Monday’s Bumper Sticker
July
“July,” he whispered. “Feel the passing year’s cold breath breathing down your neck?”
He flicked it aside. “It’s just time. It’s just air. It’s nothing that matters.”
Then he resumed writing like crazy.
It was all that mattered.
What the doctor ordered
Just what the doctor ordered,
none of them could say.
He said a lot about this and that,
if and then, but and why,
adding, “It depends on what the insurance pays.”
Then he bounded out of the room,
as he told them, “Have a good stay.”
Just what the doctor ordered,
became more bewildering throughout the day.
Floofcifier
Floofcifier (catfinition) –
In use: “He found that treats and catnip were the perfect floofcifier for three of the four cats, and that was enough to maintain the peace.”
Progression
a twinge
becomes an ache
an ache grows into a throb
the throb develops as a relentless pain
the pain
becomes a fear
the fear grows into a concern
the concern develops as a constant worry
the worry
becomes a visit
the visit grows into a routine of meds
the meds develop as a constancy of life
the life
becomes a bore
the bore grows into apathy
the apathy develops as a decision
the decision
becomes a moment
the moment grows into a goal
the goal develops as an ending
The Boxes Dream
Looking out a window, I saw an elderly white woman gesturing as she ranted. I couldn’t understand what caused her ire, and then realized she addressed the presence of two white boxes. The boxes weren’t large, about the size of a VHS tape cassette each. Her issue seemed to be that they were sitting by the side of the road, and nobody was picking them up. After she pointed the boxes out, I could see the boxes and the road, and see that she stood on a yellow field.
A friend from my military service, Derek, came in and left me a box. Closed, made of brown cardboard, it was about four by four by four inches, a cube. After some time of sitting around the place doing other things, and looking out the window at the ranting woman and the two white boxes, I picked the box up and tried, but failed, to open it. Setting the box down, I left the house.
It was dreary and busy outside. The ranting woman was gone. The two white boxes were still there. I crossed the yellow field to them and picked them up. Cars passed me on the road as I examined the boxes. They were flimsy and empty. I couldn’t understand why the woman was so upset about them and their presence. I looked for a place to discard them. Not finding one, I took the boxes to my place.
I left my place again and went to what seemed like a parcel delivery place. It was very busy. I found a locker with three boxes inside it. They were addressed to someone else, a man. I knew his name, but I didn’t know him, but I believed I knew what was in the boxes. I wanted to know, so I took the boxes to my place, and opened them.
I can’t recall what was in two of the boxes, but shoes were in the third. Feeling ashamed of what I’d done, I closed the boxes and left with them, meaning to return them. I ran into Derek and explained what I’d done, and that I needed to put them back. I didn’t want anyone else to know what I’d done, and I wanted the rightful recipient to get his boxes. Derek couldn’t help. I eventually took the box back to where I’d stolen them and put them there.
After returning home, I took the two white boxes that the woman railed about, and put them back where they’d originally been. Then I went back into my place.
Derek came in and took the box he’d brought me. “Sorry,” he said. “This wasn’t supposed to go to you.”
He left, and the dream ended.
Telling
Your silence tells me
something must be wrong
I can’t tell by your face
It’s blank as stone
It bothers me to hear you
staying so still
No matter what I say
Emptiness is all I feel
My words run dry
trying to dig something out
I don’t know where to turn
so I just walk out
there’s a distance in the feet between us
that can’t be measured or crossed
I feel my efforts are wasted
and our time has been a loss
Word Count
He was mentioned as not being very talkative, but I found him loquacious. I mentioned the disparity to him.
“Well.” He shrugged. “I don’t talk much around my wife and family, or her friends.”
He turned his beer bottle by its neck. “I read a 2014 study about the number of words men and women use in a day. They always used to say that women talk more than men, but this study showed that men and women speak the same amount on average, about sixteen thousand words a day. Most of us filter it out. I talk more at work than at home because they filter more of my words out at home.”
“How do you do that? I mean, how do you figure something like that out?”
“Well, it’s all rough. There are a lot of factors. I set up a spreadsheet to figure out the average. I can show you on my phone.”
“Ummm….”
“Okay.” He laughed. “No problem. I understand. I’ll give you the executive summary for an average day, quote, unquote.
