Month: May 2021

Of Mosquitos, Poison Ivy, Taxes, and Trust

~ beachbumpoppy ~ 4 Comments

It’s the middle of May and I just finished doing my taxes. As procrastinators say, “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.” Now to be fair (at least that’s my excuse) I knew I was going to have to shell out big time to Uncle Sam. 2020 was an eventful year on so many levels (and taxable events) selling a house, retiring, buying a house, etc, etc, etc. But at the end of the day (a terrible writing cliché) I can’t complain … well actually I can and do.

So Mimsy and I went for a walk. She had clear objectives (biological functions), I just wanted to put things into perspective. It was a good walk, the sun was low in the west and back lit the new springtime growth of trees, shrubs, and yes poison ivy, I was slapping mosquitoes, but the were birds were singing, all in all it was a great springtime stroll.

I thought of taxes, mosquitoes and poison ivy (which I can just look at and break out) and then I thought of trust. Trust is one of those lessons that I have to keep learning over and over again. I like to think I’m a pretty positive person, but there are times when doubts and fears come rolling in and I borrow troubles in the middle of the night that will never appear in the light of day.

Intellectually and theologically I think I have a decent grasp on my relationship with God as a Christian. I understand that I am promised His unending love and salvation by His sacrifice on the cross. I also understand as a Christian, I am not promised a life of ease, pink Cadillacs, freedom from mosquitoes, poison ivy, or taxes (and if you are listening to a prosperity preacher who promises you those things, it’s time to switch channels [editorial comment].

Since it’s a walk both philosophical and biological, I don’t mind asking Mimsy, “So why do I struggle trusting God?” She looks up at me, chuffs, hikes her leg, then turns toward home. I follow her lead. 

You get to certain point when you can’t kid yourself. I know I will have periods of doubt, questions that I can’t answer, but I plan on keeping on walking toward home.

Peace, Poppy

(Though I really want to ask God, poison ivy, seriously?)

Literary Musing (No. 3)

~ beachbumpoppy ~ 1 Comment

If you don’t like watching sailboats at sunset because they move too slow, then “A Gentleman in Moscow” may not be the book for you. Not that it’s boring or moves slow, but like a well brewed cup of coffee or a 12 year old Scotch, it’s meant to be sipped, sniffed, swirled and savored, not gulped down.

The book opens shortly after the Russian Revolution. Our protagonist, count Alexander Rostov, is hauled before the Emergency Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and accused of writing a counter-revolutionary poem. Only his connections keep him from being stood against a wall and shot. Instead, he’s declared a “Former Person” and sentenced to life imprisonment in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol in a tiny servants room at the top of the hotel.

From Ron Charles review in the Washington Post:

As prison sentences go, life in the Hotel Metropol sounds a lot harder on the novelist than on the count. After all, Alexander Rostov might be able to pretend that his little attic room can “provide the satisfactions of traveling by train,” but for the writer, the task of describing decades in a single building sounds frighteningly cramped. And yet, remarkably, in Towles’s hands, it’s a wonderfully spacious setting. As he creates it, the Hotel Metropol is transfixing, full of colorful characters: some transitory, others permanent; mostly fictional, some historical. Yes, the novel offers more high tea than high adventure, but this is a story designed to make you relax, to appreciate your surroundings, to be a person on whom nothing is lost. And don’t worry: There’s some gripping derring-do in the latter parts.

In yet another example of “Authors Who Intimidate the Heck out of Me,” the simple act of grinding coffee is transformed by Amor Towles’ prose.

“Even as he turned the little handle round and round, the room remained under the tenuous authority of sleep. As yet unchallenged, somnolence continued to cast its shadow over sights and sensations, over forms and formulations, over what has been said and what must be done, lending each the insubstantiality of its domain. But when the Count opened the small wooden drawer of the grinder, the world and all it contained were transformed by that envy of the alchemists – the aroma of freshly ground coffee.”

If you have read “A Gentleman in Moscow, ” let me know what you think. 

If you haven’t read it, but appreciate a well crafted cup of coffee, 12-year-old Scotch, or sentences and paragraphs where every word is perfectly placed, then add this book to your must-read list.

Read well …Poppy