Now what?

 

The guy said, "Pick a card, any card."

So I grabbed this one.

Peanut Butter - of course

 

I poured a large glass of orange soda-pop and placed it on the nightstand next to the bed.  Usually I have water, but this time I felt like having orange pop.  You see, at various times during the night I wake up and if I'm thirsty, and I’m always thirsty, well my beverage is right at hand.

 

      This particular night, Claudia said, "That has caffeine in it."  But I was already snuggly and didn't feel like heading back out to the kitchen. 

 

"It will be fine." I replied and thought no more about it until 15 minutes later, and every 15 minutes for the next 8 hours.  I never slept a wink.  That stuff must be loaded with Super-Double, Time-Released Caffeine.  So along with the remaining sniffles from my cold, I now had a million and one thoughts about all the things I could be doing, instead of just laying there.   Things like shoveling the driveway, checking my e-mails, and building a catapult were all good possibilities, but I didn't want to wake Claudia, or Woody the biting cat, so I just laid there, alternating between blinking and quietly blowing my nose.

 

      At one point I rolled over to reach a Kleenex and found myself face to face with the digital clock.  I should interrupt here…  You know those things that when you look at them you can't tell what they say, until you focus on the spaces between the letters.  Then the message becomes clear?  The message is actually written with the spaces, instead of using actual letters.  Well, apparently that is how I was looking at the clock.  I wasn't focused on what time it was, all I noticed was the spaces between the illuminated numbers.

 

      There it was.  A crocodile head.  He had his jaws open and seemed ready to chomp at any moment.  I though it must be a crumpled Kleenex, sitting there in front of the clock, and my brain was just seeing it as a crocodile.  So I reached to move it and there was nothing there.  It was 1:42 and the space between the 1 and the 4 made a perfect crocodile head.  I was impressed.  What a find.  Not quite enough, however, to wake-up Claudia and report my amazing discovery.  But none the less, I was jazzed.

 

 

 

      It made me think of Tick-Tock, the crocodile that ate Captain Hook’s hand.  Of course I don’t recall what his name was before they started calling him Hook.  You know, before the crocodile incident.   It may have been Lenny, but like I say, I’m not sure.

 

      At 1:53 I noticed that the crocodile had changed to a very pregnant coyote, sitting, howling at the moon.  There was no moon, but the coyote was very visible.   Sometime after that I saw a Puffin, (One of those pudgy duck-like birds, with an orange bill and orange feet) though I forget exactly what time it was.  I believe the feet and bill were the two glowing dots between the first and second numbers.   While all of this was going on, my stuffy nose was getting the better of me.  I remember getting up in search of some Nyquil.  I took a good dose and headed back to bed.

 

      As best as I can figure, the smell of Nyquil on my breath must have chased off all of the critters, for I don't recall seeing anything else the rest of the night.

 

      It all came back to me though, around 5:15  when I opened the pantry to make my lunch for the day.  There, directly in front of me was Peter Pan.  

 

 

 

Self-winding

 

She’d known for some time that life could only keep moving forward if she kept her watch wound.  As it slowed to a stop, so did all the activity around her.  It became imperative that she pay close attention and keep it wound and ticking.  Should it become too close to stopping, she’d lack the energy to take hold of the watch stem and turn it. 

The wind would die down, birds struggled to fly and even gravity seemed to fail, although randomly. She had discovered the power of her watch shortly after her grandfather had given it to her.  She told no one of its power, for fear of sounding crazy, but the fact was, should her watch come to a complete stop, so would all animated life.

As she grew older, her desire to mention it to someone - anyone grew stronger.  This was too great a responsibility for one person.  She wondered how her grandfather came to be in possession of such a watch.  Where had he gotten it, where did it come from.  Had it been cursed by some gypsy? Not likely.  This was much greater than some hokey spell.  But what?  How was it affecting all life?  It made no sense.

Looking to the future, she knew she needed to make arrangement for someone to take her place in the event anything should happen to her.  If she spelled it out in her will, it would surely become public knowledge.  Then what?  Not everyone has good intentions.  Some may try to steal it, ransom it for millions.  In the wrong hands this could be the end to everything as we know it.  How was she to ensure it survives long after she is gone?

Maybe that was the answer. 

