We cant have anything nice...

 It's so sad. Not everyone knows this sentiment. It's a cliche.  But it's one of the saddest. Sincerely, deeply sad.

I am sitting in "a pile of rubbish" and it's home. I've been sick for years and this past week was one of the worst episodes. Brief though it was.

I vacilate between the two extremes of total perfect surrender and desperation, looking at the "stuff" that has been my life in recent and in some instances, years and years of what we call life.

I spend a good deal of time thinking about "stuff". Without having been a philosophical minded person, it would be empty of it's context, but all the emotional ties and depth of attachment would be there anyway.

This has always been for me, a kind of personal war of mind against an ideology: that things are meaningless. It is, for a Christian, a sure sign of a stubborn personality. Because to give everything for the prize is a common theme in the mind of a worldly understanding of Chritianity. 

I have even used it as a springboard for the persecution*. The all giving, the sacrificial, even unto death, they that a magic public would decide deserves it's wishes. And yet, what is the good in, the treasure in something so simple as a family heirloom? 

I have lost things that were both deeply meaningful and valuable. And I have lost maybe 10 televisions. These new flat screens are real wusses. 

I bought some thrift pillows in 2020, and a love seat, I don't know when we lost the love seat, perhaps earlier last year. The pillows are at the bottom of an old China cabinet I have had since the 1990s. The two together are poignant. Stuffed in the bottom of the cabinet, unable to be closed, are those used pillows, so pretty when I bought them. The top is missing all it's glass now, except for one shelf. I used to adorn it, the cabinet, with dolls my grandparents brought back from their trips around the world, and with the pottery of artists, and the China of those who left this life childless, and my children's various medals from small accomplishments. 

Stuff. Piled somewhere in a weatherproof room, covered in mold from the last disaster. This place, covered in ash. 

*Rome