- Thinking of the post’s title brings back memories and a smile. Pre-pandemic, I used to regularly visit a coffee shop. I usually ordered mochas there. So, it was Michael’s mocha. Going with the alliteration scheme, Michal’s Mocha sometimes became Michael’s March Madness Monday Mocha. It also took place in May. Just harmless fun, banter between me and the ‘ristas.
- The skunk under the house was active last night. Lots of squeaking under the master bath and then arose that smell. We admire this skunk for her persistence and tenacity. She’s like a writer, never giving up, you know?
- I shut down the skunk’s activity last night — well, it was this morning, really, one twenty-five AM by all the standard references — with the iPad. Turning it on, I called up a video of David Frost interviews. Setting the iPad on the bathroom floor with the volume turned up, I plugged it in so it wouldn’t run out of juice, and closed the door. As soon as David Frost began speaking, the squeaking ceased.
- Just to make home life more interesting, we now have what seems to be a gopher hole in the back yard. Investigations are ongoing. More reports forthcoming. We’re a no-kill household, so I’ll probably be turning to sonic stakes to drive them away.
- I’m always fearful of calling down the muses’ wrath when I mention that writing is going well, that I’m enjoying the process and entertaining myself with what I write, so I won’t mention it.
- I really enjoyed the 60Minutes interview with Colson Whitehead that aired Sunday. First novel rejected twenty-five times and never published. He writes for himself but hopes that one person will identify with and like what he writes, and maybe one will become ten, etc. That’s me paraphrasing, based on what I heard, and perhaps what I wanted to take away from his outlook. He’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, which, great, congratulations to him. More importantly, those two books are in the house in my reading pile. My wife read both and recommend them to me. I seriously trust and respect her judgment in these matters. So, I’ll put those books higher on the pile.
- The reading pile is always growing, it seems. Books get recommended or passed on. Reviews are read and chords are struck. Friends publish new books and must be read. A new favorite author is discovered and other works are hunted down for reading. Then, there’s the non-fiction side. Reading is a constant requirement. I’m fortunate to have the time to indulge myself.
- I was reading in the living room yesterday afternoon. The book at hand was Countdown City by Ben Winters. It’s a quick, engaging noir adventure. Sunshine bubbled in over my shoulders through the blinds. Sitting, listening, in a pause from reading, I heard no electronics running. No lights were on. The furnace and refrigerator were silent. Radios and television were off, though clocks are running. The home weather station was running, and so was the net and laptops and the associated equipment. But none of these things made sounds. I enjoyed the sunny stillness.
- Thinking of clocks…four ‘clocks’ are in the house. Two are in the kitchen, in the microwave and range. Another is in the bedroom. The fourth is a battery operated clock in the snug. But then, we wear Fitbits, which offer us the time. So do the phones, the thermostat, and laptops, printer, and tablets. We track time everywhere.
- I’m fussy about synchronizing the clocks, too. I think, or at least, pretend, that it harkens back to my military career. Being synchronized to the second was important to us in that life.
- Also to keep life interesting — because these are such boring, tedious times — credit card fraud struck us. I was reviewing my credit card billing last week. It’s a weekly habit for me to go online and review all the finances, a time-killing activity to fill space when I’m putting off doing something else. It just takes a few minutes. Well, lo’, there was a small charge that I didn’t recognize. After verifying it didn’t belong to my wife, I challenged it with the company. They responded by cancelling that card and sending me a new one. However, they didn’t tell me that they were doing that. First I know of it was when the credit card was rejected. That spun me up fast. Suspecting it was related to the fraud that I reported, I checked into the account to look for notice that such is what happened. No notice. A chat with an agent was required to verify cause and effect. It would have been nice to be warned or notified that they’d done this, right? Irritating customer service policy, to say the least.
- We have only two credit card accounts. Each is used for certain activities, to help limit exposure. That meant, though, that we are down one credit card. Momentarily, yes, but it’s a domino effect. Emails arrive, hey, your card was rejected, what up? No idea when the new card will arrive so some activities are on stuck in a queue. Whereas I had reduced checking the mail to once a week in general, sometimes twice in one week, I’ll now be going to the mailbox daily.
- Also, I knew that credit card information. I could rattle off the number, expiration date, and security code without hesitation. Now I’m forced to learn a new number and particulars. Yeah, I like whining, don’t I?
- Got my coffee. Ready to write like crazy at least one more time.
Ignorant
Unheeding of what they thought or humans tried to do, the skunk removed the board with her powerful front legs and went back under the house. A robin changed positions, looking for a meal.
Indifferent to changing clocks, pending elections, economies, and pandemics, nature shifted gears, changing colors and striking down leaves and blooms in the northern climes, and refreshening and enlivening the landscape south of the equator.
Oblivious to watching eyes, hopes and despairs, and lies and promises, the sun rose, and the stars shone, and the moon reflected on it all.
All of nature and physics remained ignorant of the human worries and events, as though they were a drop in the bucket, a blink of an eye, or a mote floating through the firmaments, and not the end and beginning of everything.
The wind, as he thought about it, sighed, and went on.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.
Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.
The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan, Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.
I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.
That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.
Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.
Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.
So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.
Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.
Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.
Un
As I expected, the sun finished setting in the east, drawing light down into itself.
So appearances would inform you, if you saw it. From my short and unhappy survey (leading question: “What the hell is going on?”), I knew that none around me (which was just one person, my spouse) professed to see what I saw. You can call it (as I did, trying to elaborate to her) an eastern sunset, but I knew it was the sunrise going backward.
That’s the expression that drew a brisk, dismissive head shake from my wife when I uttered it. Then she executed the ‘I’m-going-to-avoid-the-crazy’ scurry. Except, she walked backwards and did it before I spoke.
