Wrong GPS instructions

 

The Neighbor's Cat

 

As long as I am under here the crows can’t dive at me, the rain can’t fall on me and I can still keep an eye on you.

 

 

 

 

Words

 

The word fortress seems like it is already constructed with fortified letters.  It is a sturdy word, stands on its own, brave and not at all nervous.  Some words are self-defining like that.  Skittish is another one.  A little frail, perhaps timid.  It’s sort of an under-nourished word, coming off a little sickly.  Gritty carries a little discomfort with it.

 

***

 

Fortress really does walk into the room already wearing its armor. It’s a word with shoulders. You can almost hear the portcullis clank shut behind it. The double r in the middle is like a pair of iron bars, and the t's stand like guard towers. Even the ending — ‑tress — feels like a stone wall settling into place. It’s a word that doesn’t wobble. It plants its feet.

Skittish, meanwhile, is all elbows and nerves. The skit at the front already feels like a startled hop, and the double ts don’t fortify anything — they stutter. The whole word seems to flinch as it leaves your mouth. It’s pale, a little underfed, maybe wearing a sweater that’s too thin for the weather. A word that would apologize for taking up space.

🧱 Words that carry their own architecture

Some words arrive pre-built, their meanings baked into their shapes:

• Bulwark — heavy, blunt, like a log slammed into place.
• Gossamer — soft, airy, dissolving even as you say it.
• Clatter — a word that trips over itself on purpose.
• Murmur — a word that curls inward and speaks quietly from behind its own hand.

These words don’t just mean something; they behave it.

🫣 Words that seem to tremble

Then there are the frail ones, the ones that seem to need a blanket and a cup of tea:

• Meek — a word that barely raises its head.
• Tremulous — practically vibrating with its own syllables.
• Wisp — a word that could blow away if you exhale too hard.
• Fretful — a word that wrings its hands.

They’re not weak, exactly — just honest about their fragility.

🎭 The deeper pleasure you’re tapping into

You’re noticing something that poets and chroniclers (and Zobostic Corwin himself) instinctively lean toward: the physicality of language, the way letters and sounds carry emotional weight before meaning even arrives.

It’s the same instinct that lets you turn storms into psychological portraits and forts into autobiographical metaphors. You’re listening not just to what words say, but how they stand, shiver, lean, or brace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The MD Foundation

 

None of my thoughts are alphabetized or standing in single file.  It’s all just a jumble.  Not sure why.  There are names that stand out, like Al Kaline, Norman Cash, Ruth Buzzy, Norm Peterson and Cliff Claven.  These are not people I’ve met or know, they’re just part of the jumble.

The same goes for places like New York City.  Never lived there and never cared about it at all, and yet here it is, taking up real estate in my brain.  

Being disorganized is not a good starting point for anything.   Moments also consume bits of my thoughts.  Harsh winters sometimes drift up against, what would have been a passing thought, but now becomes frozen in time, fuzzy mitten caked with frozen snow, fingers inside hurting.  Then suddenly a wild pitch, and the runner on first heads for second.  Like I said, completely unorganized. 

Maybe this is a disease.  I could hope for a cure, or maybe a telethon to raise money, so researchers with test tubes and beakers of fog can wear their lab coats during TV commercials.  “Won’t you give, that a cure may be found?  Don’t let this happen to you or someone you love. Give generously to fight Mental Disarray.”

 

Paid for by The MD Foundation

 ***

 Your jumble feels less like a disease and more like a parade with no permit—characters wandering in from every decade, cities showing up uninvited, winters barging in wearing their wet boots, and baseball players cutting the line because they always do.

It’s not disorganization so much as cross‑traffic. Your mind seems to run like a busy intersection where the lights have all decided to blink yellow in solidarity. And honestly, that’s part of the charm: everything gets equal billing. A fuzzy mitten from 1963 can interrupt a stolen base attempt from 1971, and nobody complains. Even Ruth Buzzi just shrugs and keeps walking.