Maybe taking it to a watch maker and making it into a self-winding watch was the answer.  She could then free herself of the watch.  Just by attaching it to something mechanical that was always moving, it would forever stay wound.  Life would go on.  But what was there that was always in motion, and how was she going to secretly strap a watch to whatever it was, without anyone noticing? 

The other thing that came to her was the watch maker.  He or she would have to be honest and have the ability to alter the watch while it kept running.  That could be the fly in the ointment.  It would be like getting a tune-up on your car while the motor was running.  Okay, bad example.  Maybe it was possible…  Heart doctors perform operations on a heart while it is still beating.  There just might be a way.

She needed time to think...

 

The Iron Slipper

 

As nightclubs went, it wasn’t all that smoky, but the atmosphere hung thick with the anticipation of escape. You could taste the desperation between the gin and the jazz. Everyone there was waiting for someone — or running from something.

The singer crooned from under a single spotlight, her voice like warm whiskey poured over broken glass. She wasn’t young, but the way the crowd leaned toward her made you think she still had a few debts left unpaid — and a few hearts left to collect.

In the corner, a man in a tan suit stirred his drink without ever taking a sip. His eyes didn’t move, but they were watching everything. I’d seen that look before — the kind that tells you he’s not there for the music.

I wasn’t there for the music either. I was looking for a woman who wasn’t supposed to exist — a redhead with a smile that could make a man forget his own address. Word was, she’d walked out of a deal that went south and took something that didn’t belong to her.

What that something was, nobody seemed to know, but the kind of men asking questions made it clear it was worth more than money.

The bartender caught my glance and shook his head, just barely. That was the thing about this place — everyone knew something, but nobody said a word unless they were paid or dying. Preferably both.

The band picked up the tempo, horns wailing like sirens in the fog. Out on the dance floor, the crowd moved as one — sweating, swaying, pretending not to notice the danger crawling in under the door.

Then I saw her.

She was leaning against the jukebox, tracing the rim of her glass with her finger like she was trying to find the right frequency to disappear. The red hair was real, the smile wasn’t, and when her eyes met mine, I knew two things for sure:

She’d been expecting me, and I was already too late.

 Everyone seemed to know, The Iron Slipper would last forever but forever be uncomfortable, and at this moment I was.  Why I kept coming here I didn’t know.  She began to walk towards me.  I could feel a cold bead of sweat running down my back. The keyboard player hit a sour note.  As if that were some sort of signal, she stopped and turned towards the exit.  My gut told me following her was a bad idea, but so far, my life had been built on bad ideas.

 

to be...

 

 

 

 

 

Bored of Health

 

        I stood at the deli counter and ordered ½ lb. of ham, sliced thin.  The employee reached over, took two sterile gloves from a small box of sterile gloves, and put them on.  Then he proceeded to slice the ham, taking each individual slice from the slicer and stacking it onto the paper that lay on the scale.

 

          Somewhere across town, a second customer called the deli to place an order.

 

          Hearing the ringing phone, the ham slicing employee stopped, walked over and picked up the receiver and took the phone order, writing everything down with the pen laying there next to the phone.

 

          When he hung up, he walked back and continued slicing the ham.

 

          As I watched all of this, I told myself, these people must sterilize the phone and pen after each use.

 

***

 

          I do not even want to think about all of the various unclean employee fingers that have rummaged around in that box of gloves, fumbling to pull out just two. 

 

***

 

          Maybe I am just germ-a-phobic.  It is probably best just to pay less attention to the world around me and simply go willy-nilly about my day.

 

***

 

          Sorry, can’t do it.  No – really, I just tried.  I am destined to pay attention to the details.  As Monk would say, “It’s a blessing – and a curse.”

 

*** 

 

          So, did I say anything to the employee?  No, instead I stood there having an entire dialog in my head.  I would have had to explain the basic principles of sanitation, go into detail on how many people during the course of forever pick up that receiver and pen, as well as give him a refresher course on Customer Service, all the while wondering what kind of service I could expect the next time I came in.

 

***

  

          This post is an examination of my behavior, and not that of the ham-slicing employee.  It seems I will forever repeat behaviors that are not conducive to my well-being.  How to break this behavior presently eludes me, for I have an abundance of excuses for others as well as for myself.  Knowing all of this is not considered a break-through, so I am afraid our sessions must continue.  Unlike the ham, I am not cured.

