Fran Said
Thursday’s Trinkets
- Feels like a Saturday. Odd, for me. I haven’t worked for a company where I kept a schedule for several years. You’d think the days of the week would’ve lost their feel by now.
- How does Saturday feel? Less structured. Freer. More relaxed and less stressed. Comfortable as a pair of your favorite shoes. Full of expectation that something good is just about to happen.
- Mood was dark earlier in the week. Ah, the standard black cycle. Went into a snarling depression. Thinking about what/how to write a scene, I sulked. ‘Thoughts went, I’ll be sixty-five years old next year, struggling to finish a novel. Written fifteen. Published four on Amazon to no great success. Agents are barely interested in what I submit to them, and I don’t pursue getting published with any great energy. Why am I wasting my time with this shit?’ Then I went mumbling away, did some other things, and thought, oh, this is what happens, and went back and resumed writing. Mine is a fickle mind, probably like most people. The fact is, I enjoy writing, and employing my imagination to create puzzles for my mind to solve, then scrambling to find he words. That’s writing, innit?
- Some of the week’s hours were spent helping my wife. She belongs to an exercise class. They meet every MoWedFri at nine AM via Zoom. Pre-COVID, it was an hour earlier at a gym. The instructor has been teaching this class for forty years, and my wife has been going for fifteen. We’ve made many friends through the class, including the instructor and her hubby. The class also launched my wife’s book club. Each year for Christmas, the class members take up a collection and sign a card for the instruction. Well, hard to do that this year. So I set up a private Gofundme for them. We worked with the Y on a letter that was sent to the members. Then I created an eighteen inch by thirty inch prop check for my wife to use to present the collection to the instructor. The prop came out okay, although elements reminded me of a fifth-grade project. But we had to use what we had on hand. It’s the thought that counts, right? The class took up over eleven hundred dollars. Knowing the instructor and her hubby, who aren’t in need, they’ll share it with others who are in need. They’re quite generous people.
- Setting up the Gofundme was extremely easy. It impressed me with how simple it was. Which had been my impression, leading to why I helped my wife. She and her friends were thinking it was technical and required computer savvy. It doesn’t.
- Reading Bill Bryson’s book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants. It’s rich with history and details. Great expanding knowledge. I’m not as intimate with my body’s functioning as I’d like to be. That’s one reason why I selected this book as a read. As I’ve aged and endured some minor health issued (enlarged prostate gland, broken arm, high blood pressure), I wanted to know more details about myself. I’ve been reading on the net, pursuing symptom after symptom, organ after organ, getting more granular with processes and functions. I suspect many people take up the same pastime of learning more about their body as they age. I keep thinking that I should’ve paid more attention when I was younger. You know, before things began giving me problems, right?
- Ran into a friend at the grocery store. I was checking out, he was coming in. About eight AM on Wed. We were both masked and had hats on. I said, “Pat.” He stopped in front of me, six feet away, and stared. “Who is that?” “Seidel.” “Michael!” A smile lit his eyes. “Didn’t know you. Hat. Mask.” We chatted for about ten seconds, and then pressed on. Not great socializers, either one of us, but it was pleasant encountering him.
- Watched Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom last night. Fraught with dialogue, tension, and foreshadowing, the film kept me focused. Strong characters…well, strong in every area and value. Viola Davis is on the shortlist of actors that always shade my opinion of a movie. If she’s in it, I’m more likely to be drawn to watching it. All that I’ve seen her in, she impresses me. Chadwick Boseman had also joined the list so it was crushing to hear of his death. Gotta say again, though, white people are often cruel, greedy assholes. Which, as a white person, pisses me off.
- It’s been a windy week. My cats DO NOT LIKE WIND. Tucker refuses to leave the house. His position is fine with me; he’s safer in the house. Boo the house panther likes to go out in the morning for a few hours in the back yard (if there’s sunshine) and an hour in the evening on the front porch. Papi, though, (aka the ginger boy, Youngblood, and Meep) despises the wind. He goes out the back and returns to the front, banging on to get back in. Does this six to eight times a day. Bored in the house but too bothered by the wind (and the cold) to stay out. Poor boy. I wrote about his feelings about the wind last month in The Despised Wind.
