It’s a recurring theme for me. I see old people and wonder what they were like when they were young, and I look at young people and wonder, what will they be like when they’re old.
Like her, in the floppy sun hat, green pants, and multiple pastels scarves, short grey blonde hair and wire-rimmed round gold glasses. When did she become that person?
Or take her for example, the blonde early tweener with blue hair and fringe bangs, dressed all in black, with a long-sleeved shirt and tight shorts, white crew socks, and white canvas shoes. She’s a gregarious presence in her small knot of companions. What will she be like in the future?
Weird thing: thirty-five customers by my count in the coffee shop. Four of us are male. Two of the men are working on computers. It looks like the women are all socializing.
Contemplating the dynamics and speculating about people is an attractive way of engaging my mind as I sip coffee and the muse comes to write.
Another grand opening has commenced in Ashlandia. A food truck and picnic table are in the parking lot. Couple chairs. Band is setting up under a white canopy on one side of the small lot. Merchandise has been pulled from the store and is displayed on racks and tables. Vintage clothing. Looks like a good turnout.
Third business in that location since I lived here, which is nineteen years. Once upon a time, that place was a bakery called Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Place to go for pies, cookies, breads, turnovers…well, bakery stuff.
Beside it was a small Italian restaurant. Wiley’s World. Excellent food. It’s now a plant store. Across the street used to be a bank but is now a Starbucks. A coffee shop, updated and modern, replaced the old, beloved coffee shop on the corner that went out of business almost ten years ago when the building’s owners upped the rent. And on the other corner was a bowling alley that is now a small strip shopping center that seems to stay half empty.
Then again, I used to walk to this corner to the coffee shop. Just about a mile, every day. When the coffee shop went away, I had to walk further and further till it reached the point that I was consuming too much of my writing day to reach my writing destination and go back home. Then COVID hit and everything shuttered and there was little walking to anywhere.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same” is the expression. The flux of business and life, revealed in the shifting landscape.
He seemed like he was aged. Not much energy. I offered coffee. He gave a head shake. I took that as no. That’s my culture.
He sat, cold and broody, high thin clouds on a blue day, a sun sluggish with its heat, tired with its shine. Seemed to be studying the trees. The old oak across the street sways high above power and phone lines. It’s an old neighborhood in parts, and that’s how it used to be, black telephone and power lines hanging between poles, home to birds and dangling shoes. The oaks leaves are green but their shade seem to be yielding into the yellow that takes them every year. Saturday seems like he’s considering it like a mystery: when will those leaves change?
It’s 59 F now. Saturday plans to get up to the high seventies, that is, if he can get up. Weight is holding him back. He’s had it a long time but it still surprises his muscles. A car goes up the hill outside the window and another goes down, causing him to look, like they might be guests coming to see him. Everyone sees Saturday and no one sees him. He’s invisible and there, forgotten, overlooked, used.
He pulls out a newspaper from the air, opening up the big, thin pages, humming as he reads. I smell the ink but can’t see the black headlines. The Neurons begin humming with Saturday. Working overtime, I finally pluck the song’s words out of the mind’s grey folds, putting enough together to get a sense of the melody. Performers arrive late to the scene: Bon Jovi. “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” plays in the morning mental music stream (Trademark cracked). A 1995 song that begins with a depressing litany but then rises up with defiance and optimism.
Now, as then, when I heard the song back in the day, I think of the stereotypes attached to it, like the idea that Saturday night is a good time. How that is embedded in our culture. How far back does that go?
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has been brewed and calls. Here’s the music. Have a good Saturday. Cheers
Today is Thursday, September 12, 2024. A chilly morning here in Ashlandia, the rain has stopped and the sun is crowning over obstacles, trying to toast us a little today. Right now, it’s 54 F, and the high won’t wander much more than the low seventies.
Yesterday was supposed to see us in the upper seventies. We never made that mark at my place. When I was out writing, rain was dumping on the intersection where the coffee shop sits. Like, wow, very cool to see the silver bullets splashing up on the soaked asphalt and cement. Heavy streams built up fast, gushing into sewers. But driving home, just a four minute event, I was quickly out of the rain; we didn’t see that rain event at our place. Weather can be fickle like that.
The cats took to the rain like cats who don’t like water. After some feeble efforts to assert himself as an outdoor animal, Papi stretched out in front of the fireplace. Although it wasn’t on, it has a pilot light when I lit a few days ago, so it emits some heat. He stayed there for hours, deeply asleep. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) on the other hand headed for the bed and sacked out.
