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I had a short day planned for work today because we had a new refrigerator coming this afternoon. Of course they called me at 10am to tell me the guys were at my house. Luckily I was able to bail at work, and ride my bike home in ten minutes. Our old fridge was doing that thing again where it decided to run all the time and become a giant freezer. Luckily the property manager said because we've been living here since 2002, that he would buy us a new one. It's so odd having a fridge without rusty shelves in it. The old one was actually made in 1989. The down side is that this new one is huge. It makes my tiny kitchen even tinier.

First thing I did was put some ice trays in the freezer to make ice. MAKING ICE IS SO EXCITING!! Not really, but yes it did work. I now have ice in my freezer, and the things in the fridge are not ice. When I pour cream into my coffee, it doesn't come out like a slushy.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, I've also been watching a lot of train documentaries. There's so many documentaries where they take someone famous or not, and put them on an old train route somewhere in the world. I just watched one where an old Russian ballerina who defected from the USSR came back after the end of communism to take a train ride across Russia to show her very American son her old country. It was cool because not only was it about trains, but also about Soviet history. There was this eerie moment where they see an old statue of Stalin tipped over and his nose smashed. She talked about how she remembered when Stalin died, and how she cried and everyone cried because they were all brainwashed. Looking at the statue's broken nose she was both laughing and crying. She was upset that someone defaced the statue, but also said, "He deserved it. He killed so many people." Then laughed and cried some more. You could see how split she felt about it. It's here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL0SYziZgO8

I know this sounds silly, but I'm fairly confident that I'm going to live to be 101. I have no basis in reality to back this up, but a while back I saw a obituary in the paper for a guy who died at 101, and I just had this overwhelming feeling that I would be 101 when I died too. Who knows, maybe not...note at this moment I was going to follow up the maybe not with an imaginary scenario, but then that would be testing fate now wouldn't it? The reason this wild fantasy came up is that some day all of this stuff we're living through now will be a part of history, and I'll be one of those old people that remembers history. Maybe they'll put me on a train, and I can tell stories about the old United States....yeah, we used to have separate restrooms for men and for women, and those were the only two options.
meowmensteen: (Default)
I changed my journal title to "I Chop Wood, And Carry Water" because I think I had a glimmer of Nirvana on my walk to the grocery store this evening. I also felt this profound love for everyone and every thing...I'm sure there's a pill out there that can fix this state of mind. Just think, if the Buddha had the right medication... also if van Gogh had a little prozac, maybe he wouldn't have cut off his ear. Why the left ear?

No, I'm not intoxicated. I'm not sure when I first heard the line about chopping wood and carrying water, I think it might have been when my dad was getting into Zen. He always had a bunch of books around the house about Zen. That line kind of stuck in my consciousness. I think I even cut the words "I chop wood" into the back of my hand once in high school. When my English teacher saw that, he laughed and gave me a hug. Yeah, I was a weird kid. Out of the blue last week, I looked at my horoscope in the news paper, and it had that line in there. What are the odds?

It's hard to describe what it (the phrase) means to me. I was thinking about how if life had set me up for something better, I might not have been so driven to stick to, and learn my trade. I might not have put in all the years of mixing dough and melting chocolate if I had a chance to make more money doing something less laborious. Even now, after being a baker for over ten year, I feel like I'm half way there to being a Master Baker, whatever that it, but that half way further than someone who hasn't followed my path. The rewards of life aren't just given to you. They can't be. It's the experience that teaches you. I heard some cheesy pop song yesterday where the young singer was begging to put to sleep or something until he could wake up older with all the knowledge that comes with age. I wanted to find him and whack him over his head. DUDE! It's the getting there that gives you the knowledge. You can't just get it without the effort. Learning something profound often requires you to change the way you understand yourself.

There's more to it than the end result, it's the process too. I chop wood. I carry water. I do it every day. I don't do it so that one day I'll be the best wood chopper. I do it because the wood needs to be chopped.

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meowmensteen

February 2023

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