Category: Thinking, thinking

Saturday’s Theme Music

I was being prepped for surgery yesterday (routine and elective, no worries) when I began streaming the 1976 Pablo Cruise song, “Love Will Find A Way”. My specific verse was, “Oh, but it’s all right, once you get past the pain.” See, I was giving myself a little pep talk – “It’ll be fine, once you get past the pain. Yes, you know you’re right, Michael.” The Pablo Cruise song helped distract me.

The surgery didn’t come off. My BP was running 230/131. Too high, they said. It was checked several more times and never dropped.

My wife and I were surprised and baffled. As she put it, “He’s very active, walking almost ten miles a day, and never seems to have a problem.” Off I went to another doctor to address that issue. Heart, lungs, carotids, etc., all sound good, no dizziness, etc. A medicine was prescribed to lower it. We’ll go with the flow and see where it goes.

Meanwhile, a little mellow music.

4

Helmet Law

The young woman on the scooter was wearing a lavender helmet. It went well with her shiny purplish bikini and sandals.

Watching her pass, he gauged she was probably traveling thirty miles an hour on the twenty-five limit road. Most people drove thirty to thirty-five, with some hurrying on to forty. Two people had been killed on the road in the last ten years, so he worried about the unknown girl. A friend had been wearing a helmet when she crashed. Wasn’t on this road, granted, but she’d been going thirty miles an hour when she lost control. (Privately, he thought she was going faster because he’d seen her riding before, but she claimed she was doing thirty.) Despite wearing a denim shirt and cotton shorts, she’d suffered huge injuries on her back and legs when she slid along the asphalt road. Weeks of hospitalization followed, along with a year of treatment.

That’d been what a person wearing a shirt and shorts had suffered. As for a person without much of a top…

He shrugged. At least she was wearing a helmet.

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The Flaw

Going through the morning’s triple S activities – shit, shower, shave – he was thinking about his parents and their health. They’d divorced when he was a little boy. Each had contributed to that mess, he decided while conducting his retrospective. Mom forced issues and seemed to thrive on confrontation. Dad shunned conflict. Throwing himself into work, he’d held several jobs simultaneously. He did each well, and they paid well.

After their divorce, Mom had remarried six or seven times – he wasn’t sure – and Dad had several live-in girlfriends besides two other marriages. He thought it was remarkable that he’d married and managed to keep it together for over forty years.

Of course, he’d never been close to his parents. Splitting time between Mom and Dad’s households, he’d struck out on his own after graduating high school when he was seventeen, and then married at eighteen. Neither parent had made an effort to stay very close outside of birthday and holiday cards. Mom visited him and his wife one time, after he’d bought the round-trip airline ticket for her, after they’d been married thirty years. Dad had visited once, dropping by their first apartment for a grinning, goofy fifteen minute visit. Two visits between the two parents in more than forty years.

He sighed. Both parents, in their eighties, were in declining health. He knew he’d miss them once they passed away – everyone told him so – but it was hard for him to generate compassion for their situation.

He hated that he had that flaw and couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

2

The Perverse Inverse Law of Hurrying

Have you ever noticed..?

You’re trying to hurry. You’re eager to get started or — shudder — you’re running late. Perhaps you overslept or ignored the alarm clock, or kept playing with your pet (and that’s not a euphemism). Maybe you can blame it on your computer – “Did you see today’s headlines?” – “I was this close to a new high score.” 

Whatever the reason, cause, or excuse, do you see how it seems to cause everything to automatically go against your efforts to be quick? Lines form, traffic jams, the computer takes it time applying a gajillion updates, and the people ahead of you can’t find their credit card — debit card — cash — checkbook.

Your mind gets in on it. Suddenly you remember, “Damn it, I forgot my list,” and you need to retrace your steps, or you can’t find your keys/glasses/shoes —

Or the toilet stops up, and the water rises —

Or a car’s blocking your vehicle in.

It’s enough to make one scream.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

“More Than A Feeling” (Boston, 1976) is a song about memories and regrets. Yeah, mistakes? I’ve made a few.

After a pleasant writing session yesterday, I drifted through plans and my personal history, which took me into this song.

So many people have come and gone
Their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the sun in the summer sky

h/t AZLyrics.com

I was twenty years old when this song came out and stationed with the U.S. Air Force in the Philippines. Whenever this song was played at parties, someone inevitably requested, “Turn it up.” Dos, someone usually played the air guitar. Trey, several people would sing along. It’s that kind of song, a poignant rocker.

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Another week, and more mass shootings – hello, El Paso and Dayton, we’re talking to you. Chicago is overlooked; none dead in its mass shooting, just seven injured.

August has arrived with a bang. We’re expecting a week of thoughts of prayers. Sure, everyone dies, but do their deaths need to be senseless executions for the crimes of their skin, culture, ethnicity, or being in the wrong place and time when angry, hateful people acquire guns and decide to pull the trigger?

Sorry we can’t do anything about it, so, so sorry. What else can I be, but all apologies?

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Back, Baby

Hold breath. Release.

Order, calm. 

Relax. It’s okay.

Sure. Yes. It’ll be okay.

So it went on Monday. My wife and I left on a car-cation. Just a road trip to Yachats. I wanted to write, of course, but I knew she was jealous of that. She wanted to break out of our regular structure of existence, hence the trip to the coast.

So, with reluctance, I agreed without speaking to her unspoken concern. It’s the kind of thing that works after being married through a few ice ages.

I worried, though, oh, I worried that I’d forgotten what I’d written, where I was in the ms., and what I was about to write or change. It helped that I was on draft number seven of April Showers 1921. It’s probably ninety percent written, with changes being made to sculpt the story, structure the plot, polish the prose, and exercise the pace. Still, I worried that the muses might decide to teach me a lesson because I’d ignored them for four days.

A more rational aspect of me reassured me that all would be well. That piece of me proved correct. I sat down with my computer and cuppa coffee today, opened the doc, and said, “Oh, that’s right. This part is wordy and awkward and needs some lovin’.”

Then I was off. Good day of writing — and editing — like crazy. Good to be back. Time to go on to other things.

Butt’s asleep, ya’ know? Yeah, writer’s butt; it’s the worse. They never warned you about writer’s butt when you told them you wanted to be a writer, did they?

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The Thief

The thief isn’t death – we’re all going to die —

the thief is the decline that robs us of time.

The thief burgles memories

and steals our wit,

the thief is the disease that rots our bodies

and makes us sick.

The thief embezzles our energies and usurps our pride,

darkens our vision and makes hope a lie.

It takes our hearing and corrupts our senses,

builds up walls and creates new fences.

We look out from within and they look in from without,

both of us wondering,

does anyone know what life is about?

 

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