Now that I've finally put why I wear a septagram in words, I find this page. According to traditional Cherokee belief, "Certain numbers play an important role in the ceremonies of the Cherokee...The number seven represents the seven clans of the Cherokee, and are also associated with directions. In addition to the four cardinal directions, three others exist. Up (the Upper World), down (the Lower World) and center (where we live, and where ‘you’ always are).
I put those italics in, for emphasis. It does make more sense than the way I said it in the last entry. Do you suppose someone is trying to tell me something? Just out of sheer curiosity, I wonder what clan I would belong to if I knew my Cherokee bloodline?
I still don't know what to say about yesterday. My mom and I decided to take in the (supposedly) big yard sale on the highway stretching from Scottsville Ky. to Gallatin Tn. I thought the plan was to begin in Gallatin, allowing me to stop at the bank because I only had a dollar bill and some loose change on me. We'd get some breakfast and work our way up the road. It was a good plan.
When she got here, she decided we would take some of the back roads to Bethpage and work our way back to Gallatin. She also had a "few extra dollars" I could borrow and I could pay her back when we got to Gallatin. So now I'm looking at just a few hours out and being only twenty minutes away from my house instead of spending the entire day exploring places I don't see very often - plus I'm automatically in debt whether I wanted to be or not. Not only am I in debt but now I am limited in what I can buy because there's only "a few extra dollars" available.
I wish I could have said exactly that at the time. As par for the course, I didn't have time to process anything and think it through to find the right words. Hell, I couldn't find any words at all at times. Of course, it led to a fight and I came off looking like a damn crazy idiot. A damn crazy idiot in tears, no less.
It feels absolutely crazy when I can be brought to tears because someone simply talks. I kept trying to explain (again, without having time to bring the right words to mind) why I felt the way I did and she kept explaining why she did everything. Literally - why she did things the way she did; why she took the back road, why she looked stuff up on the map, why she pulled away from the curb while she was looking for the location of a particular sale. I ended up feeling as if it didn't matter what I said because I wasn't being heard. No, it would be more appropriate to say my own words were heard but no one was listening to them. Everything was automatically taken as a personal attack and verbal floodgates were opened as wide as they would go. After a while, I felt as if I was literally drowning in a torrent of explanations. The only response I had was to burst into tears and say, "Just hush. Please, just hush."
It only got worse for me when she kept asking, "Well, what is it you want to do?" She was wanting a definite response and the only answer I could give her was "It doesn't matter." It felt like a classic "Six of One" situation. If I went home, the whole damn thing would leave me feeling lousy for the next few days because, once again, nothing would have been resolved. If we did anything else, the whole thing would be dropped and nothing would be resolved.
Times like this make me feel very alone. I know it's nothing more than personality conflict. Still, there is nothing I can do, except feel as if I am spinning around in little mental and emotional circles surrounded by the detritus of millions of words and explanations...and hoping they don't fall in on me.
The day wasn't a total wreck, I guess. I finally got to the bank and the yard sale was better at the northern end of the route. There was just about everything to be had out there - puppies, clothes, cars, lawn mowers, needle point supplies, yard ornaments, antiques, plants and power tools. I found a little Beany Baby bumble bee for a dime. I love bumble bees and they are exordinarily hard to find in any shape or form. Another thing was a book about one man's adventures to learn about so called "primative" peoples. He lived with head hunters, cannibals and Saudi sultans.
The absolute prize, after finding the bee, was a book called "Small Scale Farming - An Organic Approach." There is a ton of information in there to be such a slim book, such as how to make your own fence wire tightener with plywood, brads, and a hammer as well as making a a fence wire splicer out of a single piece of metal. It also tells how to pull up a fence post using nothing more than a chain and a wooden board. It could be useful to know what kind of wood burns the longest and hottest and how much coal and natural gas it would take to equal the BTUs of a rick. For example: a rick of hickory has the equivilent BTUs of 1.9 tons of anthracite coal. Isn't that something?
Heh - I knew you'd be impressed.
Page and graphics Copyright 2004 D. Firewolf
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