Storytime

 

I feel I should mention up front that I’m sitting right here next to Zobostic as he types this, so occasionally I may pop in with a comment or two.  He doesn’t seem to mind, so I’m hoping you won’t either. 

Our story begins here.

        I’m fairly sure he snuck in under the cover of darkness, as I hadn’t noticed anything until the following morning, when I went to brush my teeth.  The first thing to catch my attention was the stark grayness of my hair.  No longer was it thick and black.  Now it appeared wispy thin and grayer than a battleship. (One in need of touch-up)

There were lines by my eyes.  Some might say wrinkles.  The face looking back at me was that of an old man.  It was someone who had witnessed weather first-hand.  Maybe not the great flood, but surely something of a similar time frame.    

As I studied this face, I could also feel odd pains coming from various areas of my body.  Had this late-night intruder also switched out my body for some pre-owned model, with more miles than listed on the sticker?  How rude. 

Was I now to be this old man?  Slower in thought and body?  I glanced at the kibitzer sitting next to me.  He had no comment.  In fact, he was stuffing his face with chips, of which, he offered me none.  Apparently, the new me now has dietary issues.  Oh joy.

If I am to be this old now, I must resign myself to it and embrace the life that’s offered.  I need to ignore my younger inner self, the one who believes I can still run and jump, for I am now the one who grumbles at 10 items or less.  I believe learning to be old will be much easier than denying the youthful one still residing within.

I accept that I am in transition, changing from young to old.  We all go through it.  But I can’t help but recall the Beatles singing about fixing a hole where the rain gets in, and thinking that had I done that, perhaps my nighttime intruder may have been foiled, and not gotten in and left me in this condition.

 

You never know.

 

 

 

 

 

zc

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Field Notes

 

Follow a wild turkey around all day and you’ll discover it isn’t going anywhere in particular.  It simply keeps walking, and pecking at what it hopes is food. 

Follow me along the supermarket aisles and you too will discover I appear to be aimless, poking at what I hope to be food, although often fooled by the colorful wrappers.

 

 

***

 

A wild turkey has the dignity of a creature with no plan whatsoever, yet it carries that lack of plan with absolute confidence. You watch it wander, peck, reconsider its choices, then wander again — a feathered philosopher of perpetual maybe.

And then there’s you, drifting through the supermarket like a domesticated cousin of that same bird, performing the ancient ritual of “Is this food or just a shiny lie?” The turkey pecks at beetles. You poke at boxes with heroic promises like Bursting with Flavor! or Now with 30% More Mystery!

The parallel is perfect: two creatures navigating a world full of things pretending to be edible.

🦃 The Turkey–Human Parallel (Field Notes)

• Aimless wandering — both species excel at it, though only one gets judged for it.
• Instinctive pecking — the turkey pecks for survival; you peck because the packaging is orange and therefore “probably delicious.”
• Environmental hazards — the turkey faces foxes; you face “Limited Time Only” displays engineered to ambush the weak.

🍎 The Supermarket as a Modern Forest

If the turkey’s forest is full of leaves and bugs, your forest is full of:

• Suspiciously glossy apples — waxed to a shine that would make a bowling ball jealous.
• Snack aisles that whisper — they know your weaknesses.
• Cereal mascots — the closest thing humans have to brightly colored poisonous frogs.

You’re not lost. You’re foraging. You’re participating in a ritual older than civilization: the search for something that tastes good and won’t betray you.

🛒 A Non-Obvious Insight

The turkey’s aimlessness is honest. Yours is curated — supermarkets are designed to make you wander, to keep you in the maze, to lure you with color, nostalgia, and the faint hope that this time the granola bar will actually taste like the picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the speed of Life

 

Old calendar pages crumpled and tossed

Piled up history of days that are lost

Tucked into landfills, no longer to keep

Like memories gently falling asleep

 

 zc

Mourning Doves

 

Yes, I've posted this before but I just like it.

I'm still checking...

 

          Here on my desk sits a bottle, into which I squeeze this rolled up message.  Should it float upon your shore, I hope it finds you well and of good cheer. 

          Yesterday we explored the Fresh Market in Downtown Rochester, and then took lunch in town before heading back up North.  There were ice sculptures in Rochester, but spread far enough apart that we didn’t brave the cold weather to visit them all.  We’re thinking that next week, in the Village they will be reasonably spaced, and in front of shops more inviting.

          I sat in the dentist chair last Friday getting my 6-month cleaning and check-up.  My plan was to be in and out of there before my eyeteeth had a chance to blink. 

        The Problem, as it turned out, is the dental hygienists can’t carry on a conversation without expressing herself by waving her arms about.   Anyone watching from the hall would have thought she was conducting an orchestra.