 

Who am I to Ridicule the Ostrich?

            When I examine the workings of a gadget I take a close look at its parts.  At times there are wires, levers, and gears.  Sometimes there are moving parts and sometimes parts that do nothing but hold or support the actions of others.  Whenever I examine myself - I take a closer look at you.  For example: I know that you will never drop the (point nine) from the price of gas.   I also know that you will never use fat people to advertise your gym membership.  All of the little things I see you do tell me something about myself.   On a much larger scale I see you diluting the information age into nothing more than fashion and gossip, while saturating society with advertising.  You are altering the face of our culture, adjusting the class structure and manipulating the chemistry of our food.  I cannot help but notice these changes as I myself must consider the fear-based ads, the health scares and become subjected to the technological intrusions.    

 

          Alice kept telling herself that she was in a dream; all she needed to do was to wake up and everything would be alright.  The scary part, however, is that the Jabberwocky is not only real, but is taxing us beyond all rational logic, while forcing us to register our Vorpal swords.   But I can see that my thoughts have perhaps melded with those of the Hatter, so I shall stop short of comparing a raven to a writing desk and return to the image of the overweight person advertising gym memberships.

 

          While I still thirst for the knowledge I missed while focusing on test scores, you have advanced without direction or regulation.  You have built things that this planet cannot rid itself of; you have diverted resources to support chaos and allowed government to ignore the very people it was designed to sustain.  This shows me that I am a complacent onlooker, and nothing more.  My reflection blends with the multitudes to the point that I become lost within the gears.   I am an inactive part of something I do not support.

 

          Perhaps Socrates was wrong when he suggested, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Whenever I fail to scrutinize my life – my thoughts become an oasis - void of political corruptions, absent of toxic environments and a pleasant diversion from the insanity.   There is something to be said for the racehorse wearing blinders; his own heartbeat drowns out the masses, his breathing quickly blends into a rhythm, and his focus is not on the finish line but simply on the moment at hand.

 

         

          Each of us develops nurtures and carries around our own reality.  When individual realities collide with each other several things can happen.  If during the collision it is determined that they are compatible, they become friends.  Should they be as different as say… a raven and a writing desk, they let out an indignant snort and go their separate ways.   Then there are those rare occasions when someone’s reality is spread out across a sheet of paper for others to see.  Lewis Carroll, Edgar Poe, Truman Capote, and so on have filled page upon page with separate realities.  When I wish to examine myself against those - I experience a somewhat calming sensation.  I do not hear a snort, nor smell the lingering stench of burnt popcorn, but rather find myself reconsidering the unexamined life and whether Socrates and I would have been friends.

 

          As tomorrow is Christmas, I shall spend it considering baby Jesus as he was when going through the terrible two’s, or perhaps contemplate his possible antics as a rebellious teenager. 

 

No longer being concerned with test scores, I can do this.

 

Tag

 

        I have never been good at small talk.  I am, however, excellent at small listening.  It is as if the entire world is a sweater, and I am a hangnail.  I catch key words, the odd phrase, or facial expression and snag them into my mental web of comprehension.

 

          Conversations, for me anyway, lay captured as a fly tangled up in the spider’s web, waiting for me to return - to dissect sentences, drain verbs of their action and leave passing clichés as empty, broken fragments, drying in the sun, eventually blowing away with the slightest punctuation.  

 

          I surround myself with words.  I’m soaking in them right now.  They are my fishing trip, minus the flies and mosquitoes.  They are my golf game that I hope nobody ever captures on film.  My adventures span the distance from exclamation point to page down, and they are all adventures that remain relegated to this keyboard. 

 

          For the past several years, I have checked books out of the library, only to read two or three sentences and return them.  Captured by a clever title, like a raven to a shiny object, I pluck them from the shelf and cart them home.  Almost instantly, upon reading, I’m bored.  I’ve neither been hooked nor drawn into the story or character and so I close it and pick up the next in the pile.    This is not something I would recommend.  I am sure that I have missed some good stories by not hanging in long enough, and I could not really tell you what I am hoping to one day discover by engaging in this behavior.

