What a long time we've been!

My, my, my. What a ghost-town this place has become. A ghost-town like the ones you could find all over Europe after the Bubonic Plague. Empty, empty, empty with an echo all about like an empty well.
Now that I have thoroughly depressed the spirits of everyone present, we may continue in tolerable comfort.

The reason for our long absence could be stated in many ways, but I shall revert to the age-old custom of pointing fingers--a very good custom and one I don't see any sense in erradicating--and vow that it was all The Gentleman's fault. Y'see....he has been ill.

Very ill.

So ill I don't think it likely he'll ever recover.

Of course it hasn't been a terrible illness. The Gentleman has quite enjoyed convalescing and--rather than go to Bath or the Seaside and have done with it--The Gentleman vows to himself to be an intolerable Bunburyist just so that his sweet Nursie shall be near him.

Oh yes. That was the trouble all along. His nurse. You see, she happened to have dark eyes, and he soon discovered that dark eyes are sweeter and more troublesome than eyes of any other shade because they don't tell all right away--one must stare at them for some time before ferreting out all the secrets. And the longer The Gentleman looked at his Nurse's eyes, the sicker he got till his case was quite deplorable.

We--The Nocturnal Why and myself--have successfully avoided The Gentleman's illness. I do not think it a contagious infection--at least not immediately, though I am by no means assured we both shall not fall beneath it's dark finger sometime in the future.

If you must have it spelled out, The Gentleman has a.... disease of the heart. It makes that precarious organ flutter and patter and gallop whenever Nursie is around...which is convenient because said Nurse must stay about longer to take his temperature and coddle him and pat him on the shoulder with a "poor little bunny" or  two which The Gentleman likes better than ever so much toast and jam and hot cocoa.

His heart complaint extends past moments when Nursie is around and causes him to be absentminded, to never pay heed to his clock, and to hold his phone--glued to his ear--to ease the pain in that troublesome area of the heart whenever Nursie is absent. I am afraid there is no cure for this illness but eternal attachment to Nursie. Her presence seems to excite the poor patient, but calm him too, and the pain returns immediately upon her departure so that we are all in an uproar and wish to goodness she'd stay so The Gentleman would stop having relapses.

There is no use consulting a physician. He'd only sigh and mention something called "twitterium-pationicum" which--if you care to Google it--is a malady most often caught by young folk in conjunction with the Spring, but felt at all times of the year by those of a warm-blooded, warm-hearted nature.

The Nocturnal Why and I do all we can to comfort The Gentleman....and for now you--and we--must excuse him from posting on this blog. It is all the poor chap can do to refrain from hallucinations of glorious illness to come...you would not be much interested--nor enlightened--by his blatherings. ;)

           ~The Cock-Eyed Optimist

The Grapevine--Society's Terror

Telephone. We've all played the game before as kids--you know, the one where you sit down in a circle and whisper something entirely random in the ear of the person next to you. Usually (if your speech has been suitably garbled) by the time the whisper gets back to the head of the line it sounds nothing at all like what you started with:

"I said 'Pink elephants wear pajamas', not 'Pink cheetahs hug their mamas!'" and you laughed as if it was the funniest thing the world over. Which it is not. But we don't quarrel with a five year old's sense of humor. Hopefully they'll grow out of it.

The older I grow and the more time I spend with people, the more I realize how The Grapevine is only a huge game of Telephone. It can work in two directions.

"The direct and the...indirect. Of course the indirect would be less direct than...the direct but..."

 (Pardon the intrusion of Roman Holiday into a perfectly serious post. ;) The Grapevine--that kidney of Society, that organ that filters every little bit of Social blood--can either make you look like a dunce or a diva. There's seldom an in between. You know it's happened to you:

You mention an off-the-cuff piece of news to a friend. Something small like, "I think it would be so much to fun to have a ball sometime this fall."

Two weeks later you meet a friend of a friend of a friend who bounds up to you, clasps their hands and exclaims: "So I heard you're planning a huge dance party for November!"
You start flicking through your mental Dewey Decimal system trying to figure out how such a thing could have been planned without your knowledge. Then you realize. Someone's been your unofficial, unsolicited Officious Solicitor and now the whole world is ready for your Mega Dance Party invitation.
On the other hand, if you were to admit that you struggled in a certain relationship with a family member to another friend and that friend was to blab, give it two weeks. You'll have a sympathetic Rumor Monger hammering down your door with reams of advice as to How To Stop Hating Your Grandmother.

