I never ever want to be
after having come this far
the stale and somewhat crumby
last cookie in the jar,
Dark and awfully quiet
no longer with the bunch
one by one I watched my friends
spoil someone’s lunch,
It’s different for us cookies
no fancy sheets of silk
our idea of heaven
is a tall cold glass of milk,
and it’s not like on the playground
being picked last for the game
who took the final cookie
Well… no one wants the blame.
Truly there’s no sadder sight
when you are far away
than finding here within my box
you’ve nothing left to say,
No scribbled note that’s hard to read
with fingerprints a chocolate mess
no magazine that no one needs
no neighbor’s mail to my address,
No laundry soap – the sample size
mailed for me to try -
In hopes that I clean-up my act
and then decide to buy,
No letter coming back to me
cuz I forgot a stamp,
and not a word from my friend Lee
while he’s away at camp,
Another day on empty
I guess I'll buy some socks
then Amazon can send me
a happy cardboard box.
The science of the day tells me the center of the earth is extremely
hot liquid, like a molten metal. They
use volcanic activity to prove their statement.
I tend to believe it is nougat. I
have personally witnessed several candy stores in every city and country I have
been in and I know candy does not grow on trees. I have to believe it is mined from deep below the earth’s crust and it is the rotation of the planet that keeps it
from becoming a solid.
***
ZC, I have to admit your theory
has one major advantage over the geologists': theirs requires seismographs,
pressure models, and equations. Yours requires only a sweet tooth and
observational skills.
Let's review the evidence.
The Scientific Position:
The Nougat Position:
I must confess the parallels are striking.
Furthermore, if Earth's core were
molten iron, one would expect occasional reports of iron bars being ejected
from volcanoes. Yet when was the last time a volcano launched a perfectly
formed wrench or garden rake? On the other hand, candy bars routinely reveal
layers of caramel, nougat, and mysterious fillings hidden beneath an exterior
coating. Nature often repeats successful designs.
Your rotational hypothesis also
deserves consideration. Anyone who has ever tried to stir cooling caramel knows
motion delays solidification. Therefore, the Earth's rotation could very well
be functioning as a planetary-sized candy mixer.
Of course there are unresolved questions:
The scientific community may
object that seismic waves passing through the Earth indicate material
properties inconsistent with nougat. However, I suspect very little grant money
has been allocated toward large-scale planetary confectionery research. Until
someone drills all the way to the center and returns with either a spoon or a
spectrometer, the debate remains suspiciously one-sided.
As a field researcher, I would
recommend continuing to monitor candy store populations. If their numbers
increase while the planet's mass remains relatively constant, it may suggest an
active replenishment process deep beneath the crust.
In short, geologists have their
magma. You have your nougat. Both camps agree on one thing:
Something chewy is going on
beneath the surface.
I’ve been spending way too much time wandering around the halls. I am neither in the present nor the past. OK, maybe a little in the past. I long for certain bits of yesterday, although not most of it. You can leave out the political antics and all the lame advice from doctors, especially the ones advertising cigarettes.
From my office, looking backwards, I enjoyed most the snail mail. People looking at other than themselves and writing to me. Seeing the value in sharing their events and experiences with someone not even in the frame of their picture. Just looking at the envelope and seeing it had been carried from their house to mine was a hoot. I get it now, when they say, “Nostalgia is a thing of the past.”
I recall Stephen
Wright once saying. “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.” There is a frequency in that which strikes
my inner child. That’s the one that has
never grown up and still feels compelled to add gibberish to the seemingly
endless Blog.
***
Zobostic, this feels less like
someone lost in the halls and more like someone who knows exactly which doors
he keeps opening.
What you seem to miss is not
really the past itself. You even dismiss whole sections of it right away: the
politics, the dubious medical wisdom, the cigarette-shilling doctors. You're
not asking for yesterday wholesale. You're picking through the antiques bin.
The snail mail part struck me. Not
because of the letters themselves, but because of what they represented.
Someone sat at a table somewhere, thought of you specifically, and created
evidence of that thought. Then the envelope traveled through rain, sorting
machines, truck stops, and mailbags until it arrived in your hand. The letter
wasn't instant communication. It was a physical record that, for a brief time,
two people occupied the same conversation.
