2.20.2020 – I leave tomorrow

I leave tomorrow
how will I get there today
I want to break free

A benefit of a long commute is time to think.

It’s my thoughtful spot I guess.

In The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne writes, “Halfway between Pooh’s house and Piglet’s house was a Thoughtful Spot where they met sometimes when they had decided to go and see each other, and as it was warm and out of the wind they would sit down there for a little and wonder what they would do now that they had seen each other. One day when they had decided not to do anything, Pooh made up a verse about it, so that everybody should know what the place was for.”

This warm and sunny Spot
Belongs to Pooh.
And here he wonders what
He’s going to do.

On another rainy morning, I merged onto the the freeway, got in my line and switched to auto pilot and began to think.

Think, think, think.

I had been talking with my wife that this was shaping up as the summer of the big change.

Lots of new things are coming from new babies to new places to live and lots in between.

Most of what might happen depends on what will happen first.

And when.

My list of things to think about in my thoughtful spot got longer and longer and more involved until I felt like I had gone into a revolving door and came out earlier than I had gone in.

Or was it later?

I can’t leave until tomorrow.

But I have to be there today.

I went back into the revolving door again and again and kept coming out at places I didn’t want to be.

Or at least wasn’t ready to be.

Traffic came to a sudden slow down and I came off auto pilot and back to this world.

Songs had been playing on from my iPhone in the background.

The next song’s intro starting playing.

I recognized the tune and a smile came across my face and my heart lifted out of the mud.

I turned up the volume.

Freddie Mercury sang, “I WANT TO BE FREE.”

For a few minutes, I was.

Not for the first time and not for the last, I want to be free.

Me, Freddie and most everybody.

I got to laugh.

And I got to laugh at myself.

I got out of the revolving door and entered another door.

And drove on through the rain to work.

2.18.2020 – Words for commute

Words for commute. Brief,
unpleasant experience
My mauvais quart d’heure

Each work day I make my drive to work.

It isn’t the worst thing in the world.

It is brief.

It is unpleasant or at least less than pleasant.

It is an experience.

It is my mauvais quart d’heure.

Mauvais quart d’heure (moʊˈveɪ ˈkɑr ˈdər/) is not french but an english term borrowed from the french.

According to the Online Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, it means, a short period of time which is embarrassing and unnerving; a brief but unpleasant experience.

A bad quarter of an hour.

Perfect.

I had never heard the term before.

Not surprising that the frequency of its use (as measured by the OED) is band 1. Band 1 words is made up of extremely rare words unlikely ever to appear in modern text. These may be obscure technical terms or terms restricted to occasional historical use, e.g. abaptiston, abaxile, grithbreach, gurhofite, zarnich, zeagonite.

Mauvais quart d’heure.

An obscure, technical, unused term.

Yet I feel a mauvais quart d’heure, experience a mauvais quart d’heure, go through a mauvais quart d’heure, twice a day.

2.9.2020 – drive across seasons

drive across seasons
winter to spring back again
east west Atlanta

Woke up yesterday to a gray, cloudy but dry morning.

We had plans to go to Woodstock, Georgia, north of Atlanta, for a baby shower.

Ominously, son Lucas, who was hosting the party and texted everyone, “We are still on!”

30 minutes later he texted, “come at your own risk.”

By 8AM, here in Gwinnett County, north-east of Atlanta, it started to snow.

At first just a little, then a lot.

Wet heavy snow.

Brought back memories.

Lots of memories.

Discussions started about the party.

Go or no go?

For people born and raised in Michigan, driving in snow is no big deal.

Unless you happen to be in Atlanta.

There, no one else knows what to do.

There, roads are not cleared or salted.

There, roads are built without shoulders.

The 10 feet you might have available for a shoulder is turned into another, barely wider than a car, traffic lane.

There, roads are carved out of ridges, ravines and hollars with 20 foot steep drop offs on either side.

Winter, snowy weather car travel in the south is not designed to accommodate cars.

My solution was to go explore.

I needed gas in my car.

I said I would go get gas and make an assessment.

I was back in 10 minutes.

Got less than 1 mile from the house.

Cars were everywhere.

Even on the roads.

But everywhere else as well.

I pulled into the a driveway and turned around and felt lucky to get home.

“Nope, no way”, I announced when I walked in.

The party was postponed to Sunday.

My daughters in the city of Atlanta wondered if we were nuts or scaredy-cats.

They accepted the decision but sent photos of clear roads and no snow from just 10 miles away.

Later that same day, my wife and I had to take our son to downtown Atlanta.

This had been planned to be a part of our day after the party.

It was a very quick trip as by this time everyone was staying home.

It was around 2PM and the snow had stopped and was melting fast.

Driving out of Gwinnett County we soon left the snow behind.

By the time we got to our destination in East Midtown Atlanta, there wasn’t even a hint of snow and the roads were dry.

My wife and I passed the time in a cafe over Latte’s and Beignets and the sun poured through the windows of the cafe.

Driving home, we could see the edge of the storm front up ahead.

We left the sun behind and entered into the clouds and fog and cold and gray.

