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.