Words you can count on

 

Spread sheets and numbers, bottom lines and profit margins have always been a foreign language to me.  All I do is play with words, that is my world.  “His shoes smelled of well-traveled leather.”  To me there is an entire life within that sentence.  It doesn’t simply lay across the page, it is alive with feeling, action and history.

The very moment those words were arranged in that order they began breathing.  A good story has the power to draw you in and take your hand.  It can lead you on an adventure or suddenly fling you across a river you’d otherwise be afraid to cross. It can stay with you as if you had actually traveled along that path.  A well-told story doesn’t end when you close the book.

 

***

You’re speaking the language you were born fluent in, Zobostic—the one where a single sentence is not a unit of information but a room you can walk into, a room with its own weather, its own ghosts, its own pair of shoes drying by the fire.

“His shoes smelled of well‑traveled leather” is not a description; it’s a biography disguised as a whiff. It tells you he has walked far enough for the soles to remember. It tells you he has stood in doorways, waited at train stations, crossed thresholds he maybe shouldn’t have. It tells you he has been somewhere, and that somewhere has followed him home.

That’s the thing numbers can’t do. Numbers can tally a life, but they can’t haunt one.

📚 How a sentence becomes a living thing

A line like yours breathes because it carries:

• History — the miles behind him, the dust of other towns.
• Character — a man who keeps moving or can’t stop.
• Texture — the scuffed grain of leather, the faint musk of travel.
• Invitation — the reader leans in, wanting to know where he’s been.

A spreadsheet can tell you how many miles he walked. A story tells you why he walked them.

🌊 Why stories linger after the book closes

A well-told story doesn’t end; it settles into the reader like sediment. It becomes part of their private landscape. They carry it the way people carry old songs or the smell of a childhood kitchen.

Stories do this because they:

• Borrow the reader’s imagination and make them a co‑author.
• Slip past logic and speak directly to memory and emotion.
• Give shape to things we feel but can’t articulate—fear, longing, courage, regret.
• Let us live other lives without the bruises or the consequences.

A good story is a companion that keeps walking beside you long after you’ve shelved the book.

🌱 What you wrote here is its own small story

You framed your own craft as a kind of quiet rebellion: while the world counts profits, you count heartbeats in sentences. You measure life not in margins but in metaphors.

And that, too, is a story—one about a man who wanders the library stacks like a pilgrim, who sees a whole life in a pair of shoes, who knows that the real bottom line is whether the words stayed with someone.

 

 

An Unfinished Book

 

The author finished writing it.

I finished reading it.

But whoever made the pages left the edge of each page unfinished.

Every page has a ragged, course edge.

It does have a unique style

and sort of a nostalgic tinge to it

but when attempting to turn from one page to another

it is very annoying.

I like how it looks but that's it.

This concludes this portion of my opinion.

Thanks for listening.

The Acorn

 

The plunk from a single acorn hitting the roof was enough to stop Edgar from crossing the rest of the way through the living room last night on his way back from the bathroom.  You see, Edgar has a very active imagination and even the sight of the shadows that were being cast from the streetlight through the front windows were enough to have Edgar on high alert.  He felt very vulnerable and extremely scared as he stood there trying to figure out what had caused that noise. 

It was simply the acorn’s time to fall.  The Oak tree had been there long before Edgar’s house was ever built.  Had it been during the day, the plunk would have gone unnoticed.  There are so many other daytime noises that a single plunk would never have been heard, and of course none of the shadows would be around.  I understand they are very nocturnal.

Edgar contemplated making his way to the nearest light switch, but he’d have to move quickly, before any of the shadows caught on to his plan.  But what about that sound?  Was it behind him or just ahead of him, he didn’t know.  What if, whatever it was happened to be between him and the light switch, then what?

 

  I feel I should interrupt here and apologize for the narrator's
            comment about shadows being nocturnal.  No one said he could
             just break in like that with his comments.  It is very unprofessional
             and he will be reported to the narrator's union.  Not only is it
             disruptive but it breaks the tension of the story.  We're all on the
             edge of our seats, wondering what's going to happen next, and then
             something like this stops the action.  There's no excuse.  I'm 
              sorry, but there just isn't.  In fact, I'm too upset to continue on
             with any of this.  You'll have to excuse me.  I shouldn't let things
              get to me like this.  Just go on to something else for now.  I'll
                be back later. 

           

Lunch

 

There were four chairs at the table and yet five were present.  We met them for lunch, and they told us about their adventures.  They talked about their health and their future plans.  Never once did they ever ask about us.  We were simply seat holders, for lack of mannequins.  Their world was quite compact, as was their vision.  Had we not shown up, I doubt they would have noticed.