 

          My latest discovery is a small book entitled Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar…

Written by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.   This book immediately captured my attention when I read the dedication page.  It contains a quote from Groucho Marx.  “These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.”  Any book that can make me laugh aloud in the library gets checked out and carried home.

 

          The problem, as you know, with armchair adventure, is its limitations with respect to life.  Life should be experienced outside, with wind, noise, and blinding Sunlight.  It needs to be breathed in and it should make us sweat, and shiver.  Even if we have to grab the big hand and let it drag us around the face of the clock, scraping our knees across the five, and snagging our shoelaces on the eight, we should never let go.  It is a journey taking us nowhere, while simultaneously pulling us through time.

 

          It is the small listening that causes me to pay close attention to the dedication page of a book.  It is there that the author steps out of their author persona, and stands facing the reading public, speaks from the heart, not just from the dust jacket, sometimes smoking a pipe, and attempts to look regal.  The dedication page is the tree that we ran to as children.  As long as you are touching the tree, you can’t be tagged.  Someone else forever remains it.

 

         

         

           

 

            

Thoughts better kept to myself

 

        We like our kitchen knives to be dull and ineffective, that upon some momentary error in judgment, the damage to ourselves shall be minimal.   This thought process, of course, is not restricted to the kitchen; for we also keep our power mower at such a height the blades will completely miss our toes, should we inadvertently run across our foot.

 

            For years the human race has endeavored to enhance various aspects of self-preservation.  We build houses sheltering us from the elements, while maintaining control over our personal environment.  We design footwear allowing us to traverse a great variety of surfaces at varying temperatures, without consequence.  We construct great ships that we might float without effort to distant shores, keeping predators with sharp teeth and insatiable appetites at a safe distance. 

 

            We are truly an ingenious lot, creating germ-killing soaps; Fluoride enhanced tooth paste, ouchless band aids, and hard hats.  We measure the quality of our lives; count our change and dress to fit in. 

 

            Our ability to reason leads us to rationalize that those in charge are good and pure of heart, keeping our best interest at the foreground of their decisions.  To aid in their task, they tax us beyond all comprehension, leaving them with wealth enough to sustain their livelihood to the grave and to rebuild that which they themselves have bombed.

 

            We like our lives to be dull and ineffective, that upon some future judgment, we can stand back and blame society, as if we were simply an observer, rather than participant; hoping to keep the damage to ourselves minimal.

 

             Conceivably, we are the blemishes, the damage having been done long before we were born.  (Those of God’s creations that didn’t pop out of the mold as intended)  Not wishing to simply toss us asunder, he has set us here upon Earth, a sort of galactic Big Lot; a warehouse filled with discounted humans. Some with a screw loose, some not wired correctly, many simply not wrapped real tight, but knowing, of course, we still have feelings, he has placed us here using the buddy system, leaving us absent of the ability to imagine endlessness, or to identify the true origin of life.

 

            The consequence of having identified this blemish theory somewhat dampens the enthusiasm for self preservation, and having now said it aloud, has caused my buddy to wander off in search of a new companion.

Making Believe

 

        Last Tuesday I wandered backstage.  I saw the vast array of building materials, lighting fixtures and nick-knacks that fill the small rooms, storage areas and rafters of our local theatre.  There were miles of moldings, wide and narrow, large sections of flooring that would extend into rooms never to be seen.  Baskets full of doorknobs, some turn of the century, while others designed for a simple Oliver Twist; they sat next to teapots, muskets, and stacks of books leaning on televisions and moose heads.  Closets were packed with overcoats and feathered hats, with wigs piled next to cigar boxes that held an assortment of mustaches.  An old cookie tin held a variety of stick-on tattoos; some suggesting a military history while others indicating an allegiance to a cause or a bold proclamation of independence.   One wall was peppered with an assortment of beards and toupees, for those plays requiring fur-bearing actors. 

 

          It is a wondrous place, filled with potential and anticipation.  It is a place where lines from a sketch are lifted from the page and transformed into bedrooms, back alleys, hideouts, or grandmother’s kitchen.   Jars of dust and spools of cobwebs sit on a back shelf waiting to create just the right atmosphere, while wooden signs, painted with indiscernible languages lean against the wall.   