"My grandmother? What on earth do you mean?"
"Don't be such a sly little thing. I heard that you were having a hard time loving her--that you sometimes felt that you wanted to scream when she asked you for the eighteenth time in an hour what day of the week it was."
"First and foremost, you are incorrect and dramatic. I do not hate my grandmother. Second...it is none of your business, third, at this moment in time I come closer to feeling vindictive emotions for the girl who told you all of this than I do for my poor, world-weary grandma!"

That would be my general opinion of The Grapevine in its worst capacity. Essentially, it can easily become a whirlpool of gossip and hearsay. Messages are garbled and lost and changed and can come out to the people on the other end entirely transformed into something not even remotely resembling their original form. There is that danger, but as a Cock-Eyed Optimist, I can't be entirely dismal about The Grapevine. I've found it to be extremely useful in numerous ways when all and sundry keep their tale-bearing tongues in check. James tells us to be "quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger." It's a good piece of advice and one that would revolutionize The Grapevine and every other part of Society. :)
Prayer requests are quickly and expertly related. Needs are filled. Plans are made and finalized. It can be a hilarious, helpful and good-humored leg of Society....provided no one cuts the telephone lines and sends a wrong message.

As Society's operators, lets try to keep the Telephone a useful tool--not a clammy-tongued parasite. :)

Have a Sneeze.

We mentioned to The Gentleman that it was time for his post on a very sort of Pollen-ish day last week. The Gentleman looked at us and sneezed and wheezed and choked; eyes red and bleary and voice hoarse.
"What?" he managed to squeeze out.
It was a Spring-ish "what", well-fleshed with pollen and all that. We decided to leave him alone. He will be writing a post as soon as he gets over his extreme (ahem) joy (ahem) at it's being Spring again. Until then, have a tissue and a face-mask and hide from all this yellow powder! :)

IMHO......

Dear World,
        Has it ever occurred to you how bad we have grown at the art of entertaining ourselves? We must have comedians, we must have television, we must have movies, and ipods and ipads and iknow not what else. We must have thousands of friends on social networking sites and we must let them know exactly what we think at the exact moment we think it. It is no longer good enough that we can send a letter without a stamp via email--no, we must hear the friend's reply (often senseless enough) immediately, and thus instant messaging, chat, and other things were created.
All these technological advances are great boons to our entertainment--I like nothing better than to get on the computer of an evening and chat with my best friends. But I wonder if these advances are as great a boon to our social skills and--perish the thought--our intelligence?
And I'm not the only one who has noticed it. Haven't you seen the little picture going around the internet?

"My Smart-phone made me Stupid."

We've all seen it--those groups of laughing, happy, congenial friends who walk into a restaurant, stare at one another solemnly for a moment, pull out their gadgets, and begin to text across, around, about, before, behind, below the table. I may be a little behind on the technology of the day, and I don't have free texts on my phone,  but I've found my tongue to be a bit quicker in conversation than my fingers could ever be.
My friends and I often lament the lack of real wit in today's conversations, and the general idea seems to be that there are just not enough opportunities. I would wonder, though, if we wasted less wit on making up the perfect Facebook status and instead put that brain-power into making clever conversation, if we'd all be a bit more charming.
Just imagine the wittiest duos that you've ever heard of...Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet come immediately to mind for me. It makes me cringe to think what some of their conversations might look like per today's conveniences:

Darcy: "Do you text as a general rule while dancing?"

Lizzy: "Yes." (pulls out her phone.) "I prefer to be unsociable and taciturn. Makes it all so much more agreeable, don't you think?"

Darcy: "ROFL."

Major cringing going on over here. That is so hideous. I know it's an extreme example but dear World, don't you agree? Our ability to make conversation seems to be languishing in the annals of texting language. (Not to mention our ability to spell properly which subject I will not even broach.) Just try it, I beg of you. Put yourself out to say one clever thing a day, and you may soon find your intelligence is not so impaired as that of your general acquaintance.
                                
Ever Yours,