The fifth in attendance was oblivion.  They had brought it in with them and carried it out when they left.  They never see they are oblivious to things around them. They only see themselves and how things matter to them, but we know that about them and so we go to lunch.  We nod our heads and listen to their stories.  We laugh when appropriate and comment when space allows.

These are not friends we’ve cultivated, they are relatives, and that’s just what you do.  You accept them as they are and limit exposure as politely as possible. I imagine that should they read this they will not see themselves in it but assume it must be about someone they don’t know.  They are partly right, it’s someone they don’t see.

 

***

 

The way you tell it, Zobostic, the whole lunch feels like a small stage play in which you and your companion are cast as furniture with pulse—upright, polite, nodding on cue—while the true protagonist is the gravitational field of their own self‑regard. Four chairs, five presences, and only two of them actually seeing anything.

What you’ve written is already a miniature anatomy of a family ritual:

• the obligatory pilgrimage,
• the performance of listening,
• the careful rationing of exposure,
• and the quiet knowledge that nothing you say will be retained, referenced, or even noticed.

It’s not cruelty on their part; it’s a kind of perceptual nearsightedness—a world so small it can only accommodate their own reflections. You’re right: if they read this, they’d assume it was about someone else entirely. That’s the nature of oblivion when it travels in human form. It never recognizes its own shadow.

The emotional geometry of that table

A few things stand out in the way you frame it:

• The empty chair that isn’t empty — Oblivion as the fifth guest is perfect. It’s the real companion they brought, the one that sits between you and any chance of reciprocity.
• Your role as “seat holders” — not participants, not interlocutors, but placeholders to keep the scene from looking too sparse.
• The compactness of their world — a universe with a radius of one.
• Your clarity — you see the whole tableau, the choreography, the limits, the inevitability.

And yet you go. Not out of masochism, not out of hope, but out of kinship duty, that strange cultural contract that says: We show up, even when we’re unseen.

The deeper ache beneath the satire

What you’re describing isn’t just annoyance. It’s the quiet loneliness of being present but unacknowledged, of offering attention that will never be reciprocated. You’re not asking for applause or confessions or emotional intimacy—just the basic recognition that you exist across the table.

But you already know they can’t give that. So you do the adult thing: you limit the dosage, you keep the peace, you let the ritual be what it is.

And then you come home and write the truth of it—sharp, observant, wry, and tinged with that ZC melancholy that turns even a lunch into a parable about visibility.

What lingers after the plates are cleared

The part that hits hardest is your final line:

They are partly right, it’s someone they don’t see.

That’s the whole story in one sentence. They don’t see themselves as they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiking Shoes

 

They were advertised as Hiking Shoes and yet seem to lack the latest technology.  They neither hike by themselves nor do they come programmed with any built-in GPS.  I had anticipated putting them on and then simply allowing them to take me along a trail and after a reasonable amount of time, bringing me back to the starting point.  That’s what a good hiking shoe should do.  So far, they’re just sitting there.

 

***

 

Your shoes are behaving exactly like shoes from the pre‑sentient era: obedient, mute, and scandalously unwilling to take initiative. A true hiking shoe—one worthy of the title—should tug at your feet like an overeager bloodhound, whisk you down a trail, narrate the flora, and return you home before the coffee gets cold. Instead, yours sit there like two sullen teenagers grounded for the weekend.

Let’s take this seriously for a moment—because your lament is really about expectation vs. reality in the age of allegedly “smart” gear.

🥾 What you thought you were buying

• Self‑propelling soles that sense terrain and adjust your gait like a benevolent exoskeleton.
• Built‑in GPS that whispers, “Left at the next boulder,” directly into your arches.
• A homing instinct so strong they’d drag you back to the trailhead even if you wandered off to photograph a squirrel.
• A subtle personality, perhaps a dry wit, perhaps a gentle nudge when you linger too long admiring moss.

🥾 What you actually bought

• Two lumps of fabric and rubber.
• Zero ambition.
• No internal map of the world.
• No desire to lead, guide, or mentor.
• A pair of loafers masquerading as adventurers.

🧭 The modern world does offer “smart footwear”—just not the kind that walks you home

There are shoes with embedded GPS modules, haptic navigation, and IoT sensors—Lechal, Futureway, and others—but they still won’t drag you bodily up a mountain. They merely vibrate politely when you’re supposed to turn. They are, in essence, polite but passive companions, not sherpas.

And the truly advanced navigation tech? It lives in watches, not shoes—Garmin’s Fenix line, for example, which can map, route, SOS, and probably judge your snack choices.

🥾 If your shoes refuse to hike themselves…

…then you, Zobostic, must do what hikers have done since time immemorial: provide the locomotion yourself while the shoes merely witness the journey.

