In the hue of the early morning all things look blue, When night is still present, yet morning is crescent, Things seem so simple when the day is new.
Like a black and white photo that in color lies inept, Creates a dichotomy between simplicity and depth, I reach my conclusions to questions never asked.
Then comes the evening and the sky fills with color, My busy mind spreads into the pinks, reds and yellows, And the answers that filled my head with sweet sound, Become questions again as I turn them around.
As the sun falls low and sinks into the night, Things begin returning to black and white, The complexities of the day stick in my soul, As the blunders and mistakes regain their control.
But than without fail comes the very next morning, My soul arrives giving my ego no warning, I get lost in the moment that always is new, And changes everything, when all things turn blue.
~Cynthia 9/9/9
I wrote this one very early fall morning after a night of worrying what would happen to my mom who suffers from dementia. I sat outside looking into that meager place between night and morning. I think sometimes that if our days had no end we would be doomed as a society. How often do we go to bed feeling drained of most of our hope and all that we are? Only to wake feeling renewed as if some magical answer were planted in our brains overnight, even though all things remain the same.
Anxiety seems to be spreading like the black plague. I don’t know too many people who do not get occasional bouts of it. Like a thief it knocks us down and steals our courage in a split second sending us into a panic as if we don’t have enough of anything, including air. The similarities to the great depression of the 1930’s are striking, however there is one difference. The general population was not swimming in the sea of credit card debt.
Paper or Plastic?
This option seems to quickly becoming a thing of the past. Looking back, the 1980’s were very similar to the “roaring twenties” just before the great depression. The behavior in the 80’s seemed to be about spend, spend, spend. We spent everything we had, and when we did not have anymore to spend we used plastic. It gave us instant credit, instant satisfaction and allowed us to begin to borrow from an uncertain future and between 1980 and 1987 consumer debt doubled in this country and most of that debt was on credit cards. It seemed to net a time of reckless behavior and poor financial choices. The bar was being raised and we kept bending over backwards until we could no longer slide under the falling economy. But it was not just the rate at which we were spending money that changed. Our society and relationships began to become temporary and plastic much in the same way. Generally speaking it seemed to be a point in time of rash behavior and just like the 1920’s we began to find ourselves diseased and spent. It is interesting when we look at societal changes such as marriage rates, which rose sharply just after the great depression until around 1945 when the rate of marriage began to fall and divorce began rising. The trend continues, we are marrying less but divorcing more.
Every thing seems to be disposable if we break a nail we glue a plastic one back on, we swill water from plastic bottles than toss them we will worry about where they go when they begin to fill the seashores I suppose. What story is this telling us about ourselves? It seems as though we have painted the future with watercolors while standing in the rain. I can hope this marks a point in history when someone somewhere in the future will make a note that this is where things began to change. People realized they can’t eat money and their life is not a quota needing to be met. Our credit score does not score points with those we love. But for now we find ourselves like that place in the movie when you know something is about to happen, and, such is our anxiety. But as real as the movie seems when you are watching it, you leave the theatre and everything changes as you walk out into the light. And so, on those long nights when all things seem so black and white – go into the place just before new where all of your worries fade into the blue.
~Cynthia