- My Fitbit report said that I did eighty-seven miles last week, three less than the week before. I thought, bullshit. I don’t know how that thing counts. Yes, I know the principles they employ; I’m just dubious of the results. Still, I keep trying to maintain a twelve-miles-a-day average. Need some sort of goal to focus.
- Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. Happy holidays, whatever one it is which you recognize or celebrate. Remember, stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, social distance, and get the vaccine. Cheers
Next Year
Picked up some library books the other say. The library set up is working for this lockdown era: go online, put a book on hold on my account. They send an email when it’s ready. I have a window before it’ll be put back on the shelf, giving me time to plan when I’ll go down there to pick it up.
I go several times a month. There’s a table set up outside, under a canopy, Saturday through Thursday, noon to four. Tape is used as markers to indicate the traffic flow and safe distances. Patrons line up six feet apart. The librarian comes out. We’re all masked. You give your name; the librarian goes inside and return with your books. Your account number is verified verbally via the last three numbers. They give you your books and you go on your way.
As part of the process, a slip of paper with the book’s title and its return date is printed. On that little slip are also two little financial gems. One states how much money you’ve saved yourself by borrowing from the library. The other tells how much you’ve saved this year.
The first is $26 on my slip of paper today. That was for two books. Both are hardcovers. Neither were published this year. I suspect I could get them for less than twenty-six dollars used.
The second number is $660. That’s how much I saved this year, they said.
Well, I don’t know about that. I pay a little in taxes each year for this. It was a bond issue for the county library system, and it’s part of my annual property taxes. I don’t think they take those taxes into account when they tell me how much I’ve saved.
But I like the system. I’m a writer. I’d like people to buy and read my books. It’s great that the library system pays books to fulfill that for writers. I hope my books end up in the library some day. It’s also an excellentway to save on trees, innit? Buy a book and let multitudes read it.
All that led to ebooks. These books were available to be borrowed as ebooks. ebooks do even more to save trees, although we then get into the sticky situation of electronic waste.
I don’t do much ebooking; I like the personal heft of the thick books in hand as I carry them around and read in various postures. I know I’m silly and sentimental that way. I could use ebooks and save more trees. Yet, I resist.
I blame blue light for some of that resistance. I watch television (so cut down, you reply) while I’m running in place (oh, you answer, that’s a little different) or using the Stairmaster as part of my exercise. I’m not good at reading while walking (though I’m trying). I also spend a lot of time on the ‘puter reading news (so cut down, you suggest) (I probably should, I answer, as not much of the damn news is good for my spirit), writing, and editing. I don’t want to add the strain of reading ebooks to the strain I already thrust on my eyes.
Nothing is as clear cut as it first appears any longer, whether it’s environmental impact, saving money, or selling books. Our lives are choices, decisions, and compromises. I could, instead of running in place or exercising while watching television just curl up with a book. I could, instead of using a hefty volume, make it an ebook and reduce other strain on my eyes. Or I can go to audio books —
Yeah, don’t even go there. I am a fan of audio books; I’ve used them when driving long distances, and I’ve used them while exercising. I’ve found, though, I prefer the inner voice that I create when I’m reading something.
So, I’ve thought about these things. I recognize some of my habits are comfort ruts. Comfort ruts can be pretty useful in periods of stress, such as, say, a global pandemic. Then again, it may be that I’m just too lazy to change, modifying that ‘too lazy’ to ‘too old and set’.
This is just one facet of existence. These same sort of exercises go on with other things as we live, from medicines to using plastics to cars to public transportation to fossil fuels to recycling to GMOs to organic food to nutrition to healthcare to eating healthy to money to politics to welfare to taxes to social security to war to equality to fashion to music to film to being healthy to relaxing to having fun to —
Well, that point is hammered in. Life is a busy process of constantly re-balancing all these choices. I wonder what’ll it be like in another hundred years.
Strike that: let’s just see what it’s like next year.
Michael Seidel, writer 