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Horns of the Dilemma

Autumnal Equinox 2024


I know what I’m doing even when I don’t know what I’m doing.

 

Perhaps not many people can sincerely make that statement.  But I’m honest when it comes to truths about myself.  I come up with so many new ones each day!

 

My Beloved Teaching Colleague, Roy, wisely informed me, not long after we’d met, that I was “a hurried child.”

 

Yes, I had to grow up fast, to become the responsible adult in the household, the Mother, that I didn’t get, and would never have.

 

I must have been quite matter-of-fact about dealing with this horrendous deficit in my childhood.  I wasn’t aware of my attitude, or approach, as a pre-adolescent, then, or anytime afterward.  I did what I had to do, and I moved on, to wherever it was I had to go — to become who I am — to become the adult individual that God created me to be:  Debra.


The truth about the child, Debra, came to me from the mouth of a babe, my own Dear Daughter.  As a pre-adolescent, she informed my that I’d, early on, rejected my mother, and she never got over it.

 

How an individual deals with rejection by someone else makes all the difference in this world, and in the Next, for each person in that unfortunate inter-personal transaction.  The response that I, the rejector, received was poetically put by William Congreve in his play of 1897, “The Mourning Bride”:

 

“Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.”

 

Politically put, it’s what We the People have had to put up with for almost a decade.  It’s been nearly 8 (EIGHT) years since the aftermath of The Presidential Election of 2016.  The hideous hellcat just won’t shut up, or go away.  She needs the money and the attention, like any other attention-whore.  Perhaps she was a child whose mother rejected her, and she never got over it.


Getting over it, whatever “it” is, frequently never happens with a certain type of person.  He, or she, owns the problem.  The larger truth is that the problem owns that person, sometimes for an entire lifetime.

 

Sewing away is one way that I work through a problem so that it doesn’t own me.  The dilemma might have me on its horns, but, in time, I somehow turn that beast around and end up with the horns in my hands.

 

I then blow those horns!

 

How do I accomplish a seeming reversal of fortune?

 

I don’t know.  But I do know what I’m doing even when I don’t know what I’m doing.


This morning, I decided that the time has come for me to sew that Bettina blouse I’ve been eyeing as a sewing project for a couple of years.  Jolene, my little beagle queen, keeps racing into my Sewing Room, whenever I’ve left the door open.   Her piranha-like jaws grab the lengths of lace and she takes off with them like a prize!  No damage takes place, not even to the pride of possessing her prey!

 

The pride of possessing your prey is a womanly sensation, one that men claim as well.  The truly territorial instinct is completely feminine in nature.  Stalking the dress you’ve been waiting to buy, for decades, and then actually buying the beautiful attire — it brings a thrill no man can comprehend!

 

And purchasing a new pair of jeans, online, at slasher-sale price, from a favorite American company, a working-girl store of yore, was a most delightful and unanticipated pleasure for me.  That garment is not Made Over There!


Of course, I had to hem the pants.  My short legs do not accommodate the voluminous length of material that extends to my armpit.  Doing alterations is but one of my well-learned, and well-practiced, tasks within the art of being a seamstress.  The cut-off yardage of denim fabric shall be used as a wonderful contrast trim for the pillow whose component parts I cut out this past spring!

 

I know what I’m doing even when I don’t know what I’m doing.


For me, the Sewing Projects of my essay of Labor Day 2017 are still very much projects-in-progress, awaiting realization.  First, I had to move out of the Peach House, in 2018, and work on selling that Master House. I then awaited construction of my Dream House, while living in the Rental Dump for two years (2018-2020).  Most of my possessions were boxed up and stacked, in 2 rented storage units.

 

At last, during the tumultuous and historic summer of 2020, I stepped foot, as the Occupant, into the empty and not-quite-finished abode that I dubbed “Larkhaven”.  Moving into the New Home took forever.  Settling into the New Home felt like an eternity!

 

The phases and stages of those endless emotions provoked the composition of my three, long-awaited Westerns, along with a book of poetry.  I also re-vamped my website, or, more accurately, last September (2023), my Webmaster devised an entirely new website, hosted by a company based in Israel.

 

I did the editing!  Debra with a pair of scissors took to the old website with gusto and great aplomb!


My personal life underwent some sadnesses, with the unexpected loss of Chance, the Royal Rascal of a hound; and the sweet and sentimental goodbyes to Gabrielle, the Snowshoe Cat.  I also parted ways, through my art, from several rare people of my past.  All of those cherished souls remain with me in spirit, because their powerful spirits powered me to where I am today, to who I am today.  To who I shall be tomorrow . . .

 

The sorrows of those farewells, mournful as they were, paled in comparison to the grief and dolor of too many of my fellow Americans.  Those good, generous, and God-loving patriots appallingly lost loved ones because of the ghastly greed, vulgar failures, feckless lies, and godlessness of the traitors within the U.S. government.


Those debased and amoral Americans-in-name-only:

 

(a) don’t what they’re doing; (b) know what they’re doing; or (c) both.

 

I’m sticking with my long-standing modus operandi as a humble, proud and virtuous American who is sewing away to tomorrow:

 

I know what I’m doing even when I don’t know what I’m doing.

 

The horns of the dilemma for the patriotic American are trumpets for liberty, truth, justice and the American way.  Blow your horns!

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