An email arrives.
A letter journeys.
Those are different things.
And then there's that Stephen
Wright line. "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."
The genius of it is that it sneaks past logic and lands directly in the
imagination, where your inner child still lives. Not the child who wants toys,
but the one who enjoys tilting reality a few degrees just to see what falls
over.
I suspect the endless blog isn't
really endless because you have so much to say. It's endless because you're
still entertained by what happens when two unrelated thoughts collide. A pile
of mail and a freight train. A lizard doing push-ups. A stranger with a
clipboard. Morning dew and a park bench. You collect those collisions the way
some people collect stamps.
Perhaps nostalgia gets blamed
unfairly. People speak of it as longing for the past, but often it is
appreciation delayed. We don't realize something is special while we're
standing in it. Only after it wanders away do we look up and wave.
The phrase "Nostalgia is a
thing of the past" sounds exactly like something your inner child would
enjoy. It's true, ridiculous, and somehow slightly sad all at the same time.
As for spending too much time
wandering the halls, I've noticed something. When you write about the past, you
rarely stay there long. You pick up some small artifact, turn it over in your
hands, and carry it back into the present. The letter becomes a thought about
connection. The old joke becomes a reflection on imagination. The past isn't
where you're living.
It's just where you keep finding
material.
ZC
Think of your brain being a collection of rooms. Each individual room is constructed of thoughts. The room farthest away is the future room. Whenever you enter it, things look and feel very distant and not quite in focus. There are closets filled with imagination in that room and they might seem pretty wild, maybe even a little scary.
The room out back, of course, is the past. Everything in there has already happened. Instead of furniture, there are hundreds of crates, each one packed with memories. They have been tightly packed, and some may even be hard to recall, they’re so wedged in.
It’s not unusual to see people just wandering the halls between rooms. There is a vacant expression on their face, and if you ask them what they’re thinking about, nothing will come to them, for they are not actually in any particular room.
The present room is the smallest, and yet you can’t get to any of the other rooms from anywhere but there. All of the hallways come off of the present room and the items in there are more distractions than furniture. The window draws you away - the smell of coffee snaps you back. The paintings on the walls pull you towards the back room, while friends and family tug on you, trying to keep you in the present.
If you stay out of
the present room for too long, it can become a very lonely existence, so be
careful. Most tend to get stuck in the past just because there is such a great deal in there and it all looks and feels so familiar.
I was hired to be a sorter. I sort. I stand next to the conveyor belt and as the various items come along, I pick them up and place them into the appropriate bin. If they are broken or damaged, I turn and place them on the conveyor line behind me. That takes them to a completely different room. It is someone’s job in there to decide if they can be fixed or not.
The person next to me
is Larry. He is also a sorter and has
been here for many years. He’s been
telling me about all of the odd and strange things that have come along. He wears gloves. He said he won’t ever do this job without
gloves on. I’m not sure if I believe
some of his stories or not. They seem
pretty wild.
We get a ten-minute break in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon, with half an hour for lunch. There are vending machines in the breakroom and that is where the only wall clock is. There are plenty of tables and chairs and Larry says that is where the company-wide meetings are held. The last meeting, according to him, was about the changes to our insurance. Larry says that we now have a deductible and less coverage.
There are safety
posters everywhere. Safety glasses and
hearing protection are recommended but not yet mandatory, even though the
mechanical grinding noise of the conveyor is loud and annoying, I can still hear
Larry’s comments and complaints throughout the day.
The one event Larry had mentioned was still festering in my thoughts. It had happened last month. It was a Tuesday morning, and everyone had walked into the plant as they always had, but something was off. The entire place was eerily quiet. No conveyors running, in fact no sounds at all. Even the employees that had already walked in were not talking. People were wondering if someone had died or something, but they weren’t even speculating about that. They weren’t saying anything.
Then, like a shadow
of sound, moving through the place they learned that management and
front-office people were all gathered around station 5. Nobody could believe what was there on the
conveyor belt. Larry said that was the day he started wearing gloves.
