Fleeting Time

October 16, 2024March 7, 2025 / Hermionejh

I have not embraced becoming an adult. Many of the adults I knew growing up made adulthood seem terrible. Becoming an older adult (an elder – perish the fucking thought!), has happened kicking and screaming – I’ll let you know if that changes. That’s the rub about being human and subject to the conditions of the material world.

This is an interesting world, but I’ve just started to feel like I have some command of my life, and now I enter my elderhood when the body starts falling apart and can no longer do what my younger self wanted to do but couldn’t manage.

Yes, books, songs, comedies, and tragedies have exhausted the topic, but I’ve not been here before – and likely neither have you.

I met a woman in her twenties who was already having plastic surgery to game aging (good luck with that), and another who constantly buys potions, pills, infrared devices, and anything else she can barely (or not) afford to keep collagen and her telomeres from reduction or corruption – although ultra rich people like Jeff Bezos are working to solve that. You’ll have to be in the ultra rich category to benefit from it. Immortality or near-immortality won’t come cheap. Also, there isn’t enough resources on Earth for everybody to be immortal. Maybe that’s why Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars?

A better solution might be to somehow have a human brain implanted in an android shell, but that human brain would still be subject to aging – and android shells would be too. All material corrodes or otherwise breaks down eventually. It’s an immutable reality of the material world. But, hundreds of years alive are better than our current sub-100 average.

Bryan Johnson lives an algorithmically driven daily regimen to keep his body and mind 18, or as close to that as he can. His goal isn’t to cheat death but to live an optimal life.

My brain got trauma wired as a young child, and continuing into my young adulthood – and so many of us are born with, or develop, challenges to living a well-regulated life.

We’re here for a minute, really. What are we going to do with it?

I’d like to be more highly functioning. That’d be nice. Less depression, less anxiety, more embracing of whatever time I have left, and write that book I have wanted to write for at least a decade.

I have watched friends drop off sideways to cancer and other terrible illnesses. I have lived long enough to see most of my aunts and uncles reach their 90’s and 100’s before finally succumbing to various conditions or simply wearing out. My maternal grandfather lived to 102, but was mostly blind and deaf at the end. We haven’t solved those problems yet, even if we can live in a better physical condition.

We all come into a tumultuous world. It can seem like we were born too late or too soon, and that’s why reincarnation is such an attractive concept. This might not be our one shot. Some people claim to remember past lives, but most of us come into the world with a blank slate, oblivious of any prior existence (if there were one, which I doubt).

Our species seems to seek power and domination above all else. Nothing is ever enough. We also have the possibility of peaceful and contented lives, and that’s what I’ve been trying to achieve. It’s been an elusive goal that I’m still working toward.

Contentment doesn’t mean a risk-free, or a challenge-free life. It’s a choice, and a commitment, and not all of us have the ability to choose. Less pain and strife means more time for focused creativity and a fulfilling life.

I don’t know if I’m getting wiser, but I certainly have more awareness and experience. The balance of time growing shorter is also a good motivator. It’s do before I die now, even if I could reasonably live another forty years. There’s no way to know what time will bring, but my memory of my early years is growing less sharp.

Maybe I’ll try Bryan Johnson’s protocol. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Mapped Out

February 18, 2024 / Hermionejh

I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that my body – especially my face – is more and more a map of my life, but it feels that way.

The permanent crease above my left eyebrow lets me know that my quizzical expression is lopsided – it seems my right eyebrow doesn’t care to express itself much. The same goes for my ever-deepening smile creases that have a deeper groove on my left side than my right, and how apt it is for an inner life and outward life often at odds that has left visible reminders.

I chide myself for wanting to erase those lines and creases – my vanity wanting a smooth, un-lined face forever.

I have lived. The years keep going by leaving time’s impression, not really having much to do with who we are inside. We are semi-ageless. It seems like it would be a tragedy to stay the same – never deepening our understanding, knowledge or experience.

I get it that so many would strike that bargain – and are doing their best to keep time’s imprint off their bodies. Half of me wants that too.

