Tumbleweeds Of Merit

Annmarie Throckmorton, M.A.
Oct 23, 2018
2 min read

I realize that my Blog flotsam and jetsam has posts from the past century of my life entered right next to postings from my here and now. And my tranquil postings are often bracketed by emotionally turbulent postings. The reason for this is that, first, I am at the time of life, soon to be a septuagenarian, where past events are very, very clear to me, they come unbidden to my mind; and so many are very, very sad, but they have merit and should be included in my memoirs. And yet, my current life is often pleasant and tuned closely to nature so I enjoy including these happy experiences. Equally, I feel vindicated when I am able to post about a twenty-first century injustice that I have encountered, and I hope that my blog contributes to solving those sorts of problems.

I also use this tumbleweed* format because human beings do not automatically think chronologically. To tell a fiction story, for example, events follow in time with cause and effect. But this blog is not fiction, it is nonfiction, it is true. It contains the real and significant events in my life, it contains my most consequential thoughts, and it contains a little bit of whimsey, but all true.

There is no reason why memoirs cannot move fluidly between the now and then. Our minds turn naturally from current events to the past, and back again, to good feelings after bad, and around again. Wise thoughts tumble after silly ideas, and so on. This is perfectly fine and natural. The tumbleweed effect allows for new associations to occur in one’s mind, it encourages learning from the past by carrying the past up and over into the future. As for the emotional swirls and eddies that tumbling causes, our minds and bodies are created to easily balance the flux of happy and sad emotions/thoughts, old and new, on a moment by moment basis. I suggest that the reader “go with the flow” as they used to say. No worries as they say now.

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* tumbleweed (North American / Australian / New Zealand) is “a plant of dry regions that breaks off near the ground in late summer and is tumbled about by the wind, thereby dispersing its seeds.” Source: Bing.com