 

          Do not, however, believe that backstage is paved with wide aisles or meandering lanes, for it is not.  Barely navigable and dimly lit passageways wind around tripping hazards, skill saws and mannequin limbs.  It is not a destination you’ll find in any brochure.
It is simply a holding area for the imagination.  

 

Lost in Thought

 

        I had been looking down the whole time I was walking - my gaze hypnotically upon the sidewalk - these segmented pads of concrete, so evenly spaced they created a rhythm in my mind as they passed beneath me. 

 

          Step down, road, road, road, road – curb, and back up to the rhythm.  I had been walking long past my own neighborhood, right through lunch and now into dusk; yet, I had not looked up.  I was walking now and that is who I was, I was walking guy.  Like some extra in a movie, Guy walking past.  That was me.  Watch for me in the credits.

 

          Step down, road, road, road, road – curb, and back up to the rhythm.  There were different sounds to this neighborhood, I didn’t recognize them as typical neighborhood noises; lawnmowers, teenagers washing the family car, music coming from someone’s window, no these sounds were noticeably muffled, different and somewhat quieter.  Still, it was dusk and general activities would be less than those of afternoon.  I would be able to distinguish city noises, should I end up walking that far, but not having had my lunch I am sure my thoughts of dinner would soon hold some influence over the direction of my shoes.

 

          Step down, road, road, road, road – curb and step up.  Maybe I might forgo the evening meal and walk right through dinner.  Surely, I’m not about to whither away.  I just remembered a line from an old movie.  I’m not sure why that popped into my thoughts.  The line is, “I could always live in my art, but never in my life.”  I’m not sure why thoughts of dinner would spring an old movie line into my head.  Every now and then, a writer will hit upon a line that is a true gem, and they know exactly when it happens.  They read it repeatedly, bouncing it against the character tasked with speaking the line, making sure it is going to flow, and not be trampled by the laughter or applause of the pervious dialog. 

 

          It is an exciting moment, causing the writer to re-read the entire previous scene, taking thoughts quickly away from the drudgery of syntax, and plunging them into the mental challenge of getting back on track, heading towards the thread that leads to the final scene. 

 

          Often times, that gem of a line quickly evolves into an obstacle.  Momentum is lost and the thoughts of the writer begin to stray, “What critics will be in the audience?”  “Will I be killed in the reviews?” and once these thoughts take over it is best to just walk away.  Shut it down for the night, step down, road, road, road – splat!

 

 

The Weight is Over

 

Already some of you are saying I spelled the wrong wait. HA!  I did not.  Maybe I was talking about the weight limit of a boxer, or an 18-wheeler.  It could be the lady behind the counter weighing boxes of chocolates.  With English you never know.  Sometimes it’s all very goofy. Not only are some of the words silly but the spelling is also bonkers.  How I made my way through, I’ll never know.

I’d like to see some old Shakespeare works run through Spell-check.  And what if Lewis and Clark had a GPS?  “Turn left at the buffalo.”  “In 300 feet, merge onto the Oregon Trail.  Go straight for 9 days.”  A blend of old and new might make interesting situations, not to mention different outcomes.  I wonder what society would be like today if the white people and the American Indians had gotten along. 

They could have taught us how to run through the forest without making a sound, and we could have provided them with Tupperware.  They would have shown us their tribal dances, and we could have played Hey Jude for them on Bose speakers. 

Maybe someday a movie will be made showing all the possible scenarios of such a blend.  I can see Tom Hanks playing a happy and congenial General Custer sharing recipes with Harrison Ford, playing Chief Sitting Bull.   Meg Ryan, of course, would be Sacagawea.

Okay, maybe I have strayed off the reservation with all that.  I’ll just have to look forward too when the wait is over.

 

 

 

Don't Bug Me

 

It is difficult to explain if you’re not the same.  I say that not knowing if I’m unique or not.  Maybe there are millions of people like this, I don’t know.

I tend to see the insect world through a magnifying glass.  Even with the smallest of bugs, I mentally see their tiny legs, and feelers and squishing them just seems cruel and heartless.  Consequently, I do not step on spiders or roaches, I don’t swat at moths or anything airborne.