Wrinkles do not confer, and should not imply, wisdom, after all – just that we’ve lived long enough for our bodies to start breaking down.

The work to stay healthy and functional seems to fill up more time and can feel daunting.

It’s probably a question of available energy than motivation, but I am more alive when I’m doing things I love, and especially getting out into the woods for long hikes.

As stupid as it sounds, I’ve started understanding how we’re everything and everything is us. I have the same elements as the chair I sit on, the floor I walk on, the metal in the ladle and the clay or ceramic of the bowl that contains the soup I’m eating, that also contains the elements of my body.

I’m not even stoned! But, yes, we are made from those elements too.

This isn’t new information to any of us, but the perception or feeling is different. It feels more visceral now. Is that wisdom? I think my brain just loves rabbit holes.

The minutiae of the outer world has become more fascinating.

I never had time nor inclination much for that when I was younger – not that I didn’t appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the world and the phenomenal unlikelihood and mystery of life itself.

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer preoccupied with raising my child or finding someone to share my time or my life with. I suppose it’s different for everyone.

Maybe it’s also because I feel my mortality more strongly than ever and I want to be here as fully as possible for the time left to me.

As for any of us, my last day here could be today.

It’s like a deadline is fast approaching and the urgency to get get my shit together to have my portfolio or the highlight reel of my time here ready for who or whatever might review it on the other side from here feels more imperative.

That might not at all be a thing, but my anxiety about the possibility is clearly nerve-wracking.

Will they like me? Did I do alright? Will they forgive me if I fucked up the one job I was supposed to do here (the instructions of which somehow got lost) – or was I just supposed to wing it all along – and we’ll all laugh about the big tangled mess I made?

I hope it’s the latter because the worry is being mapped out all over my ever-creasing face.

Love Is

February 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

Because there is love we exist. Not because of sex, even though that’s literally how we’re here (most of us anyway), but we exist because we form bonds of family and friends. We can even bond with strangers, with characters in books or on film or other mediums.

Our capacity to love never diminishes.

We might become bitter, or angry, or vengeful, but find a way to crack that and love can enter, fully.

Removing love can make us feel broken, incapacitated, but it never ends our ability to love if we had enough love and appropriate touch in infancy and early childhood.

Love is the center of our being and emanates from our heart – which is where our goodness and spiritual connection also stem from.

Love can and has changed the world, and love can save a soul, and heal our entire planet.

We get to choose what we leave in this world. All we can do is pass on our love, and knowledge and wisdom. The rest falls away.

Love is steady and unceasing, but it must be chosen and practiced and remembered.

Choosing love isn’t always easy, but it’s an open invitation, just waiting whenever, if ever, we’re ready and willing.

I Forgot

February 13, 2024February 13, 2024 / Hermionejh

Our brain and body’s super power is perseverance.

We forget childbirth’s intensity, and blunt trauma’s pain. We can remember that it was awful, but not really feel the raw intensity.

Our brains anesthetize us against horrific events. We go numb.

My partner was in a horrible accident that rattled his brain so bad the doctors had to drill his skull to relieve the pressure, and he fell into a coma for several weeks.

The doctors told his parents they were likely saying goodbye to him and to try to prepare for that.

He doesn’t remember a thing about the accident. He remembers leaving for a party with his friends, and waking up briefly in enormous pain at the hospital, only to sink down into oblivion again. The next time he regained awareness, he was being wheeled into rehab where he spent painful months while learning to use his voice after being intubated so long, and to use his body again.

He can only recount what the driver (his cousin), and the medics and hospital staff, his parents, brother, and his girlfriend told him about what happened.

They can barely talk about it to this day without choking up.

Had he died, he would have been in blissful ignorance.

This is my dark time of year. I forgot.

How, you might ask. How, when it happens every year? I can only look at you in silence. I wish I knew.

I think, perhaps, my brain anesthetizes that particular knowledge, which is difficult because I am woefully unprepared every year. It would be funny if it weren’t so devastating.

