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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Monday’s Theme Music
Monday began with a crash. The cats rushed in. One tentatively walked forward, eyeing the wreck. The others sat down and looked at me. “You’re in trouble,” he said.
I knew he was right. I’d begun unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher. A small ceramic bowl was on the counter. I picked the white thing up, thinking, where can I put this so it’s out of the way? As I turned, it yelled, “For love,” and threw itself from my hand. It crashed to the floor and splintered into forty pieces or more, like a huge white KFC offering. The bowl’s last words were, “Tis my heart,” then it was no more.
I cleaned up the mess with care. It had landed on a kitchen throw rug. I took that off and shook it out, and then vacuumed the crime scene. The cats monitored everything to ensure I did it right.
My wife came into the kitchen as I finished. “What happened?” I explained it all. I knew it would affect her. Yeah, it did. The white bowl sits in the middle of a bamboo serving tray. We’ve had it since I took my first lesson in being married. I’m still learning. We paid about $20 for it at a store like K-Mart, but you know how it is with these things that you buy when you’re poor and first starting out. They’re cheap and priceless.
Or maybe you don’t know because you were never poor or never started out, or you lack sentimental bones and think, it’s just a bowl, get over it. Oh, you heathen.
Anyway, I can still see the bowl leaving my left hand. I still wonder how it happened. I still see my wife’s look when I explained, and I still hear the noise it made when it kissed the floor.
Depressing way to begin a day but not as bad as some things which could’ve happened, I tell myself. That’s true. Just read the news.
The Neurons began my day with two songs in succession in the morning mental music stream (trademark pending). First was “Abacab”, a 1981 song by Genesis. I believe that’s in mind because of yesterday’s theme song, “Turn It On Again”. That lasted until I looked out the window and checked the billowing trees and crashing rain. Then The Neurons dropped “Manic Monday”, written by Prince, performed by the Bangles, released in 1986. But then, watching rain and wind and a single scrub jay out the window, Les Neurons pulled up another 1986 song, a reflective tune by The Steve Miller Band called “I Want to Make the World Turn Around”. It starts with a sax, which surprised me when I learned it was a Steve Miller offering. Wasn’t startled to learn later that was Kenny G. playing sax. Had that feel.
Today is December 26, 2022. Hope you and yours can seize the day. Sun rose here at 7:38 and will set at 4:45. The high will be 56 F and there’s a wind warning out. Right now, it’s 51 F. A Christmas cactus sits in sunshine in the living winter, offering some joy in its red blossoms. Other than, it’s just another Monday.
Time for coffee. Cheers
Sunday’s Theme Music
Warmish and foggy, kind of cool, too. It’s Christmas day in southern Oregon.
Dawn dashed in under the fog’s cover at 7:38 in the morning. I fed the cats and we prepared food to take to our friend’s house for Christmas brunch. Sipping coffee, I looked out the kitchen window. The fog was hurrying away. Sunshine struck the valley’s southern edge, lighting the trees and the blue sky.
I thought about all the matters which have gone well for me and pushed that aside. Homelessness plagues our small town. All those people were out there, looking for places to get warm, to be safe, to rest their bones and minds. I helped a few this week but it never feels like enough. Never. It’s a pattern encountered across the nation, one of the most powerful societies the world has ever seen.
I thought about the misery of people in other states hanging on as snow and ice storms undercut their infrastructures and cut their power. I thought about the military forces battling for arcane logic in Ukraine and the people trying to help one another to stay alive there. Then I thought about all the wealth hung onto by our world’s most fortunate families, individuals, corporations, wondering if they’re the most deserving, and how the sperm lottery affects our existences. I’m flattened often by stories of the wealthy do the most that they can to stay wealthy and make more money. Work harder, others are told. It’s just that easy.
Just Christmas reflections, little different than my recurring daily thoughts. Not original, but worn and tired.
My music today has nothing to do with the holidays. The song came out of dreams and efforts, weariness but hope. Called, “Turn It On Again”, the song is by Genesis. Released in 1980, the song is about a man whose friends are the people on TV.
Have a merry one. Happy holidays to you, whatever your flavor of seasonal celebrating as the common era year slides to an end. Hope you’re warm and safe, with a belly full of food.
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 