Crickets | Philosophy

Posted on September 6, 2022 by Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud

Update to my dining room cricket dilemma…I was in the bathroom last night, brushing my teeth, when I looked down and witnessed the offensively loud chirping cricket hop onto the rug right near my feet.

This was quite a distance for a cricket to travel, but without really thinking about that (and I should have), I reached down, scooped him up with a page hastily torn out of a book, and dropped him in the toilet.

And flushed.

As the water was swirling and he “swam” away, I instantly thought that I had missed a valuable opportunity to have a chat with another species.

Why in the world did s/he visit me like that? Was it random or was there a message I was meant to hear?

I should have paused and taken a moment to put myself in that little cricket’s shoes (so to speak) and I now wonder what that action attempted to communicate or convey.

Instead, I lost a potential new friend and even more importantly, I acted in haste and without concern for his/her welfare.

Anyway, I’m really, REALLY sorry. Je regrette mes actions.

On the other hand, that was apparently the source of the late night chirps…

Arthur Schopenhauer said it best:

What’s in a name?

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud

Romeo and Juliet
Spoken by Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Do you like your name, the name you were given–the name on your birth certificate?

I don’t like my name.

For as long as I can remember, every single time I hear someone call me by my name, my very first thought is “that’s not my name”.

Is that weird? Am I weird?

For a nanosecond, I have to remind myself that it’s ME they’re referring to, because not only do I not like my name, I really feel that it’s not actually my name.

“Oh, you’re talking to ME?”

I don’t know what it is, but it’s not the one that’s on my birth certificate.

I remember telling my mom that I didn’t like my name and that I was also curious why my brother had a middle name but I didn’t, and she told me to choose my own middle name and it wouldn’t be legal nor official, but it would be something special just for me.

So I named myself Aurora, because that’s who I identify with. Aurora means dawn, but I chose it because of Sleeping Beauty. Princess Aurora (also known as Briar Rose) is the daughter of King Stefan and Queen Leah. On the day of her christening, Aurora was cursed to die by the evil fairy Maleficent. We all know she’s awakened by the prince’s kiss of true love. My mom read me that story so many times, i memorized it. What she failed to impress upon me was that it was just a fantasy, not real life.

Only one person has ever known that’s my secret name.

Some call me Rose or Rosebud, even Angel Boy refers to me as Princess (which is pretty funny when he does it in public, haha), but none of those are my given name, either.

When I meet new people or I’m introduced and asked what I like to be called, half the time I don’t have an answer or I say it doesn’t matter or I’ve even asked what do they think my name should be? What do I look like?

Additionally, no one can spell my real name right and that’s part of the problem, I think. I’ve spent my entire life correcting the spelling which only contributes to my possibly delusional introspection that I’m a mistake–an aberration; a typographical error.

Maybe I don’t really exist. Maybe I’m a character in a fairy tale minus the fairytale ending.

Being and nothingness. Maybe Sartre had it all figured out–this little existential crisis of mine isn’t even original. (Or NON-existential, in my case.) This existentialist philosophy is a study of the consciousness of being. Or not being, which is tiring my non-existent brain.

Except the one name I always respond to with a smile in my heart is “Grandma”.

Or “Mom”.

Because that’s who I am.

Always. Always. Always.

The path (or post) not taken

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud

Dear Darling WordPress,
You lost another post, probably an award-winning post, full of levity and wit and irony, and all the best things in the world rolled into one post. Ahh, such is life….

So, there I was, in a quandary about what path to take and just like that — click –the old lightbulb snapped on!

Clap on, clap off…

I had to THINK which involves a level of introspection that I rarely attain. Here’s my brain on any given day: “…work out, clean, garden, cook, bake, shop, read, shop…”

Rinse and repeat. Deep thoughts? Not so much.

As I was looking out our patio doors, I noticed all the different paths in our yard.

Curvy paths of rocks

straight paths of pavers to the pond

or a meandering path to the greenhouse and beyond

and the steps that lead you to another level.

I thought about how that’s another one of life’s important lessons.

If one path doesn’t work, you can choose another. And if none of those work, you can change course by moving the rocks or the pavers just a little bit to reflect a different direction or to avoid an obstacle in your way.

It doesn’t really matter where you go, the success is in the path you take to reach your goal or your destination.

Today I wrote about something other than my original idea because WordPress threw up a barricade that blocked my way.

I toyed with the idea of giving up altogether or trying to recreate my initial thoughts, when, for the first time, I became aware of the paths in my yard.

It opened my eyes to a deeper reflection, not unlike the reflection you’d find if you followed the path to the pond and gazed in the water.

So that’s it for my philosophical sputterings, I have no idea what came over me!

Now I have to pack fourteen outfits to accompany hubs to San Francisco for a two-day business meeting. Road trip! And yet another road taken.