Last night at the beer gathering, a small group ended up discussing birds. One asked about robins and their migration habits. Like me, he’d been taught in grade school that robins fly away for the winter. Like many life aspects, it gets more complicated than that. Our retired biology professor recounted that a friend of his did several bird counts at a slough for several years and discoverved exactly where the local robin population went each winter, living off various winter berries.
Other than that, we talked about the election and the debate, and the vice president’s pearl earrings. You now, on the right, they believe those were audio devices, giving Vice President Harris an affair advantage over Trump. That’s why he did so poorly. Because how else could he have done so poorly when she did so well? Yes, that was morning snark, undiluted by coffee.
The Neurons fired up Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble from 1989 in the morning mental music stream (Trademark caught). The song is “Crossfire”. It seemed to come into mind as I gazed across the valley. The air feels like autumn but most of the trees didn’t get the text in this area. And then I just sort of mused about how we were caught between the two seasons. And ‘lo, “Crossfire” began playing. I always particularly enjoyed the lines, “Money tight, nothing for free. Won’t somebody come and rescue me.” Used to sort of identify with it.
Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and vote blue in 2024. Breakfast has been consumed; so has some coffee. Time to get up and do things. Here’s the music. Cheers
I went off topic on a mini-rant with a friend this morning.
It started as an innocent encounter. They commented on my Harris-Walz bumper sticker. I support her campaign to be POTUS.
He said something about being comfortable with a woman president, and I just riffed, telling him that we’re overdue to have a female as our president, just as we were overdue to have a black as our president.
And maybe it was the air, but I went off on a tangent about sex and gender, and how so many people tell me that sex is a matter of biology and that it goes hand in hand with gender. They talk about it as a foregone and undeniable fact of nature. I point out that are many species who have it way more complicated than the simple labels of male and female. I firmly believe that sex and gender continue evolving for humans, just as we as a species continues evolving.
And, and, to finish, it’s always humorous to me when someone pulls out the God card. “God created man and woman.” Right, but isn’t your God all-knowing? So, if they’re pulling the strings of creation, aren’t they creating the others who aren’t strictly male and female as you would have it? And do you claim to know the mind of God? And don’t tell me you’re going to predicate everything on a book or teachings that are a few thousand years old. It’s been revised and edited, and by the way, can’t God change their mind about things?
Guess that’s a commandant I don’t know: “God shall not change their mind.”
I don’t know why I went off. But it’s out of me know. At least for the moment.
The pendulum is swinging. It’s Friday, August 30, 2024, and the hours of daylight have noticeably reduced. It’s an advantage at sun soars through blue cloudless skies, working with the air to lift the temperature next to triple digits during the day, like 97 F today. But then the clear skies and longer night lets the temps skivvy down to the upper fifties, delivering relief. Slips of autumn have climbed back into my life. Some maples have shifted into fall fashions. Starbucks is offering fall drinks. School is back is session at every level locally. And football is again rolling across TV screens, carrying news through feeds.
But first: we must get through Labor Day. In the U.S., we have the bookend holidays of Memorial Day and Labor Day. To many, MD marks summer’s unofficial beginning, and LD is the unofficial end.
I read several news articles in depth this morning. One was about how Republicans have softened their climate change stance. They rarely outright deny it these days. I guess that with so much extreme weather killing and maiming our world, they recognize that they look and sound like fools when they do. Instead, they like to problemtize the solutions which Democrats — and much of the world — recommends. Like moving to more sustainable forms such as wind and solar. No, these caus more problems, they inform their constituents, even as they lie about what’s happening.
Last day of my theme of time in the song’s title. As many of age and are forced to cope with changes, we lament the same thing. The Neurons brought the song that asks the question into the morning mental music stream (Trademark timed): “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” It originally popped onto the rock music scene in the hands of the Kinks in 1965. It’s since been covered by a chunk of performers, most notably Bowie and Van Halen. But I stayed with the Kinks for this day. Ray Davies of the Kinks wrote it and said in an interview:
“We’d been rehearsing ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’ and our tour manager at the time, who was a lot older than us, said, ‘That’s a song a 40-year-old would write. I don’t know where you get that from.’ But I was taking inspiration from older people around me. I’d been watching them in the pubs, talking about taxes and job opportunities.”
First, I was working for a friend I used to work for, Laura. She was a terrific boss, perhaps the best I ever had. Certainly in the top three.