But this year there are extenuating circumstances. The death of friends over the past year, and most recently a sister, pushed my preparation for this dark time completely out of my mind.

I use my lighter times of year to shore up my psyche, my resolve, and practice my emotional and mental tools I have learned over the past thirty years.

And then it seems to all fall apart in my moment of need – as though I’m fresh on the planet and have no idea what this thing called emotion is or how to handle it.

Maybe I can come up with a safe word or phrase my partner can say to me, like “It’s the fucking trauma, stupid!”

Yeah, that would go over so well! LOL

Maybe “Keep it simple, sweetheart,” would suffice.

Peace, Love, Grief

August 20, 2023 / Hermionejh

There have been better days lately. I’ve been doing my best to fill up the friend-shaped space she once occupied.

We don’t know what, if anything, awaits us after this world, so it’s a crapshoot if we’ll ever meet again. We won’t have eyes to see one another, mouths to talk and share a laugh, or arms to give a hug, but we will recognize each other if we retain consciousness outside our body.

I saw another old friend today that I haven’t seen in years. He was part of our large mutual friend group when we were teens, and I’m grateful he hasn’t radically changed since then. Matured, yes, but still true to his essential self.

After we parted I was hit with a wave of loneliness or sadness that seemed outsized for the situation, but later realized that it was about belonging – and about loss, because my friend who died in May also belonged in our friend group.

It’s kind of silly that I wanted to cling to him emotionally, as if his presence would resurrect our friend, but she’s gone, and no one can bring her back.

We both had places to be, so we left, and I walked myself through the mental patch of grief left in his wake that he really had nothing to do with.

The starkness of grief can trigger my leftover childhood neglect trauma. It feels like standing alone in the midst of a crowd.

My inner peace comes from the center of my heart, because I have no peace without love, but it’s very hard to find the love without peace. Thankfully, it’s still possible, even if it’s only moments.

I’m still in my life. I have things to do and places to go. It’s ok to still be here. It will also be ok when I’m no longer here.

I wondered earlier today if the experiences we have and the knowledge we gain are not ours alone, but are directly feeding or enriching the spirit world.

It might be that that is not how any of this works, but it made me feel like I’m possibly contributing something worthwhile to the whole.

Who knows?

None Of My Business

March 9, 2023 / Hermionejh

I heard something today that I heard a long time ago, but keep forgetting: it is none of my business what anyone else thinks of me, and none of anyone else’s business what I think of them. What I think is irrelevant.

Tending to my own life, to my own path, is all that is required of me.

I cannot count on anyone else – it isn’t fair to put that burden on anyone – but it sure is nice to have friends who don’t mind walking beside me time to time through this world.

My job is to meet people where they are and have no expectations of them. It sounds easy, but it’s not.

I hate change, and I hate having to change. LOL

It’s uncomfortable, it’s painful, even, but it’s life.

Is there some being or force overseeing all of this, guiding us, or willing to guide us if we so choose?

I have no idea.

Sometimes I would like to believe that, but in order to accept that I have to also accept that that force or being is also cool with horror. So I stay away.

Let it be.

I don’t want to argue anyone else’s philosophy, or point of view. Evil exists. We see it every day. It’s so enormous that it’s almost paralyzing, and I have to tune it out.

Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe I deserve all that I get.

I don’t know.

I believed in love. I really thought love would change the world. I really thought showing up and speaking out would change the world for the better.

Maybe it has and I can’t see it.

I don’t know. It feels like just a lot of wasted energy.

I have been very naïve my whole life. I was idealistic, I was hopeful. I’m not ready to give into the forces of evil, but they feel stronger than the forces of love lately.

I’m ready to leave the world – whenever my time comes. I believe I have done my best.

My imagination leads me to a quiet place out in the universe somewhere. There is no sight or sound, and no worries. There is no happiness, no sadness, no anger, no hate, but also no love. It’s just energy, I guess. At least that’s what science says. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, and everything must go somewhere.

