Tag: life

Friday’s Theme Music

We’ve shifted back into standard Ashlandia winter mode. Dropping into the twenties at night, forties to fifties, all Fahrenheit, during the day.

It’s Friday. It’s Feb. 24, 2023. Sunshine broke in at 6:54 this morning, lighting up two fresh inches of snow. Was 29 F then. Now we’re up to 34 and the snow is melting. I saw the snow falling and accumulating as Papi made his usual declarations about being an outdoor animal and needing to leave the house, then changing his mind and demanding to come back in because he’s domesticated. The weather wizards inform us that we’ll see 46 F before the sun whisks away over the horizon at 5:55 PM.

Up north in Portland, friends share videos of heavier dumps, like ten inches. Meanwhile, a buddy down in Santa Cruz shows photos of several inches in his area. February is made for snow this year.

I had words in the head sometime in the last twenty-four heures that went, “Bring it on, here we are, win or lose.” I was contemplating the snow and drought and snowpack, and the associated variables that accumulate into our annual regional water concerns. Hearing my thoughts, The Neurons said, “Hey, we know that song,” and inundated my morning mental music stream with Float On by Modest Mouse from 2004. Jeremiah Green, the Modest drummer, passed away on the last day of 2022, cancer, 45 years old. I think of him because I enjoyed his drumming in this song. Reminders of our mortality are everywhere.

Stay positive. Carpes Friday. I’ll do the same after chugging some strong black roasted bean water. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

Some journeys take you exactly where you know you’re going. You know exactly what to expect when you arrive. Other journeys are just a stopover in the larger picture.

But some journeys are mystical. You don’t know if it’s the final stop or the start of a full new journey. All you can do is wonder.

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Words Wait

A friend has gone into hospice. Failing heart. Surgery to replace his pacemaker was aborted a few months ago. Measures were made to help him sufficiently recover for a new pacemaker. Whatever happened since, he’s in hospice.

I thought about him and me, and him and his life, trying to find words for where we’re at. I finally decided, I was happy to know him, enjoyed his company, admired his accomplishments, respected his principles, and enjoyed his company. The words feel empty and lost, as satisfying as reaching into an empty bag.

It’s the nature of existence as we know it to live and then die. Sometimes the space between the beginning and end are cruelly small. His was not. He’s done the first. Now he will do the second.

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Friday’s Wandering Thought

He eavesdrops on others. He always does, the rogue. This time, he’s listening to three attractive women as they meet and discuss their lives. Their shifting topics could have been lifted from his own existence. He has to restrain himself from chiming in when they try to remember the name of a television show or when they struggle over recalling the name of Amor Towles’s latest novel or Jerry Seinfeld’s writing partner. He’d love to plunge into their brief discussion about The Mists of Avalon as one tries to tell the others about the novel.

But he doesn’t know them, and they don’t know him. They might think it’s rude.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thought

Laying in bed and thinking about his dreams, he told himself, you have to get up. Feed cats. Drink coffee. Try to live.

It felt like it was going to a stretch day, a day when you stretch your energy just to be.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s wind music is a head-banging offering of fast guitar riffs, thrumming bass, and shrieking Deep Purple concert vocals. Christmas trees were on the curbs to be picked up. Not any more. Wind rolls them into the street like holiday tumbleweeds. A few trees have been downed, and branches have surrendered.

It’s warm, though, for January 4, 2023, 40 degrees with a forecasted high of 13 degrees C. Sunshine and clouds have been doing moves since the sun’s 7:40 valley appearance. (“It’s a valley sun, a valley sun, oh my my, fer sure fer sure, it’s a valley sun and there ain’t no cure.”) The planet’s rotation will spirit the sun’s presence from us at 4:52 PM. Rain is on the way, the radar says.

I was musing about time and changes and the shifts I’ve seen in my lifetime. Some of them were the changes witnessed in other individuals, or the organic growth of new norms and mores that accompanied technology’s growth. A few thoughts went along fault lines of how I see myself as changed, and what I can’t see about myself that’s changed.

After staying quiet over this for a while, The Neurons began the 2006 song by Staind, “Everything Changes”, in the morning mental music stream. The song came out a year after our move from the SF bay area to Ashland, a huge shift of demographics and density. It was also ten years after my military retirement, and the year that IBM bought ISS. All of those were large changes for me. 2006 was a year of huge changes and recognition and adjustments to previous changes. So this song kindled thoughts about what was once the way and the plans which had been made, and how all of it tilted and rolled. That’s life for some of us. Others plot it out and follow their life like sheet music.

Stay positive, test negative. Adjust and change as needed to thrive. Speaking of thriving, I’d do much better with coffee in me. Here’s Staind. Cheers

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