I was injured in the dream and forced to wear a cast on my left arm. It struck me as an unusual cast but I can’t provide any details. Encumbering me, it was forcing me to do things in unusual ways.
Laura was at her desk, watching and talking. I suddenly had a brainstorm about how the cast I wore could be modified to make it easier to deal with the limitations it imposed. Laura began talking about it a split second after the idea came to me. We both started babbling about with growing excitement. Calling me to her desk, she said, “Take out the notebook from the inside pocket on the left side of my jacket.” I did, and handing her the small brown book. She opened it to a blank page and started writing.
With a dream shift, I was now in line. I needed a new vehicle. Five people were ahead of me. A female cashier was helping us. I saw a white Jaguar convertible with a red interior. It seated four. I decided, that’s what I’m buying.
The cashier told the first person in line, “We don’t have any small cars left.” Then she called out to the rest of us, “Is anyone in line interested in any car besides a small car.”
Raising my hand, I responded, “I am. I’m buying that white Jaguar.”
The purchase was done with dream speed. As part of my purchase, I was given a model of the car. They went off to get it ready for me to drive away. I went to a coffee shop and purchased a cup of coffee in a paper cup with a plastic lid.
A hard wind was blowing. I needed to set my coffee down but worried about the wind blowing it over, even though I was in an office. I opened a file drawer and set the coffee in there, thinking that the drawer will protect it from the wind. Then I set the little white Jaguar on top of it.
The wind immediately blew the little car off the coffee cup lid. I wasn’t surprised. I said, “That’s exactly how I expected that to go.”
Two lanes in each direction with a turning lane, Ashland Street is one of our little city’s busiest main streets. Besides connecting to the southern Interstate exit and entrance, it’s home to four shopping centers, a fire station, college dormitories, five gas stations, a Starbucks and another coffee shop, along with several other businesses, motels, and restaurants. Connecting to our main drag, Siskiyou Boulevard, which leads to downtown, Ashland Stret is divided by median stripes and cement dividers in numerous places.
The city has added white stanchions alongside the bicycle lanes on Ashland Street. Some call them bike lane delineators. A couple inches in diameter, they’re tubes which stand 36 inches high and help separate the bike lanes from motor vehicle lanes, making it safer for bike riders.
Questions have arisen from the people. Like, how are cars supposed to pull over to the curb to let emergency vehicles pass? Second question that everyone wonders is, how will the street sweeper handle the stanchions? There’s no clearcut answer for that, they say. As for pulling over for emergency vehicles, people insist that they can’t.
Except: I noticed that these stanchions or delineators are spring mounted. They bend over. I believe cars and street sweepers can go right over them. The question is, will drivers do that?
You know how it is with change. Some have a harder time with it.
First, I had this dream about sharing my apple pie with a young woman. As she was eating my crust, my wife came along. I went off to talk to her.
My wife and I ended up in what seemed to be a living room. Other family members were vaguely int the area. But my wife came to me and said, “I want you to look at my colors and tell me what you see.”
And I was all, “Huuuhhh?”
Other than being Caucasian as my wife, this dream wife didn’t look at all like RL wife, even though she’d started out as RL wife. Her hair was darker, heavier, and longer, and she had this pale, long, face with bright red lippy.
Second, she was dressed like a goth.
Third, she was holding up some kind of panel in front of her.
I thought the panel was a mirror at first. Then I saw that it reflected with nothing but swirled with images that reminded me of melting steel. I was trying to answer my wife’s request to tell you what colors I was seeing and describe her clothes, skin, and hair. She unleashed a heavy exasperated sigh at me and said, “Not those colors.”
Then I saw the mirror thingy was changing. Yellows and oranges were emerging, along with lesser spots of apple green and pine green. There was also a stretched out blotch of purple that was so dark, it was almost black.
I described these things to her, and then, somehow, I knew the colors had to do with her health, and told her, “I think you can change these colors. Just think of the color that you want to be, and that’ll happen.”
She was doubtful but almost immediately, a soothing fair blue swept across the mirror.
Don’t you hate it when you gain weight but you hang onto clothes which no longer fit you because you tell yourself you’re going to lose that weight, and then you finally give up on that idea and give the clothes away or throw them out because it just depresses you to see all those clothes that used to fit you, and then, about a year after you give them away or throw them out, you lose weight and could wear them?
Michael Seidel, writer 