Rainy Monday

July 12, 2021 / Hermionejh / 7 Comments

“Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” from Rainy Days and Mondays, Carpenters, 1971 album

I wish I could empirically know if it is my mother’s spirit that I feel in certain moments like this morning when I heard her voice inside me say “what a rainy day,” as I looked out over the tiny garden this morning.

Her voice came unbidden. I wasn’t thinking about her in that moment, but I’ve been thinking of her since.

Are there gardens wherever she is – if she’s anywhere at all anymore?

There must be gardens, because she’d create one.

Doesn’t all our creativity speak to something beyond us? We dream, and plan, and build. We create worlds within worlds – aquariums of fish sometimes replete with real or plastic plants, old time scuba outfitted people, little plastic treasure chests, or practical items like miniature caves or structures where the fish can swim through or hide.

There’s Biosphere II in Oracle, Arizona – a town I once briefly lived in – where a dreamer designed and built a sustainable living environment for when we have thoroughly trashed this one (as we seem unable to stop ourselves from doing).

My mother was curious about everything. She pondered life’s mysteries, and whether we continually recycle into flesh beings – or whatever forms we might take in an endlessly diverse universe.

I could and did talk to her about anything, and while I still have my scholarly and philosophical friend who also ponders the extraordinary, and the mundane, my mother’s voice is silenced except for memories, and a few video and audio recordings.

But maybe her voice isn’t silenced. Maybe consciousness resides outside the body. Maybe my mother has just changed form, and carries all that she gained from being on Earth with her – willing her thoughts into my brain once in a while?

It’s frustrating that I can’t know for sure, and it feels like searching for the roots of truth in mythology.

I once read that God(dess) is an “unknowable essence,” but has sent, and will send, messengers throughout all time to tell the rest of us why we exist, and what It hopes from us.

My mother once read me some other sage’s words: “Why do you seek God(dess)? Does a fish seek water?” I don’t know the author of those words, but they often sustain me.

I sense my mother’s smile and encouragement too, and that will have to suffice.

All Hallows

November 1, 2011November 1, 2011 / Hermionejh

Rabbit, Rabbit. The ancient Celtic year begins today, marking the start of winter. Winter was already ushered in rather harshly with our recent Nor’easter dumping thirty inches of snow in some areas. I feel lucky that my town escaped with just over a foot of the heavy, wet snow. I was only out of power for part of a day, while some of my friends are yet to get back their electricity.

Yesterday, I visited my Mom because her phone was out and I wanted to make sure she made it through the storm alright, even though I know that one of my aunts was staying with her, and the guy who works for her and lives nearby would also have checked on her and I figured I’d have gotten a call if anything bad had happened. Then I thought that all phone service in the area might be out, and I just wanted to visit regardless of anything else. I was a bit worried that fallen trees or downed wires would prevent me from making it to my mother’s house, and it might well have earlier in the day because I saw evidence of cleared trees and other debris all the way there.

It was almost evening when I arrived, and I brought a flashlight in case it was dark by the time I left. My mom doesn’t have electricity or running water, so the storm changed nothing for her except interrupted phone service.

The glow of the kerosene lamps, and warmth from the wood stove, enveloped and welcomed me even as I was welcomed by my mother and aunt. They were happy for my unexpected company and we chatted about the snowstorm’s effects, and how weird it was to have a major storm before Hallowe’en, as we sipped coffee and evening began settling in. I don’t know if it was the time of day and the way the lamplight glowed and cast slight shadows on the walls, or the steamed windows and cooking smells from whatever dinner my mother was making, or simply spending time with my mother and one of her sisters, but there was something so extraordinary about being there that I noticed and enjoyed in the moment, and that feeling, or experience, actually, has stayed with me since.

I left before it was dark and made my way up the path without needing my flashlight. I noticed the stillness of the woods around me as I walked, and had a sense of being present to life in a way that I rarely sense.

I got up this morning and began working on things that I often think about doing rather than starting – or finishing. I feel my life changing, almost radically (for the better), and I hope that’s true.