noise in the background
is it the television
why not turn it off?
Month: October 2019
October 25 – cautionary tales
cautionary tales
run and tell the king, again
sky falls, persevere
“I wore this frock coat in Washington, before the war. We wore them because we belonged to the five civilized tribes. We dressed ourselves up like Abraham Lincoln. We only got to see the Secretary of the Interior, and he said: “Boy! You boys sure look civilized.!” he congratulated us and gave us medals for looking so civilized. We told him about how our land had been stolen and our people were dying. When we finished he shook our hands and said, “endeavor to persevere!” They stood us in a line: John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, and me — I am Lone Watie. They took our pictures. And the newspapers said, “Indians vow to endeavor to persevere.” We thought about it for a long time, “Endeavor to persevere.” And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.”
Lone Watie from the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales
Driving to work and reviewing the week at large, my heart files with bitterness.
My soul is filled with bile.
Fed up.
Not going to take it anymore.
Just plain angry with humans and lack of humanity.
I sit down and power up my computers and the radio from London is playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. (Violin concerto in D major, Opus 61).
Faith, maybe not reborn or rekindled but somewhat tempered.
There yet are reasons to stand.
Persevere.
October 24 – thinnest of margins
thinnest of margins
my life didn’t change today
whale ropes, driving
Driving home on I85 in Gwinnett County, Georgia, I made the simplest of lane changes.
Going to my left with the car in front moving at my same speed, I checked my left side view mirror and glanced at my rear view mirror and started to merge slowly into the next lane.
I looked up and the car in front had stopped, most unexpectedly.
Instead of a smooth, gradual slide to the left, I jerked the steering wheel and the car swerved hard to left.
I reversed the wheel to the right and straightened out in my new lane, moving past the stopped car that had been in front of me.
It had to have been all by instinct.
They say that the time it takes for a batter to decide to swing at a baseball is longer than it takes for a pitched ball to travel 60 feet 6 inches.
Baseball is a game of inches.
I doubt there was room for a folded over piece of paper between my right front bumper and that car’s left rear corner.
A whisker.
A hair breadth.
And I was on my way home.
The driver of the car in front of me was on their home.
No accident.
No stopping of rush hour traffic.
No exchange of paper work.
No waiting for cops to determine who was at fault.
Nothing.
Nothing worse than a bad scare.
The scare was bad enough.
It was several minutes before I could relax and say a quick prayer of thanks.
I have been in an accident where the margin went the other way and the car coming up from behind me barely clipped my bumper and both cars were badly damaged though no one was hurt.
At least once a week, I see worse.
Much worse.
In Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes, “but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.”
He writes, ” when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.”
But whaling and whale ropes?
I was driving a car, something un-imagined by Melville.
Maybe Melville couldn’t imagine a car but he knew life and he writes,
“All men live enveloped in whale-lines.”
October 23 – no sincerity
no sincerity
hypocrisy in buckets
Great Pumpkin, cropped
For me, a part of Fall and Halloween is watching It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.
I enjoyed it as a kid.
I reveled in as a college student, making a point to watch it with my room mate, Doug Bruder. (We would call each other later in life with reminders when it was on.)
I introduced it to my children.
And my grand children.
I knew it was on this week but was surprised when I turned on the TV last night to see it on.
I yelled for my Grand Daughter, Azaria, to join me.
My daughter, Lauren, says, ‘Oh its Dad’s show.”
And my dear wife came in and sat with me just to be nice.
Azaria had her phone in her hand and was less than eager to look away from the device to watch this 60 year old animation play out as her grand father mouthed the lines.
I was pleased to notice this year that when trick-or-treating, Charlie Brown got rocks several times.
In the past, to make room for commercials, the Bach Fugue of ‘ALL I GOT WAS A ROCK’ had been cut to a single repetition.
I gloried in Linus’ speech of, “Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”
Then on to the party and it happened.
Lucy bobs for apples and pulls Snoopy out of the tub and starts yelling blecch blecch.
Snoopy slithers away … and … CRAWLS INTO THE PUMPKIN PATCH?
What?
WHAT!
Wait a minute.
Snoopy climbs out of the tub and goes over to Schroeder at the piano.
Schroeder then plays out a melody of World War 1 ballads that stirs Snoopy’s heart or moves the dog to grief.
He doesn’t go out to the pumpkin patch until over come with tears, he leaves the piano and goes out the door.
Where was the toothy grin and Pack Up Your Troubles and SMILE SMILE SMILE.
Where was the embarrassment in the dogs face when it howls in emotion during Roses of Picardy?
All cut to create more time for commercials?
Might as well cut off Mona Lisa’s nose.
No sincerity here.
Oh the hypocrisy!
Oh.
Oh.
Oh, Good Grief!
October 22 – entire life learning
entire life learning
how to communicate, still
wrong words are chosen
According to a quick google search, the Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use (and 47,156 obsolete words).
The odds are stacked against me that in any given situation, I will say the right thing or use the right words.
With texting or posting or any form of writing, audio emphasis or how the words are said out loud has to be supposed, or pre-supposed.
I have long said that most texts and emails are read in the same voice that I would read a note that said, “Report to Principal’s Office NOW!”
Is that fair to the person emailing me?
What do the words mean?
We have the audio recording of Neil Armstrong’s first words when he stepped on the moon.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” (click for audio)
Which means the same thing.
NASA later said that there was a burst of static at the most inopportune moment and that the static blanked out the word, ‘a’.
Armstrong was supposed to have said, ‘That’s one small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Plan ahead and select the right words, events and technology will conspire against you and confuse the meaning.
With all those words available, the most used phrase in English must be, “What I meant, not what I said!”
No Haiku For You 