🧠 Why these names and places show up

They’re not random; they’re cultural barnacles—the kind that attach themselves quietly over decades. You never asked for Al Kaline to take up residence, but he wandered in, hung his coat on a neural hook, and now he’s part of the permanent cast. Same with New York City. You don’t have to care about it for it to squat in your mental attic. It’s simply one of those places the brain keeps on retainer, like a spare key.

And Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin? They’re practically unionized. They show up in everyone’s head, leaning on the bar, offering commentary no one requested.

🧤 The mitten, the snow, the sting

That’s the part that gives your jumble its texture. Not just memories, but sensations—the ache of fingers thawing, the crunch of snow that’s been stepped on too many times, the way winter can freeze a thought mid‑sentence. These aren’t intrusions; they’re the emotional punctuation marks in the run‑on sentence of consciousness.

📺 The MD Foundation Telethon

Your disease—Mental Disarray—would absolutely get a telethon. Picture it:

• A celebrity host who’s slightly past their prime but still game.
• A bank of volunteers in matching polo shirts answering phones that never ring.
• A scientist in a lab coat holding a beaker of fog, nodding gravely.
• A scrolling chyron: “Your donation today helps untangle one mind at a time.”

And then the testimonial video: A man sits at a desk, staring at a stapler. “I don’t know why it’s here,” he says. “I don’t even staple anything.” Cut to black. Soft piano. “Please… give.”

Paid for by The MD Foundation, whose motto is: “We can’t fix it, but we can name it.”

🎭 What’s really going on

Your jumble isn’t a malfunction. It’s a creative ecology—a place where memory, culture, humor, and stray winter weather coexist without zoning laws. It’s the same inner landscape that lets you turn a waiting room into a corn‑dog‑and‑mosquito epic, or a desk into a philosophical diorama.

It’s not disorder. It’s Zobostic‑logic—a system that runs on associative leaps, comedic timing, and the occasional snowdrift.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Writer's Group

 

In the northern woods of Michigan there is a log cabin.  During the winter months, it is rented out to a small writer’s group.  As the place is quite remote, they are never bothered by visitors or deer hunters.  It is the peace and quiet they come for. 

There isn’t electricity but it does have a fireplace and comes each year with a supply of firewood, lanterns and candles.  The writers must supply their own food, blankets, dishes and utensils.  Each writer uses a manual typewriter or pen and paper. 

During their stay at the cabin is the only time the four writers get together.  The rest of the year they never see each other.  Although the cabin has indoor plumbing, the major complaint every year is how awfully cold the water is coming out of the sink.  It stings just to wash their hands.  Whenever they want hot water, it must be heated in a saucepan on the woodburning stove.  

Only occasional thuds can be heard in the woods, from large clumps of snow falling from tree branches.  Other than that, it is eerily quiet.  Tall snow markers line the long, winding driveway that leads from the highway.  The one and only sheriff in the area is always notified when the writers are there, so there is no panic if they see smoke coming from the chimney.

 Two years ago, Larry – the least competent of the writers had to be rescued by the sheriff.  It seems he had written himself into a corner and couldn’t get out.

This has been an exercise in what not to do.  Sitting down to write, while not having any idea what you want to write about can lead to something like this.  Really people, don’t let this happen to you.  This could have been completely avoidable.

 

***

 

The cabin you’ve sketched feels like one of those places that exists half in geography and half in folklore—a structure that stands in the northern woods of Michigan but also in that strange borderland where writers go when they’re trying to outrun their own blank pages. What you’ve written is already a sly little parable, but let me widen the lens and let the snow settle a bit differently around it.

❄️ The Cabin as a Character

The place isn’t just remote; it’s deliberately inconvenient. No electricity, no hot water unless you coax it into existence, no visitors except the occasional sheriff who knows better than to ask what they’re working on. It’s a cabin that seems to say:

“If you want to write, you’ll have to earn it.”

Everything in it is a test—

• the cold water that stings like a rebuke,
• the lanterns that flicker when a sentence falters,
• the woodstove that demands attention just when a paragraph is getting good.

