State of Mind vs State of that Room

For six months now my room has been steadily accumulating "stuff". Books, clothes, shoes, bags, more books, printouts, folders. As the "stuff" has been piling up, my stress levels have been rising. What I'm wondering is, am I unable to organise my "stuff" because I'm stressed or am I stressed because I seem to be incapable of sorting out the goddamn mess?
I love the sense of satisfaction I get from a well cleaned up room. The freshly laundered bed clothes, the shoes arranged neatly in pairs, the cds all sitting pretty in their cases, jackets, trousers and skirts all hanging in well behaved rows.
I feel virtuous and good and ready to take on the world. The next day the good work is all undone and I'm back to living in chaos again. I tell myself that I'm comfortable with the mess. I know where everything is. I have a "system" of shifting piles. Maybe I can fool myself but my stress levels don't seem to be falling for it.

Hello Is There Anybody There?

The gentle art of conversation is dead and gone. We used to talk. We all used to talk. We used to have conversations about everything. We used to give each other advise about relationships, clothes, parents, jobs, haircuts, just about anything you could mention. We used to meet face to face. We would telephone each other and chat for hours. That was then. These are memories I've dredged up from the past. Now, today, we send emails and text. We communicate with a language of short, snappy phrases and abbreviations. In our hurry its not just the words that we abbreviate. We've cut short our conversations. Lost are the messages communicated through body language and tone of voice. We've lost the ability to look each other in the eye and deliver a message and recieve a message that is much more than mere words. We hide behind usernames and anonymous comments. We disguise what we really think behind cynical comments designed to be uber cool. An honest conversation, now thats a scarey concept.

No Answers

The shootings in Virginia yesterday are hard to take your mind off. We've become so desensitised to the indescribable awfulness that is Iraq that the news reports from there barely scrape by on the radar. When a killing on such a large scale happens in the US or anywhere in the West it lands right on the radar. There are lots of discussions in the ether as to why that is and why we should feel guilty and I don't want to get into that here. What I am trying to understand is why someone turns into a killing machine and once they've started they can't stop. We are all capable of horrendeous acts but what is it that prevents most of us from turning into monsters and lets others run riot? Supposedly the murderer was reacting to being jilted by his girlfriend. If we imagine that he couldn't stand the thought of his girlfriend with another man, the thought is so unbearable that the only way he can deal with it is to destroy them. He needs to restore control in his life. He needs to feel that he has some power over his life. He uses his ultimate power, the power to take life. Does he think about what he's doing? Does it all happen in a rage? Is he calm for the four hours or so that this all took place. Why did murder become the only solution he could find for his problems. Was he wired differently to the rest of us? Is it fair to focus so much on the murderer and not his victims? His legacy, their legacies are these feeling that we are all experiencing.

May Flowers

Talking today my mum bemoaned the youth for forgetting old traditions. She told us that when she was a wee lass on May Day all doorsteps would be covered with flowers. We asked her why this was done but she didn't know just that back in the 40s and 50s in small town Ireland everybody collected wild flowers and laid them on their doorsteps. Doing a little searching I found out that this came from a mixture of Celtic traditions of celebrating Bealtaine (May) and Roman celebrations of the goddess of Flowers. The flowers were to keep all evil spirits from the house and more specifically in Ireland to keep the pesky fairies from the door. I don't know about the fairies but I really like the idea of celebrating spring and bringing some colour and new life to the house. I might just revive this tradition next month and see of any of my neighbours follow suit?

All Apologies

He told a story. I won't tell it to you now. It was about life, death, being a bystander or taking part. He apologised for his "silly thoughts". They weren't silly in the slightest. They were observational, philosophical, thoughtful, thought provoking. I would have told him so but we don't speak anymore. Once, when we did speak, I told him off for being too self deprecating. He asked me what that meant and so we looked it up in a dictionnary which he always kept nearby. He laughed. He had an open mind and a hunger to learn. What else should he be.

How to drive

At 830am when one is on ones way to work the following is how not to drive in front of one.
1. Appoximate speed 10 mph
2. Brake on seeing on coming traffic (its a main road for the love of all thats earthly)
3. Stop at every junction, with minor side roads, to let traffic onto the main road
4. Stop at every parked car just in case they might decide at some point in the near distant future to pull off
5. Indicate right then take 10 minutes to make the turn even though 3 consecutive cars were polite enough to stop to let you make your turn.

As a general plea, if this sounds like how you drive, could you please have a lie in tomorrow morning till I get to work on time.

Shhhhh

It's all so nice and quiet here. I like it. No noise. No bother. Lovely.