Journal
Each day I go a wandering …
Layin’ low
Seeking out the places where the ragged people go
Seeking out the places only they would know
~Paul Simon.
I don’t know why, but ever so often I wake up and just want to disappear into obscurity, leaving everything behind. Everything. Hit the road with just a quarter in my pocket. I understand that husband who goes out for a loaf of bread, and just keeps on going for twenty years before his conscience makes him go back to his roots to see how much damage was done.
But I won’t. And this feeling too shall pass. Geezers just don’t do that unless something is medically screwed up in their brains. Gone are the days when I could hit the road, catch an occasional meal at the Salvation Army, and keep moving until my feet stopped itching. Snookums has me too spoiled for that. I have grown overly fond of clean sheets and hot showers. Not to mention regular food.
But I lovingly remember the sleaze, the anonymity that cloaked me, the city corner that faced the sunrise and brought warmth to a chilled soul where I arrogantly watched them wretched wage slaves zip by in their leased cars, and congratulated myself on my understanding of life.
Ah! To be young and stupid again!
Mz Muze Stops by …
I was just sitting back in my chair listening to talk radio and my ever present budgie, Kippur when I saw her sitting on top of my monitor, chubby legs daintily crossed at the knees, and cottage cheese squeezing out at the garter bands of her old-style nylons.
“That cheesecake pose went out in 1920 along with that skirt you are wearing.” I snarled. “Where have you been? I have been sitting here for a week and all I have been able to crank out is the coffee is good journals.”
She snapped back, “Maybe if you stopped downing all that codeine, I could get a word in past that chunk of chedder you have for brains, Hemmingway.”
“I’ve been sick.” I sniffed back, averting my eyes as she uncrossed her legs and tugged the ratty tweed skirt down in a vain attempt to cover her knees.
“You have been out of the hospital a week and a half. You know damned well you don’t need the pain pills. You are just taking them because you like being stupefied. You’re just an over-the-hill, bald-headed hippie anyway. Maybe it would be a good time to actually write something worthwhile before the crematorium turns you into cinders.” She spitefully retorted.
“I can’t write when my soul is unquiet. I am upset with the hopey-changers and this disaster in social engineering that they have foisted off on people.” I whined back. “I have been thinking of getting back into political pieces.”
“If your soul got any quieter, the coroner would be writing out your final ticket. Seriously, you really need to start working on something other than social journaling, but I am not sure that politics are your forte’.”
“I can’t seem to maintain any sort of interest in my stories. After I get to know the characters, I lose all further interest in them.” I bleated.
“Yes, writing is work, Maynard. Cross checking and rewriting are all a part of the mix. It isn’t all beer and skittles, you know.”
“Skittles means something different these days than it did in your day. Men haven’t played skittles in æons. Skittles are sweet candies that the boys in the hood visit convenience stores in suburban neighborhoods to buy. Get a new bromide.”
“The point is, Daniel Webster, that writing is mostly perspiration, and very little inspiration. You haven’t sweated since the last letter you got from the IRS. Where you at with Akashaic?”
“Do you ever weary of old clichés? Akashaic is kind of a dead horse right now. I had too much of my old middle aged sexual fantasies in it. Now that I am a … *ahem!* … golden ager, the basis of the tale seems to be a little trite. It needs a major rethinking.”
“Well, rethink it.” She said, unsuccessfully trying to smooth out the button gap in her cheap blouse.
“Actually, I have revisited it. It will be a total rewrite if I do. I drug out some old drawings I had made of the castle in light of the new thinking, and maybe I can salvage the tale. But for the moment, I have a number of unfulfilled promises to catch up on before setting down to seriously re-craft it.”
“You always have an excuse ready, don’t you?” She snapped.
“And you are as unhelpful as ever, aren’t you!” I shot back.
Ghosts of Birthdays Past
… sleepless … ghosts of the past visit me one by one, each one as diffident and uncaring of their impact on me tonight as they were the day the friendship was killed. Each one carries a veiled offer to pick up the friendship again, but the offers are written in changeable script that says one thing now, another thing later.
What do they mean by “friend”? Why would they even want to be friends now after long years of silence? Such friendships are like class reunions, where you meet every ten years or so, make some small talk, and move on, feeling like you had done something worthwhile in reliving the past.
La-de-dah
No. I am not going to do that to myself again.
Three ghosts are standing on the fringes of my world, their hands clasped chastely in front of them. The look so tiny, so small, so vulnerable, so alone. They show up at my old haunts and make small talk with my friends while casting probing glances my way. I shant. I can’t. I am too old and beat up and you are all just too heavy for me to lift again.
Go spook someone else.
