May 10 – bed or coffee

10 more bed minutes
or 10 more coffee minutes
cruel, too early, choice

Wake and stare at the clock and realize you have 10 minutes before the alarm goes off.

Head doesn’t hurt yet and stomach is behaving itself and you can luxuriate, in every sense of the word, in a half-wakeful, warm drowsiness for those 10 minutes.

Or, you can get up 10 minutes early.

Head doesn’t hurt yet and stomach is behaving itself and you can luxuriate, in every sense of the word, in the unhurried sipping of a second cup of coffee as alertness and awareness slowly rise through your brain and body while you become awake.

On the one hand, if this is the hardest decision to make this morning, I live in a pampered world of privilege and affluence, and I know and appreciate it.

On the other hand, it is a cruel choice to have to make this early in the morning.

May 9 – need a friend

If one of those days
when you really need a friend
too late to make one

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.
Proverbs 17:17

We all know this and we all want friends, so why is it so hard to find friends.

Common history together is the bond of friendship.

School, work, church and family brings you together with people that you share common experience with.

But you can’t have much common history in a matter of days or weeks or years.

Here in Atlanta, 9 of 10 people are not from Atlanta and 1 out of 4 is foreign born.

What we have in common is that we have nothing in common.

May 8 – Oreos with lunch?

Oreos with lunch?
box was full from the outside
but empty inside

As I made my lunch this morning, I saw a package of Oreo Cookies in the pantry and my mouth got all set for the crunchy creaminess to follow my sandwich late today.

I thought the package was light but wasn’t prepared for an empty package.

No cream filling.

No cookies.

No nothing.

The thin cows of my dreams ate up the fat cows of my hopes and stayed thin, once again.

May 7 – Hum of the Highway

Hum of the Highway
Sound of America singing
Not Walt Whitman’s song

All day long, like white noise (by itself a terrible nuance of this age) or the low drone of of a far off bagpipe, I hear the hum of thousand’s of engines. The low whoosh of cars and trucks forcing their way through air.

It’s background music for this techno era of auto tuned electronics.

Not the same music Walt Whitman wrote about.

I Hear America Singing

BY WALT WHITMAN

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

May 6 – Wake up Eddie!

NOOOOOO, MA-MA, Come ON,
Keep Moving! Wake up Eddie!
Driving? Words to yell

My wife has noticed that one the rare occasions when I am driving with her in the car, I talk to the other drivers. She is quick to point out that they can’t hear me.

Actually, when I am driving by myself, on my daily commute into and out of Atlanta, I am not talking to other drivers so much as I am yelling at them.

I know they can’t hear me, but it does help me feel a little better.

Today’s Haiku is a lexicon of my most used phrases.

Here is what they mean.

NOOOOOOOO: (Long and slow, starting high to low) – For drivers who try to cut in, in front of me.

MA-MA: (prayerfully as in ‘ma-ma yo tengo hambre” which is about 33% of the Spanish I retained from a single term in college) – When I see drivers ahead me somehow avoid getting themselves into an accident (two cars merging into the same place, 1 car merging and speeding up as the car already in the lane starts to break).

COME ON: (said in two very distinct words with a corresponding pause between)- For drivers in front of me who allow a gap for other drivers to cut in, in front of them, which pushes me another car length away from my destination. This has become more a problem lately as I notice drivers leaving a ‘handheld gap’ in front of themselves so they have more space between cars to stop as they are playing with their phones and not watching the road.

Keep Moving: (like a command in the way A TEN TION is yelled in army movies)- For cars that slow down for no apparent reason. Gawking, Cop on the opposite side of the freeway, right turns with a right turn lane for traffic through the turn, RAIN. This is big in Georgia and there are actually ROAD SIGNS that have been produced and placed by the State of Georgia that say, KEEP MOVING. I love this sign and want these words carved on my tombstone if I have one.

Wake up Eddie: (with desperation in your voice) – For those moments when all the sights and sounds of traffic leave you in no doubt that an accident is just about to happen. Based on this old joke:

George and his brother Eddie, were interviewing for truck driving jobs.

The guy says to George, “You and your brother are driving a big rig across country. Eddie is asleep next to you in the cab. It’s raining and you are going down a steep hill. Without a warning, at the bottom of the hill, another big truck coming the way other hits the brakes and jackknifes into your lane. Other trucks in front of you break and stop all over the road. At the same time, the railroad signs start to flash and the crossing guards come down and a trains crosses the road in the middle of all the trucks. What do you do?

George looks at the man and thinks for a moment and says, “I wake up Eddie.”

“Wake up Eddie?, says the guy, “Why would you do that?”

“Well,” says George, “Eddie has never seen such a big accident.”