Let’s back up (ha, ha, yeah).
Yesterday morning, in our home office, still on pandemic sheltering, I’d noticed things. Temperatures were falling; my wife undressed from her exercise class and returned to her nightwear. The cat walked to his kibble bowl and dropped food from mouth to bowl, and then walked out backwards. “What the hell?”
The computer’s clock was reversing, as was my Fitbit. Breaking news comments vanished from FB, and then the news went away.
I put pieces together through tests. The day was progressing backwards. I could speak correctly and be understood when I was in the same room with my wife. But everything I heard when she wasn’t around was backwards. People and cars went backwards, as did birds, cats and dogs, and squirrels. I couldn’t shout, “Look, look,” and point things out to her. That cause and effect wasn’t working.
Terrified, helplessly, I ‘un-ate’ my oatmeal and un-made my breakfast.
Need I tell you about my toilet experiences?
It was a long, long night.
Then I got up from going to bed, sucked up my spit and toothpaste, and experienced once more the revulsion of un-urinating. Finishing, I spied a man in my bathroom mirror.
I would say that I shit myself, but that’s no longer how life functioned.
Whirling, I gawked at this tall, pale man in a green bathrobe with blue pinstripes. Clean-shaven, his black hair sprang in every direction. One hand held a glass mug with, I guessed, had beer in it, from its sudsy amber effervescence. The other hand was in his robe pocket.
“Oh, there you are, finally.” Putting his mug down on the bathroom counter, he glanced about and pulled a revolted look. “Jesus, the bathroom, are you kidding? Why couldn’t you have been asleep?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Un. Sorry about my attire but we don’t need to dress. I usually don’t, so consider yourself fortunate. I had company over and dressed for them.”
Stunned and silent, I stared at him. Dozens of questions and comments exercised my brain but none found the exit.
Looking at me, Un said, “You’re gonna attract flies. Close your mouth. Now, my name is Un. I’m here to fix you. People have something called chronoceptors. You’re a people so you have them. They’re teeny, tiny things, small as atoms. They’re part of your nervous system. Sometimes they get inflamed and stop working right, which screws with your time flow perception.”
Un had produced a white and blue stick and looked at it as he talked to me. On my end, I said, “What?” I wasn’t giving a good representation of myself.
Un said, “It’s not that uncommon. We usually catch it immediately, but sometimes we miss it. Usually, when we do, the afflicted go nuts or kill themselves. Call yourself lucky, cause that didn’t happen to you.”
“What?”
Un jabbed the white and blue thing into me. As I yelped and attempted to jump back, he cackled. “This is going to sting.”
It was stinging to the point that I was about to scream. Everything felt like it was on fire.
Then it stopped and I was alone, well, alone except for my cat. He was standing at the door, gazing at me. I was dripping sweat, but that’s all that I noticed about myself.
Did it really happen?
I don’t know.
I admit, though, I felt very relieved when I took a normal pee.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Time for slide back Sunday.
With time slipping away (fewer markers out there to force me to pay attention), I often find that another day has fled. Muddering about it, I thought about how day flows into night and night flows into day, distinguished by weather and light changes, sleep cycles, eating, and clothing changes.
Out of that came a 1965 song by the Kinks, “All Day and All of the Night”, which amused me. (Easily amused? That’s me. Check.) Trawling the Youtube uncovered a 1965 television appearance where they played it. Seeing that black and white footage, hearing that sound quality, admiring their haircuts definitely slides me back to a more relaxed time (primarily because I was just a wee shithead at that point).
Here we go.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Tons of time songs were going through my head this morning. “Time Won’t Let Me”, “Too Much Time On My Hands”, “Does Anyone Know What Time It Is”, “Love Me Two Times”, ” “Time After Time”, “Time” (one by Alan Parsons and another one by Pink Floyd), “Time Is On My Side”, “Time In A Bottle”…you get the gist.
Then, weirdly, an old Oasis song (well, from 1994), “Live Forever” broke through. That, I decided, is today’s theme music. Most of us aren’t going to live forever. Oh, sure, there are probably some among who secretly live very long lives, like thousands of years, but that’s not forever, is it? And the machines among us, along with the angels and aliens, also live decently long, but even they don’t make it to ‘forever’ (which begs the questions, just how long is forever?) (which also prompts songs about forever into my music stream).
Despite our knowledge we’re going to die, most of us fight like hell to stay alive. That’s why we’re willing to practice distancing. I’m a fatalistic person toward death, myself, but I’m not interested in the pain and discomfort that I read that many endure with COVID-19.
So, here’s the music. That is all.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Seems like everybody’s waiting
For a new change to come around.
[Background:]
Come around, come around, come around.
[Lead Vocal:]
Waiting for the day when the
King, Queen of soul sing around
[Background:]
Sing around, sing around, sing around, sing around.
[Lead Vocal:]
You can understand everything’s to share.
Let your spirit dance brothers everywhere.
Let your head be free, turn the wisdom key
Find it naturally – see you’re lucky to be.
Dig this sound it’s been round and round and round.
You get out your cold feet ba-by
Something on your back lay it down.
[Background:]
Lay it down, lay it down, lay it down.
[Lead Vocal:]
Don’t you know honey maybe your light might shine this whole town
[Background:]
This whole town, this whole town, this whole town, sing around.
[Lead Vocal:]
Time for you to all get down
Yeah do it
h/t to AZLyrics.com
The song is Santana with “Everybody’s Everything” (1971). Thought it fit well for these times. BTW, that’s a Neal Schon guitar solo, not Carlos.
Get ready.
Michael Seidel, writer 