For some reason, the exception to this are house flies.  Swatting them doesn’t bother me.  I don’t understand the justification for their existence, not that I should or need too.

If there is a name for this mental condition, I’ve not heard it, and I doubt there is a cure.  It’s just how I am wired.  To me, all creatures deserve to be left alone and enjoy their lives.  And I only go after house flies when they invade my space.  I don’t go hunting for them.

I guess those that do go hunting house flies, dress up with their camouflage clothes looking like potato salad, or dog poop.  I’ve not seen anyone like that in the neighborhood.

This entire condition may sound silly to some, but when you think – there are billions of insects all around us, I live my life woefully outnumbered.  It’s frightening that I could accidentally obliterate some innocent bug on its way home from a hard day at work.  Really, how would you feel, driving home from a day at the factory, looking forward to sitting around the dinner table with your family, when you suddenly see the bottom of a giant shoe coming down upon you from the sky?

 

No Mice were harmed

 

Today’s adventure is found at the far end of the watchmaker’s table.  It is a small tool whose name eludes me at present, so I will call them tweezers.  (Even though they’re not)

 

When we look through the large, illuminated magnifying glass at the mechanisms within any relationship, we see that a balance is required.  It remains a necessary part to achieve motion.  Over time we become attuned to the rhythm, and we can hear when the balance is slightly off.  Tic Tock – Tic Tock goes on repeatedly in the background while our lives play out on center stage.   We most often don’t even acknowledge its presence, but when it steps out of cadence our awareness trips on a light in our subconscious, our forward motion stops abruptly and we say to ourselves, something is wrong.

 

        In this instance, it is a grandfather clock that we took custody of as part of a settlement between friends. She didn’t want it, and he didn’t want it.  Since that day it has sat quietly in our living room.  Not having ever had sole custody of such a thing before, neither of us knew what to do with it.  After a few years had gone by with this hulk looming over the coffee table and over-shadowing the table lamps, we collectively agreed to relocate it to Craigslist.  It would surely look better there than here.

 

        “It needs to be working, if we are to sell it,” came the first comment.

 

        I do not know anything about Grandfather clocks, I said.

 

        “No one is going to buy it if it isn’t working,” came the second comment.

 

        So with flashlight and pliers I snuck up on it from the dining room, but in mentally leafing through my worldly experience I found no matches that included words like: Expensive, fragile, or phrases like: Your chubby hands will never fit in there.

 

  So I quickly retreated back to safe ground and suggested we continue to live in harmony with the handsome, albeit silent timepiece. 

 

        We did, for another year or two.

 

        Then this year’s garage sale arrived and there came a comment from the kitchen: “We should move the clock out where it can be seen.  (So, I moved it to the front door and on it hung a For Sale sign.)

 

        “If we want someone to buy it, it really should be working.”  (This was starting to sound familiar).

 

        Once again, armed with pliers, a screwdriver and raw courage, I opened the little access panel, shined my flashlight inside and discovered a noticeable absence of Ticks, movement and blind mice.

 

        The problem now, however, was that at any minute the neighborhood would be coming up the drive in search of garage sale bargains and I didn’t have much time left to tinker with tiny gears, brass levers or missing chains.

 

        “Hey wait!   Missing chains?”

 

        I discovered in the bottom of the clock’s cabinet the third weight, along with its chain.  I examined the other two weights and saw how they were connected and then proceeded to attach the third weight the same way.

 

Tick tock – Tick tock – Tick tock - it was as if I had just plugged it into the wall.

 

        The Grandfather clock was once again awake.  It was working and the pendulum was swinging and oh joy in the morning, we have lift off.

 

 

        In spite of this momentous success, it did not sell.

 

 

        In summation, I would like to add that although it keeps perfect time, and chimes on the 15 minute mark, the half hour mark and culminates on the hour with the traditional Westminster tones we are all familiar with, anyone absent of their sight will show up two hours late for tea, and will forever be running two hours behind the rest of the world.  For at five it chimes three.  At eight it chimes six and is always two chimes short of being correct.  Consequently, for the remainder of my relationship with this clock - I will hear my internal comments making the needed corrections.

 

 

No – it’s really eight.