Some mornings are just good …
So many things are going through my mind today as the noise of the flooring contractor interrupts my morning quiet. But that is OK … at last I will have a bathroom that fits me, and the red oak flooring is going to be much nicer than carpet that was there. Whose idea was it to but carpet in a bathroom? Geesh. Certainly not by anyone who has had to clean one.
So todays thoughts drift to this curious idea of freedom so many people have. I don’t know what it is that makes people think that health care, gun control, wimmens reproducible rights and student loans equate with freedom. We have bastardized the word, and I think it is too already too late for us. But I got mine. It will be up to some future generation to spill the blood of its youth throwing off the yoke of an all-encompassing “Daddy” …
An old friend has reappeared in my life. Odd that they come and go with Mz Muze. But we takes our inspiration where we gets it. Welcome back, C.
The day is a bright yellow and green Spring day, the rains fled, the rye and wildflowers are shooting up faster than I can keep them chopped down to civilized heights. A new character appears in the novel, another is killed off. A new birdbath sits disassembled in the driveway awaiting its installation. A tree branch awaits being cut into next winters firewood.
The coffee is great, but then, it always is. Some things need to stay at a high level of excellence!
Good morning!
r
Blogging at night chronicling the morning
OK. Evening is here, the pups got their goodies, the parakeet is nagging me for boogie type music, and I haven’t done a damn thing but comment on other blogs. The deal is, I gotta write every day. It don’t matter if it is on the novel, or in the journal, or a snide letter to the editor.
“Thou shalt write of it every day. Each and every day thou shall write of it.”
OK. I writeth of it.
It has been a rainy day. Great and glorious rain. Drizzling rain, pouring in sheets rain, showers, mists. We have been in such a long drought that I have forgotten what a rainy day looks like. Long dormant grasses and wild flowers have sprung up, sere trees are budding with an eye aching green, fields look like they are covered in green velvet. And the smell of wetness pervades all.
And today is a buying day … we picked out woodlike flooring for my studio and the guest bathrooms. The installers will remove the toilets, install the flooring and quarter round and be gone in one day. Who could hope for more?
And I bought new planters for the front porch to screen me as I sit and spy on the neighborhood comings and goings. My house is like the gate house … everyone has to drive by that nosey old man on the corner. Now that summer is here, I can take my morning coffee at sunrise there, and be entertained by the mourning doves lonesome coo, the mocking birds olio, and the cardinals fussing.
There you have it. A chirpy morning blog written close to bedtime. No broody reflections, no morose opinions. Just don’t get used to it.
~r
Ms. Muse Reappears!
I was sitting at the PC when I glanced up and saw her perched on the top of my monitor, peering intently at me with her legs inelegantly crossed at the knees, revealing the bottom of her thigh and the dark band of her hosiery. Her tight, ratty and once fashionable tweed skirt pulled up past the knee from the straining, leaving a view I really wasn’t prepared for. I averted my eyes with a shudder.
“Good Lord, if you aren’t a mess. Do you lay around the house like that all day?” she asked. “I would ask you when you last bathed if I dared.”
“Yeah, I do lay about all day. Why do you ask? It’s not like you cared. You left with the rest.” I shot back.
“As I recall, you tossed me out with the rest.”
“You don’t recall very well. I didn’t toss you anywhere!”
“You tossed out the women who inspired you. You didn’t have any other inspiring things around?” She asked.
I fleetingly though I caught a wisp of genuine concern from her, but quickly dismissed it as wishful thinking.
“Apparently not. I usually write for someone’s approval. My ego just doesn’t hold much in the way of inspiration for me. Besides, I didn’t toss them out. They left.”
“If they were smart, they fled.” She cackled in that annoying way of hers.
“Well, whatever. They are gone, and I shut the door behind them. Jeesh. They really believe I am going to ‘have a cup of coffee’ with them some day. Why do women do that?”
“And you moped around for three years afterwards?”
“Yeah. I did. Turns out I also had an undiagnosed illness that made an emotional wreak out of me. I wasn’t prepared for that, and was doubly shot down. So tell me why you ask.”
“Cripes, what a mess you are. I think you need to get a new set of lounge clothes, get a professional barbering, and start sitting straight at the keyboard.”
“You don’t look so good yourself.” I snarled
“At least I am dressed. You are still in your damned PJ’s.” She retorted
“At least they are not ragged. You too busy to stop by Goodwill for a new skirt? That ragged thing went out of style in 1972. And a red Rayon blouse?”
“What would you know about style, hero? You write like Mickey Spillane.”
“Yeah. I do. When I write. I dunno, I have never really ever tried to develop a style. Besides, Spillane made tons of money writing like Spillane.”
“Spillane made lots of money by writing.”
“Well, money isn’t the object at this point. Just catching a theme that could hold my attention for more than three days would be remarkable progress.”
“So you haven’t done anything with Akashaic?”
