Thursday, January 28, 2016

20160128.0657

I evidently either forgot to set an alarm or had a battle with my snooze button that I do not recall. But I am awake now, and so I am considering the ongoing work with which I am presented. A surprise meeting awaits me today, for example; another was determined necessary, and since the meetings pay, I decided I would happily put in to attend. And another level of work on the same project is looming; I have put in to do some of that, too. Sherwood Cottage and those who live in it need me to make money, and the rate of pay offered by the meetings and the next level of work is certainly attractive; I am happy to put my time to those ends, especially since my more regular freelance work seems to have tapered off a bit. To borrow from an old adage, the sun is shining, and a scythe rests in my hands.

That there is something off in the image of me as farmer, I concede. Although I come from farming folk, and only a generation or two removed therefrom, I am very much not a farmer. (I can also hear several members of my family snorting and saying such things as "Ya think?") Make no mistake, I appreciate what farmers do; I like to eat, as should be obvious. But I also like to be inside with my books, reading them and reasoning through them and their implications to make new knowledge. Tilling fields and hoeing rows does not generally allow of such things, to my knowledge; the outside work I have done, helping to dig ditches and install electrical services, has not. (Working the smoker does to some extent, however, which is part of why I like to do it. Another part is that I like smoked meats. They taste good.) To picture me holding older farm equipment, then, is a bit odd, and I know it.

The scythe also has strong associations with The Reaper, whom song tells us not to fear. That image is also somewhat odd to apply to me. For all the unpleasantness that is associated with me--and I have read over no small number of comments that make the association--I am far from a fatal figure. Ms. 8 might argue, had she the words, that the opposite is true, since I join her mother in giving her life and do no small amount to keep that life going. (That I will be unsuccessful in the end is not a source of joy to me, as could be imagined.) I do not move unseen through the masses, swinging my sharpened blade from side to side and gathering in that which its passing fells. I am instead overt and obvious in my dealings, and when I do swing a blade--and it has happened before, on occasion--it is generally in a vertical motion, chopping or cutting down rather than to the side. So it is not as if I do as Death does, and I am not as certain in my approach.

What is certain, though, is that work continues. Equally certain is that I need to attend to it.

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