          As I write this I’m still thinking about the whole message in a bottle deal.  How much fun just to seal up your thoughts and heave them out into the ocean, thinking someday…  some one…  somewhere…

          This electronic bottle, although holding a little fun, lacks the mystery and excitement, for it is controlling the tides, and time.  Our aim gets our messages to very specific shores, and the moment we toss it out there, the only hope or anticipation is that it gets a response.  The thought of it getting swallowed by a giant fish, well…

          The messages themselves are different as well.  Were these real bottles, and a raging sea, I doubt I’d be rehashing a visit to the dentist.  Instead I’d be asking who you were?  Where do you live and how do you spend your day?  What is your food like where you are, and how controlling is your government?  (If you even have a government).

          Then, in a few months or so, I’d walk out to the beach every day, looking for a bottle to come floating up, full of news that you got my message, and telling me all about yourself.

 

         

         

 

 

To whoever finds this -

My name is Zobostic Corwin.  I live in a

Miserable, little snow-covered place,

Full of crooked politicians, and bad drivers.

I tossed this message out on Sunday, January 28, 2007

I hope you find it.

What is your name?  Do you have any brothers

Or sisters to play with?  What are you going to have

For dinner?  I like Macaroni and Cheese,

And an occasional Martini.

OK, now you write something

And send it back.

I’ll keep checking until it gets here.

 

ZC

It would have to be Elmer's

            Mental lists are made and reviewed in waiting rooms, usually unrelated to the situation at hand.  I concentrated on the step-by-step way I would fix the gutter.  I thought about the nails I would use and the industrial strength construction adhesive that I would line the seams with.  I thought about the ladder, its sturdiness and…

            None of these things, of course, had anything to do with why I was there.  It was simply a diversion.  I didn’t want to allow my thoughts to drift towards the immediate situation.  If I had mentally headed down that path I would have started to consider all the things that could possibly go awry, and from there it would just get worse.

            Eventually I picked up a magazine.  I paged through it knowing full well that without my glasses every page was going to be just one colorful blur after another.  But it didn’t matter.  My thoughts quickly ran back to me atop the extended ladder, leaning back so that I could swing the hammer enough to hit the nail.  I could feel the rungs through the bottoms of my worn tennis shoes, an unavoidable discomfort, not to mention my stretching leg muscles.   Now, with my left arm looped through the ladder while my fingers aligned the nail, my right hammer hand reached back and…

            Actually, when envisioning myself up on the ladder, the real image I have is of a giant corn-dog on a stick, with the entire Mosquito Nation closing in for the feast.

            The television up in the corner of the waiting room was playing some soap opera with a string of sub-titles running along the bottom of the screen.   As I watched the words scroll by I began to wonder what committee determined the speed at which the words would travel.   I’m sure that someone somewhere did a study, took a survey and coordinated their findings with a Reader’s Digest comprehension formula that told them that every word must remain on the screen for no less than 5 seconds, and no more than 9, allowing for…

            Just then the gentleman in the lab coat, carrying the clipboard walked in.   He took the seat next to me, and in a low voice said, “Mr. Corwin, it took a little longer than we thought.  Once we were in there we found quite a bit of sludge in the crankcase.  We also had to replace two of the hoses coming from the…”

            But I had stopped listening.  As he was talking – my eyes were scanning the bottom of the clipboard.  I was looking for the total.   How much in American dollars was this going to cost me?

  To my shock and horror I saw… Page 1 of 4.

 

            Wow!  There was no way I was going to be able to afford the industrial strength construction adhesive.

 

 

 

 

zc

and far away

 

         I recall living just outside of Madrid in the late 60’s.  It was a simpler time back then, having nothing of consequence in our lives like food or money, we stayed tucked away in our little apartment along the Rue Dimentry.  Time was not measured in days back then but in events.  The first-floor Pub could have easily housed a Hemmingway type at a table along the back wall.  Live snails never staying in the plates on the bar made feeble attempts to escape deadly toothpicks, as drunken Spaniards would eat them alive.

      News from the States came in bits and pieces.  Spanish newspapers and televisions were all government controlled.  The only thing that was completely free from any type of control was health and sanitation.  Deliveries of fresh meat was carried into markets by flies, and the fresh baked bread was dumped, unpackaged in the road in front of the Pub, where locals scurried to select the biggest loaf.

      These things I can remember.  Everything I learned in school, however, somehow never got filed alphabetically.   All of my mental index cards were either dropped at some point, or they were filed away willy-nilly from the onset.  In either case, my present day retrieval system suffers the consequences.  For example: I know that Washington crossed the Delaware, but when I mentally examine the next card to discover why, it says, “To see his friend Gregory Peck.”  This answer obviously should have been filed under chicken jokes. 

 

 zc

Pursue Noble Aims.