“No. I set up a timeline, pared some of the characters and demoted some more, and wrote bios for the remaining ones, but the story has sat for three years. I started a series called Shaman in the Sagebrush, but it got mostly ho-hum comments, so I shelved it.”
“And your Journal?”
“I started three or four sites on multiply.com® and one on Blogster®. But I really am not all that social, and the current crop of lefties are ignorant, effete asses, though most of them pat themselves on the back for their stellar intelligence. I think their trashing of Paula Jones back in the Clinton era exposed them enough for me.”
“Geesh. You still bitching about Clinton? You are an anachronism.”
“Don’t use big words, it confuses the lefties. Anyway, I am migrating my Journal over to WordPress® and my writings over to Blogger®. I may link to them from Blogster® for a time if it works, but it appears that most people on Blogster wont do links, so I may lose many of them.”
“Are you going to pick up Akashaic now?”
“No, I think I’ll journal for a bit, tell some vignettes, and maybe try my hand at simple poetry for a bit. I am not ready to bury myself into an epic now.”
“Well, hero, I am here if you need me.” she said, giving a little wiggle on top of the monitor.
I averted my eyes.
~r
A wave offering
Counting the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot (starting with the second day of Passover) is essentially a Biblical command: “You shall count for yourselves, from the morrow of the rest day [of Passover], from the day you bring the Omer as a wave offering seven weeks; they shall be complete. You shall count until the day after the seventh week, [namely,] the fiftieth day”.
This is the first day of the counting of Omer.
It is another of those mysterious Jewish traditions where we begin count barley stalks for the days and sheaves for the weeks. The scriptures tell us to count the days, and to count the weeks. So today, across the world, some streams of Judaism will wave one barley stock and recite an ancient blessing.
There are seven daily blessings, and seven weekly blessings. At the end of all this counting is Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks. And according to the holy writs, fifty days after leaving Egypt, the Israelites were given the Torah, or the Law as some are wont to call it.
It also points to another future event. Some feel that it will mark the beginning of the rebuilding of Temple, which brings a whole host of other problems, namely that the Muslims have built a gilded mosque on top of the ruins of the Temple.
There be wars and rumors of wars … a warning to Christians and Jews alike. For that matter, the atheists among us need to be a bit worried too.
Anyway … waiting for the flooring salesman this morning. We are putting new floors in the guest room bathroom and the studio bathroom, and installing handicapped toilets in the studio. Not that we are handicapped, but rather I like the idea of not having my chin on my knees when I use the potty. We have a “Jack and Jill” bathroom between my study and Snookums sewing room that we share during the day, so it has become a priority.
It is all good. I have time to journal and listen to talk radio this morning along with some coffee sippin’ while waiting. And this is the day Snookums volunteers at a local food bank for a few hours in the afternoon, leaving the house to me and the animals.
But along with my new studio, and improved view, I see all the undone yard work. Broken tree limbs need to be cut into firewood. An unassembled concrete birdbath awaits removing an older plastic one. The front lawn needs over seeding. The driveway needs weed killin’ … and life goes on.
Good morning!
Monday’s Journal
Late Monday morning … breakfast is done. Kippur the budgie scolds me as I sit down to write a morning journal. I think spring has actually arrived here in my little corner of paradise. The fields around me are a cautious green after the long droughts. They have been fooled too many times by sudden rainstorms that rolled through weeks apart, so the wildflowers are not showing like they normally do.
I mowed the verges last week, then read that the monarch butterflies are thin this year, and need milkweed plants to survive. I normally leave an un-mowed patch of wildflowers and weeds somewhere in the yard, but wasn’t thinking much about it when I mowed this year. Ah Well.
Jenna, our white possibly American Shepard escaped today, but returned home after an hours romp through the neighborhood. I am always glad to see them return, because there is a busy narrow road on the East side of the property, and there is not enough room for a car t
o dodge an animal. Every trip to town reveals a new free ranging pet lying on the road.
It is time to set out the tomatoes in their hanging baskets. Last year I tried those “Topsy-Turvy” baskets, and they worked ok, but are definitely ugly. I am going to try making my own out of heavy plastic pots that look like they are terra cotta.
I am reopening my WordPress® blog. My time at Blogster was a disaster in the making. I am just not tolerant enough for social sites anymore. I think one post denigrating “Fux” news that got a lot of chuckles sort of unhinged me. Not that I am such a big fan myself, but the p
eople who denigrate it are the same people who believe they are so diverse, but in reality are very narrow group thinkers who despise half of their fellow citizens.
Ah well. Here on WordPress® and Blogger® you subscribe to the blog, not the service. I’ll link the blogs facebook® and perhaps twitter. If people want to subscribe, they can, and if it is too much work for them, they won’t.
Anyway, life goes on here in the heart of Texas, spring arrives on the grasslands, and in Rusty.
Good morning!
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