Tag: just goofing around

Today’s Wandering Thoughts

They entered the coffee shop, passed the hall with two restrooms in it and two signs pointing out those restrooms and walked to the other end of the coffee shop and stared at the employees’ break room door. Then they walked back to the counter and asked the baristas, “Do you have a restroom?” If they’d let their eyes go left, they would have seen a third large sign saying, “Restrooms” with a significant red arrow pointing the way and explanatory text, “The restrooms are in the hall to the right.”

Sometimes, though, you know, urgency just pushes rational thinking and observational skills right out of the brain.

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Floof Sleep

When he settles for a nap

The floof comes along

Sniffing to confirm his identity

Verifying he’s still alive.

The floof settles in

And then settles again

And again

Draping a paw over his chest

Pushing a furry head against his cheek

Taking too much room

Rendering him captured and immobile

As he relaxes and sleeps.

Awakening stiff but refreshed

He reminds himself again

Sleeping with a floof is the best.

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Saturday’s Wandering Thought

He had a rogue eyebrow hair. It curled up and away, refusing efforts to make it fit with the rest of his eyebrow. With a suppressed small sigh, he cut it back. He’d learned years ago that once an eyebrow went rogue, it needed to be trimmed. Don’t pull it, though, no. All kinds of things could happen if you pull it, including a gray – or worse, a white – replacement hair growing in, or nothing replacing it at all, leaving you with smaller and small eyebrows.

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Weaving

He follows, and then he follows.

Each leading and following

Looking to the other to lead and follow,

Pausing to see where the other is,

More comfortable and reassured after knowing this,

Going back to join them, waiting,

Changing paths, creating intersections,

Following and leading,

Friends and not masters,

Weaving memories of entwining lives together.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thought

A new electronic traffic message sign was up, warning me of a delay ahead. Bare orange, very functional design, basically just whatever was needed to hold up the big black sign with its electronic orange characters to give the message.

Sort of surprising. I thought with all the naming/advertising frenzy going on, with companies buying the rights to naming stadiums and other facilities, buying the rights to name a construction sign or advertise on it would be a no-brainer. “You deserve a break today. Stop at McDonald’s after you’re through this mess.” Then Micky D can add two golden arches to the sign.

More inventive and creative types will go the old Burma Shave route.

“You’re trapped in a car. Surrounded by tar. Fortunately for you, Starbucks isn’t far.”

What names would you expect to see advertising on or naming electronic traffic message signs?

“Orange cones put you in mind of anything? Dairy Queen is ready.”

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

He went to the bathroom and entered the code. It blinked red — occupied.

Thinking it through, he thought the light had blinked red twice. He’d never seen that before, so he tried it again. It again blinked red twice.

That seemed odd. Beginning again, he suddenly laughed. He’d been entering his ATM PIN. With the correct digits entered, the door blinked green.

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Past Perfect Me

Awakening to light, slowly mobilizing brain cells and muscles to enjoin the day, I sensed something different. The sense catalyzed my awakening, catapulting me into a full upright position.

This was not my room.

But it was my room from…when?

Rock groups, astronomy, and Formula 1 racing posters, blue bedspread, simple small room layout were absorbed, an answer gained: this was my room when I was seventeen.

I was in my bedroom from when I was seventeen. I had to be dreaming.

Almost as I went through this, I heard a voice inside me saying something similar. As I endured my shocked understanding, I stood.

Almost as I went through this, I heard a voice saying something. Freaked out, I stood up. “Who are you?” I asked in my head.

Then I did something I never thought I’d do. I asked a voice in my head to identify itself.

They seemed to be doing the same.

They seemed more panicked. And younger. So I took the initiative. “My name is Marshall Chamberlain,” I said in a calm voice. “What’s your name?”

“That’s my name, too. Marshall Chamberlain. I’m Marshall Chamberlain.”

Although I’d almost expected it, my throat dried as realizations took over. I couldn’t accept them but logic forced me to say things, searching for truth and understanding. “I’m in my bedroom from when I was seventeen, living in Pennsylvania with my father. Do you know where you are?”