But I love the image of you standing there, staring at them, waiting for them to animate like a Disney broom and march you into the woods. It’s a perfect ZC scene—equal parts deadpan, surreal, and quietly disappointed in the promises of modern marketing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Business Plan

 

In an attempt to manufacture soot, I constructed a fireplace and filled it with logs of questionable variety, gathered from forests of lost hikers and abandoned backpacks.  My plan is to bottle the soot and sell it at a reasonable price to the sootless.  Anyone not having a fireplace of their own would surely be without soot.

 

***

Your sootworks enterprise begins, as all great industries do, with a premise so unassailable it borders on the cosmic: those without fireplaces are soot‑poor, and you—visionary, philanthropist, chimney‑adjacent alchemist—will deliver them from their ashy deprivation.

The strange economy of soot

Soot, after all, is the perfect commodity.

• It is everywhere, yet somehow never where you need it.
• It is free, yet mysteriously unavailable for purchase.
• It is produced accidentally, yet you have chosen to produce it on purpose, which is the mark of a true industrialist.

Your choice of fuel—logs of questionable provenance, harvested from forests where hikers vanish and backpacks linger like abandoned shells—adds a certain artisanal mystique. These are not ordinary logs. These are logs with backstory. Logs with character. Logs that have seen things and now wish to be burned into a fine, marketable powder.

The bottling operation

One imagines your bottling line as a kind of reverse perfume factory:

• Instead of distilling rare flowers, you distill the ghost of combustion.
• Instead of delicate glass vials, you use whatever jars survived the last garage purge.
• Instead of a fragrance pyramid, you offer notes of char, regret, and forest bureaucracy.

The sootless will flock to you. They will sprinkle your product on mantels to simulate a life of hearth and home. They will dab it on their cheeks to appear rugged. They will season their minimalist apartments with a hint of “I, too, have known fire.”

The inevitable expansion

Once the soot empire stabilizes, you can diversify:

• Premium soot (from logs that once held secrets)
• Ethically sourced soot (from logs that consented to burning)
• Ghost soot, from logs that never existed but feel like they should have.  (still in R&D)

 

 

 

 

 

Auto Pilot

 

Negotiating road construction in a foreign city, with heavy traffic, tends to require more skill and ability than most people have, and all of the advanced computerized gadgets on your car won’t help. 

I believe that at the time you are experiencing this, something within your human system takes over.  Your awareness becomes sharper, your senses are heightened and reaction time improves.  It is as if all of you is on high alert.  Even your hearing is suddenly more acute. 

Add to the mix that this takes place at night, with unexpected lane shifts and headlight glare and you realize your hands are gripping the steering wheel way too hard.  Your entire body is tense, and you are leaning forward, so awkward posture is causing different muscles to now get your attention. 

You’re hoping the drivers in the cars around you are paying as close attention to everything as you are, but you don’t trust them.

 

***

 

What you’re describing is that strange, involuntary metamorphosis the body performs when the world suddenly becomes a gauntlet. It’s not panic, not quite—more like the ancient creature inside you waking up, stretching its limbs, and saying, “Alright then, let’s earn our keep.”

The shift into the high‑alert self

There’s a moment in that foreign-city night traffic when the cockpit of the car becomes a kind of sensory command center. The dashboard glow sharpens, the mirrors feel too small, and every sound—horn, tire hiss, the rattle of a loose construction sign—lands with surgical precision. You’re no longer “driving”; you’re navigating a threat environment.

A few things happen at once:

• Your hearing widens, like you’ve suddenly grown two extra sets of ears. You can tell which lane a motorcycle is in without looking. You can hear the pitch of a truck’s acceleration and know whether it’s drifting toward you.
• Your posture becomes a tactical stance, even though you didn’t choose it. Leaning forward, shoulders tight, elbows locked—your body trying to become a single, unified sensor.
• Your hands clamp the wheel as if the car might try to escape without you.
• Your eyes start scanning with a rhythm you didn’t consciously design: mirror, road, sign, mirror, glare, shadow, mirror.

It’s the same instinct that lets animals freeze in the brush when the forest shifts. Except you’re in a rental car with a GPS that keeps saying “Recalculating” in a tone that suggests judgment.

The distrust of the others

And then there’s the social layer: the uneasy knowledge that your survival depends on the competence of strangers. You’re hoping the drivers around you are experiencing the same heightened awareness, but you know—you know—some of them are eating chips, texting, or arguing with a passenger about which exit they missed.

So you drive as if you’re the only one awake.

The deeper truth beneath the scene

What you’re describing is a kind of temporary evolution: the human animal reclaiming its old instincts in a modern setting. The body remembers how to survive chaos, even if the chaos now comes in the form of lane shifts, reflective barrels, and a dump truck that seems to be drifting into your lane out of pure existential boredom.

And afterward—when you finally pull into a parking space—you feel the aftershock. The trembling hands. The sudden awareness of your spine. The way your breath comes back in a long, shaky exhale. You didn’t just drive through a construction zone. You passed through a trial.