I paused in my walking to read
I paused in my reading to think
I paused in my thinking to write
I paused in my writing to walk
Crash
Travelin’ and unravelin’
leaving miles of web behind
tangled up with sticky notes
caught flat on my tongue
I see you in my mind’s mirrors
through a complex lens
hearing you
with jaundiced eyes
missing you
until I overflow
and crash
Demand
I demand that you see me as how I think I am
in the world as I believe it to be
and not as you think I am
in the world as you see it.
Space Walk
Bored and restless, he left the table in the cafe and walked to stretch his legs. He walked without thought under the trees, sometimes watching the traffic as he went or other pedestrians, but mostly looking inward, until he found himself at one of observation decks. It was empty. He stepped up to look out the windows.
Space seemed as empty as the observation deck. Readouts clicked, whirled, and blinked on panels of information presented in red, blue, green, and amber characters below the window. It all seemed too abstract for consideration. Three things remained concrete to him for now. One, he and his family had made it onto the Ark. Two, they’d left Earth behind. Three, he probably wouldn’t live to see the new world, but his son would.
Right now, those three things were all that mattered.
The Green Chair
Above – Scheckter (on ottoman) and Pogo on the green furniture.
Well, the green chair is gone.
I know, it was just a chair. An ottoman and love seat originally went with the chair. Made of a textured green material, the furniture had straightforward lines and were without embellishment. But they were comfortable and sturdy, and they fit our little study.
The little study was in the first home that we bought in Half Moon Bay, California. It was right off the breakfast nook, by the dining room. Sounds fancy, right, but it was small, yet elegant. It’s where we ended up spending a lot of time. With the windows open, we caught a cooling ocean breeze diluting the sunshine. Fog horn often sounded above the sound of Highway 92 traffic. We could watch television, read, and listen to music in there, and be very cozy. Our living room furniture was too large for the little study. Besides, if we put that furniture in there, we’d need to replace it. More furniture was needed, an exasperating decision.
The green chair with the ottoman supporting my legs is often where I sat. That’s where the cats would join me. We had three then. The elderly Queen, Jade, had joined us when we were stationed on Okinawa in 1982 and was twenty-year when she passed away in our HMB home. The sweet, affable Rocky came from our Germany assignment in the late eighties, the sole survivor of his litter. Later came the black long-haired, handsome fellow, Sam, as direct and unpretentious as his name, abandoned at Moffett NAS when some family moved away. Each gave me happy hours of purrs vising with me in the green chair before passing away.
The orange boys, Pogo and Scheckter, (Chubbosaurus Orange) found their way to us, joining us on the green chair and the green love seat, stretching out in the sunshine. They moved up to Ashland with us in 2005. Between cancer and a car, Ashland is where their story ended.
As we moved, the green furniture dwindled. First, the love seat went, because there wasn’t room in our newest house. The green chair and ottoman ended up in the master bedroom. Alas, though, besides sleeping on the chair, the cats found the green furniture to be excellent scratching posts. After Rocky, Sam, Jade, and the orange boys made their marks, Lady and Quinn took up the task of shredding the chair and ottoman. The ottoman was finally defeated and tossed. Tucker and Boo joined Lady and Quinn to work over the chair. All had floofnesia about not scratching the furniture. Lady and Quinn found their way over the rainbow bridge, but then along came Papi, aka Meep. He found the green chair quite comfortable.
Now the final piece, the green chair where I shared their company, is gone. It was just too shredded for my wife’s tastes, so out it went.
Stupid chair. Makes me tear up and cry just remembering it.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Reading news about the Middle-East puts me in a martial mood. Military.com wondered if war between the U.S. and Iran is inevitable, and have thoughts on how that war would play out.
*snark alert* I know that most believe that war with Iran can be avoided because John Bolton is on Trump’s team. One of the architects of PNAC, Bolton was a prominent voice in demands for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He thinks that went well. He also wants preemptive war with North Korea. With Bolton in place, surely the lessons of other wars will be learned and war will be averted. *end snark*
All that reflecting introduced a 1970 Black Sabbath tune called “War Pigs”. A taste of the lyrics that Ozzie sings:
The Medical Bill
My latest medical bill arrived. This was a follow-up to the doctor’s office. On that day, I was weighed and then peed in a cup connected to a computer to measure my flow and output. Then a nurse asked me some questions about how I was doing, before the doctor came in, read the reports, and made some follow-up actions. Including waiting — they were overbooked and I waited twenty minutes to see him — peeing, and talking, I was out of there in about forty minutes.
