THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

In the year (circa) 1802, poet William Worthsworth penned the line "The world is too much with us," and 13 more lines to go with that. For me, it was memory work in junior high, and it has stayed with me. Often, I think of this truth as it applies to my everyday routine. If I thought the dead could spin in their graves or needed to, I'd have Wordsworth getting a speeding ticket. What would he say about our fast world today? It surely would not be pretty.

This "too-much-ness" floods all areas of our lives, so that if we need or desire solitude, we have to scrounge for it, with something like a time clock set for the next interruption which often turns out to be a total break from what we're doing.  How I imagined all the free time I'd have when moving into this lovely retirement community, only to realize later what I was giving up. 

During 2014 to date, I've completed reading only two books! Three and a half months, think of it! Only two books, when I used to average 100 a year. Of course, I've done some writing and that really takes a great deal of time for even a small job, both fiction and things like blogging. (Blogging is by far, not the extent of my nonfiction writing.) I think there must have been 27 and 1/2 hours a day in my previous life, when there was time to read. And also time to sleep. I am almost not sleeping these nights. 

And for those of you not already in the know, let me tell you I have lost the sight of one eye. Yes, truly. It wasn't gradual; it happened overnight. I had mentioned here a black eye I woke up with one morning, perhaps a month ago or a little longer. There was no proof of reason for this occurrence; it did not hurt; and with treatment of a special bruise cream, I kept the black from moving down my face. I think I was probably sleeping on my right side and had no convenient place to rest my arm, and so it went where it wanted to go, apparently right to my eye socket. I might have rubbed the eye in my sleep. Then a couple of weeks ago, I awoke with the ball of my palm stuck tight to that same eye. When I peeled the hand away, the sight in that eye was gone. The retina specialist said he could not reverse it. And now one of those interruptions has just called time.