“I work nine hours a day. Monday through Friday, of course, with holidays off, all that. With commuting, I’m gone about eleven hours a day. I sleep about seven. That’s eighteen hours. So I’m awake and at home about six hours a day.
“Since I’m awake about seventeen hours a day, I decided that I average about nine hundred forty words an hour. I decided to call it a thousand. So I spoke about six thousand words a day at home. I figured that they hear about half of what I say. Three thousand words. They pay attention to about fifteen hundred. So, I’ve reduced what I speak at home to about a thousand words.”
“You speak a thousand words in six hours?”
“Yep.”
“But don’t the same rates hold? If you’re saying a thousand words, aren’t they hearing just half of those, and so on?”
“Oh, no.” He grinned. “Now, because I don’t talk much at home, they pay more attention to when I do.”
“That’s all pretty cynical, isn’t it?”
“Cynical? Or honest?” His grin turned rueful and his gaze turned inward. “Truthfully, I think they still pay attention to about half of what I say at home, if I’m honest. I think I’d rather be talking more and ignored, but I see them tune me out when I open my mouth.”
Shrugging, he lifted his beer bottle toward his mouth. “It is what it is.”
The Shooting Dream
I dreamed last night that I was shooting people. Don’t worry, I hadn’t gone on a rampage; I was being told by others who to shoot and when.
They were real people, and not voices in my head, or ghosts. It was a beautiful day. I cringe to note this, but I was on a grassy knoll. Around me, though, was mostly country side. I had a rifle. A person beside me – not anyone that I know – would be given a piece of paper. They would read something and then look around, and point, and I would aim and shoot.
It didn’t bother me in the dream, but this is not me. I’ve gone hunting a few times, but didn’t like it and stopped. I was in command and control in the military, and controlled nukes, but I eventually grew to dislike that role. As I’ve lived, I’ve concluded that there are enough threats to life out there without us going about killing one another. Yes, I understand that life is finite, and we’ll all die, and killing another is simply advancing the outcome. But I also understand that killing brings waves of actions and reactions. Some of those waves never stop, but build and expand, creating more killing.
So, it was a startling dream for me to experience. But I was just following orders, right?
Be Careful Out There
If you like to walk, as I do, around your town, be careful.
Caution and awareness are seared in my head. A friend in another town was walking his dog one morning several years ago. A vehicle killed him and his dog. The driver was never identified.
People get distracted, even drivers. Some don’t like stopping for people in crosswalks. I know it, because they’ve told me. They don’t care about the law, safety, or anything else. Some are too busy with other things. I’ve seen people eating as they drive, talking on their phones, or putting on make-up. Some looked at me as they passed and gave me a nod or a wave. So they see me, but kept going.
Crossing in front of the Jackson County Library in Ashland where Main Street becomes Siskiyou Avenue is the most hazardous in my experience. There’s a traffic light – the final one downtown as you’re going south – about fifty feet in front of it. Leaving downtown frees drivers from the multiple crosswalks, traffic lights, and twenty miles-per-hour speed limit. Now freed, they gun their engines and race up into the twenty-five MPH zone. They don’t to stop again, not when they’ve already had to stop so many times, especially for someone crossing the street in a crosswalk. Better to just miss the person and keep going, right?
Yes, it happens. It’s not fiction or exaggeration.
Perhaps the most disturbing incident this week was the Ashland Police Department‘s car that didn’t stop for me. It was about one in the afternoon. Traffic was light, and it was a beautiful summer day. I was in the southern crosswalk, crossing Main Street at First street. An APD vehicle was approaching. The blue and white SUV was several car lengths away from the northern crosswalk in the center of three lanes. He didn’t stop; he didn’t look my way. I could clearly see him, a white guy with a goatee, with a heavy, burly build, and a receding hairline and sunglasses – but he couldn’t see me (I guess).
When he didn’t yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk, neither did two other vehicles, both following him, but in two different lanes. Why should they? The APD car didn’t stop, so it must not be the law, or enforced, they probably assumed. Both of the drivers saw me, giving me a look as they passed, with one driver, a young woman in her twenties waving at me.
The APD car didn’t have his emergency lights on. He, and the others, stopped at the traffic light up the street at Second and Main.
So be careful. Lot of people are distracted. It happens. Many just don’t care or don’t want to stop for pedestrians. And many just don’t see you.
Or so they pretend.
Michael Seidel, writer 