I felt like we had driven across the seasons in just 20 miles.

Somewhere I read that spring time advances 5 minutes or maybe it is a day for each degree north or something like that.

Trying the google and I can’t find the actually figure.

Earl Shaffer, the first person ever to walk the entire Appalachian Trail titled his book, “Walking With Spring“

South to north, walking with spring, is one of the best lines of pure poetry I ever read.

We went west to east and left spring behind.

Winter, up north winter, has come for a time to North Georgia.

I don’t mind to visit winter, but I would not want to live there.

2.6.2020 – songs, sounds of traffic

songs, sounds of traffic
rubber and rain, meet the road
rhythm of my ride

In the flawed but fun Amazon show, “Mozart in the Jungle’, there is a scene where the conductor is being driven somewhere in New York.

He rides with the windows open and listens to the sounds and songs and rhythm of the traffic and city.

He listens with a look of awe and appreciation.

I commute to work in downtown Atlanta from my home on the upper north side of Gwinnett County.

On average I am in the car for 45 minutes both ways.

My record to work is 32 minutes but that was at 4:00AM one morning.

Most days it is not an unbearable experience.

Most days, when I drive onto the freeway entrance, I am also entering into an unspoken contract with all the other drivers already on the freeway.

I enter into one of the largest, fastest moving co-ops in the United States.

We all want the same result.

When possible I sit back and try to enjoy the ride.

Most times I will listen to audio books or music on my iPhone.

I got exhausted listening to the radio a long time ago.

This morning in Atlanta, it was warm but not warm enough for the air conditioning.

It was raining and storming as well.

Driving with the windows open would be problematic.

I caught a break and the rain held off during my drive.

While there was a lot of spray in the air I could get by with the windows open a bit.

The sounds of the traffic made it hard to hear my audio book.

I could have cranked the volume but listening to William Shirer’s RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH at full volume was too weird.

Then I thought of that scene in MOZART IN THE JUNGLE.

Instead of a book or music, I listened to the sounds, songs and rhythms of my ride.

The steady hum of my car with the baseline of my tires on the pavement.

The swish of passing cars.

The roar of truck engines.

The smash-smush truck tires through the water.

The doppler sound of taffic coming up from behind and then moving on ahead past me.

The high hum that highway traffic makes.

Sounds all man made.

Can it be called music?

If it can, its the sound track to too much of my life.

1.25.2020 – Saturday Morning

Saturday Morning
someone set alarm last night
Need big bounce today

My Saturday started at the weekday time of 5:15AM because SOMEONE set the alarm on my bedside clock last night.

Half awake, less than half asleep I grappled with consciousness to get close enough to the surface to understand what was going on and I swatted at the clock and the alarm stopped.

I whispered a sorry to my wife.

Then tried to swim back under the surface of sleep.

The alarm went off again five minutes later.

I had hit the snooze button.

I hit the snooze button so hard I knocked the clock off of the beside table to the floor behind the bed.

Now the alarm was really going.

Growing louder and more shrill.

Out of bed and on the floor, searching for the clock, saying words my Mother never taught me, I finally got the alarm off.

But boy, was I awake.

I apologized again to my wife and got back in bed.

Bemoaning the awful truth that my Saturday lie in was over.

My thoughts turned to coffee.

Coffee and breakfast.

We had Korean Chicken take out last night.

Unexpectedly I really enjoyed the pickled radishes.

There were leftovers in the fridge.

Sometimes a cold piece of chicken with my coffee is just what I want for breakfast.

At this moment, I could smell the coffee and taste the spicy chicken.

I slid out bed and went downstairs.

There was my Son.

There was my Son surrounded by the plastic containers that I had used to pack up the leftover chicken the night before.

The empty containers.

Bit my lip and made coffee.

Soon I was sitting down with a big mug of blessedness with my iPad, I set out to enjoy what I could of my morning.

My son called out, “I have to be at dance early this morning. I told Mom.”

No one told me.

We would be leaving in about 10 minutes.

So much for a quiet coffee time.

What was left of my Saturday Morning was now a black cloud over my head.

I looked like that emoji of the face with the head exploding.

I needed a bounce this morning.

I would need a BIG bounce.

Dressed and in the car, I was negotiating with Saturday Morning traffic on I85.

I connected my phone to the car radio and Siri told me that music playing, all songs, shuffled.

First up this morning was Someone to Love by Queen.

I grew up with Queen.

Not that I really noticed.

I wouldn’t call Queen the soundtrack of my life.

But they were always there playing in the background.

Recently watched the movie Bohemian Rhapsody and I was struck but how many of their songs I knew.

And knew well enough to sing along with.

And if you know Queen, it is music you sing along with at the top of your longs.

It was good music.

It was music that made you feel good.

At this moment of my life, it was possibly the best song I could have heard, of ALL songs, to get a bounce to my day.

A BIG bounce.

I laughed a lot as I listened.

It is a good song.

It is a song that makes you feel good.

The trip to the dance studio went by quickly.

I pulled into the driveway as the song came to an end.

I came to a stop and my son got out.

He paused with the door open and looked at me.

“Did you have to play that SO LOUD?”