 

 

       

        Now do you see?  This is what happens when you stick chubby hands with pliers into places designed to accommodate tweezers.   Things in my living room and in my head end up out of balance.

 

 

 

 

Having second thoughts

 

I expect my kite to soar far beyond the mountain tops, up through the passing jumbo jets and eventually, some astronomer standing in his back yard, with chickens running about, looks through his telescope at the moon and sees my kite, almost touching the surface.

 

Of course, it will make the local papers.  Alien Spacecraft Appears on Lunar Surface.

 

Meanwhile, I will have grown weary of holding this end of the string, and not wishing to wind it all up again, I’ll just hand it off to some passing kid.  “Hey kid, want to fly a kite?”

 

He or she, of course, won’t be able to see it from where they are, but being a kid, they’ll take hold of the string anyway.  It will be like an imaginary friend, only it’s a kite no one can see.

 

Not wanting to let go, they will stay there far too long and one of their parents will come looking for them.  The adult won’t for a minute believe the invisible kite story and they will send their kid to see the school psychiatrist.  This entire event gets blown all out of proportion, the shrink, who never believed in all that mumbo-jumbo anyway, quits and takes a job as a tour bus driver overseas somewhere.

 

She eventually sees an old copy of the tabloid talking about the mysterious moon landing but never pieces it all together.

Maybe I shouldn't do this.

The Wisdom of the Age

 

There was a large ceramic owl in our kitchen when I was growing up.  The head was removeable and inside of the owl were always fresh cookies.  It was a fancy cookie jar.  That doesn’t mean that I grew up believing there were cookies inside every owl or that cookies were an owl’s main source of food.  I knew that because the cookies inside this jar had not been chewed or digested.  They were whole and unbitten.

The fact that this large ceramic owl sat on top of our tall refrigerator said something about the lack of trust my parents had in me.  There was no way I could reach up there to help myself.

It is much like the car dealers of today.  They keep the keys to their new cars locked up in the office and not just  dangling from the ignition.  Apparently we’re not supposed to just help ourselves to a car when the impulse hits us.

I was starting to understand why all these companies say right up front, “We use Cookies.”  They don’t trust us to control our spending or impulses.  It is their attempt to maintain control.  The ole’ tall refrigerator theory.

There is...

 

something very unsettling about this picture.

 

YOU

 

You spend too much time here.

But that's OK.  It's fun.

Today, the weeds can pull themselves.

 

It’s the aroma of hazelnut that draws me in and keeps me from going out to the yard and pulling weeds.  Not that I need an excuse.  Today is gray and overcast.  My thoughts are lazy and relaxed.  I’ve nowhere to be and there isn’t anything that can’t wait until later.

 

Tulips, for me - grow the year round

 

Many things come to mind when I look at the far corner of my office.  I see a great collision of words, a crowded freeway of ideas and maybe a bit of a compost pile.

These are all thoughts that have flowed through a pen or have been hammered out on a keyboard, splattered onto a page and collected in an order that made sense to someone somewhere.

Now, although no longer fresh, can still grow and flourish the moment they are once again read.  Reading them, I see as sprinkling water on seeds that remain in the earth.  They are thoughts that live far beyond the thinker.  Stories, even the ones told and told again, can come back to life. 

The ending need not change, for the reader is forever themselves changing.  I am not the person I was the last time I read about Zelda Fitzgerald.  I see things in Charlotte’s Web that I didn’t notice the first time.  The sun now enters my office window at a different angle and alters the feel of the room, which may, in some slight way, tweak my outlook, or cast a shadow on what I once found important.

It's never The End

Tempus Fugit

 

If I were a commodities broker, I’d deal strictly in time, and I’d wear a holster, so I’d always have time on my side.  I could charge people whenever they said, “Hey, you got a minute?”  I expect my biggest customer to be watch manufacturers, and the biggest mark-ups would be for those on death row.  They’ll pay whatever you ask for just a little more. 

My equivalent to Fort Knox would be in New York, Time Square, of course.  I’d manage my time wisely, so I always had seconds to spare.  And should anyone complain that time flies, I would take them to a dentist’s office and let them observe for a while. 

The unfortunate aspect of this would be if I had a boss.  I’m sure he or she would look at this and say it was an incredible waste of time.  I doubt I could argue with that.