I turned and looked into the dresser mirror as I spoke, staring at my young, skinny self. Thin dark mustache and goatee, thick, brown curly hair, unibrow, muscles.

“No. I’m…I’m in a bedroom.”

I took a tight grip on my sanity. It was like one of those crazy movies where a parent and child have switched places, except I’d been switched with myself. I was back in time, as had happened to Kathleen Turner’s character in Peggy Sue Got Married, except I’d also gone forward as a youth to my present existence, and we could hear one another.

“Tell me what it’s like. Is it big? Blue walls? Light-colored carpet, king-sized bed? Sliding doors to a patio, and a large bathroom with two sinks, a garden tub, sauna, and shower?”

“No. It’s…no, I don’t know.”

“Is it a nice, airy room with large windows, French doors leading to a balcony? Can you see a big body of water?”

Shock rattled me. A third voice. “Who?”

I was thinking fast, realizing as he spoke, thinking it as he spoke, as the young me also thought it, “We’re all past, present, and future. We all have a past while we live in the past, and have a future waiting to be lived.”

Then the ‘old one’ from my future said, “This could go very good, or very bad. I don’t remember anything like this happening to me when I was young. I think I would have.”

A younger voice asked, “What’s going on,” as another said, “I remember this room.”

Several of us thought, past, present, future, past, present, future. It’s not static but dynamic. The future almost immediately becomes the present and then moves on to the past.

“I hope this doesn’t spiral out of control,” most of I said. Sounded like seven, eight voices.

With a common thought, we all caught our breath and waited.

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I Got Mail

The habit to check my email is strong. Still do it every morning. It’s even more of a habit now that I’m dead. The body might be gone but not the habits. Those who died before email don’t really get it. Those who died after email died don’t either.

I had mail. I knew I would but I still heave a heavy sigh when I see the messages. It’s iMail so the box is bottomless. I haven’t been able to verify it, but I think the i in iMail means infinite. I have fifty-seven thousand six hundred seventeen unread messages and counting.

They’re all from ‘me’, that is, other versions of me who’d also died but were in a different heaven. The multiverse theory of reality is right; every decision, no matter how small or large or nuanced, generates a new universe. With iMail, the dead across multiverse heavens can connect with one another. The messages from me to me vary little from one another. It’s the same missive I sent to my other selves when I discovered this capability after I died.

“Hi Michael, it’s me. Or you, ha, ha.” With some small differences. Some open with ‘hey’. Or drop the name and call me ‘dude’. Or, Mike, M, Mickey, Micheal, Mychael, etc., or yo. Some start, ‘it’s you’ instead of ‘it’s me’. Some hyphenate the ‘ha-ha’ or leave it naked of punctuation, ‘ha ha’. ‘Hah’ is also used. And ‘ha’. And there’s every variation of all those, including capitalization and punctuation and language. Because some of me were born in NAZI America because the US lost WW2. Others write from the Second United States or the Commonwealth of the United States or the Confederate States of America because I was born in Virginia, and we all share that. That’s who we are but the similarities and differences become complex.

There are some, who, like me, sent out a request. “Please stop. Don’t send me mail.” But the newcomers, who survived the heart attack which killed me — or never had one at all — or were sober, high, stones, drunk, etc. — but were killed later by cancer, accidents, shootings, on Earth, in space or on Mars, the Moon, etc, or by the first wife second wife husband father mother son, etc., — and all the many ways one of those might kill me — and different ways in which the attempt is made — and the different dates, times, locations — all of them come onboard and send out that same damn email, with variations.

I might be in heaven, but it’s email hell. You’d think I’d have the willpower to stop, but here’s the thing about the multiverses: even dead, since I still exist but as another form, every decision creates a new verse. So some of me manage to stop and quit checking their email, but it’s not me. At least today.

I’ll see what happens tomorrow. I hopefully won’t lose it and kill myself in heaven, which apparently we can do.

I’ve seen that imail, too.

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