CHAPTER TEN – “THE NEW NORMAL”

Grab a coffee. We are charging ahead, DESPITE all systems saying, “BREAKING NEWS!!!!” We are moving into Janet’s Chapter TEN. When last we spoke, I was flailing around in Chapter 9, adjusting to my new-found life in Paris. Then BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM. It happened. What happened? Chaos. THE NEW NORMAL! Are you talking about a Kaleidoscopic Shift? No. That would be normal as it used to be. I am talking about my NEW NORMAL of chaos. CHAOS. CONGLOMERATED MESS. MIXTURE. That is the new normal. Not just for me. And as I adjust to the changes around me, I realize that this is true for ALL of us. The whole world – chaotic climate and chaotic people and chaotic happenings requiring change. This is not the same world as it was before the pandemic. I have been humbled.

What is the plan? WHAT? NO PLAN`???????? OOPS. Are you telling me that we are going to have to suffer the consequences of our own actions without anyone to blame? Well, I will just pick someone or something. At random. That is what everyone else does. I have a list of possibilities.

You can call it what you like but everything is changing, as we speak. You can blame whoever or whatever you like, but HOLD ONTO YOUR SEAT AND FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS. IT IS GOING TO BE A BUMPY RIDE!!!!! (Time for a meme.)

I cannot predict what is part of the mixture, or the unrest that is prevailing, but everything is changing, and I don’t see it getting better (whatever better is) for another lonnnnnng chapter, like it or not. So, I am sharing some thoughts with you while I adjust to the predictability of the chaos. These are some lost words from my childhood. I am a child of the 50’s. I was living in a peaceful and comfortable, predictable time, even though I did not know it. (sigh) For instance, (I don’t think these are just “Southern Slang”)

Jalopy; Hunky Dory; Heavens to Betsy; Don’t touch that dial; Carbon copy; You sound like a broken record; and Conglomerated Mess. 

Hung out to dry; A lot of Moxie; Best Bib and Tucker; Straighten up and fly right.   Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy Moley!

In like Flynn; Living the life of Riley; A knucklehead, a Nincompoop, or a pill; Not for all the tea in China! Or A Slow Boat to China. (singing)

 Back in the olden days, life used to be   swell,   but when’s the last time anything was swell?    Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back!  Kilroy was here; Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! This is a fine kettle of fish!  Pshaw; Hey! It’s your nickel;  Don’t forget to pull the chain.    Knee high to a grasshopper; Well, Fiddlesticks! Monkey Business: I’ll see you in the funny papers; Don’t take any wooden nickels; Wake up and smell the roses; See ya later, alligator!    Okidoki.  (double sigh)

OK, I will admit that these words fall trippingly off my tongue. But I was careful to leave them out of my legal briefs. Judges DO NOT LIKE reading cliches.

Well, you get my point. I am now off and running into Chapter TEN, like it or not. Coming, ready or not. So, I will leave you with some closing thoughts that I like. I am still pondering these thoughts by a guy named Romeo Bouchard.

Food for Thought:

“It is a privilege to be able to grow old. Old age is the season for taking stock, the inevitable “diving into oneself and withdrawing from survival” (Serge Bouchard): age forces us to reinterpret our lives, to look for the common thread, to weigh their successes, misfires, injuries, pivotal moments; to do the housework, to take a distance, to transmit to those who stay and who come what deserves to be, This is why I write, at home, from source, while waiting, and you who read me help me feel alive. Like a boat leaving the port, the old people get loose, move away. Memories become their most precious treasures: they replace what can no longer be. Their descendants relay behind them their imprint in the chain of DNA and time.

There is nothing scary about aging when we realize what we are made of.  We are made of the matter of the Universe, we are sons of the Earth and the Sky, we are stardust, we come from this fury to live which pushes the cosmic energy to organize itself, to live and  to think about (Hubert Reeves).  We are not born: we have always been: we appear, like grass in spring.   We will not die: we will always be: we disappear, like grass in the fall.   We are made of the substance, energy and movement of the Universe.  Between the infinite winter where we were not and the infinite winter where we will no longer be, we live the time of a fleeting spring, summer and autumn, we are shooting stars, three little ones  turns and we go, we leave an imprint: our children, our loves, our works.

We are, the moment of a life, the Consciousness of the Universe. The gods, the stories and the philosophies that have been invented to say it, are not worth a sunset, a living tree, the birth of an animal or of a child, the conflagration of two bodies, the permanence of ‘an attachment, the dedication of a worker, the courage of the people … and the cruelty of their masters. The beauty of the world has an answer for everything. To grow old and die, like the evening of a beautiful day: tomorrow is another day.”

So it’s a privilege to grow old. I agree. And very humbling.

So , Welcome to Janet’s World! Chapter TEN!

P.S. the memes are favorites of mine.

And, a fun cartoon portraying my Pollyanna attitude, below. (My nightmare was always forgetting my line in the school play.). Meet Mr. Pollyanna

Best JAY, signing off with a favorite photo from Chapter TWO in Daytona Beach, Florida USA as JANET, age 16, moves into Chapter TEN in Paris, France, age 84.