Even the snow behaves like an editor: dropping its heavy thuds from the branches, reminding them that silence is never absolute, that something is always falling somewhere.

✍️ The Writers as a Temporary Species

They migrate here once a year like a flock of literary birds who forgot how to fly the rest of the year. They bring their own blankets, their own food, their own doubts. They arrive with manual typewriters and pens, as if electricity itself would be too much of a temptation—too easy, too forgiving.

The rest of the year they vanish from each other’s lives, as though their friendship only exists in this cold, ink-scented ecosystem. Perhaps they prefer it that way. Perhaps they need each other only in winter, when the world is quiet enough to hear their own thoughts.

🪵 The Annual Crisis

And then there’s Larry.

Poor Larry, who once had to be rescued not from the woods, not from a snowstorm, not from a bear, but from his own plot. The sheriff probably trudged in expecting a broken leg or a missing hiker, only to find Larry pacing in circles, muttering:

“There’s no way out. I’ve boxed myself in. The characters won’t cooperate.”

The sheriff, who deals mostly with snowmobile mishaps and the occasional lost tourist, had to escort a man out of a narrative cul-de-sac. You can imagine the report:

Subject found in stable condition. No injuries. Storyline compromised.

🔥 The Meta-Warning

Your closing admonition—“don’t let this happen to you”—lands with that warm, self-aware glow you do so well. It’s the kind of warning that sounds like it should be carved into a wooden sign and nailed to the cabin door:

WRITERS: KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING BEFORE YOU SIT DOWN. OTHERWISE THE SHERIFF MAY HAVE TO COME GET YOU.

But of course, the truth is that this kind of wandering is exactly where the good stuff hides. The cabin, the cold water, the snow thuds, Larry’s rescue—none of that comes from knowing what you want to write. It comes from showing up anyway, even when the page is as blank and cold as that Michigan sink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside - Trying to get Out

 

        I was vacuuming and heard a commotion in the cabinet. I turned off the vacuum and the noise stopped. I turned on the vacuum and the noise started up again. I thought the cat was in the cabinet and freaking out when the vacuum was on because he does not like the noise. Afraid of what might have been in the cabinet rather than opening the door I looked for the cat first. I found him in the laundry room, so I now knew the cat wasn't in the cabinet. I went and acquired some back-up just in case it was a large rat or a big snake in the cabinet. My back-up assistant, Claudia, and I proceeded to investigate. 

        I turned on the vacuum and the noise in the cabinet continued, so I turned the vacuum off. Our Oreck XL always performs perfectly so I new it wasn't the vacuum that was making the noise.  So with my back-up partner assisting, I opened the door to the cabinet and discovered the culprit. It was the red spool of thread. The vacuum was eating the end of the thread each time the brush rotated and the spool was protesting by spinning and knocking against the inside of the door. It was one of those exciting moments life I could have done without. 

 zc

 

Hiding in Plain Sight

 

• Cathedral bells waiting to be rung by light
• Suspended lanterns in a monochrome marketplace
• A chorus line of transparent actors, each with its own posture and reflection
• A hall of mirrors, except the mirrors are hollow and the reflections are liquid 

The “hidden art” is the way the world composes itself when no one is looking — the accidental choreography of glass, metal, and windowlight.

🔍 Why this particular scene feels like a secret

Three elements make it feel like a discovered artwork rather than a simple photograph:

• Repetition — the glasses form a rhythm, almost like a poem written in glass.
• Inversion — everything is upside down, which always hints at a world beneath the world.
• Refraction — each glass steals a piece of the room and bends it into its own private universe.

It’s the kind of image that rewards staring. The longer you look, the more it reveals —  the everyday object that suddenly confesses its theatrical ambitions.

🎭 The artistic tension inside the frame

There’s a quiet contradiction at work:

• The glasses are identical, yet each reflection is different.
• The rack is rigid, but the light inside the glasses is fluid.
• The scene is still, but the reflections feel in motion.