates this idea:

 http://www.fastcodesign.com/3048249/infographic-of-the-day/experience-the-effects-of-aging-on-your-perception-of-time

 

~~Juliet Waldron

All my Historical Novels
http://www.julietwaldron.com


 

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

 

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

 

 

Free Papers

Juliet's Author Webpage

Once a week you find them in the lobby of the grocery store.  I have a habit of reading through them. There are the usual advertisers, the churches, the realtors, the auctions, the used car dealers, restaurants that offer “early-bird” specials for seniors, and club listings—chess, photography, computers, knitting, quilting, and a host of support groups. There are a few obituaries, but I hope never to find the few people I do know featured.  There are classified ads, too, and these are mostly the reason I read it.

Every once in a while there’s something that makes me smile.  My most recent favorite said: “Found! One of those things you pick up things with in the 300 block of Mayberry Street.”  This writer had good intentions, but the words to describe the object he’d found eluded him.  Still, he did note where he'd found it, and perhaps that would reunite the owner with the lost object.

Sometimes, the ad reveals something about the mental state of the person who wrote it. This is unintentional, but here’s a good one, full of anxiety: “Lost blue tool box full of tools. I’m not sure where I lost it, but it’s blue, full of tools and says Erector on the lid. Reward! Thank-you.”  You can tell that losing that was a terrible thing, but you can also tell that the writer has probably lost a lot of other important things over the years. As someone who can relate to absent-mindedness and loss, I sincerely hoped someone eventually returned his toolbox (blue).

Another ad, one I responded to, said: “Help me please! I have 31 cats who needs good homes.  Bring cat food.“

I went to the place—the back of beyond behind a very small somewhere along-the-highway town and up a hill via a gullied dirt road. There I found a ramshackle house and on it's last legs barn. There were cats everywhere, running for cover. A woman, thin and tired looking, with tattoos all over her arms, came out and we sat down together on the grass. She explained that she had worked at a shelter, but couldn’t endure the weekly euthanasia, and so had ended up with all these cats. I could see straight-away that most of her cats had no use for people—probably with good reason. 

I watched cats skulking under the rusting junkers  and behind old engine parts that littered the yard. After a few minutes, she  opened the big bag of cat food I’d brought and spread it on the ground. Skinny cats came swarming from every direction.   After gulping hastily, all keeping one eye on me--the unknown--most ran away. I’d been watching an orange threesome, scrawny nine month adolescents. The kind weary woman pointed them out, calling them “my orange brothers.”

One, the skinniest and shabbiest, climbed onto my lap. As soon as I touched him he began to purr, a huge roaring purr. He drooled with joy as I began to pet him gently. His eyes were washed-out yellow. His fur was dry as straw and his nose ran. I could count ribs and feel his knobby spine.

I felt a strong emotional connection—and then he bit me, grabbing the skin of my forearm with his teeth and twisting like a bulldog. Just a millimeter short of drawing blood, he leapt off my lap, stood just out of reach and continued to gaze at me, trembling, drooling, and purring.

“He didn't mean that,” she said. “He just gets excited.” 

This desperate, sick, love-starved soul is the one I took home. You never know what kind of cool stuff you'll discover in the free paper...

 

~ Juliet Waldron

 

 

 

 

Hop on over to these blogs too and see what's cooking: 

 

 

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/

(Tricia McGill)http://mizging.blogspot.com

(Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/

(Connie Vines)