This isn't one of them...

We are traveling together, you and I.  Born within a proximity, placed here on the same planet, and now this message is possibly our first contact.  Of course we know nothing of each other, aside from our ability to read and write in this language. The rest are assumptions.

If you wander about within this blog you'll most likely discover me to more positive than negative, more observant than adventurous and with math skills ending at my little finger.

You, having sent me nothing in return, leave me to assume a multitude of contradictions.  You have an amazing life, but for whatever reason, do not believe it to be noteworthy.  You dream in color and simply assume everyone does as well.  Part of you wishes you could turn the clock back, while your reality says, once through is enough.  You don't want to do any of this again.

Of course, if we have met at some point, neither would have recognized the other.  Maybe I was the circus writer you noticed one day, changing tents.  Maybe it was you I overheard at the lunch counter telling someone, that was the last straw.  Who really knows if our paths have ever crossed, or ever should?

It's all together possible that in person we would be like matter and anti-matter.  O-well, doesn't matter.  The odds are this invisible electronic moment is all we have.  This is our here and now, our yearbook, photo album and resume all embedded here in +'s and -'s. 

If, by some quirk of fate, we do meet, you should know the following:

I ignore dress codes.  My drinking preference is Coke and not Pepsi.  I believe politicians to be equal to, though no better than, mosquitoes.  I was born with an endless supply of commas and I'm not afraid to use them.  The Princess Bride will always and forever be the best movie.  I enjoy flight but not flying.  I like people but not crowds.  I believe rap music should be seen and not heard, and I'm not all that keen on the seen part.   I'd like the wonderful moments in life to last forever. As this isn’t one of them I’ll end this here.  After all, I was much older when I began this blog.

zc

To a Far Away Place

Thinking of far away places does not necessarily suggest a discontentment with here. It is with that foundation I continue.

I have forever had a longing within me to explore conversations with those at foreign Cafés, drinking recommendations while attempting to consume questionable menu items. It is the toe in the pool, anticipating the uncomfortable chill all the while hoping to be awash with warmth and enlightenment.

I have not yet been to Italy, though it surely leads the pack with flair and impressive landscapes. It sets upon the Earth, as does a great book sitting quietly on the shelf at the library, not hidden but simply there for the taking. One must discover it, build a passion for it, and of course have a library card.

It is in my dream of Italy that I sit at a sidewalk table listening to a local telling me the history of his village, the unexpected excitement at his sister’s wedding, and of Giuseppe, his loyal dog, presently asleep at his feet. In truth, such an encounter would contain communication stumbles, background noise, and various fumes from traffic and from Giuseppe. However, this story is mine for the telling, and reality has been edited.

Neil Armstrong must have thought about far away places and maybe with a deafening silence replacing street noise and forgoing the sidewalk cafe.  A silence not unlike that currently shared by our ancestors. They are stories no longer told, as the tellers themselves remain checked out. It is not my intent to draw any correlation between death and space, except to suggest silence as a common denominator.

Every Friday for years, I have dragged cans down to the curb, cans full of silent wrappers, motionless advertising, and exhausted toothpaste vessels. Silent containers transported to vacant hillsides, where circling birds hunt for bits, morsels tucked in corners, wadded in cellophane and food remnants disfigured by microwaves.

It is the avoidance of this silence that makes here tolerable. There is a certain comfort in knowing that the falling tree makes a crashing, thunderous noise, even in our absence. We need not see the darkness to know upon closing the door the light has gone. It is a faith-based refrigerator upon which empires have been built.

Limitations to our comprehension of far away places stand like sturdy fence posts at the edge of our imagination. We can neither see over nor climb such a fence, just as we can never fully know who built it. Instead, we make noise. We cry as babies, and squawk as teenagers. We build televisions to chatter back at us when we sit alone. We press cell phones to our heads, like seashells that are full of friends and appointments, all the while knowing that eventually we ourselves will be scheduled for a Friday pick-up.

Side note:  I started this thinking about travel and far away places and somehow ended up talking about death.  Maybe it was one of those questionable menu items that altered my journey, or maybe death is simply the farthest away place one can go.  Farther perhaps than Italy.

A Sign of Age

Some point north

some west and east

those pointing south

I like the least –

Eyebrows, as we all do know

should stay in line

as they do grow –

should not bush out

like caterpillars

as if they're combed

by roto-tillers –

A sign of age

I’ve heard some say

when eyebrows head

the other way.

zc

Time is not Linnear

I have been contemplating this for several weeks and have attempted to imagine the multitude of paths leading from this single thought.  All I have discovered are the limitations of my knowledge, and they are staggering. 

It remains a frustrating endeavor, that of not coming close to any conclusions worthy of conversation.  One recurring thought, however, is the elusive knowledge of how to exceed the speed of light.  Apparently some nuggets of truth are simply beyond human comprehension.  There are divine passwords, unhackable, perhaps written in the universal language of all planets, communicated by neither sound nor gesture.

Air exists.  We need not see it to know the chute will open.  Time is a human construct.  It is our stick with which we verify the depth of the river.

Time, void of measurement, removes even the awareness that the river exists.  It would be stepping blindly, never knowing if we were already at the edge of the riverbank and finding ourselves suddenly being swept downstream.  At that exact moment the water within the river and the air beneath the chute are one and the same.  

The unmeasured passage of events are nothing more than two empty hands circling wildly about. 

Not For Sale

The colors of the old painting were muted tones, almost appearing dusty.  The chair in the painting was a wooden rocker with an elderly print material on the seat and back.  Just looking at it I could feel the uncomfortable squeak and hear the springs jabbing me.