Before going further, I want to say that I’m amazed and grateful that my military retirement gives me health benefits. I can’t say that enough. That’s not what this is about. This is about a neophyte in the healthcare’s billing process.
The bill began as a total of $277.10. That’s not bad, I thought. Insurance covered $59.36. Cool. Then, total adjustments and discounts were $180.84. Of that, $4.10 was a discount given to me for the prompt payment of previous bills. The other $176.74 was an insurance adjustment. The total due for me to pay is $36.90.
I’m not complaining so much as stating my surprise and confusion. What in the world is that insurance adjustment that reduces the bill by sixty-three percent? Is it a volume thing between Tricare and Asante? Makes me wonder about the original bill and its legitimacy.
I don’t know. The discount wasn’t explained. I suppose I could do an Internet search, but, well, I’d rather just note it and press on, at least for today.
Breaking it Down
While working on the yard and house today, songs run through my head. I don’t mind it if they’re barefoot, but some of them wear heavy combat boots. That leaves a mark.
One song was the Rupert Holmes song, “Escape”. Most know it as “The Piña Coladas Song”. It’s all about how badly Rupert and his lovely lady were doing. He sees an ad in the newspaper’s personal columns and reads, “If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. If you’re not into yoga, if you have half a brain. If you like making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape. Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for, write to me and escape.”
So he writes to the paper, answering the ad. They meet, and guess what? It’s his own lovely lady that he’s meeting. She’s the one that put the ad in the paper! So, Rupert continues, then we laughed for a moment and I said, “I never knew
That you like piña coladas and gettin’ caught in the rain. And the feel of the ocean and the taste of champagne.”
Mind you, she’s advertised for a lover; he answered that ad. They were both looking for someone else.
At this point, in real life, if he said, “I never knew that you like piña coladas, she’d reply, “That’s because you never listen to me.” Then it’d probably be on. He’s already confessed that he was tired of her. She’s clearly tired of him, too.
Yeah, I don’t see a happy ending here. I don’t think that either one is the lover that the other one was trying to find.
Of course, my mind also suggested, “Well, maybe it’s a small town. What are the odds of her putting the ad in and him answering? Those odds improve if it’s a small town.”
Then my mind went all Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on me. I imagined the bar patrons familiar with the situation saying, “Oh, no, here we go again.”
I concluded from this that my romantic band of my spectrum of being must be tiny.
The Flow
I used to be an avid motorsports fan. I thrived on the exploits of Dan and Mario, Bruce and Denny, Jody and Giles, Keke, Niki, James, Alan and Alain, Aryton and Mark. I still keep abreast of it, but it’s become a complicated relationship.
I was recently reading Mark Hughes at MotorSport. He’d written a mid-season recap of how Formula 1 teammates fared in qualifying against one another. About one driver, he said, in essence, that the driver was still correcting and reacting to the car, that he hasn’t been able to get into a flow with driving it.
That’s how I often feel with creating a novel. Days come and go where I feel like I’m chasing the scenes, acting, and reacting. I’m not able to get ahead of it. I blame the muses for not showing up, for mumbling guidance, changing their minds, or disagreeing with one another, trapping me and my writing in their battle. But then, building on experience and effort, suddenly I fall into the flow. You know the flow when you’re there. Time and the world seem to vanish, because you’re inside your creation. Scenes spin into being like magic. Dialogue leaps into your head and onto the page. Decisions are made; you hold your breath at what’s happened, and walk away spent.
Today’s session isn’t a flowing session…yet. The muses seem to be sleeping in. Every sound from grinding to talking heard in the coffee shop feels like a personal assault.
The flow doesn’t always come easy. When it does, it’s a spoiler. Yesterday was one of those days. I walked in, sat down, wrote, edit, revised, cleaned it up, and departed. See how that would spoil me?
Time to put my head down and try again to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 