Lydia Schoch

    I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, — and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

– Emily Dickinson

My ninth grade English teacher planned a whole lesson around this poem. We actually did an entire unit on Emily Dickinson’s poetry and life. It’s one of the reasons why I became such a huge fan of this genre in the first place.

There’s something about this poem that’s stuck with me. The speaker in it is dying. She and her loved ones know she’s dying. They make all kinds of plans to smooth along the process.

Then she (the speaker) actually dies. What happens after that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It makes me wonder what Emily expected to happen after death. Her family attended a Congregationalist church, but I always got the impression that she had a mind of her own. Maybe she agreed with them. Maybe she didn’t.

I wish I could sit down with her and ask her what she really believed.

These are the things this writer thinks about when I’m sitting quietly in the corner. 😉

Video by Will Burrand-Lucas.

This is really cute. I can’t believe the meerkats even allow Will to approach their babies. That takes a lot of trust!

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it. The intelligent person hesitates, ponders, wavers. The unintelligent never wavers, never hesitates. Where the wise will whisper, the fool simply declares from the housetops. – Osho

I’ve never read any of Osho’s books. The topics he chooses to write about don’t interest me, but I stumbled across this quote from him recently and really liked it.

I came down with a doozy of a cold over the weekend, so my brain is foggy. These are the things I think about when the fog lifts temporarily:

Why does this seem to be so common?

Is it intelligence or education that makes people more willing to admit what they don’t know?

Will we ever find a cure for the Dunning-Kruger effect?

What do you think?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

From A Writing Fable or Glimpse of the Pearl via everettpoetry:

ravenlike
I gather bits of foil and bright colored string
shining objects that catch my eye

Woman abandoned as baby in Macon in 1915 dies at age 100. Annie Ione lived quite an exciting life. Her story should really be made into a book or movie.

The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater. Okay, this was really funny.

Mistakes I’ve Made “Debating” Online via NonProphetess. There’s a lot of smart advice here. I use some of these techniques in real life as well.

Home In Your Dreams via OlliCrusoe. Definitely follow the instructions in this post. They make the whole thing even better.

Free Art Books. I just found out that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is giving away free art ebooks on their website.  There are several hundred different options to choose from, and they cover a wide range of time periods and styles. I highly recommend checking them out.

What have you been reading?

Who else is running low on new books to read?

I’m a genre omnivore. I’ve been reading quite a few non-fiction books about psychology and sociology recently, but most of them haven’t been capturing my attention longterm.

Genres I love:

• Science fiction
• Medical nonfiction
• Science
• Fairy tales
• Psychology

Genres I have the occasional, sordid fling with:

• History
• Fantasy
• Romance
• True stories about mischevious pets that you just know are going to die of cancer/old age/stupidity in the final chapter.

What I’ve read recently that was really good:

My Dear Gnome from ChezEddy on Vimeo.

This is a short film about a garden gnome and a deer who decide to play a game of checkers.

I was impressed by how much storytelling ChezEddy fit into about one minute.

I can’t say anything else about this video without giving away spoilers. Go check it out for yourselves!

Photo credit: Marco Bellucci.

Jonah Skeptic.

His name showed up in my Google Analytics report recently.

I wish I knew who he really was.

I can’t find anything about him online.

He’s probably not even an actual person, but he sure should be with a name like that. It’s a great one.

I almost let this post die quietly in my queue so I could keep the pseudonym for myself. I barely spend any time writing about religion or atheism, though, and I also think it’s a good thing for women to identify themselves as women online as much as possible.

Are there people who will treat you differently because of this? Of course. But I do think there’s something to be said for standing up and being counted if you’re able to do so.

Jonah Skeptic sounds brash to me. Is he kind of person who veers Thanksgiving dinner conversations into arguments about politics, religion, and money? Does he ask pointed questions about other people’s sex lives when they ask him why he’s still single?

He probably likes to say shocking things for the fun of it and drinks Scotch in front of teetotallers.

No doubt he despises sentimentality in all of its forms….except when it comes to snuggling with his childhood teddy bear, Ursus, at night. No one is ever too cynical or too old for that.

He has a snarky exterior, but I’d bet he’s the kind of person who picked up both of his cats from the local animal shelter.

There’s something satisfying about giving Jonah Skeptic a backstory. It makes him more likeable and me a little less disappointed that he doesn’t already exist. If he ever shows up in my Analytics history again, I’ll add a few more sneak peeks into his past.

What personal mysteries have you solved lately?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Back in the Shack via jdubqca. I really liked the imagery in this poem. It reminds me of the hikes my parents used to take with us when we were kids. We never found a shack like this one, but we did discover some pretty cool caves.

Fire Safety 101 via electricfire89. Did you see the twist coming?

California Will be Bone Dry in a Year, NASA’s Top Water Scientist Predicts via Buffytuf. I expect their drought to raise U.S. food prices and possible lower the cost of (some) Californian real estate. It’s hard to live somewhere that doesn’t have water, after all.

Modern Curses. All of them would be incredibly annoying.

Rogue Wounds. I was fascinated by the stories in this article.

Google Feud. This game challenges you to guess what other people have googled. You’re given the beginning of the question or phrase and then have to provide the final word. It was a lot of fun.

From Fixed Menu:

The most coveted items on the tray are the salt and pepper packets. Every person I surveyed, without fail, used the word “bland” in describing chow hall food. Rather than prepare separate trays for inmates with high cholesterol or blood pressure, the kitchen serves low-sodium meals for the entire prison population.

What have you been reading?

Here’s the only hint I’m going to give you about this short film: evil is pink.

Photo by Yathin S Krishnappa.

This weekend my favourite husband and I finally got around to watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 because we don’t mind being a little behind on popular movies if it means seeing them at a quarter of the cost it would be to go to the movie theatre on opening weekend. (Wow, that sounds like the kind of stuff my parents said when I was growing up. Isn’t it bizarre when that happens?)

I really enjoyed the trilogy the Hunger Games movies are based on, and the first two movies were great as well.

This time around, though, I felt restless. I don’t want to give away spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read the books or watched the movies, but certain events from Mockingjay were stretched out a little too much for my tastes. They could have easily all fit into one movie if the filmmakers had made it a little longer than normal.

Drew completely disagreed. He liked having more time to feel the rising tension of everything that’s happening to Katniss and the other rebels.

“I think we’re losing our attention spans,” he said as we discussed this. He liked having time to savour  the storyline. I wanted more action.

Did we agree? No, but he made me think.

Are we losing our attention spans?

I know I’m quick to pull out my cellphone when I’m waiting somewhere boring. It has almost everything I need to stay entertained whether I’m stuck in that situation for ten minutes or an hour. There is also something to be said for looking extraordinarily busy in certain parts of Toronto to avoid unwanted attention.

I also only tend to give books a dozen pages or so to catch my interest before I move on the next one. To be fair, though, I’ve always been like this. Life is far too short to waste time on books you’re only half-interested in.

What do you think? How has your attention span changed over the last decade or two?