The employee manning the register was multi-tasking; eating her sandwich while playing Angry Birds on her iphone.  I could hear them as they flew through the air and then exploded. It made me happy I no longer had employees to be concerned with.

The antique store smelled old and the wooden floor was warped and creaked.  I looked back up at the old painting.  I could see by the price tag they had no idea what they had.  I wanted to reach up and snatch it off the wall, buy it as quickly as I could and head for the hills.  My problem was my ethics.  I'd feel like a crook.  It would haunt me, I know it would.

The little bell hanging over the front door tinkled; someone else had just come in.  The employee didn't even look up.  Just as easily it could have been someone leaving, and with anything tucked under their coat.  I felt bad for the owner of this store, whoever they were.

Now that there was someone else in the store besides me, I grew concerned they would spot the painting, grab it and not think twice about ripping these people off.  Then again, I knew what I was doing.  I was justifying buying it.  I was telling myself I was the "good guy" in this story.  I reached up and lifted the painting from the wall.  I'd simply take it to the register and ask to see the store owner.  Maybe they were in the back room, or next door.  I'd offer them a fair price and if they went for it, I'd feel good, they'd make more money and everyone would win. 

I stood there at the counter for a moment, waiting for the girl to look up.  She finally did; she looked to once again pick up her sandwich, then looked at me as if I were a disruption to her busy day.

Annoyed, she said: "Can I help you?"

I wanted desperately to tell her she was fired, but obviously I couldn't.  I lifted the painting up and laid it on the counter.

"I'll take this."  I pulled several twenties from my wallet and counted out the exact asking price, plus tax.

As she rang it up I wanted to stop her, I wanted to stick to my original plan of asking for the owner and negotiating a fair price, but this employee had pushed my buttons, now I was the one bothered, annoyed.  This isn't how you treat customers, I thought to myself, as an interruption.   "I'd like you to wrap this if you don't mind, maybe heavy, brown paper if you have it.  And tie it with some twine or tape it real good.  Thank you."

After she completed the transaction she pulled a large sheet of butcher paper from under the counter, carefully flipped the painting over and laid it onto the brown paper. She cut the price tag off and handed it to me, then as she started wrapping it I noticed the back of the frame was stamped with, NFS, with a signature scribbled next to it.

I instantly knew that it had been marked not for sale. I held my breath waiting to see if she would notice it, and if she did, would she know what it meant?  Just then the second customer, who had come in moments ago, walked up to the counter and was standing right next to me.  He was also watching the clerk attempt to wrap the painting.

"You've cut the paper too short," he said, trying to be helpful. The girl gave him the same annoyed look she had given me.  She then lifted the painting slightly and pulled the paper completely out from under it.  "I'll start over," she grumbled, and ripped a much larger piece off the roll under the counter.

"That should be plenty." I said, as I quickly attempted to give her a hand wrapping it.
The man next to me then asked if we would flip it over so he could see it before we wrapped it.

"I'm in sort of a hurry," I said, as I kept wrapping.

When it was all wrapped I carried it out to my car and carefully laid it in the trunk, on top of an old army blanket.  I got in and just sat behind the steering wheel, staring back into the store.  I wanted to drive away, make my get-a-way, as they say, but I just sat there.

This is wrong, I muttered.  After the other customer left the store the clerk walked over, locked the door and flipped the sign over.  It said out to lunch.  I knew she had already eaten her lunch; she just didn’t want to wait on any more customers.  I felt bad for whoever it was who’d hired her.  What a miserable employee she was.

 I couldn’t bring myself to drive away with the painting.  I would sit there and hope the owner of the shop would show up before it got too late.  What I hadn’t counted on was what happened next.

to be continued…

At the speed of yesterday

Code Blue

         It wasn’t at all how he thought it would be.  He had always believed that Heaven was this marvelous and amazing place, floating somewhere above the clouds, free from criminals and crooks, mosquitoes and politicians. It was a place where no one ever got sick, or stole your lunch money; a place that never handed out homework or gave tests. 

          Could he have been wrong all this time?  He knew he was dead and he knew everything was completely different, and yet here he was, standing on his tiptoes, his fingers clutching onto the window ledge, peering in to catch a glimpse of… what, he wasn’t sure.  He just knew he was supposed to wait until he was called, then he could go in.  This was not a good situation, mostly because; well… he didn’t like waiting.

          As he relaxed his grip on the edge of the window and once again stood flat on his feet he looked down to see just what it was he was standing on.  He was surprised to see nothing was there.  There was no floor, no fuzzy carpet or cold ceramic tile.  In fact, he could see all the way down to the…  Hey, he could see himself lying on the operating table.  He didn’t hear any of the machines buzzing or beeping, and he couldn’t hear what the doctors were saying, but yep, that was him, and not only that, he no longer was afraid of heights.  Being up there didn’t bother him in the least.  In fact, being up like this, absent of all the fear of falling, was really fun. 

          Now there were too many doctors and nurses leaning in, he couldn’t see what they were doing.  He wondered what all the commotion was.  It was then he could hear what he thought was a beep, but it was far away.  Suddenly there was another and another.  The beeps were louder and seemed close.  He could feel himself drifting back down towards his body.  The jabber from the doctors annoyed him, it was interrupting the beeps.  Hey, he could hear the doctors.  But they still sounded muffled.  Suddenly he felt himself take a breath.  His lungs hurt, but the rush of oxygen felt good.